The Freudian Petticoat

Voici venir les temps . . .

2011-07-15T14:07:00.019-04:00

It's my last full day in the reading room at my favorite library, and I'm trying desperately to see all the rare books I need to see, and to consult all the sources at my fingertips before I have to go home, put the final touches on my manuscript and send it out. Oh, and I start teaching again in a month, so there's that grad course syllabus to prepare (Note to colleagues: Do NOT open an email from a student in the summer if the subject line is "Reading List." It will make you very unhappy).

I've just returned a wonderful, very rare manuscript bound in vellum and created by the Goldsmith's Company. It's in two books, the first dealing with weights and measures, assaying gold and silver and the mint. The second, which is more along my lines of research, lists precious stones, and describes where they are found and how they are valued. This was very helpful for a few references in my chapter on pearls, but also for the piece I hope to write on Jessica's turquoise ring in The Merchant of Venice.

The book ends with descriptions of some hard substances that are decidedly not precious stones, but were also of great value in the East and were traded as currency: lack and indigo (red and blue pigments), ambergris, musk, and civet (animal excretions used in perfumes and aphrodisiacs). These things interested me the most, in part because what are dyes, perfumes and aphrodisiacs doing in a book whose title is ye knowledge of all sortes of Gemmes or Praetious Stones, describing the Places wheare they growe, their Names, Coullors, Vertues & Valewes, According as they are bought from Marchant to Marchant worthy their Studie, which profess themselues Iuellers or are desirous to be made acquainted with those Secrets of Nature? In other words, how is indigo a precious stone? Yet from an early modern sensibility, the inclusion of pigments and perfuming materials with gems makes perfect sense, as all of these objects were traded, along with spices, "from Marchant to Marchant" in the East Indies, Persia and the Ottoman empire, and all of these items were employed together with sugar and spices and mummia (mummy) by apothecaries in the early modern pharmaceutical industry (if you can call it that).

I learned a lot from this manuscript, and because it's my last day at this beloved archive, was sorry to have to say goodbye to it, just as I'm sorry to have to say goodbye to my new friends.

I'm feeling melancholy and out of sorts today in general, as when anything stimulating and inspiring--not to mention frequently frustrating--comes to an end. We had our last seminar yesterday, and I am very grateful for the new colleagues and friends I've made, but oddly sad that it's over.

Despite all of the work I have to do today, I'm finding it rather challenging to concentrate, feeling a little distracted. I move around as if I were under a spell, or as if I had taken some powerful drug, my heart beating a little faster than usual. (It doesn't help that I've been reading about early modern aphrodisiacs and Sonnet 119 is thrumming through my head). I will be relieved to return to the regularity of daily life at home. But today everything is triste et beau comme une grande reposoir.

Blogging about the New Media

2011-07-14T10:36:00.008-04:00

So I've been in a summer seminar for the past month, at my favorite library. This is what we academics do in the summer: when we're not teaching as many summer school classes as we can manage in order to afford home repair, or churning out another manuscript or set of articles, we get paid to go back to graduate school. Except that it's like one of those accelerated summer-school classes that we teach, only grad-school style. This means 4-6 hours a day, 4 days a week, with a nightly reading list that far exceeds the weekly reading list I had from some of my most demanding professors back at Quill & Stylus. And if you're also trying to get a manuscript ready for a preliminary review, then farewell liberty.

Still, it's been a wonderful, stimulating and engaging experience. The seminar seems to span time, space, and dimension. It's too broad to describe here, and since I'm still writing under the gossamer veil of anonymity-ish-ness, I won't bore you with the details. But it's nearing its end, and the last two days have been devoted to readings, explorations, and discussions of The New Media, led by a brilliant pair of guest scholars.

We talked about film, database, archive and virtual space. We all created avatars and jumped around virtually on the Globe in Second Life (well, some people did. I couldn't figure out how to get off the roof of the balcony). We looked at a number of interactive on-line learning communities. But we haven't yet talked about blogs. A colleague mentioned blogs in an email message addressed to seminar participants today. The gist seemed to be "So, folks, what about blogs? Do they participate in the curatorial function of databases?" (We established last time that archives and databases kind of do have an author function and even an argument, even though many present themselves as being objective and all encompassing). Anyway, this made me think about my almost-defunct blog, and how only a couple of years ago everyone seemed to be participating in the academic blogosphere and now, well, notsomuch. That said there are still some wonderful academic blogs that I read regularly and for which I am grateful (shout-out to Flavia, and In The Middle!) I have to remind myself to blog, in a way that I never did before facebook, or twitter, or smartphones. Obviously blogs aren't just curated archives. I'm not sure they are archival at all, but they do participate in the collaborative thinking that goes along with new media. And what about blogs that are no longer active, like Blogging the Renaissance? Do people still read "dead" or "dormant" blogs, when there is no activity there any more? Or are they kind of like virtual archival materials themselves?

What will people think of blogs in times to come? What would Herzog's mutant albino crocodiles think of blogs?

A Delectable Discovery

2011-06-06T18:43:00.019-04:00

When I'm spending so much time writing and researching, I like to escape now and then to a good novel on my kindle. When I'm not reading Spenser, Milton, and Donne, of course. My favorite historical novelists tend to be those that absorb the literary stylistic touches of their periods, like John Barth and Allison Fell, or who adopt a (post)modern style all their own, like Hilary Mantel and James Morrow. To give you broader a sense of my escapist reading tastes, the last few novels I've read have included medieval mysteries by Ariana Franklin, historical fiction by David Mitchell, Michel Faber, Ronan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Waters, James Morrow, and the early modern young adult fantasies of my friend and colleague Marie Rutkoski. Not to mention the literary fiction of my adorable beau, who likes to tease me when he sees me reading something fun by calling it a "trashy novel." This time, when he asked me what my "trashy novel" was about, I immediately called it rarebookporn, which left him a bit confused.

As fate would have it, I chose A Discovery of Witches, and finished it (579pp) in two days. Anyone who loves reading historical novels, fantasy, research, and early modern rare books ought to be aware that the talented historian Deborah Harkness, author of the remarkable book The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven: Yale UP 2007), has written this, and though by no means high art, it is still a fantasty romp that is nearly impossible to put down. I kind of felt as if it had been written just for me (and not simply because it ends with quotations from the two poets who feature in the final chapter of my book). If you mix what's seriously cool about material textual research with Buffy (and I realize that may already be a redundancy to those familiar with Joss Whedon's series, since in the Buffyverse a fair amount of strategizing takes place in rare book rooms and Latin and Aramaic are living languages), Brooks's People of the Book, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, you might come a bit closer to what was so pleasurable about this book, but basically reading it felt like a vacation filled with magic and illuminated manuscripts and tiny pointing manicules and emblems and Giordano Bruno and sexy vampires in Duke Humfrey's library.

I am even more contented by the knowledge that there's going to be an Elizabethan sequel. Now, back to my manuscript. With the new chapter completed, it's off to thinking about language and the body politic in Poetaster. And I've got almost no time to lose, as I've seen the syllabus for my summer seminar, and it's more reading per day than I had in grad school per week at Quill & Stylus, which was kind of known for overloading its courses.

Procrastination can be Fun (and debilitating)

2011-05-30T17:50:00.018-04:00

Speaking of time . . .

In a little under 2 weeks I will head to our nation's capitol, where I will spend 6 weeks doing some work at my favorite library in the whole world and participating in a summer seminar with a reading list as long as my bibliography.

I promised an editor that I would send him my book manuscript at the beginning of the summer as it was nearly completed when we met in January. Then I got sick (pneumonia--don't try this at home). Then I got better, and wrote to him, and we agreed that I needed more time. Then I got the brilliant idea of scrapping about 50 pages from one of my chapters and rewriting it based on a brief paper I recently gave at MLA. Then I got the second brilliant idea of turning my introduction into a separate chapter, and writing a new, short introduction to the book.

