In the eye of the beholder

Comrade Physioprof opines, in the comments to my last, that I have "an illness."

Oh, yes, I do, but it's not what he thinks.

Organizing one's books in LC order is a minor eccentricity for an English professor (and visit the Little Professor's blog, say here, for an example of someone who has more books than I do); among librarians, I'm sure it's considered a professional hazard at worst, and probably a sign that you really love your job.

However, staying up three hours past bedtime to pore over snippets of excruciatingly illegible secretary hand (see here for an example) in an effort to decide whether any of them were written by the same chap who signed his name on a flyleaf, and if so how many, and whether the marginalia with very similar letter forms but with a different slant should be assigned to the same chap or assumed to be from a different writer . . . that's sick.

I can grant that, but I still think people with food blogs are weird.

Weekend bullets

• Sir John has had a cold for several days. I think I'm finally getting it. So I'm staying up late to try to finish grading before I feel awful.
• Of course I should have finished already.
  
• Why, with all the "teaching to the test" that presumably happens in schools these days, can my students not manage to read and follow simple instructions?
  
• Grading the outlines of essays (on exams) goes much faster than grading translations.
• I can't believe I made it through the whole semester without getting sick; but then, why now? Why could I not just avoid illness altogether?
• I would much rather be working on the MMP, and this morning I procrastinated for awhile by staring at handwriting snippets trying to decide if one A resembled another. Or not.
• On a related handwriting question, I found a reference to an opinion of Ian Doyle's that was . . . wrong. Not in a major way, but he left out a perfectly legible* letter. My world reeled.
• *Perfectly legible if you read English secretary hands.
• Every time I look at an example of secretary, I panic and think all my skills have fled, or maybe I was deluding myself all along. It takes several minutes to get my eye in and start seeing the shapes again.
• Really I should be thinking big-picture thoughts about the MMP, not tiny-detail thoughts. Have I mentioned that I'm nearsighted?
• Must finish grading translations. Then if I'm sick tomorrow I can spend days lying on the couch watching B5 DVDs and drinking toddies, guilt-free.
  

Dating is hell

The new MS is all kinds of interesting, but there is a problem: since the hand is the same, and the MS is securely dated, my identification of last summer is wrong.

Just plain wrong. Impossible. Factually incorrect. As I said then, there's no way to hand-wave my way out of this.

At least I haven't made the claim in print. But still: a lot of research and clever connections that I thought had me well on the way to a cool publication, all that is right down the drain.

Calvinball. Humph. I think I just scored against my own side.

OMG ponies!!! Elebenty!!11!

A manuscript scan popped into my inbox this morning.

It's the same hand.

This is very exciting.

I know you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it's good news.

So I have to think about whether I'm sticking with my goal of finishing a book chapter this fall, or whether I want to get on with this other project while it's relatively fresh in my mind. There is a bit of a problem about visiting this other manuscript, given my teaching schedule. But that's a mere detail.

More dream; or, Yr doing it rite

I have finished a batch of items to grade (well, comment on, not grade) more than 48 hours before I need to give them back, and I am looking forward to reading the final projects of which these items will form a part. Wonders will never cease. I always say that I love teaching; it's the grading they pay me for. It's so discouraging to get papers that suggest I've been talking to myself, in which students repeat the same mistakes I've marked and explained before, that are full of vague generalities and logical errors. Anyone who collects written assignments knows what I'm talking about (and I expect people who grade mathematics exams and similar assignments have their own collection of moans).

But! I'm teaching paleography. My grad students are doing projects focusing on manuscripts, most of which are in my own school's Rare Books room. I did not know we had such fascinating material. I mean, I knew the material was there, but I am amazed and delighted at what members of this class have been finding out about what it is, where it came from, who wrote it, what light it throws on the documents' historical eras, and how it got to this midwestern regional university. This is so cool that I'm doing the Grading Happy Dance in my chair (I didn't know there was a Grading Happy Dance except for the one you do when you're done, but I'm inspired here), and thinking about who around the university should get copies of the final papers, or at least a report on the results of this class. The Rare Books librarian is obvious, but I'm sure there should be some publicity about the findings and the importance of teaching apparently weird and obscure topics like paleography.

It makes a difference to teach a topic I truly love, and it clearly makes a difference to the students to work on "real" problems, to find out things that were not known at all (not just unknown to them) before they started. How I wish I could find a way to do this in all of my classes. It would be possible even at the undergraduate level, even in the courses I normally teach; but, with the number of students I have, it would also take enormous amounts of time and energy on my part to guide everyone through this process.

