There are no jaguar kittens

that have been photographed in the wild. Just in case you were wondering how secretive mother cats can be. Or how hapless PBS photographers actually are. I could talk about animals abandoned after they have been in documentaries, or the current Inuit complaint about how the radio tags are harming the polar animals. But maybe soon we can go into more details. For now let us just say Jaguar mothers have their reasons.

Before we had xerox machines

In the olden days, oh, say the late 1990's, it occurred to me that someone ought to worry what would happen to historical knowledge with so much data then available online. What scholar in their right mind would choose to study dusty leather bound volumes or crumbling paper when they could work from internet resources? So I imagined that history would, for all intents and purposes begin about 1980, and my mind's eye saw generations of children for whom anything that happened prior to the 1950's would have not causative value at all, not really, not when they consulted their hearts.
Then Google books came along and I had to find something else to worry about. But the article below reminded me of this silly anticipation of mine. Now all I have to worry about is who will scan those cuneiform clay tablets.
(The full article can be seen here)

December 28, 2007

The United States Supreme Court

Stacey Cramp

For the past year, a rare early copy of the Declaration of Independence has hung unassumingly in a side hallway at the Supreme Court.

...Where was it before it went on public display?...

Court officials confirmed last week that the 1824 vellum copy had spent seven forgotten years hidden behind a filing cabinet at the Court clerk's office, until it was discovered in 2003, fixed up and displayed for public viewing in 2006.

The copy, one of only 200 made from the 1776 original, would likely fetch $500,000 or more if sold on the open market, according to an expert dealer in historic documents.

The story of the document begins in 1820, when then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams ordered copies made of the declaration, out of concern about the condition of the 1776 original. The document signed in Philadelphia had been kept in several locations, had been furled and unfurled, and was already beginning to fade.

The future president hired a D.C. engraver named William Stone to execute a small number of copies to be sent to the states, to members of Congress and to the Supreme Court.

Stone used a wet-transfer method that damaged the original further by drawing some of its ink away to make a copy. From the paper copy, Stone made a copperplate engraving that then made a strong impression when printed on vellum, a parchment made from animal skin. The vellum copies were completed and distributed in 1824.

"It is as close to the original declaration as you can possibly get," says Elwin Fraley, a collector and dealer of rare documents who operates History Buff Inc. in Minnesota and Florida. "They give you goose bumps when you see them. They are extremely valuable." Fraley was surprised to hear that the Court's copy was misplaced for such a long time.

The Court's copy had hung in the clerk's office since the building opened in 1935. But when the clerk's office underwent renovations in 1996, an unnamed employee apparently put the document behind one of the office's Lektrievers, which are automated filing cabinets. It was done for "safekeeping," a Court spokeswoman says.

There, Court officials say, it was "forgotten" for unexplained reasons until the curator's office launched a successful search for it in 2003. Once it was found behind the cabinet, some restoration work and reframing was done. In 2006 it was placed back on display, but not in the clerk's office. Instead, it hangs near a ground-floor elevator where it can be viewed by visitors to the Court. The copy is a remarkably vivid rendition of the faded original, which is on view at the National Archives...

Some of the 200 copies are in poor condition and some have fallen into private hands, says Fraley. Within the past year, Fraley says, another William Stone copy of the declaration sold for approximately $450,000. The sale on Dec. 18 of a copy of the Magna Carta for more than $21 million...

Pity the Cat

that killed those people at the San Francisco Zoo

Money and Art and Drugs

You have heard of Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals., I assume. Ruth Lilly, one of the heirs,
In 2002, gave Poetry Magazine a gift of stock worth more than $100 million. This gift ensures the continuation of a leading proponent of an art which is notoriously poorly rewarded in financial terms. Wallace Stevens, for instance, worked at an insurance company for years to survive. Ruth Lilly, not having to get a job, herself submitted poems for years to Poetry magazine, founded by Harriet Monroe. Independent financial wealth is itself a time honored path of artists, I think of the James Merrill in this category. Lilly's poems were never accepted for publication in Poetry magazine. Her gift though shows a kind of genius. Poetry magazine spent some of their wealth in supporting Garrison Keillor. So keep taking those drugs.

Claude Cahun (1894-1954)

Lucy Schwob is the name of a French woman born into an avante garde family in 1894. She is more famous as Claude Cahun, an artist, but she is not well known and from the photographs of her art I cannot evaluate her artistic talent. But the stories I have read about her activity during World War II remind me about the amazing possibilities of human heroism. She and the Jewish woman who was her lover refused to leave their home on the Channel Islands as a German invasion was imminent. For four years they conducted, they being two women by themselves, an anti German campaign and were undetected. They distributed anti Nazi leaflets when to be found out meant certain deportation to concentration camps if not execution. Two middle aged women with no family or other support near by. An amazing story I discovered from a review of a new book written by Louise Downie and discussed by Terry Castle in the London Review of Books.