The work has been going well, though not exactly as quickly as I would like. I am not entirely sure I will be done in time to send the manuscript off by the end of June, though I sincerely hope I will. I'm about 90% finished with the sweet new chapter and I'm really happy with it. Then on to the intro-spin off chapter, which needs about 15 pages on Jonson's Poetaster, which will be smooth sailing and loads of fun to write. Then back to the new, shorter intro to give it an update on recent theory and scholarship. Then I shall double-check my intros and conclusions to all the other chapters, and set it free, only about 3 months late.

Since I clearly have this all planned out, and have been writing on average about 6 pages a day, every day, no days off, this should be no problem whatsoever, correct?

WRONG! For some reason unless I am at my desk during the school-year stealing a few hard-earned non-student-filled hours, or in the middle of an archival reading room surrounded by other scholars more diligent than me, heads bent dutifully over books and laptops, I am unable to stay focused for long stretches of time.

After two hours at the computer I feel great because I'm clearly, honest-to-god WRITING. So still feeling pleased with myself, I wander outside and pet the porch kitty (more on him later), water the plants, sweep the porch, swiffer the floors, make tea, go for a walk. Then I go back to work and carefully write another four to six paragraphs. Then I fiddle around adding footnotes and images and pulling quotes in. Then it is too late to do any more work at all because it is time to go to the gym, where I lift weights and do cardio intervals on the elliptical thingy without falling off, so I actually feel like I'm getting stuff done, and then I get to sit in the sauna or steam room and feel good about myself because I am being HEALTHY and getting THINNER, so yay! Then it is time for dinner and because it is now summer we get to cook and prepare yummy fresh things from the farmer's market, like salade nicoise or chilled pea soup or gazpacho and then have minted honeydew popsicles for dessert (adorable beau is a popsicle addict so we make them every week). Then it's time to maybe watch a movie and/or to read the New Yorker in bed with my adorable beau and our cat, so yay!

Then I fall asleep and dream dreadful anxiety dreams about putting a 20page manuscript in the mail, or about the apartment flooding and the landlord trippling the rent, or about losing everything I've ever written, or losing the ability to write or see or think or about going up for tenure suddenly tomorrow (by the way, I can totally control when I go up for tenure at this new job, meaning I can go up as soon as I get a book contract, or wait a few years, which is awesome, but also might be slowing me down a little bit). When I wake up, I rush to the computer to make things right. In other words, I only manage to get things done if I do them half-assedly and then put them off enough to cause me to fret and worry about it unconsciously to the point of waking up in a cold sweat, shaking with apprehension. My cycle looks a lot like this and this.

I recently started blogging again in the hopes that it would help me stay focused on finishing my manuscript. I'm not sure if it's working, but it certainly beats making tea or going for a walk. And hey, at least I'm writing stuff.

Keeping Time

2011-05-28T18:38:00.012-04:00

Because I write about poetry and antiquity, I am always keenly aware of the way that time seems to keep us guessing. The lyric mode can suspend, extend, and rewind time. Just look at Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which moves from the longest length of time imaginable (apocalyptic), "vaster than empires and yet more slow," to the grave, where worms consort with his mistress's corpse, to the pounding heart beats of the last few lines. Or look at Shakespeare's sonnet 59, which imagines that time itself is revolutionary; all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. The poet imagines encountering an illuminated miniature of his beloved in a medieval book, centuries before the young man was born. Or else he's imagining projecting an early modern book containing a portrait of his lover into the future, perhaps our future:

Show me your image in some antique book

Since mind at first in character was done

That I might see what the old world would say

To this composed wonder of your frame

Whether we are mended, or whether better they

Or whether revolution be the same

And then there's the way that music itself transports us into a different time-scape, one in which time seems to stop, or move at a different pace from normal life. It doesn't always happen, but when it does it can be sublime for the audience and for the performer. I remember distinctly that it happened one spring when I performed the Chopin Barcarole at Oxford, during graduate school. I went into a trance and it really felt as if the music was doing something to the fabric of time, stretching it, unwinding it, repairing it, folding and pleating it.

There's an excellent article by Burckhard Bilger in The New Yorker that came out last month, in which Bilger anatomizes David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and author who is fascinated by the way that the brain registers time differently depending on the situation. The brain can appear to stretch time, for instance, during a near-death experience. Eagleman has begun studying musicians. I'm more interested in what happens to our perception when we feel like we have somehow walked outside of time. You feel it in the early stages of a romance, when you stay up all night and the night seems to go on forever and ever and then suddenly it's daylight and whoops, it didn't go on forever and your romance grinds to a bumpy halt (cue Romeo and Juliet 3.5).

There's also the weird sensation we get when we remember and try to relive those moments. For me, they are all connected to music. When I play a certain piece, like Schubert's G flat major impromptu, or listen to one, like Beethoven's A Minor quartet Op. 132, I am again transported by memory to that place where (when?) time stood still. Only instead you can't get it to stand still again, and the experience is somehow cheapened. That's why we sometimes cry, because we know we can't rewind. And of course the experience of loss is heightened when it's Schubert or Beethoven, because somehow in their music, they both seem to yearn for the same thing and yet remain profoundly aware of its futility. When adolescence hit me like a giant blow to the head, I would listen to my favorite childhood record, Mary Martin in Peter Pan, over and over again, tears streaming down my face as I mourned my lost innocence. Ovid was right: change is the only constant. But sometimes I think I feel it a little too powerfully.

I recently learned that an old boyfriend, now a friend, has gotten married. I am happy for this old boyfriend, and very happy in my current relationship. I also have very powerful and intense memories of my time with the o.b. (old boyfriend), and most of these memories are strengthened by their association with music. Listening to him play the last movement of the Beethoven Op. 109 and trying not to look at his facial contortions, crashing through the fugue of the Schubert F minor fantasy together, lying side by side on his tiny bed staring at the ceiling and trying not to move, listening to recordings of the Beethoven trio Op. 70, No. 2, and to Op. 132.

We went our separate ways. We parted amicably (in fact it was the most amicable and satisfying break-up I have ever experienced). We dated other people, we stayed in touch as friends. We saw one another once in a while, and when we did, we went to musical performances, and it was not without awkwardness, confusion and nostalgia. I know people always select which memories to retain and then we edit and modify them, usually unconscious of what we are doing. Maybe the o.b. remembers things differently, or different things.

A small part of me wants to believe in revolutionary time. Not that everything repeats itself exactly, but that the past is still animated, that these old memories are somehow alive and ongoing. A part of me really wants those two young people listening to that quartet on the floor of that tiny Oxford room six years ago to go on listening to it and to go on thinking that time is standing still.

Returning to the Blog

2011-04-25T23:42:00.002-04:00

I'm tickled. I really, really am. A few weeks ago, at an important early modernist conference on the West Coast, more than one person I admire (including the inimitable Bardolph, of the currently catatonic Blogging the Renaissance) said they missed reading my blog. As did Veralinda, in comments on the last entry. I always succumb to flatterers (and I don't mean it in the Renaissance, negative sense).

I've been so busy with the move and with my book I had forgotten about this space. I was also pretending to be trendy and acting like blogs were so ten minutes ago.

But now I find myself back here. Partly because I miss writing in this free, public-yet-intimate way, and partly because I read somewhere that if you stop blogging then blogger deletes your account and everything is lost. So much for posterity!

So I'm back. Still in the South, still finding it quirky, still marveling at life, writing, scholarship and early modern studies. Please stay tuned.

It's been a while

2010-12-13T19:44:00.016-05:00

I'm afraid I've let this blog atrophy, but I've been finishing my book and undergoing a number of big changes, some unexpected, some expected, and all welcome.