I really admire Belle, but I believe her when she calls her teaching process "exhausting and draining and exhilarating." And I'm also with Anastasia on people needing to know some basic stuff before they "get to have thoughts or feelings." The reason my current grads are doing such great work is that they already know stuff: often, stuff I don't know and couldn't have taught them. Again, if I were up for the exhausting and draining part, it would be possible to convince many of the underprepared undergraduate researchers that they need to learn the basic stuff for themselves so they can get on with the cool research part . . . but I have tried that, and it really is a huge amount of heavy lifting before you get to the exhilarating phase. Though I regret not having the energy to do this, I really can't manage it and stay sane and healthy.

Nonetheless, it's wonderful to have a semester like this one, where I actually am eager to collect projects and see how all the pieces fit together.

Paleographer Barbie

Apparently there is now a Computer Engineer Barbie. I learned about this from a set of letters in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. One said, "Even though Barbie is a computer engineer this year, she is still a Barbie with a a disproportionate body type and plastic must-have 'career' accessories. In a time when young women need better self images, this Barbie still doesn't convince me that Mattel is on the leading edge of engineering images . . . . " Um. I really hope you're not saying that women (or men, for that matter) with disproportionate body types can't be computer engineers. To put it bluntly, people with big breasts can be smart, too. I had very much hoped that the stereotype of women in STEM fields being mousy nerdish un-sexy types had passed. But perhaps not.

Aside from that, of course you need the accessories. Barbie is a toy. When you play with toys, you either have or make stuff that goes with whatever imaginative adventure is at hand. Artist Barbie can have a palette and easel; Physician Barbie a stethoscope and syringes; Chef Barbie a whole array of miniature cooking implements. But as Sir John said, "What does this one do, sit in front of a computer and complain about her aching neck every once in awhile?" I thought it would be hard to tell Computer Engineer Barbie from Mathematician Barbie or any number of Barbies engaged in work that mainly takes place inside one's head. I suppose English Professor Barbie and Historian Barbie would have big piles of books as well as the laptop, but really, it's hard to tell one intellectual worker from another by the accessories (now that the day of slide rules has passed).

And then I thought, "Oh, hey: Paleographer Barbie!" Besides the laptop, she can have a ruler, a magnifying glass, and sheets of lovely writing: a page of Insular Minuscule, a page of a tidy Gothic book hand, and a page of Italic (let's not frighten the children with fifteenth-century English Secretary Hand. Time enough for that when they're older). Clothing includes a big woolly sweater, since most libraries and archives are freezing, and a blazer with huge pockets, since you often aren't allowed a bag of any kind (Yale wouldn't even let me have my glasses case, though en revanche, the Beinecke is at least warm). Since some libraries provide clear plastic bags for one's belongings, there's another possible accessory.

Anything else you think Paleographer Barbie should have?

Documents meme

Following Dance and Notorious, here are a couple of mine.

First, the easy:


And here's a harder one:

Last week, I gave a presentation about my manuscript research for my colleagues. About ten people came (the departmental good sports, the junior faculty establishing face time, my writing buddy). My main focus was on the effort to determine how many hands commented in a particular manuscript. Afterwards, a twentieth-century specialist (it was nice of him to come) asked how I knew that the most frequent commenting hand was sixteenth century. I explained. "You mean, you can date something just by the style of handwriting?" he asked. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. Yes, this is what I do. I'm not Ian Cunningham or even T.E., but I do have skills that most people don't.

Ways of seeing

I’ve been thinking since last summer about how I recognize people, and what I identify as important details, and how this relates to ability to recognize scripts or font details. Last July, I attended a conference where I knew about three people beforehand. A very large group—forty?—went out to dinner one evening, scattered over three large tables. I sat next to an organizer who was trying to check us off a list; she knew her old friends, but wasn’t sure who many people were. After just two days with these people, I was able to fill in everyone else for her, and she said, “Do you specialize in type fonts, or something like that? You’re so good at recognizing details!”

As I’ve said, I don’t think I have a very good visual memory, and I tend to pick out the wrong details in handwriting. If, in a year’s time, I was again in a room with the people from the restaurant, I’m sure I’d have trouble recognizing about half of them. What I do is pick out details that will let me recognize and name them tonight, tomorrow, next week: this one has a cloud of long dark hair, that one has glasses like my grandfather’s, another has a sunburn. When people are animated, I identify the one who has a lively, crooked smile, another who gestures with his chin in a characteristic way,

Of these, the smile and the gesture are probably unchangeable and will help me recognize their owners next year. If the hair is cut or dyed, the glasses changed or removed, I’m lost. Unless features are really distinctive—a big nose, a pursed mouth, heavy eyebrows—I look at a face and see “Two eyes, check; nose, check; mouth, check; all present and accounted for, in the usual order top to bottom.” I have a terrible time recognizing many of my students, who are mostly young enough not to have developed distinctive wrinkles, and who tend to dress and groom themselves so as to meet conventional standards of attractiveness. The rare Goth or punk is a blessing. I always know who has the dyed black hair or the green streak, but a row of pretty young blonde women confuses me. Actresses and dancers are the worst: Sir John is constantly amazed that I can’t tell the difference between Actress X and Actress Y, and I am equally astounded that he can, even when they have cut and dyed their hair and gained or lost weight for a role.

