Adams & Virgin

I swung by the Boston Public Library after work this week to check out their exhibit on John Adams' library collection. It numbers about 3,800 books, and is well worth seeing in person, even though much of it will be on-line shortly. He liked to write running commentaries in the margins of his books (the blogging of it's time). Each such tome has a gold ribbon. In one volume about ancient Egypt that depicts topless Egyptians carting around the Pharoh(?) in some ceremony or other, he wrote 'This is religion? Good God!' It was noted elsewhere that he called Mary Wollstonecraft a 'blockhead', so I remarked to a passerby "I guess Lucy didn't coin the term". http://www.bpl.org

The Virgin Megastore near the Hynes Convention Center is going out of business, so I hoofed it from Copley to get my 30% off CD's & DVD's. I got the Criterion Collection's "For All Mankind", which pays tribute to the Apollo program by editing the films and TV broadcasts to make it all appear as one single mission. I was shocked, shocked to learn later that the director couldn't find a particular view of the moon in the original footage, so he went to a capsule that's now at the Air & Space Museum, taped a picture of the moon outside the cabin window, filmed it and edited that shot into the movie. On the train ride home, a girl noticed that that I had the soundtracks to Season 1 & 2 of Battlestar Galactica, and mentioned that she was a fan of the show (Starbuck is her favorite character). While were were discussing the series I double checked my receipt, and sure enough the cashier had only charged me for one instead of both. I piped up "Two for the price of one", then had to explain that it wasn't part of the sale. As she got off, I told her I'd make copies & give the CD's to the library.