Expected: I moved. I had an excellent first job, but as I eventually discovered, it was not for me (nor I for it). I went on the market extremely late in the season, applied to a very small number of jobs, made the short list on all of them. This time around, nerve-wracking though it was, I had all positive and confidence-boosting experiences. Even the job I didn't get, which was an interdisciplinary position at a very important ny institution and went to a tenured scholar whose work I admire, was still kind of a dream moment in my career: just to have come that far and allowed myself to fantasize about teaching there, living in the Village, and taking my students to exhibits at the Met, was loads of fun. But the right job chose me, in the end. I had always wanted to be at a research institution, and now I am at an excellent State R1 with a fine doctoral program, a large faculty (about 50 of us), and an Oxford program which is coincidentally down the road from my old college (go Keble!).

Unexpected: I moved further South! I am now in one of the so-called "deep south" states, a state that at the moment (well, since the '80s) is very conservative. I never expected this to happen.

Also unexpected: I love it here! My little college town, sometimes referred to as a "brain bubble" is full of over-educated, arty hipsters and vegans and yogis and local foodies and indie rockers.

Also unexpected: my adorable beau moved down here (from Brooklyn) and now we are trying our hands at co-habitation and domestic bliss. He seems to like it here, too. Also, I haven't seen anyone go so quickly from criticizing me for indulging the cat ("you're such a Jewish mother to her!") to outdoing me in spoiling her ("can I give her this yogurt?"). To be fair, he also trained her not to wake us up in the morning, a feat I have never been able to accomplish on my own.

Also unexpected: my students are smart and inquisitive and bursting with intellectual curiosity. They like me! They don't need to be told what questions to ask, they are already asking them. They stay after class to talk about poetry. They are also diverse and quirky and, well, not all that homogeneous a group. Okay, so this wasn't exactly unexpected at all, of course my students are awesome. But sometimes when one moves from an expensive private institution to a big, affordable state one (in the poorest county in the state), one doesn't know what to expect (perhaps also because expensive institutions tend to have somewhat inflated senses of their importance).

Expected: my colleagues are awesome. My department is, well, an English department (each messed up in its own way, pace Tolstoy). But mine's actually a functional one, with a tremendous amount of support for, and protection of junior faculty. Tenure rules are clear and specific. Procedures are followed, and a sense of democracy achieved. It's also a big department: I'm one of five practicing early modernists (the other four are senior faculty). My senior colleagues are strong and supportive and collaborative. In particular, they have of late been very encouraging and helpful in navigating the uneasy waters of academic book publishing.

Anyway, I'm thinking back to a year ago, when I felt unhappy and bitter. I'm kind of overwhelmed by how quickly things seemed to turn themselves around.

I don't post very often on this blog, in part because I'm finishing my book, and in part because I fear I've lost my audience. But for some reason I felt like I needed to finish telling the story it was telling last year. It's not the end, but at least it's finally happy.

Dinah Washington: I Don't Hurt Anymore

2010-05-11T10:54:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. It's been a crazy year, very busy, very up-and-down, and yet it seems that as the semester draws to a close, I've actually come out on top, rather than underneath. Or maybe that's just growth or something. Anyway, this song was in my head and I thought I'd post it here.

Musical Signs

2010-03-04T12:03:00.017-05:00

I am not one for spiritual signs. But if I were, they would have to do with music.

I should explain about "The Theme." When I was in High School, I spent my summers at a large arts camp in the Midwest. Even though I never got a big role in any of the Shakespeare productions, or won the concerto competition, I loved it there. And at the end of every musical performance, the performers had to play the camp's theme. And the rule was no clapping. You were supposed to walk out humming it. And the camp's theme happens to be a beautiful little motif from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 ("The Romantic). It is like a sigh. When there is a vocal performance, the singers sing it in harmony, to the syllable of "lu" (Lu lu lu lu lu lu lu, etc) . And when little children perform it, it is always followed by "Sssshhhhhhhh" as they tell one another not to clap.

Even though The Theme is famous at my arts camp, and Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 well known, I have only heard The Theme on the radio twice.

The first time I was 17 and heading to one of my two top choice colleges for an interview and campus visit. At the time I didn't think I would get in, and the place seemed out of my league. Of course that made me want to go there even more. Anyway, as we drove up to campus in my grandmother's old toyota, suddenly The Theme came on to the radio. It was stunning. Right as we were pulling into the parking lot, there it was. We all sat in the car until it was finished. When I closed the car door and walked up into the sunshine, I knew it that no matter what happened, I would be okay. Of course I got in, though I ended up going to my other top choice, which was bigger and artsier, but that is a different story.

The second time I heard The Theme was the day before I was to depart for New York this January. I was feeling all sorts of stressed out about my move, wondering if I would be able to finish my book in New York, feeling sad about leaving a few good friends, feeling sick and congested and anxious about the future. I think I was driving to the tailors to pick up a shirt for a late season job interview (reader, I got the campus visit. Just not the job). I was on the exit ramp from 40 business, turning onto Knollwood St. to get to Stratford Road, and there was the theme. It was calming and peaceful and yet I found myself in tears. I could say that it triggered a memory of youth and innocence and happier times, but that wouldn't be true: my experiences at summer camp were just as emotionally complex as my experiences are now. All I know is that it was the right time for me to hear The Theme again. And that it brought me some sense of closure and peace of mind. Of course I remembered the other time I had heard it, and was hopeful.

The second musical sign came a few weeks ago. A dear friend (and an exboyfriend) was visiting for the first time from the UK and we made plans to hear a chamber music concert in Manhattan. We saw the Takacs Quartet at Town Hall on a Sunday afternoon. We didn't know what they would be playing, only that we hoped it would be late Beethoven since that is what they are known for. Lo and behold, the last piece on the program was Beethoven's Quartet Op. 132, with the incredibly gorgeous and ethereal third movement called Heiliger Dankgesang, "The Invalid's Prayer of Thanksgiving."

This was something we used to listen to together in Oxford. In fact, the first time I heard this piece was on my friend's stereo in his tiny rooms on Banbury Road. Hearing and seeing it live far transcended any experience of Beethoven quartets I have ever had. By last strain, I was in tears and the violist had to pause to wipe her eyes before starting the last movement. It amazed me that she could demonstrate such control over her playing and yet cry all the way through it, because it was so beautiful. It was good to share this music, at this time in my life, with a good friend. I felt like I was the invalid recovering from an illness. I have so much to be thankful for.

34

2010-03-04T11:53:00.005-05:00

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. The move to Brooklyn for the semester plus the sinus-infection-that-would-not-go-away have seriously limited the amount of free time I have to spend musing about myself on the internets.

But I do have some thoughts, having recently turned 34.

33 was rollercoasterish. It was rough and confusing and uplifting, not all at once but in succession, and I am grateful for all of this in the end, because it reminds me that I am living, that this is experience.

In the beginning of 2010 I lost a dear friend, too early--much to early--to cancer. He was one of my closest friends and colleagues, arrived at my institution right when I did, in 2006, to start a tenure track job in another department. I miss him horribly, and am still only just beginning to understand what a life without him means. But oddly, here in Brooklyn, I keep remembering him and it's kind of like being haunted by someone in a good way. He came here to spend his 4th year leave with his partner this year, and in the end, to rest from his illness. I can't help feeling like his memories are part of this place.

I turned 34 two days ago. I've been fighting this awful upper respiratory infection for 3 months that has left me fatigued and frustrated. My biggest fear is that I won't be able to finish this book and get the manuscript ready to be reviewed. Thankfully, writing doesn't take up that much physical energy, but I'm hoping that this year I'll get better. Perhaps some of the frustrations of last semester weakened my immune system enough for this malicious infection to work its way inside. Though if that were the case, then the recent spate of good luck I've been having would have strengthened it. But I still have a lot to be thankful for: an adorable and witty beau who extolls me in verse, two healthy and wonderful parents (kinne hurra) and a growing number of friends and supportive colleagues the world over.

