From the British Library, with love

I've been reading this amazing book about the history of automata from ancient times to the present. This is the first time that my research has felt a bit like paging through the Sotheby's catalogue, but I'm not about to complain. In addition to little, pearl-studded mice that run around in circles when you pull their tails, and caged birds that sing every hour on the hour, there are even more impressive feats of baroque engineering that I've discovered: a flute player, a speaking figure, and -- most famous of all -- Vaucanson's duck. This duck is a composite of model and machine: it's attached to a gigantic mechanism of gears and levers that's larger than a washing machine. It toured Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century, and was famous for approximating the motions of an honest-to-goodness duck: eating, drinking, preening, and even pooping. Apparently there are over four hundred moving parts in just one of its wings. When people found out that the duck wasn't actually digesting the food it ate, but was producing pre-fab waste that had been stuffed into it before the show, a huge outcry erupted. The idea that an automaton could mimic animal life entirely was plausible enough at the time -- few were entirely sold on materialism's mechanical explanations for the principles of life, but plenty considered it a possibility -- that it was an offense to the concept of the materialist body to produce an imperfect mechanical model.

My favorite contraption from this remarkable collection of automata, however, isn't the duck. Instead, it's a fake eagle someone made to lead his hot air balloon into uncharted territory. The description finishes with the comment, "Gentlemen with hunting-dogs are requested not to bring them, as experience has shown that these animals can be dangerous to the eagle, which imitates nature to perfection."

Historical accuracy

It's a bit hard to get over, as an American, how old everything is here in England. Unlike Berlin, where even the neoclassical buildings are only fifty or sixty years old, the pubs here can be 17th century, and the houses, 18th or early 19th. My awe has waned a bit since the proprietor of the Lord Nelson pub told me that, built in 1637, his pub was older than the Mayflower -- he was wrong! the Mayflower sailed in 1620 -- but I'm still impressed by the stolid walls and squat houses leaning into each other along the rows of London's streets. This isn't a city that believes in condos with single-word names like 'Dwell'. Which is not to say that it's a city without gentrification; to the contrary, I can't imagine a place where it's easier to burn money. My small purchases of a power drill, cleaning supplies, and paint samples have been surprisingly expensive.

Speaking of paint, we're going to repaint the living room of our place, and we're currently in the process of choosing the color. At present, the room is a shocking shade of periwinkle blue, but mercifully there's a mirror-shaped swath of white paint where the mirror above the fireplace used to be. That's where we've been testing paint colors, and so the space looks like it's got a bad case of the cream-colored measles. Whenever I have to choose paint -- and to be honest, this is only the second time in my entire life I've done it; the first was when I decided to paint the kitchen in my first Hyde Park apartment, and I chose something like 'San Francisco bay blue,' with 'baby-eyed blue' coming a close second -- I'm completely astonished by all the names. They're even more ridiculous and finely distinguished than the names for shades of clothing, which are themselves often laughable. You've got to wonder whether there's a computer, a robot, or a human with better-than-average sensibilities choosing J Crew's 'toasted chestnut' and 'fawn'. But even more impressive are names like 'nutmeg cream', 'pale hessian', and 'crumpled linen'. This isn't even taking into account my favorite detail of paint-choosing in England: there are entire lines of colors which reproduce Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian shades, so you can paint your period home to be historically accurate. Seriously: there are paint chips that say Edwardian at the top. This is called the Heritage Collection. Can you imagine the American equivalent? Antebellum, WPA, Red Scare, Free Love -- how would we periodize it?

Not much other news of note. It's pretty much been all house stuff, all the time. We did, however, have our first meal at the new place. Boiled eggs and toast. Boxes served in place of a table.

A man, an American, and a van

Greetings from the UK! I arrived on Monday morning, early -- we were woken on the plane for breakfast at 5 am London time -- and the last four days have been a whirlwind of box-moving, paint-considering, floor-examining, roofer-calling, van-loading, nap-demanding goodness. All for a worthwhile cause, I hasten to add. We're living in Bloomsbury, in central London, just a stone's throw from UCL and a short walk from the British Library. The previous residents left the place in good shape, but there are a few peculiar details: a forgotten photograph of a child in a Harvard sweatshirt (manifest educational destiny!) and, far odder, a red light in the foyer and bedroom. Presumably the red light bulbs were just put in empty sockets at the last minute, but the effect at night is pretty impressive; the place looks like a bordello. Which it isn't, just for the record.


The not-bordello remains relatively empty. Actually, it's full of boxes, but we haven't unpacked any of them yet. We've been collecting Tom's belongings from various lofts and attics. Between the hardware stores and the van rental place, there isn't a whole lot of interest to report, but as soon as we get the right kind of light bulbs and the futon gets delivered, I'll probably have more adventures to share.