June 1st
Uncle Kerry turned the key in the lock, and we stepped into an arid refrigerated room, a sudden change from the muggy heat that permeated the rest of the building. I hugged my bare arms and breathed deeply, taking in the fragrance of thousands upon thousands of sheets of vellum and parchment. This was the vault, the holy of holies of the Oklahoma University History of Science Library collection. And, since my uncle is the curator, I received the honor of being Visiting Scholar for the day.
He pulled out a book bound in handsome leather, dating from 1600s Germany, and flipped it open. “This is the original cover,” he said, pointing to a sheet of vellum that surrounded the pages, marked in neat handwriting with the words and rhythm values of a Gregorian chant for Easter. He let me touch the brushed vellum next to the carefully marked notes, which had a milky smooth texture. The book itself was from the 1400s, he said, “but the cover paper dates back to the 900s.” I had just touched a piece of music over a thousand years old. As you can imagine, the chills I felt at that moment had little to do with the air conditioning.
That was only the beginning. He showed me book after book, bound in leather or vellum, pages feeling as fragile as butterfly wings in my fingers, words printed in dark type, accented with aesthetically-pleasing strokes of red: herbals, animal guides, astronomy histories. I read the entry on Astronomy in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. I paged through a tome published in the 1500s by Nicolaus Copernicus. Uncle Kerry showed me a first edition of The Starry Messenger, the book that made Gallileo famous overnight— and when he flipped open the front leaf and showed me Gallileo’s original signature written in brown ink, I cried.
On this trip I’ve touched trees as old as the dinosaur, hiked among rocks older than the human race, and viewed landscapes that told of history from millions ago. Although those were remarkable experiences, the moment of true time-travel in my journey was touching the books from hundreds of years ago, and seeing the handwritten notes scrawled in the margins (including little hands pointing to important passages, sometimes with a bit of robe sleeve drawn in), and realizing that four hundred years ago, a person just like myself was reading this book. For all the wonders of the natural world, there is nothing more beautiful than a human connection.
I also got a chance to visit the Bible collection at the University: I touched a Bible written in shorthand, clustered in three volumes each the size of a miniature souvenir deck of cards. I was introduced to four-corner painting when Uncle Kerry pulled out a Bible with gilded pages and curled the paper under his fingers to reveal a landscape drawn on the edges of the pages. When he curled the pages the other way, they formed a new scene. I held and read a Geneva Bible, precursor to the King James version, the Bible that Shakespeare quoted, the Bible of the common man, printed in small type that was a wonder of engineering.
At last, I celebrated the year of the King James Bible’s 400th anniversary, seeing two first additions of the altar-sized books, one uncorrected and one proofed. I read the words aloud, sometimes stumbling over the archaic S’s that look like F’s, and the reversal of the V and U characters. I read Psalm 23, just as I had memorized it as a kid, from a Bible that was 400 years old. To touch history like that, to realize that the Bible hasn’t changed, even in all that time, brought tears to my eyes once again.Today I was given an incredible gift, a window into the past, and a memory that I’ll hold with me forever.
~Lisa Shafter
Money spent today: $0
Deficit: $123.31
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