My year in fortune cookies

2010-01-10T14:26:00.005-05:00

From 2009:

"You have a natural grace and great consideration for others."

Not so sure. Since I stopped taking dance lessons seven years ago I've started stumbling around and bumping into things a lot. I also have a big problem with interrupting people and talking too much. And as for being considerate of others, well, not exactly according to my most recent group of students. I can be tough, critical, abrasive. I let them know when they are wrong and say things in class like "where's the textual evidence for that claim?" I need to relax and be gentler with my kids in class. I think I should treat this fortune as something to work towards, not something that is already true.

"You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability."

Okay, I'll try not to. And I think this is probably true. Nothing thrills me more than a perfect fried egg staring up at me from a turquoise china plate. Or a simple lit window glimpsed from the dark street.

"Prepare yourself for a big change of events in your personal life."

Well, I guess it depends how one defines "personal life," but, yeah. There have been some big changes in 2009.

"Your name will be famous in the future."

But not in this life, apparently.

"Do not display your treasures or people will become envious."

Sound advice, and words I frequently need to hear. I get so excited about the things I love, I often forget that others have not been as fortunate, or might not see things from my perspective.

"Accept the next proposal that comes your way."

Okey-dokey. So long as it's something nice.

And the first one from 2010:

"You are working very hard."

MLA Bound

2009-12-22T18:05:00.002-05:00

I am, once again, MLA bound next week. Off to snowy Philadelphia to deliver a paper, see old friends, and horse around in a place I used to live.

I'm dreading and looking forward to it. Dreading it because MLA still fills me with residual dread. It's just so huge. Sometimes it's really hard just to locate one's friends in the midst of all the posturing and networking and nervous job candidates and competitive colleagues. And dreading it because the economy's so bad, there are few jobs available for anyone, and even my alma mater has canceled its annual party. It's a dark, dark time.

But let's face it, I'm a nerd. I totally love the work that we do, and so I am looking forward to it because part of me cannot wait to give my talk, and meet the important person who agreed to chair our panel, and reconnect with scholars whose work I admire.

But if you're one of my friends and you'll be there, and you're also feeling overwhelmed by the massiveness that is MLA, please get in touch with me and let's arrange to meet up. In advance.

JUDY GARLAND: 'MEET ME IN ST LOUIS'. 'HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS' WITH SNOWMAN CLIP.

2009-12-15T02:51:00.001-05:00

Maybe it's me, but I find most pop songy holiday music as irritating as it is inescapable this time of year. So I'm always glad when a little jazz standard by Irving Berlin ("White Christmas") or Mel Tormé ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") comes out over the loudspeakers, only partly because both composers were Jews who knew that Christmas sells. They were also elegant composers who knew the thrill and complexity of a long, drawn out musical phrase.

Another Jew who capitalized on Christmas was Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics to my favorite Christmas song of all time, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I like it because the original lyrics are so dark and ironic and uncertain.

Meet Me in St. Louis was one of my favorite movies as a little girl. And this scene in particular. Have yourself a merry little Christmas indeed. Then run outside and smash all the snowmen, because you have to move to New York.

This Little Light of Mine

2009-11-08T11:07:00.012-05:00

It's a gorgeous day: bright blue cloudless sky, red gold leaves in the trees and underfoot, and warmth under the dappled sun. As I tramped through the leaves in the backyard, half listening to my neighbor summon her cat "Cowgirl! Here kit-kit-kit-kit-kit-kit-kit-TEE!" which makes me feel like I'm in the country, I noticed that the familiar call was mixed with a strain of bright music. There is a church on my cross-street, a tiny white box of a building that I never paid much attention to. But today I could hear a small gospel choir inside singing

This little light of mine
I'm gonna let it shine
I'm gonna let it shine
I'm gonna let it shine
This little light of mine
I'm gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shi-ine

My mother used to sing this to me when I was very small. Hearing it today was kind of transcendental.

Underneath

2009-11-07T11:15:00.009-05:00

Being under review again is challenging, since I've started to make progress on my manuscript revision. The review can take up a lot of psychological and emotional acreage, leaving little room for focus on my current projects, if I'm not careful. And it gets scarier and scarier in the years leading up to the tenure decision. I'm only 3 years in and already I'm worried.

Reading one's colleagues' critical reports is a bracing experience, but I'm trying my best to take them to heart constructively by thinking about how I can use this as an opportunity to change as a teacher and as a scholar. I'm trying to read them as assessments rather than evaluations. And I'm hoping they'll keep me on.

I have also realized I am not a fan of certain words and phrases that tend to crop up in such reports. It's probably because right now my mind's landscape is being overtaken by thoughts about the review and its uncertain outcome. But for some reason the verb "evinces", even used in a positive way, freaks me out. It has nothing to do with what the word means. I think it has something to do with the way it sounds- kind of like a sharp knife slicing away at paper.

Haiku Dissertations

2009-10-26T13:05:00.003-04:00

I recently came across these beautiful haikus (via an email from an adorable beau) based on doctoral dissertations.

Somehow I'm more impressed by these scholars' abilities to write haikus based on their projects than by the years of research and argumentation that went in to the original projects. It's so much more difficult to reduce one's argument to seventeen syllables.

I think perhaps I ought to try to write a few of these about my book project, and maybe they will help me clarify my proposal.

HAIKU DISSERTATION

Yellow Leaves

2009-10-05T18:07:00.005-04:00

I'm back in the South for the time being. Montreal and New York were wonderful, but I've had to come back here for a while, to work, until I can find a subletter and a sublet elsewhere.

I've just turned in my 3rd/4th year review dossier (sigh of relief, followed by sigh of apprehension) and am settling in to writing, or fixing up my manuscript.

The weather's been cool, and the leaves are starting to turn. I'm switching from sandals to boots, tights, jeans and cardigans. It's not cold enough to turn on the heat just yet, but it's cool enough to smell woodsmoke and cold wet grass in the air, go for a short walk in the park and return to brew a pot of tea for the afternoon's work.

I love autumn. I think maybe I say this every year around this time of year, but I believe I think better, write better, work better when it's just starting to get chilly out. The air is thinner, crisper, my mind is sharper. Or maybe it's all the mugs of tea I'm consuming. At any rate, I am grateful for the arrival of autumn and for my leave- there are few things I would rather do than sit down with a pile of books and a pot of tea, wrap myself in a wool cardigan, and settle down to read or revise, with a nearly comatose cat nestled in my lap.

retourner à Montréal

2009-09-15T12:36:00.008-04:00

Tomorrow morning- eye blinkingly early - I'm going to take the 11 hour train from New York to Montréal. It will be my first time back in the city in two years, which is almost unbelievable to me, given that I still dream of Montréal and still think about myself as having come to the south from there, kind of as if I lived there longer than I actually did. Of course it helped cement that feeling of being "from Montréal" in my head, when I kept going back to Montréal for a year and a half after I moved south (I was dating someone who lived there).

But anyway, it's been two years. My French is rusty. My vocabulaire Québecois even rustier. I can't seem to remember the proper order of the streets that ran between my own street, Rue Drolet, and the main street Boul. St. Laurent, even though I walked past them several times a day for a year, and for some reason I find this vaguely disturbing. Henri-Julien, Laval, Hôtel-de-Ville, Coloniale, St. Dominique. There, I think that's right. (I just checked google maps and had forgotten de Bullion- how could I have forgotten de Bullion?!). Every day I would walk along Avenue des Pins from Drolet to St. Laurent and pass these same streets. I'd pass the Theatre des Quat'Sous, housed in an old synagogue, and the fancy restaurant Laloux where my parents once took me and where we ate coqilles st. jacques cooked with creme, orange rind and pernod and they served mousse de fois gras instead of butter with the bread. It sat across the street from a humble little potato place, Patate au Four, which I never tried but liked the idea that it was open late next door to a Buanderie- so you could get a piping hot potato if you were stuck out in the cold, dark winter doing your laundry.

