Wait, what's the date?

Because I have two other posts for this week I will keep this summary one short and sweet.

This week went by quickly! I made good progress in both my primary and secondary projects, both of which included little details which greatly amused me, from files about a Muppets exhibition in the early 1980s (in my secondary project of inventorying internal exhibit files) and some curious and funny selections in my primary project of processing textual materials (books, pamphlets, journals, etc) hich belong to the Natural History collection. The most bizarre find of the week was a midcentury Disney attempt at an animal encyclopedia of sorts which made no sense at all: a page about anteaters featured pictures of a flying squirrel and a deer accompanied by an illustration of Bambi, another section talking about otters and beavers displays a large picture of a koala, and one portion about raccoons begins with the memorable heading of "Hunted but Happy." However, I was also deeply amused by a series of educational booklets about various types of birds, which included several that sounded (to me at least) like they could be good band names, like the Hudsonian Curlew, the Willow Ptarmigon, the Flicker, and the Indigo Bunting. I also saw some items written by an author whose name was Philip B. Philipp, which isn't a name combination I would have expected to see in real life.

Last but not least, there were a few items from the 19th century with advertisements for "New and Improved" textbooks (which just goes to show you how old some advertising gimmicks are!), and several catalogs for marine specimens which were very interesting to peruse, including everything from an occasional humerous short story to illustrations like this one:

("But Granny what big eyes you have!" "The better to capsize your ship with, my dear")

All I can say is that if these were any example, catalogs must have been more fun in the 19th century.

And tomorrow begins the last week of my internship!