Family Fun Friday

Scott took the day off on Friday and we had a great day together! Scott took the boys to Belton with him because he had one patient to see. I used the morning to visit a few doctors trying to drum up more business for myself. Then we all came home, grabbed our sack lunches and after I made one more doctor visit at the Plaza, we headed over to Linda Hall Library to see Aunt Cindy's display there. For those of you unfamiliar with the library (as I would be if we didn't have an Aunt Cindy there), it is a research library on the UMKC campus. Aunt Cindy works in the rare books division.

We met Aunt Cindy there (surprisingly Uncle Joe showed up--he had other business there and we happened to see him, so he walked around with us too). Then we looked at a series of prints from copper engravings, many of which were taken from botanical sketches from Captain Cook's voyages. Without getting too detailed (and above my pay grade), a friend/associate of Captain Cook collected the botanical sketches from his voyages (CC discovered Hawaii and made trips to Tahiti, and charted coastlines of New Zealand and Austrailia--he was accidentally killed in an incident in HI), and had them preserved as copper plate engravings. It never made it into publication because of the expense at the time, and was only in modern times has the "florilegium" been printed up. The plates were purchased by the library and are stored there There were exquisite prints of exotic plants--just breathtaking to me as a plant lover and an erstwhile artist. Plus the kids and I knew the story of Captain Cook from one of our ValueTales, so that made it more meaningful to us. Then we went back to where Cindy's office was and Scott and I got to go into the vault with her and look at these ancient rare books. She opened that door and you could just smell the centuries in that cooled room...that musty old smell of time. Anyway, she showed us these books from the 14th century, printed in Latin...with actual penned notes in the margins! I was fascinated just touching those old vellum (?) bindings. The Captain Cook florilegium copper plates were stored there as well, but they are so heavy and large, we did not look at them. Of course the boys were a) uninterested and b) forbidden from taking more than a few steps into the vault. There would not be enough leaves in the world for them to rake if they did something to one of those books. I think we would all have to resort to indentured servitude.