This time, I'm not going alone. There is a fellow traveler (an adorable beau), who speaks better French than me but has never been to Montréal. I can't wait to show it to him. But it will also be good just to walk those streets again, speak that weird mixture of Canadian French and English, see my old friends, and wander through the used bookstores of the Plateau, stocked with beautiful francophone books and huge collections of discounted classical music CDs. I think I still have my 10% off discount card for the Bouquineries St. Denis and du Plateau, which I remember had this great window on Rue St. Denis full of curious book specimens, all of which I coveted. And of course we'll see some French cinema and visit Mile End, with its mixture of Portuguese cafes, Greek delis, and Orthodox Jews, and the Spanish and Portuguese places in the Plateau, and the lovely Café Côté Soleil on St. Denis to have a Montréal brunch, and then go for a walk up the "mountain" maybe with a picnic lunch from Marché Jean Talon and I'll see my friends and colleagues too- three days is starting to seem a little too short to fit everything in.

First Paycheck On Leave

2009-09-02T12:15:00.002-04:00

30% of my half-pay has been withheld in taxes. I now make less per year than I did as a postdoc in Canada.

Ouch.

Back to grant applications for the spring.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

2009-08-27T20:20:00.004-04:00

. . . And it's pretty much the same. Except that the cat is trying to make up for 18 days without me by sticking her face in front of me every two seconds, and about 50% of the tomatoes were destroyed by caterpillars or blight or not enough water or all three. The first day of classes was yesterday but I'm on leave so I roll out of bed at 8 and spend the morning writing and listening to Bach in my pajamas. I feel kind of ill- like I'm playing hooky or I've got one long extended sick-day.

I've got to get out of here! And so I've devised a marvelous plan: who says I should spend my leave here just because I didn't get a fancy long-term fellowship? Here, where my house is full of distractions and I feel all wrong going to campus and hanging out around my colleagues who are not on leave, and thus envious of me? I have decided to try to sublet my place and move somewhere (avec chat) with bigger libraries, more rare books, more influential and important early modern scholars, and writing-friendly cafes, preferably late this fall, but I'll do January if I must. Can I afford it? Barely. But right now I think it might make a huge difference in my productivity and general happiness. Yes?

Ugh

2009-08-21T12:07:00.011-04:00

I'm still working on this book review. I've never reviewed a book with problems, so I don't really know what the protocol is, or what I ought to do. So please, people who have published many reviews, write in and tell me what I should do.

Here's the deal:

1. It's an edited anthology that was produced in Europe. The introduction has two or three interesting historical observations on the topic, but not much analysis. It doesn't pose any provocative questions or attempt to answer them with the essays in the volume, which is kind of what I thought anthologies were supposed to do. But maybe European anthologies have a different critical approach. Maybe they're less concerned with asking enormous questions and trying to redefine the Renaissance in a ground-breaking way, the way we North American and British folks keep trying to do (and failing). So resisting a grand recit actually would be kind of refreshing, come to think of it.

2. It's full of errors. I wouldn't mind the copy-editing mistakes, but there are some really big ones. For instance, an essay all about Renaissance emblems and poetry repeatedly uses the term energeia ("activity") when the author really means enargeia ("visibility"). Although enargeia is energeia's henchman - "visibility" makes "activity" possible - it's clear that the author of this essay neither understands the difference between the two, nor their relationship. The same article confuses ut pictura poesis (Horace's equation of poetry with painting, which is really about PERSPECTIVE) with poema pictura loquens ("a poem is a talking picture"), a mistake a lot of people make, which never gets corrected because no one reads ancient languages for REAL anymore, or bothers to read the whole of Horace's Ars Poetica and compare it with Plutarch. This really, really bugs me. But maybe I'm overreacting.

3. Sadly, I wish I could write to the editors and tell them about all the mistakes so that they can fix them. This book probably shouldn't have gone to press with so many errors.

So- do I write to the journal who gave me the review and tell them the book shouldn't be reviewed? Or do I review it and mention all its faults in the gentlest way possible? I mean, 500 of my 700 words would be summary anyway . . .

Fellow writers and scholars, please weigh in.

The New Flattery

2009-08-15T17:27:00.010-04:00

For the first time, the guy sitting next to me in the Red Horse Cafe asked "where do you teach?" instead of "where do you study?" Is this the new flattery, or am I starting to look my academic age?

To be fair, he was much older than me, taught at a noted boho New England liberal arts college for nine years and got tenure there before moving to a noted boho Manhattan college.

And if he peeked, he might have noticed that my desktop was littered with virtual post-it notes saying things like "Article due August 31," "Book review due Sept. 1" and "Get image permissions" plus the deadlines of various fellowship competitions. Does that make me seem more professional?

Maybe he was just being extremely charming. What young female scholar doesn't want to be mistaken for someone with a successful professional career? This guy was slick. Then he left to go take care of his three-year-old. It's Park Slope, after all- he probably had to walk the dog while his wife went to Yoga class.

Epilogue: the same evening I went to a comedy-improv performance with an adorable beau. The young woman sitting next to us was shocked (actually even a bit taken aback) to learn my "real" age- said I looked "MUCH younger." My students always do this and it makes me laugh because what do they know? They don't know anyone else in their 30s. Maybe it was the beau.

If you can't say something nice . . . say something mean.

2009-08-09T09:38:00.013-04:00

I'm sitting in a cafe just south of Park Slope in Brooklyn, working on two pieces due at the end of the month. It's a lovely space- reminds me very much of the coffee-house where I work in my small Southern town, only much smaller (there is too much extra space in the South). The guy at the counter is from Alabama and serves Sweet Tea and seriously good bluegrass is coming out of the speakers. Were it not for all the cars outside and cute, bespectacled urban hipsters inside, I could be back home. Except that I think I like the South better when it's in Brooklyn.

My pieces are only sort of due August 31- one's a 3,000 word invited article for an online journal, and the other one is a book review which was originally due May 30. I tried to explain this to an MA student who has a crush on me a couple of nights ago. I was out with my friends, a married couple one of whom is a colleague, the other a writer. The student showed up too, and spent a couple of hours chatting with us. My colleague and I were complaining about our deadlines and then we started joking and laughing about how we'll never turn our pieces in on time anyway, because we were invited to do them. The MA student gazed at us with a mixture of shock and admiration, like he was privy to some illicit bit of information about how academics really work. And I'd forgotten all about how scary deadlines used to be, back when I was a student, back when they really mattered (or so I thought). But now that I get asked to do things all the time, of course, everything is so flexible. 'Cause that's how we hot-shot academics roll. (I hope my readers know I'm being silly and sarcastic here: I do take deadlines seriously and only rarely get invited to do anything. Just for clarification).

Anyway, I'm sitting here trying to write a decent review of this book, a collection of nine essays all vaguely pertaining to an organizing topic, and divided into four sections, but the introduction seems cursory, the organizing principle tenuous, and the section themes haphazard. Have you ever started to read a book you're reviewing and begun to think that every sentence (or every other sentence) is false? I'm at that stage right now. The book is decorated with my interjections. As I read each sentence I keep thinking "Really? No way! That is so not true." I can't tell if I'm right about this, or if it's just because I'm in a contrary, doubtful mood, inclined to question anything anyone tells me, whether it's an historical fact, an argument about Renaissance emblems, or a profession of love.

Book reviews don't really count as publications in my world, but they are still necessary. My friend Veralinda calls them exercises of good citizenship. It's just something we do to show that we are part of an (imagined) community of readers, especially at this early stage in our bookless careers. But the problem is that a book review makes a difference in someone else's career- the authors of the book I'm reviewing. And I don't want to ruin their careers since academic ones are so hard to come by. And because I can't afford it because then they could ruin mine. Still this review (graciously passed to me by Veralinda) is for a publication I respect. And I need to start being a good citizen.