So there are two kinds of recognizable details: those that provide present recognition (blonde ponytail, black geometric haircut, heavy glasses, dark lipstick, noticeably thin or heavy body) are often not helpful in the long term. The long-term recognizable details are things like movement (I always recognize Sir John by his walk, long before he’s close enough that I can see his face), body language, facial features that are in some way more than “two eyes, check”: particularly protuberant or deep-set eyes, a nose that is unusually small, tilted, large, or bumpy, a mouth that is especially wide, pinched, or thick-lipped. It sounds as if it’s easier for me to recognize ugly people, and in a way that’s true: but I also don’t tend to experience “ugly” as unattractive, because that face with the non-standard features is one I can recognize no matter what has happened with hair, beard, glasses, and other changeable details. I also try to look for features other people don’t necessarily look at: length of neck, breadth of shoulders, hands. These may change, too, if someone takes up or drops a weight-lifting regimen, for example; but they are less subject to change than hair.

What has all this to do with paleography? Paleographers need to be able to recognize both general characteristics, the details that let you tell Beneventan from Luxeuil, Anglicana from Secretary, and also specific characteristics, the elements that distinguish Scribe B from Scribe D when they are both writing a regular Anglicana, or tell that Scribe B is Scribe B whether he’s writing Anglicana or Secretary. I think the general characteristics are analagous to the details that let you recognize someone tonight, tomorrow, next week: the roundness, spacing and clarity that announce Insular Minuscule are like the long blond hair and flowing mustache. When the scribe switches scripts, it’s no good looking for the characteristics of Insular Minuscule; it’s as if the young man shaved his face and head. You have to look for the features and body language, the approach strokes and tendency to use ligatures (or not), in order to identify the same scribe using a different script. And if you’re stuck at “two eyes, check,” then you may note the presence or absence of feet, while completely missing something important about the ascenders; you may notice, in one sample, that the lines and letters are well-spaced, and in another, that they are crowded and cramped, without seeing that the letter shapes are identical.

This still happens to me. I go for general appearance, just as I do at conferences (so I won’t embarrass myself by failing to recognize someone I was introduced to yesterday!). I can recognize a Secretary hand, no bother; but is the tight, controlled inscription on folio 20 by the same hand that wrote the sloppier entry on folio 50? I look at letter shapes, but does that really help? Of course Secretary is going to have that funky h. Nose, check; mouth, check. Is the tight, controlled Secretary inscription on folio 20, in English, the same tight, controlled hand writing the lovely little Gothic comment in Latin on folio 35? Well, I’m like the Terry Pratchett demon who says, “That’s handwriting all right. Curly bits, spiky bits—I’d recognize it anywhere.”

It’s not that I’m always so great at the general characteristics, either (certainly not when I was in grad school). But I think now I can diagnose at least some of my difficulties as category confusion. If you’re trying to look at specific individual details (broken nose, funky h whose descender makes an unusual forward-and-back jiggle) when all you need is big-picture, recognize-tonight characteristics (blond mustache, round minuscule letters), then there will be trouble. Some of learning to see is learning your own distinct and individual approach to seeing. I know I have trouble recognizing faces, so I put a lot more analytic effort into identifying people than would someone who “never forgets a face.” I know I’m not a natural at paleography, so I try to work out ways of compensating for my weaknesses. Overall appearance counts for something; but remember to look at a, g, s, r (both after a round letter and at the end of a word). Remember that you are easily fooled by a change in size, as at the beginning of a new stint: look again at the shapes.

Maybe this is why I enjoy (a weird, perverse and often frustrating sort of enjoyment) puzzling over English Secretary hands. Gothic book scripts are a bit like that line-up of beautiful young actresses who all have big eyes, small noses, kissable mouths. Lovely, all of them. If you look closely, there are small differences, but will you recognize A when she goes blonde, or B when she becomes a redhead? Secretary hands are like those non-standard faces where the eyes are too far apart, the nose too big, the front teeth crooked. Hello! You, I know. You’re the Secretary with the flowing T, and you’re the more upright one with the special jiggle on the h. I have no idea if either of you is responsible for the Latin comment, but at least I can tell you apart when you’re not wearing your glasses.