Thurber House: Day Nineteen (Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum)

Today I had a marvelous experience.

Paul Watkins, retired bookseller of 54 years and longtime Thurber House board member/volunteer took me on a tour of Ohio State University.

We started out at the Thompson Library, which was (relatively recently) restored. It's an amazing building, absolutely beautiful and stunning. Enormous glass walls go up for story after story, all the books visible behind them.

One of the many reading areas is a huge, glass-windowed room where the windows are sunlight-sensitive and automatically raise and lower blinds to adjust. The floor of the room has raised text, scrambled, from American Indians Myths and Legends, A Little History of the World, and Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. Beautiful to look at. Possibly annoying for the cleaning crew!

And the top floor of the Thompson Library affords an incredible view of both the OSU campus and the larger Columbus area.

Next we went to the Orton Geological Museum, a building that is "geologically correct" in that it is constructed of stone quarried from Ohio with the oldest stones from the deepest strata at the bottom of the building and the stones stacked in order to the youngest at the top!

Next we had lunch at Sloopy's, where Paul and I found we have many shared values when it came to, well, quite a lot of things. It was a great conversation with a wonderful person!

And finally, we went to the highlight of an amazing day, a visit to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, where I got to see the exhibit of comic strips and graphic novels, including examples from some very old newspapers, a large collection of original Calvin and Hobbes panels from Bill Watterson, a huge amount of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, and originals from the tribute, Little Nemo: Dream a Little Dream. Also Chester Gould's actual drafting table where he wrote and drew Dick Tracy!

What a day! I'm grateful to Paul for his generosity and his expert tour guidance, and mightily impressed with OSU! I'll leave you with these pictures...