Meet Baby Dinosaur!

Who is this? The face and glasses look slightly familiar, but I can't put a name to it. Oh, of course! It's Baby Dinosaur.



Now, as we all know, Baby Dinosaur is known for having a Very Bad Day every now and again. Look now! He has collapsed in a heap, perhaps re-enacting the famed Stigmata in the Rose Bush.



But what is this? What is he doing?



He is getting up! He is drying his tears!



Legs are straightening!



And now, tail pert and proud, he has returned to form, singing and dancing in that, em, idiosyncratic way of his! What a character. Let us all thank the Famous Anthropologist for sharing him with the Nicebird family. And happy New Year to all from Baby Dino and Old Ken!

"Been hiding out and laying low, it's nuthin' new to me"

So said W. Axel Rose, a man who could smoke a cigarette with style. But, he didn't worry 'bout nuthin,' 'cause worry's a waste of his time. Well, worry or no, I've heard a few stories of late that could bend your bones. And, since Old Ken has not only received a request for tell of his persecution by Senate House Library but was given these disturbing photographs of a friend who was attacked by a day (i.e. yesterday), I think it's only right to have a few things out.

Where to begin? Well, I'll leave you hanging (appropriately enough) on the matter of my attack by Senate House Library and set the mood with a discussion of these photographs. Basically, what I can reconstruct is this: a friend of mine, and let's call him "Dale", has some things that he has to do. He knows that he has to do them and that he will feel better about things once he has done them (which he will); yet, it's painful going. Now, on top of that, he has some pretty strict deadlines for all this stuff—deadlines that really can't be altered.

So, yesterday he sets out for the city to work on some of these tasks. He is making a bit of progress when—bang!—the day attacks him! He opens an email to find that the venue he thinks he has booked for an upcoming conference he is organizing has been accidentally reserved for a week later, and the desired date is no longer available. As you can see from the photograph above, this blow breaks his nose, slices off his top lip and part of his scalp.

Shaken, bloodied, but determined to carry on, "Dale" then gets a cup of coffee. He wants to take it into a quiet gallery space so that he can sit and work. But, distracted by his wounds, his judgment lapses and he decides it would be a good idea to put his coffee in his bag. Bang! Day attacks again!




Completely unsurprisingly to anyone whose vision is not clouded by a thick skein of blood, Dale's coffee completely spills in his bag, soaking all the contents—including some electrical equipment. Simultaneously, as you can see in the photograph above, giant metal retractors shoot into Dale's abdomen and day attacks him with a knife. While some of these wounds subsequently heal a bit, once he gets home and receives an email affirming that the clerical error behind the room-booking shenanigans had been rectified. Yet, the damage was done.

All of this is strangely reminiscent of mine own attack by Senate House Library. Have you ever been there? A wretched place. They've long ago run out of shelf space, so have begun piling books on the floor. Idiotically, the library "begins" on the fourth floor (or fifth floor, US-style) and, despite the fact that the library serves the entire 29-university wide University of London community, there are only two elevators. Now, walking five flights of stairs every time one wants to go to the library seems like a minor detail if one is relatively young and fit. But, if one is older, sick, or (say) carrying a whole bunch of books, one would imagine that it begins to be a real drag.

So much for Old Ken's rant. As for the attack: well, one day I was leaving the library. The elevator down was nowhere to be seen and, anyway, the long queue in front of me would have meant that I couldn't have gotten on even if I waited. So I decided to just take the stairs. The stairs are marble with an intermediate landing between floors. Like a spiral staircase, they have an open "column" down the center such that one can look down from the fifth floor to the basement far below. Well, anyone I started briskly jogging down the stairs and the Library tripped me and tried to throw me over the edge into this open abyss. I was literally about halfway over before I could brace myself on the handrail and wriggle back over. It was really frightening.

Ironically enough, though, Old Ken somehow got onto a mailing list for the "Friends of the Senate House Library." They sent out a survey soliciting opinion on how to improve the place. My suggestions were simple: raze the building and burn the rubble!

What is the story here?

What's this? Two posts in as many days? Some will say that Old Ken is simply trying to pad his numbers, trying to reach that elusive figure of fifty entries in the first year of this bonny blog's existence.

Others will say: "Ken, don't you have some tasks you are supposed to be working on?" Well, it's a tough crowd I am facing here. So, let's not dwell on motivations, but rather—as we always do—let us look at the humble ruins that the world has offered and see what we can learn from them.



