Berlioz and Saint-Saëns

The Philadelphia Orchestra is starting up again after the summer break, and once again I’m glad to be part of the eZseatU program ($25 for a full year of free concerts). My first experience with Berlioz was to see Faust, which was good but I hadn’t been so enthralled that I went out and got [...]

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Four Concerts & New Classes

Back in Philadelphia, which is quickly vaulting itself into Spring (with some crazy thunderstorms – hail!), and classes have started once more. This quarter looks promising – I was unsure at first whether or not Cataloging would be for me, but the kind of cataloging I do is so different from normal cataloging that I [...]

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Dvorák and Friends

This afternoon I attended my second concert using the EzSeatU program (see previous post). Due to the lack of people at the last concert, I did not hurry to get to the concert far ahead of time. And so I was surprised to see at least 40 students waiting to be seated with the program. [...]

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Philadelphia Orchestra

Yesterday was my first concert using the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new EzSeatU program. Basically how it goes is that I pay $25 up-front, and then get into (nearly) every concert for free for one year. The only drawback is that you don’t get to choose where you are seated. 5 minutes before the performance starts, the [...]

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Christmas in Philadelphia

Well, not really Christmas. Yesterday the roommate and I went to Rittenhouse Square to see the tree-lighting. The promise of booths and fun was sort of ruined by the rain – there ended up being about two booths, 50-odd people, and a somewhat disappointing tree, although there were some good times had thanks to free [...]

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First Snow in Philly!

After a very brief flurry last night, this morning I awoke to find it snowing intensely outside. The flakes are large, and rather floaty, and I’m relishing my walk to the library through Rittenhouse later today. Also appreciating that I neither have to drive in this, nor do I have to slide down hills to [...]

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Terrible Day for Philly Libraries

Thanks to my new Twitter, I discovered last night through CBS3 that Mayor Nutter was giving his budget crisis speech. After 2 minutes of talking about how great our city is (Woo, Phillies!), he got to some terrible, terrible news. We have to close a deficit of over $108 million in just six months. Here’s [...]

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Philly Storage Solutions, pt. 2

The same week as my visit to the HDS, I went along with a Drexel section of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to get a tour of the inner workings of the Philadelphia City Archives.
As it turns out, the City Archives are located in the same building as the HDS, but we went in through [...]

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Philly Storage Solutions, pt. 1

The other day I got the chance to go see the library’s high density storage (HDS) warehouse. It sort of felt as if I were being inducted into some kind of secret society. We entered the ware house through an unlabelled lobby, signing in with a guard, going down a few levels in an elevator, [...]

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The Lowdown from “Main Street” on the 40

While waiting for the 40 the other day in West Philly, I had what started out as an interesting conversation with a fellow SEPTA believer (some day, SEPTA will be on time!), and turned into a very awkward one. It began the way almost all of my SEPTA bus-stop conversations begin – being asked what [...]

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