At the moment I'm very fond of someone who never tones it down, who speaks his mind honestly and articulately and at times (some might say) insensitively. I have tremendous respect for him, because I cannot stand it when people gloss insults with insincere niceties (bless their hearts). And because I don't think he would speak so honestly if he didn't respect and like me, too. But in the case of my review I think there must be a way for me to write clearly and truthfully about what is wrong with this essay collection and still remain sensitive to the careers I may be tarnishing. I just haven't found it yet.

Freud Returns

2009-07-25T11:40:00.010-04:00

Although Freud never visited the Holy Land in his lifetime, I took it upon myself to return him to the land of his ancestors. Here he is looking thoughtful at the Kotel (Western Wall). I wonder what he is thinking. Has he seen the light? Or is he a bit circumspect, muttering, "Sometimes a wall is just a wall"?

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem could not be more different. Jerusalem is golden white, cool, hilly; Tel Aviv is busy, dingy and peeling, congested, towering, hot and sweaty, and despite or because all this extremely compelling, especially to Freud. It is filled with arty graffiti.

The love-child of Keith Haring and a Hasid:

Freud's favorite spot (voden?):

Middle Eastern Engrish

2009-07-24T11:19:00.007-04:00

There are probably fewer examples of Engr ish in Istanbul and Tel Aviv than can be found in Japan, but I did manage to find some:

This is a coffee-shop in Sultanahmet, the historic neighborhood of Istanbul full of wooden houses, cobblestones, and cats. I passed it on my uphill walk to the Aya Sofya.

From a hotel room door in Tel Aviv.

"Naughty" Air Freshener isn't technically Engrish, since the Hebrew actually means "naughty child scent". I think maybe it's supposed to be used when your (bad) little boy makes a nasty stink in the bathroom. Incidentally, I recently learned that the Hebrew word for mouth (peh) and the French word for fart (pet), are homophones.

Spice Bazaar

2009-07-23T15:50:00.015-04:00

Overlooking the Galata bridge which crosses the Golden Horn in the Bosphorus, linking Eminönü to Beyoğlu in Istanbul, sits the spice bazaar, an ancient spot where traders on the spice road set up shop. The current structure dates from the 17th century, and is called the Mısır Çarşısı (Egyptian Market) in Turkish, because the first merchants there came from Egypt (supposedly). Inside the displays of pyramids of peppers, curries and teas are dizzying. You can also find towers of lokum and helva, both of which look like jewel-studded precious stones and come in every possible flavor. There are also long strands of dried okra, eggplant, and peppers, for stuffing with rice and simmering in stews.

As I walked the length of the spice bazaar, shopkeepers placed bits of lokum in my mouth, shoved pungent loose pomegranate tea under my nose, and tried to entice me in Spanish and French. (Apparently I'm not very American looking). I replied in Turkish with "yok teşeker" (No thank you).

I bought 100g of Aşk çay (Love Tea) at a shop near the entrance. It has rosebuds, pomegranates, hibiscus, lemon, dried apple, dried sour cherries and camomile in it and made everything in my suitcase smell delicious. When he scooped it out for me, the clerk asked me how many "darlings" I wanted to lure with the tea, 10 or 15? I settled for a modest 5- no use provoking a full-on assault. He also insisted that I purchase some lokum to serve with it because Turkish Delight is supposedly an aphrodisiac. I was a little miffed- did he really think I needed such devices? But I bought both, and gave the lokum away.

At Arifoğlu Natural Products, I sniffed four types of rose essence, made up of roses from Turkey, Syria, and Iran. I chose a tiny dram of Attar of Roses and after I paid the (cute, young) shopkeeper proposed to me even though I hadn't offered him any of my Aşk çay. When I politely refused him for the seventh time and went to join my parents, he saw them and after striking a comical deal with my father (he promised to throw in his sister), finally stammered that he was only joking. Too bad, because I was already planning my life as a spice-bazaar shop-keeper's wife.

The Attar is very strong- only a quarter of a half of a drop is needed. But it is 100% natural and blends very well with my favorite Parisian perfume (an extravagant gift from one of my 5 or 6 darlings), adding a little warmth to a very unobtrusive light incense scent.

The Food

2009-07-23T13:41:00.023-04:00

Oh, the food in the Middle East. It seems fitting that I dedicate an entire blog post to it. Looking back at my trip, it seems as if I ate vast amounts of food, even though I lost about 7 pounds.

Turkish and Israeli food are quite different, but have at least one thing in common: they are both delicious. The best thing about both is the freshness of the ingredients. Somehow even the most unassuming tomatoes are bursting with flavor (they actually taste red), and cucumbers, so bland in the States, positively sing with green, melony flavor. An Israeli I know bites into both as one might bite into an apple. They are, after all, fruit.

My favorite Turkish meal is breakfast. My Istanbul hotel served breakfast on a rooftop overlooking the Sultanahmet neighborhood, with the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya on one side, and the Sea of Marmara on the other. Laid out on a long table was an overwhelming buffet- copper bowls and jugs filled with three kinds of olives, yogurt, various white and marinated cheeses, fresh cherry tomatoes, bunches of mint and parsley, walnuts and hazelnuts and watermelon and sometimes plums, a mess of dried fruits including apricots, sour cherries, figs and white mulberries, and a full-sized honeycomb, hanging vertically from a wooden trestle.

There were also various egg dishes like menemen (finely scrambled eggs with tomato), plus small pastries sprinkled with sesame and black cumin seeds, and jars of various spices including aleppo and urfa pepper, to sprinkle on top. There were Turkish jams and confitures like pekmez (pomegranate molasses), rose petal jam and pumpkin preserve. And fruit leather, and halva, and even some tiny jewel-like pieces of lokum (Turkish Delight) to tempt those with a sweet-tooth. And Turkish coffee and Turkish tea to drink, served in a tiny tulip shaped glass on a white porcelain dish decorated with red and gold. Iced drinks included sour cherry juice and oriental sherbet, which tasted like spiced sour cherry mixed with lemonade and cardamon.

For my first three days in Istanbul, it was impossible to choose what to eat. I always took too much of everything and ended up skipping lunch and not having anything until 9pm. Finally on day four or so, I settled on melon with feta and walnuts with some veggies and a cup of Turkish tea. And that is what I ate contentedly for breakfast for the next 8 days. My mother settled on oats with hazelnuts, dried white mulberries and hot milk, and my father always had a mixture of dried fruits, bread and nuts. We never deviated.

The other Turkish dishes I love are the cold meze, small dishes (like tapas) of dips and such, usually served as appetizers. In restaurants, they come around with a huge tray of them and you get to pick. All were delicious, but I had three favorites, and I don't remember their turkish names. One was a simple dish of thick strained yogurt and purslane, a lemony succulent. Another was a tapenade made from almonds, olives, and red peppers. And the third was a marinated white fish called levrek (translated as Sea Bass), served in slivers in a simple sauce of olive oil and lemon. I could eat these three things alone for the rest of my life, but they also taste divine layered on a piece of bread.

I didn't eat as much in Tel Aviv as I did in Istanbul, but I was equally impressed by the food. The sandwiches are amazing, especially sabich (grilled eggplant, hard boiled eggs, tehineh and pickle) and shakshukah, which is fried egg and tomato in a pita with all sorts of pickles and veggies and tehineh and other things- I didn't really pay attention to what the guy put in it, but it was incredibly delicious. My friends CAG and AP swear by the coffee, but I had a taste and found it too bitter for me, though the texture was thick and grainy, like Mexican hot chocolate.

I already said that the vegetables were ten times more flavorful than here in the States, but so are the fruits. You can get tubs of giant fresh green and purple figs just about anywhere, along with fragrant lychees which sometimes come in little heart-shaped plastic boxes bearing a red sticker with the brand-name b'reshit ("In the beginning . . .") which must be a reference to all kinds of fruits being thought-up at the creation, i.e., "In the beginning, God created lychees." It is very tempting to remove the label and stick it on something else like an arm, or a laptop ("In the beginning, God created macbooks").

And then there are the freshly squeezed juices and lemonades, preferably had on a sidewalk cafe shaded by potted plants. The empress of all these is the limonana, a refreshing drink made of lemonade, crushed ice, and tons of fresh mint. The perfect thing on a hot day, though one limonana is clearly never enough. Because it is extremely hot all summer long in Tel Aviv (indeed, the coolest parts of the day are 6am and dusk), the city is full of incredibly refreshing things to eat and drink to cool off. Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv's first settlement, which feels like a tiny southern European village, is worth the short walk for the gelato alone (though it's also full of French tourists, who find it "franchement sympa"). My only regret foodwise is that I didn't get around to trying Israeli frozen yogurt, which I'm told is icier than American.

Yesterday was my first day back in North Carolina. I went to the grocery store and bought watermelon, feta, walnuts, lemons, and mint.

Back Stateside

2009-07-20T21:03:00.008-04:00

Phew- I am exhausted. I have so much to report, but I'm going to need a few days to recuperate after the disappointing ordeal of spraining my ankle on my last night in Tel Aviv just as I was leaving my cousins' house, and then having to navigate airport security in TA, Istanbul, and Chicago with a bum leg. But in the end I got bumped up to business class, so it worked out fine.

I've got a handful stories and images from my trip, so watch this space, if indeed I still have readers left- I hear that blogs are already quite antiquated.

I took many more pictures of Istanbul than I did of Tel Aviv, which I'm regretting- along with not bringing home a giant jar of tehineh and/or a kitten -but will try to describe my impressions over the next few days. I find I already miss both places profoundly, in very different ways.

Constantinople

2009-07-17T08:47:00.006-04:00

I promised photos of this blog's mascot on vacation and I do not want to disappoint. Freud took a little trip up the hill in Sultanahmet and visited both the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque, pausing to smell the roses in between. Roses and rose-scented things are everywhere in Turkey. I found rose-scented vaseline at the pharmacy, and bought a tiny dram of Attar of Roses in the spice bazaar. The Turkish word for rose, gul, may or may not be related to the word for smile, which is gulay. The Turkish word for "bye bye" is gulay-gulay, which means "smile, smile."

Freud was particularly fond of this street, which means "street of the bald beards."

The Real Istanbullus

2009-07-09T13:04:00.004-04:00

My photos today are sadly Freud-less, only because it was too crowded and busy in the Bazaar, I was afraid I'd lose him, and I felt kind of weird taking him in to a functioning mosque.

Anyway, Istanbul is full of cats, and most of them are born in the spring and summer, so that means kittens of varying sizes everywhere in early July. Kittens that come and beg at your dinner table when you dine at a fancy al fresco restaurant, kittens that jump in front of you on the sidewalk in the dark and make you squeal, and kittens sleeping anywhere food is discarded and it's warm and sunny. Istanbul residents (Istanbullus) seem to like the cats, and I've also seen several headscarfed women happily feeding and cooing to them. In the First Courtyard of Topkapı palace, I noticed a number of kittens large and small, and two rather indulgent fathers letting their toddling sons pet and talk to them. It turns out that cats are sacred to Islam. A story goes that Mohammed cut off his sleeve, rather than wake the cat that was sleeping on his arm.

Freud Contemplates the Sea of Marmara

2009-07-07T16:39:00.001-04:00

GMT +2.00

2009-07-06T04:56:00.001-04:00

. . . I'm in Istanbul. And it's lovely.

Back in the Midwest

2009-07-01T15:10:00.003-04:00

My parents live in a sizeable old brick house with a sizeable terraced back yard, with a sizeable fence.

Yesterday my parents' neighbor rang the doorbell and threatened to call the cops because the dog was barking too loudly. I kind of sheepishly agreed with him- not about calling the cops, but about the noise the dog was making. And the whole thing was my fault because I was on the phone with someone halfway around the world and had shut the dog outside and completely forgotten I had done so, or for how long.

Still, I think this neighbor serves as a perfect example of Midwestern self-importance. His own, ample yard is at least 50 yards away from my parents'. He just happens to be retired and happens to spend a lot of time outside. He also happens to be an asshole. If this were a big city, he would never complain about a barking dog 50 yards away because his ears would already be deafened by car horns and sirens and people's stomping feet in the apartments all around him.

I leave for Turkey tomorrow and have been told not to pet any of the stray cats, because I don't have a rabies vaccination. This will be very difficult for me, but I'd rather not get sick so I will try really hard to resist their feline charms.

No Need to go to the Farmer's Market

2009-06-27T17:49:00.006-04:00

It is so easy to grow things in the South. Seriously. You just stick seeds or tiny plants in the ground and wait. We got a lot of water this month, so there was little need to water anything on my own. I harvested today's bounty because I'm leaving very soon for my trip. In the picture you can see fancy beets, cucumbers, rainbow swiss chard, and two Stupice tomatoes, all picked about half an hour ago. Below, more Stupice and the larger Early Girl.

When I get back, at the end of July, the heirloom tomatoes should be bountiful. That's when I'll become a gazpacho-making madwoman. I'll have to update the recipe I posted a couple of years ago, since I've made improvements (like the addition of smoked paprika).

Early Modern Literary Pastiche

2009-06-24T22:09:00.004-04:00

I'm thinking about web-editions of early modern literary pastiche. Because it's fun, and I may or may not have just written one.

Here are a few, in recent memory:

Hieronimo's (hilarious) Shakespearean History cycle based on the Bushes: 2 George II- I. i and III. ii

Which perhaps inspired this one: The Lamentable Historie of Zelda

Anyone know of any others?

Domestic Goddess

2009-06-20T13:16:00.012-04:00

I've been stuck here at home working on various writing projects, some old, some new, some just for fun. And I'm shocked to say that I'm kind of enjoying being a homebody at the moment. Yesterday I made a lovely, cold and tangy Chlodný Borscht- I am a Russian Jew, after all -with some of the cucumbers I harvested. It is a beautiful, shocking pink.

I picked a tangle of wildflowers from the garden, which Saffron has already started sampling:

And I've taken up knitting. I'm not very technically advanced to do anything other than garter stitch (I can't even purl), so I don't know what I can produce. Maybe this will end up as a scarf, or a cell-phone case, or fittingly, a garter. But it's a very peaceful activity, and it gives my hands something to do when my mind is suddenly beset by thoughts of doubt and insecurity. Before I know it, I will have become a little old lady who knits and has cats. Somebody, please, rescue me before it's Too Late.

In the Garden

2009-06-12T18:25:00.005-04:00

It is such a thrill to grow one's own food. Today I dug up about 25 icicle radishes. I had initially thought they were spinach, until I saw their little round root tops poking up out of the soil. I also harvested a few baby chioggia beets. The tomatoes and cucumbers are growing nicely.

"Sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber."

Delay

2009-06-02T15:14:00.015-04:00

So I was originally planning on going to Turkey and Israel and maybe Paris this month. Was supposed to leave yesterday. But due to family illness (nothing life-threatening, thank goodness), my trip has been delayed for one month. I'll be visiting Istanbul and Tel Aviv in July, instead of in June.

Although I was all ready to go, tickets purchased, armed with histories of Istanbul and glossaries of Turkish and Hebrew, my suitcase packed with lightweight, summery linen dresses, and a perpetually scowling Freud doll, I'm actually relieved and elated that I won't be going for another month. This way, my father can get healthy and my mother can attempt to stop worrying (well, maybe only a little). And we had trip insurance, though apparently once you use it to cancel a trip, it expires, kind of like when you insure your tires and have to replace them- you need to take out a whole new policy on the new tires.

