Subject/Object

I have had a busy couple of days.  It feels like I haven’t stopped moving since 7 am Thursday morning–not even long enough to check my email. 

• From working all day Thursday,
  
• to travelling to my parents for a day an a half,
  
• to getting a call just as I was leaving that the library here at the university wants to interview me for a Reference Desk assistant position,
• finding out there is only one day of interviews,
  
• to getting up at 6 am, travelling back to Toronto, going to the interview, and returning by noon,
• going to the much loved Winona Peach Festival, where I enjoyed luscious home made potato chips from a truck (possible the best snack I have ever had, I’m sure XY will blog about it later.),
  
• having my brother take me all around Hamilton with XY on a nostalgia trip,
• coming home finally at 12 am on Saturday morning to discover that I have received a scholarship from the Faculty of Information Studies, covering almost all of my tuition this year,
• coming back to the city this morning and going right to work at 12 pm.

The award I received was the Florence Partridge Scholarship, bequeathed by the late head librarian at the University of Guelph to Toronto, where she did her library schooling. 

Ms. Partridge, a double graduate of the Faculty - Diploma in Librarianship ‘32 and Bachelor of Library Studies ‘39, worked as an academic librarian at the University of Guelph, culminating in a distinguished career as their Chief Librarian. She was also a tireless supporter of the arts, contributing significantly to the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre. This scholarship is awarded to a student with high academic standing.

I had to write a letter for the application, but I think I feel so much more grateful because of it. I’ve received small amounts of money in the past, but they were usually automatic, dependant on my GPA.  I think the fact that someone actually took the time to listen to my particular story, and that the money is coming from the estate of such a well respected woman, makes me appreciated it all the more.

The idea that, at the end of one’s career, that someone could reach back and give a wonderful hand to new librarians–it conveys a sense of community and idealism that I never experienced during my undergraduate degree, or even dealing with my brief flirtations with attending graduate school, while I was a member of the philosophy department.

From the beginnings of my first contact with the administration at FIS, to going into a meeting with the Assistant Dean to discuss my research and professional goals to today, I have never been made so welcome by anyone in education, even going back to when I was a child.

Bartolome de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

I think you could consider this the first activist or social justice writing. De la Casas was a contemporary of Columbus, and this 1552 work decries the slaughter of the Central and South Americans by the conquistadores. True, he was the Bishop of Chiapas, and thought that the Indians should have been converted to Christianity, but he also felt that the Spanish were quite unchristian by killing them by the hundreds of thousands, regardless of whether they heard the Gospel or not. There are some graphic descriptions, which are not really worth repeating, they are written again and again throughout human history. But I enjoyed this:

Once he [a minor Native Central American official] was tied to the stake, a Franciscan friar who was present, a saintly man, told him as much as he could in the short time permitted by his executioners about the Lord and about our Christian faith, all of which was new to him. The friar told him that, if he would only believe what he was hearing, he would go to Heaven there to enjoy glory and eternal rest, but that, if he would not, he would be consigned to Hell, where he would endure everlasting pain and torment. The lord Hatuey thought for a short while and then asked the friar whether Christians went to Heaven. When the reply came that good ones do, he retorted, without need for further reflection, that, if that was the case, then he chose to go to Hell to ensure that he would never again have to clap eyes on those cruel brutes.