Revisiting the Knowledge of Old

The MASC contains the secrets of so much knowledge. It holds knowledge in many forms; stories, journals, biographies, and even enormous bird books with pictures!  It holds more books and words that I would probably read in a lifetime. It probably has more money in there than I would make in a lifetime too! Joking aside, the experience at the MASC opened my eyes to the type of resources available to our university. It also made me aware of the type of books available. In particular the one I was able to sample titled, Theodosia Ernest.

            Theodosia Ernest was a book that chronicled several baptism stories. It contained a series of short narratives that detailed how people were baptized and the context of each baptism. It also frequently posed questions about Christianity with appropriate answers that reaffirmed the character’s faith. These question and answers were often in the form of a story which helped the reader follow along, remain interested, and retrieve the moral of the story. If memory serves, this book was made with the intent to distribute in order to spread religious ideology. It was one of many copies created to instill fervent faithfulness to the teachings of Christianity.

            Another interesting note was the small lock of blond hair I found tucked away between the pages. This was a surprise to me as well as the MASC proctor for the day. Hopefully he will have it analyzed and find that the person to whom it formerly belonged was historically famous. They possibly used it as a bookmark, but I feel like there would be a plethora of other useful substitutes. Regardless, the finding of the blonde hair was fairly creepy, but entertaining to say the least.

            I enjoyed the readings and summaries from all the other students, especially from the more curious texts. The book about the beef was particularly humorous. Some of the older books seemed bizarre, and overall it was hard to relate many of them with our generation. Possibly on the next trip to the MASC, the books sampled to us could be more relevant to college students of our age. Maybe the proctor could include old “day-in-the-life” books that recount how the university was, how sports were played, or maybe old journal descriptions of Washington cities like Seattle or Spokane. Those would be pertinent and extremely fascinating.

            Overall I enjoyed my experience at the MASC and would love to have an excuse to peruse their collections. However, I feel like it would be an overwhelming feat to attempt the navigation of their facilities.