This is just a hodge-podge of impressions and news-bits from the last week. Mostly photos though. Today's been the first day that the temperature's fallen below 80 (F), I reckon. It's been hot and sunny - and mostly quite sticky, with the odd thunderstorm; more storms are supposed to be on the way. I'm staying at the Indiana Memorial Union - a vast, rambling c.1900 'castle-effect' building, supposedly one of the largest students' unions in the world; it includes a strange mix of mock Scottish Baronial style common-rooms, Starbucks and Burger Kings, conference rooms, canteens, shops, and a 300-room hotel. Its very convenient: right in the middle of what is a lovely campus: very green, with a rolling, meadow-style stretch of grass and woods and flowers and babbling streams right through the middle. Most buildings are c. 1900, but there's also a vast Art Gallery designed by Pei (as in Louvre pyramids), and various others striking additions. My research is at the Lilly Library - not the main library (which is vast), but a specialist rare-book and manuscript library; you can see it behind the fountains. I've got a bit of a routine. I don't eat at the hotel, because all the catering is outsourced to outlets such as Burger King and Starbucks; so I go to various places around downtown. The picture is of one of them: Soma Cafe (for my coffee) - and upstairs, The Laughing Planet, which is a bit vegan, but OK. At lunchtime I just head out of the Lilly Library, past the fountains, and into the Art Gallery, and get a coffee and bun from its cafe, take it out and eat/drink by the fountain. I try and keep this to just 20 minutes, because I'm panicking about quite how much material I've got to get through before the end of next Tuesday. It's all fascinating: hundreds and hundreds of letters to and from Lance Sieveking (BBC producer, 1920s-1950s) - from the Front in WW1, when he was a prisoner, etc. Very difficult not to get distracted and lost in the whole period. But I've only looked at correspondence from 1897 to 1919 so far - and have another 50 years to go. Finally evenings. I tend to get back to the Memorial Union at about 6.15pm, and then have about two hours of work emails to do; then its emails or skype back home, and out to find something to eat. (This evening - Tuesday - it was chicken with lime, beansprouts and peas, at a cafe specialising in local organic food: very nice, though eating out all the time is expensive, cumulatively). After supper, it's tended to be marking, marking, marking so far - but that finished last night, so now I can have a couple of hours to catch up on other stuff... like doing this. Maybe do one more blog before I leave. I'm also due to meet up with some faculty and research students doing media here who want to chat.
