Getting Involved

On Wednesday I visited the Imperial War Museum which is about a 15 minute walk from my apartment. It was a beautiful old building, like most buildings in London, and had great exhibits inside. The foyer was full of war artifacts like the German V2 Rocket, a replica of 'Little Boy' the atomic bomb, tanks, submarines, and planes hanging from the wide open glass ceiling. I can't imagine something as small as 'Little Boy' killing 70,000 people. I wandered around for awhile admiring and reading about their histories and how they were used and then stumbled upon the Children's War exhibit. This was the war seen through an English child's eyes and what they went through when they were pressured to evacuate for their safety. It was so saddening to see the graves of little children and hearing the stories of those who actually lived through it all. After walking through the model of a 1940's English home I exited the exhibit to walk upstairs to see some more old planes and walk through the nose of a Handley Page Halifax B Mark VII, the most versatile of the British heavy bombers during WWII. There was an exhibit of John Singer Sargent's works but I didn't go in. (sorry Dad I know you like him)

I eventually made it to the top floor which is where the Holocaust museum is. I knew it was going to be tough to walk through and it was heart wrenching, but I got to see some footage I had never seen before of Hitler and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Maybe I wasn't paying attention in high school or something, but I never really knew why the Jews were so harshly persecuted. I watched a video describing how the early Christians persecuted them because they blamed them for Christ's death, it was quite disappointing to hear about the cruelty of people that call themselves Christians. What I really liked about the exhibit was hearing the stories of the survivors and what they went through and what got them through, it took courage to tell that to the world. It really makes me think about all the psychological studies they've done about the Nazi's and how they could have done what they did in those concentration camps, that really intrigues me. After an emotional roller coaster that was the exhibit, I wandered through the Secret War exhibit and then eventually I had to leave. All in all, the Imperial War Museum was very educational and interesting to me.


Thursday I went to school for a meeting about the books we're making. My objective now is to make as many little mock up books as I can, different structures, different content, but still all revolving around London and it's skyline.

Friday I had a Letterpress workshop which was absolutely fabulous. I've always enjoyed typography and the sort so it was really cool to learn about using the original letterpress. Some fun little facts we learned: The saying "Out of sorts" comes from typesetting. A sort is a piece of type representing a particular letter or symbol. So if you were 'out of sorts' you would be in trouble because you wouldn't be able to finish whatever you were printing. Another little fact, the & symbol is supposed to be the combination of the letters 'e' and 't'. 'Et' means 'and' in Latin. Also the phrase 'mind your p's and q's' comes from typesetting, reminding you to be careful when writing something out with p's and q's because you're writing it backwards when you set your type. Anyhow, I stayed and ate lunch and then went back to the letterpress shop to work on making my own postcard which I am not quite finished with. Typesetting is very laborious but I find it really enjoyable! It took me almost 3 hours to just composite a single one sentence quote and I still have yet to print it. I'm going to take pictures of it tomorrow hopefully. Then last night I went to Shoreditch with my flatmate Paige and her friends which was really fun.