Barbara's Blog

  Yet more fun with research! Just hours after I put up my last post, I scored a Guide to Paris written DURING THE TIME BENJAMIN JANUARY WAS LIVING THERE - 1829, smack in the middle of the "Bourbon Restoration." Just glancing through it, it contains LOTS of useful, mundane details, like what rooms rented for, and how much you'd have to pay for a haircut, and what cafes were in operation in the Palais Royale (not to mention who were the good actors, and who were the lousy ones, in every theater in town). (And an exhaustive catalog of EVERY WORK OF ART IN THE LOUVRE). (This guy was thorough). I love this kind of stuff! Most of my old Baedeker Guides date from the early 1900s, so this was a real find! (And it's a PoD reprint, so it was cheap). One of the things that delights me about this is that it gives a contemporary table of British and French money, which will make future Ben January books which involve Paris MUCH easier - I'm ALWAYS trying to track down how muc...

  As I usually do, I wrapped up New Year's Eve reading a collection I made of my favorite haiku (and watching "More American Graffiti"). I arranged them seasonally (in proper haiku fashion), from New Year to New Year:     "Let myself go to bed.      New Year's Day      is only a matter for tomorrow."      - Buson A lovely holiday season, spent with family and friends. I now have about a month before I start teaching again, and am working on getting more sleep, and getting as much done as I can on the rough draft of Benjamin January # 20 (!), "The Nubian's Curse." Rough draft is always exhausting, involving as it does stopping every ten words to look up when the word "opthamologist" was first used, and what divorce law was in Mississippi in 1840. I feel like I'm constantly apologizing for not posting more frequently, but it's always a struggle - do I sleep, or post? In a week or two I have to start putting together materials fo...