Where the past bumps into the future.
This has been an amazing week, although I did start it feeling a bit pecky. In the last couple of days there have been reports of the latest Mars expedition that has a new connection to Western Australia. It is one of those delightful strangeness’s that the latest tracking station built by the European Space Agency and listening out for the latest information from the Mars probe, has been built in New Norcia, the only monastery town in Australia.

One of the big treats for librarians here in Perth over the last few years is the annual invitation to the New Norcia monastery for a lecture on some aspect of library science. It is a very special treat because not only do we get invited to enjoy a trip out with our fellow library professionals, but there are beautiful paintings in the art gallery both newly added to the collection and ones that were gifted to the gallery over the 150 years of the monastery’s establishment, but best of all there is the library, which contains not only some pretty amazing texts, but also some incunables.
Incunables are books that were printed before there was much in the way of identifying information included at the beginning of the book. The idea that there are books like that in a location not too far away from where I live provides a real frission of delight. The idea that I could visit and possibly handle these books is one of those things that really appeal to me.

The other thing is that here is this place that is dedicated to a way of life that was first developed over sixteen hundred years ago and that was established here in Western Australia to educate, is now one of the connection points for a new exploration into the future!

It is a place where the past bumps into the future in such a way, that serried ranks of odd new thoughts start wriggling around in ones’ brain. Like the contrast between the old books in the library, some of them written by hand and trying to explain the universe as it was understood then, and the old school books of past students at the colleges when New Norcia was an educational centre, sitting not that far from the latest steel and concrete construction listening to the faint messages from far away teaching us new things about the universe around us.

I think that is a truly Grand Idea!