Isabella Bird

Talk about someone who walked around and looked at things! Regretfully I near the end of her book, Journeys In Persia And Kurdistan. (Virago Press, 1988.) Like much travel writing, it is an utterly engrossing read about one miserable day after another, punctuated by some relief and some pleasure. As I slowly emerge from such texts, I shake my head over their strange power to absorb my attention and grant such pleasure. With historical texts there is the added spell of the sense of a portal opening up in time and allowing one to look if not enter, in this case, Persia of 1890.

(If you like that sort of thing, I cannot too highly commend to your attention old stereoscope cards. The very dust off the Pyramids stings your lips as you gaze through the shaded lens at the old photos. I'm not quite clear on this, but my beloved gives me to understand that 3-D photography is making a resurgence in astronomy, so run off to your local antiques mall and snatch them up while you still can. Sometimes old Viewmaster reels reprinted old stereoscopic images too.)