I intend to spend the next four weeks trying to jog my memory of the child's Hebrew that has somehow slid down deep into my unconscious, so that I won't seem like a complete idiot when I meet up with a friend in Israel (reason no. 1 why I'm glad to wait until July). Yes, I'm suddenly very self-conscious about this. Why did I choose to learn French, a language that can only be spoken in Northern Europe, parts of Africa, and in an utterly unrecognizable form in Canada? And why did I choose to learn Latin and ancient Greek, languages that cannot be spoken at all? Oh, right: Renaissance scholarship. Very useful for scholarship and teaching; much less useful for travel- at least until we figure out a way to travel back in time. And as soon as that happens, I'll immediately travel back to age 12 and get my mediocre command of Hebrew back.

New Mascot

2009-05-24T18:17:00.009-04:00

The Freudian Petticoat has a new mascot:

That's right, a Bobble-head Freud, who came to me all the way from New York, a surprise gift from a dear friend. Although I'm sure Southern culture would perplex him to no end, Freud isn't staying in the South- he's coming with me to Turkey and Israel, because I think it would be funny to photograph him scowling in front of various exotic backdrops. Maybe I'll even smuggle him into the Kotel tunnels! Watch this space for his thrilling adventures.

Not Biden Our Time

2009-05-18T23:29:00.037-04:00

I'm coming out of thinly veiled anonymity to say that Vice President Joe Biden was our Commencement Speaker this year. And that it was my first commencement at Selva Oscura U., and I went only to cheer the MA student whose thesis I was honored to supervise. But I was surprisingly charmed by the experience.

I normally find such pomp and circumstance tiresome, full of dull people taking themselves far too seriously (my boisterous and ridiculously over-the-top graduation from Crunchy Chocolate U being the major exception). But today was different. My colleagues and I poked fun at how much this pageantry felt like a "Renaissance Faire". There I was in my Quill & Stylus regalia, looking like an early modern scholar (or girl dressed as boy scholar) and I nearly launched into "The quality of mercy is not strained" as we trudged across the quad to the accompaniment of a brass ensemble playing 16th century tunes. But we had fun doing it, despite having dragged ourselves out of bed at an uncouth hour. And some small part of me, (the part that wanted to be Queen Elizabeth I at ten and a Shakespearean actress at fourteen) was secretly delighted.

Biden did not eschew political rhetoric. He called on our students to enact change. And he cited the "terrible beauty" in Yeats' "Easter 1916" to suggest that change is inevitable for us. And, probably because I was sitting about 5 feet away staring at him, he smiled at me. Twice. Swoon! (Confession: okay, so if it had been Rahm Emanuel, I probably would have clutched my colleagues and screamed like a teenager in 1963. He is one hot, foul-mouthed Jewish politician.).

That said, a little less than one third into the awarding of the undergraduate degrees (and yes, all 1000 of them marched up one by one and shook the presidents hand, and yes it did take FOREVER), I decided that one full commencement ceremony was plenty for the next three to ten years.

Futility

2009-05-15T12:09:00.006-04:00

I tried changing the bed linens this morning, but soon encountered an obstacle.

It's pretty clear who gets the last word in this relationship.

Diamonds and Coal

2009-05-12T15:22:00.023-04:00

Crunchy Chocolate U (my undergraduate college) had a daily newspaper that would award figurative "diamonds" to the people who made good things happen, and "coal" to those who allowed bad, along with the occasional Cubic Zirconium for mediocrity. Here's my own list, and I think it's pretty balanced:

I didn't get any short or long-term fellowships this semester (coal), but I did get a piano and am going to spend a month in the Mediterranean (diamond).

My article got rejected from ELH (coal), but my panel got accepted for MLA (diamond).

Number of times I've been to my local coffeehouse in the past 3 months: 4. Number of times I've been hit on while there: 4. Weirdos: 1. Guy who blatantly hit on me in front of my then-boyfriend and not for the first time: 1. Cute, interesting potential dates: 2. (2 coal; 2 diamonds)

I'm not eating out (coal) but I'm becoming much more conscientious about what I eat and where it comes from. I've already lost 7 pounds by eating more healthfully (local organic veggies) and working out more intensively. I find I have much more energy (diamond).

Last night I made this wonderful dish from my new favorite food blog, Orangette, both of which my friend hd introduced me to last summer. It's called "Pasta with Five Lililes" and is composed of caramelized sweet onions, sauteed leeks, scallions, red onions, all melted until sweet (I braised them in a little white wine which makes them tangier) and tossed with pasta, ricotta salata, fresh chives, and a squirt of lemon. All of these bulbs are in season right now. I found everything except the red onion either in my garden or at a farmer's market. (yummy diamond)

And I'm really excited about my little heirloom vegetable garden. When I first placed these tiny, vulnerable plants and seeds in the ground I became really nervous. Aside from the odd pot of herbs, I've never grown anything edible before. Would they grow? I was positively paranoid. Then, mirabile dictu, they all grew, every one of them, even the seeds I put into the unadulterated dense clay soil, and I'm finally able to relax.

There are blossoms and tiny green nubs on the 'Early Girl' tomatoes, and the other heirlooms have shot up two feet. I've got "straight eight" and "lemon" 'cukes (which will be round and look like tiny yellow basketballs), and 11 heirloom tomato plants with wonderfully folksy and fantastical names, and what promises to be a whole spectrum of colors: Black Seaman, Mr. Stripey, Lemon Boy, Black Brandywine, Green Grape, Yellow Pear, and Stupice (which I have taken to calling "Stupid" and "Stultus" and sometimes "Doofus"). Of course none of these will be ripe until July and/or August, but it's fun to see them grow so fast. Expect to see more photos and blog-posts about gazpacho, caprese salads, and casual bucolic dinners over the next three months. (future diamonds in the rough)

I tend to make the most progress when I'm balanced, and not when I'm euphorically happy or woefully sad. I guess I'm in a kind of "tolerable tropic clime," to re-appropriate one of my favorite Donne elegies. Bring on the work! (Cubic Zirconium?)

Anecdote

2009-05-09T18:46:00.014-04:00

So there's this great, dirty anecdote about Samuel Johnson. He wanders into a room looking perhaps more unkempt than usual with his breeches unbuttoned and an uptight lady squeals something along the lines of "Sir, your penis is sticking out!"

To which Dr. Johnson replies, "You flatter yourself, Madam . . . it is hanging out."

Such a useful anecdote. But I wish there were a girl version of this.

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit

2009-05-06T02:30:00.050-04:00

I have no name
I am but two days old . . .

But the Freudian Petticoat is actually three years old, as of yesterday. I can't believe how much space I've filled with (to bend Sidney), this pixel-wasting toy of mine. And how much my outlook has changed. Well, changed in some ways, strengthened in others.

Like many blogs, this one was born out of change. I started it because I needed a space to deal with my move from Montreal to the South, my change in status from postdoc to tenure-track professor. And though my status and location have not changed in almost three years, I'm happily surprised by how much adaptation, growth and change is actually documented here.

It's enlightening to reread my first few posts about moving to the South- my anxiety over Southern Slowness and conservative football games, my delight at Southern quirkiness. Each of which, I suppose, has reversed or dissipated. As an academic, I hardly find life here slow- instead, I'm desperately trying to catch up on work, friends and obligations. And campaigning for Obama and turning the state "blue" this year really opened my eyes to the wonderful collective liberal spirit awakening here. But the cutesy, quirky charm I once saw has become saccharine and ordinary.

I guess I'm most amazed at how my voice has changed over the past three years. I just sound so much more innocent in the beginning. I'm not at all sad that I'm less so- I mean, I was frightfully innocent when I was younger. And I yearned for wryness, irony, and sagesse. (Probably yearning for it in itself is pretty innocent). Have I attained that darkened level of wit and perception I so craved? OMG I so hope so!!! . . . