vovat | The Guardian of the Gates

I volunteered today at Longwood Gardens, for the first time in a while. I only stayed there for about an hour, which is about how long it takes me to get there, so that was kind of annoying. On the other hand, I didn't really want to stay for that long anyway. I mostly just wanted to let them know that I'm still interested in volunteering there, maybe once a month or so. They now have someone else doing most of the cataloging that I had done before, but they'll probably still have library stuff for me to work on.

I had a little trouble getting through the gate, since I didn't have the most recent parking sticker. I still had an old parking sticker, though, and why they would have changed them is beyond me. Did they have a real problem with old volunteers and employees sneaking in after they'd stopped working there? I tend to doubt it. Just another pointless security measure, I guess. There's a lot of that going around, isn't there? It was all sorted out in the end, though, and I should get my new sticker in the mail soon.

Speaking of mail, I finally got my copy of Edward Einhorn's new Oz book, The Living House of Oz. Based on a quick glance through it, it looks like it includes the (former) Flatheads, the Phanfasms, and and alternate-universe version of the Wicked Witch of the West. Sounds cool, huh? Okay, it probably doesn't to YOU, but I think it does. The book is pretty short, so I should be finished with it fairly soon. I'm going to have to temporarily switch the fantasy-reading part of my brain from Discworld to Oz mode, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

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This is definitely off-topic, but some IUP stuff: Upperclassmen were talking today about a suicide that supposedly happened to a girl in 3rd floor North of Whitmyre in the first year class or something. Is this true? I thought I'd ask, since a lot of the "college ghost stories/murders/suicides" are usually made up or just urban legends. But I thought you'd be one who'd know whether it was valid or not.

I don't recall hearing anything of the sort, and that's kind of thing you'd think I would remember! I'm pretty sure there weren't any Honors College students living on the third floor in the HC's first year; it was mostly exchange students. Regardless, I don't THINK it's true, but I can't say with absolute certainty that it wasn't.

On the other hand, it IS true that someone tried to make crystal meth in a second floor room in 1998.

Yeah, I heard about that. I thought it was 3rd floor north though- everything urban legend-ish about the HC seems to take place there, like the "demon" of room 309. :p

309 would have been pretty close to being over top of where I stayed. I was in 206 for my freshman year, and 208 for the other three years. I can't remember if I ever knew anyone in 309.

RIght now I'm in 263, but have a friend (ainslie_finn) who now lives in 309. Lucky her. :p

Yes, it is third floor north, but it was long before the HC-- it happened years ago the first time Whit was a dorm, before the renovations. Actually, I heard it was a fire, but either way, yes, third floor north is supposed to be haunted by a former student. My best friend was RA of that wing one year, and she was awfully proud of the fact that it was haunted, and talked about it quite matter-of-factly, like she had met the ghost personally and thought they were nice. But my best friend's pretty weird, so, y'know. Now, the tower of Breezedale is the one that's supposed to be haunted by a girl who hung herself there. Supposedly if you see her ghost, you go crazy and commit suicide yourself... but what I can't figure out is, if this is true, how does anybody live to TELL about it being true? Ah, urban legends.

Anyway though, to rest your worries, it wasn't an HC student at least....

(I can vouch for the drug lab story too though).

I learned from an article on www.thepenn.org that the one who killed himself in Breezedale was a man, Mrs. Sarah Sutton's brother William, via revolver in 1894. He did it in his bedroom, and he's supposed to be the one haunting it, not a girl. I heard that story too.

I wish there was a more reliable way to learn things besides, "oh, I heard that... [insert urban legend here]" ;-)

Supposedly if you see her ghost, you go crazy and commit suicide yourself... but what I can't figure out is, if this is true, how does anybody live to TELL about it being true?

That reminds me of a conversation between Trot and Cap'n Bill from L. Frank Baum's The Sea Fairies:

"How does anybody know about mermaids if those who have seen them never lived to tell about them?" she asked again.

"Know what about 'em, Trot?"

"About their green and pink scales and pretty songs and wet hair."

"They don't know, I guess. But mermaids jes' natcherly has to be like that, or they wouldn't be mermaids."

She thought this over. "Somebody must have lived, Cap'n Bill," she declared positively. "Other fairies have been seen by mortals; why not mermaids?"

"P'raps they have, Trot, p'raps they have," he answered musingly. "I'm tellin' you as it was told to me, but I never stopped to inquire into the matter so close before. Seems like folks wouldn't know so much about mermaids if they hadn't seen 'em; an' yet accordin' to all accounts the victim is bound to get drownded."

"P'raps," suggested Trot softly, "someone found a fotygraph of one of 'em."

wow discworld to oz mode thats a gear shift change that usually smacks me in the face.

The fountains in the picture on the Longwood Gardens main page look really awesome.

Yeah, they're pretty cool.

bethje and I went there for our anniversary one year.

The Guardian of the Gates

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