And here I want to enlist your help. For, I found the image you see above on the ground some time ago. Notably, the image was bound slide format and it has taken me a while to convert it into a digital file. But what is the scene depicted? I had toyed with the idea of narrating it myself and (hopefully) offering a few witticisms along the way.




Yet, on further consideration, I thought it might be a bit more fun for all of us were I simply to solicit interpretations of the image. Or, perhaps you'd just like to write captions to the discrete details. Either way, please feel free to post your interpretations in the comment section below.

Without prejudging the event, here are a few questions Old Ken found himself asking of this image: when was the depicted event? Who is the center of attention and/or in whose honor is the event being held? Where is it taking place? What are the relations between the three standing women? Who took the photograph?



It all looks like quite a hoot—and please allow me to call your attention to the cake poised at the head of the table, should you think my enthusiasm requires any corroboration. Happy story-telling!

Where has Old Ken been?

The leaves have fallen from the branches. When visible at all, the sun hangs low in the sky. The fly-tip, once the haunt of many a daring yob or football hooligan, is now boarded up. Even the Polar Bar has affixed dueling inflatable snowmen to its porch roof. Yes, winter is surely on its way. But, where has Old Ken been?

Well, I'd like to think that I'm one to come clean about such things, not to get bogged down in the hussle and bustle—the hurly-burly, if you will—of London life. But sometimes, as Steve Groppi would say, situations develop. Certain "events" (say, Thanksgiving) arise; certain "opportunities" (say, having to present a work-in-progress chat) exist. And, before you know, almost a month has passed without sharing these happenings with the world via that singular communication medium, the blog.

So, friends, here I am back again, just a sittin' and a tappin,' so the song says. But, I'm afraid that what I have to share with you won't be all that interesting unless you're interested in the occult or intellectual history or that stuff they call "art" ... well, come to think about, those topics should interest just about everyone. So, let's hop to it.



The Warburg Institute: let the connotations ripple through your memory banks, as I remind you that over here, they do not attempt a Germanic pronunciation of Warburg. (Along these lines, you should hear how they mangle the name Jose; they simply can't believe there is no "Joe" involved). As we know, the Warburg was the institution built around the library of eclectic scholar Aby Warburg, who fled the Nazis to Britain in the run-up to WWII. Home to intellectual giants like Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich, Frances Yates, and many, many more. A proud history, I hear you conceding. But what kind of a place is it now?




Well, before we go much further, I want to make one point crystal clear. That first photograph you see up above: you know, the one with the Art Deco looking building all illuminated through the trees? That is not the Warburg. That is my nemesis—the building that tried to kill me—Senate House Library. Conventional wisdom has it that Senate House Library survived aforementioned WWII unscathed because Hitler had seen it and liked it so much that he designated it as his future personal library in Britain. Thus, the Luftwaffe were instructed not to bomb it. All this rings a bit too painfully true to me, as the building once tried to throw me down a flight of stairs to my bloody end. But, perhaps this is a story for another time.



Now, I had been told that the Warburg is a great place to study. But I had my doubts. The organization of its book collection is famously idiosyncratic. That is, with four floors of books, each level is given over to divisions that made sense to Warburg himself: Image, Action, Word, and Orientation. Thus, as opposed to a standard academic library (especially in the States) where you just find the floor where a given topic is and, with a basic familiarity with the LC categorization, you can find your book in a matter of minutes, the Warburg is a bit more complicated. And wasn't it all just a place of the past—a musty old haunt, filled with the kind of codgers one sees in Manuscripts at the British Library?

In short, Old Ken felt a bit daunted.





Well, after having worked there fairly consistently over the past month, I have to report that I'm sold. The collections are really amazing and, what is more, all of it is open access. There are really amazing early modern books just there on the shelf, ready for the plucking. As it is just around the corner from UCL, the British Library, and the British Museum, there are plenty of places to eat; it's open late three nights a week and open Saturdays; and the people who study there seem much more pleasant than elsewhere. And they have all these weird light cords hanging in the aisles. At first, this seems slightly strange, but it is probably a more effective solution than having to search all around for the hidden light switches (as one has to do at a certain research library at a certain midwest university which will go nameless here).




Not to take things down a notch, but one disadvantage is the bathroom facilities. What you see above is the first floor urinal. I was thinking I might get a bit poetic about how we should imagine Gombrich, Baxandall and co. relieving themselves here. But the fact of the matter is that the place smells like it might not have been cleaned since the '70s. Talk about an elephant house!

Thus, Old Ken's verdict: Warburg Institute—great place to study, lousy place to pee.