word freak

October 23rd, 2006

Dateline London.
I did a brief booksigning this afternoon at Gay’s the Word. Then made a pilgrimage to Dr. Johnson’s house, the guy who wrote the first major English dictionary. Here’s the famous garret where he did most of the work, with a crew of amanuenses. (look it up.)

They had a closet of Georgian costumes for kids to put on, and there was no one around, so…

Here’s a passage from the dictionary.

And here’s a monument outside to Dr. J’s cat, Hodge, “a very fine cat indeed.” He’s sitting on a dictionary, with oyster shells at his feet. Apparently Dr. J. would personally go out to the fish market and fetch oysters for him, rather than having his servants do it, so that the servants wouldn’t feel resentment toward the cat.

Wrote this Sunday morning but couldn’t get online to post it

October 23rd, 2006

Just arrived in London. First of all, I just want to say how boggled I am by the money everyone has been sending to the site. Thank you all so much. At last count it was about $1500. A most timely and welcome influx. I’ll talk more about the whole payment/donation scenario in a later post, after I’ve given it more thought. It’s complicated, and I have mixed feelings about it.

I had a crazy time getting ready to leave on this trip. Read the rest of this entry »