Sandy, Sarah and Ezra (of baby-zombie fame) are in town. We’re having a wonderful time catching up, watching Eleanor & Ezra together (although they are largely ignoring each other. Eleanor pays attention long enough to take whatever Ezra happens to have in his hand), and generally just chilling out.
On Friday, we spent some time in Carleton’s library digging up information on Sandy’s grandfather and great uncle, both of whom attended Carleton back in the 1940s. We first made our way to the old year books, where Sandy found a picture of his grandfather as a freshman and his uncle as a senior, hanging out with Cab Calloway when the latter visited Carleton, in the 1941 yearbook. We then headed to the archives, where Sandy got a copy of his grandfather’s transcript. Pretty neat.
What were the children doing while this research was going on? Having a total blast in the stacks of course. Who would have guessed that a library would prove to be so much fun for two one-year-olds? Fortunately, the books are packed too tightly for a one-year-old to pull out, so we really let them run free.
In a wonderful Carleton moment, Emily, Sarah, Ezra and Eleanor were sitting outside the archives office on what is supposed to be the super-quiet floor of the library. Not so quiet with Eleanor and Ezra tooling around. A woman came out of her office and said to Emily, “You know, we don’t usually…” Now Emily thought the sentence would end with something like, “…allow children down here.” But what the archivist actually said was, “You know, we don’t usually have so much cuteness down here.”


Sandy’s great uncle actually hired Cab Calloway to perform at Carleton, something Sandy’s parents later (about 40 years later) told Cab Calloway one evening in Chicago.
Ahhh, you see. . . archivists are not just shh-ing librarians! So glad to hear you found some great stuff at the library and archives.
Yes. More evidence that archivists are cool.