2.13.02 - LONDON / Jennings Dog, a Roman copy in marble of a Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a Molossian hound. The original was probably taken to Rome by Lucius Aemillus Paulus in 165 BC after he sacked Epirus—he collected Greek art. Popular among 2nd century Romans, then just as popular in England after 1750, when Henry Constantine Jennings (1721-1819) brought it home from Rome, potent with a new generation of copies to entertain gentlemen with gardens. Jennings had to sell the Dog to pay off debts in 1778 but people still called him "Dog Jennings." Jennings Dog adorns the "new" Great Court of the British Museum, Norman Foster's QEII dedication-in-progress (of becoming profitable). Glass it over, put in some gift shoppes, a cafe—what drains away? The Reading Room. It is the Museum of Effort. GBS, reading the encyclopedia to learn everything. George Gissing, starving, reading.

I'm beginning to get a bit passionate about the cause of spelling reform myself as I contemplate the vast expanses of written words behind me, before me. An ocean of words I'm crossing barefoot with the bottoms of my trousers rolled—an ocean filled and nearly choked by double vowels—eu and au and ai and ou, every diphthong, every purely formal gesture, every chronic puzzler (vein)—for every flash of wasteful arbitrary effort a pebble tossed—another pebble sinking only to accumulate beneath the surface of this knee-deep sea.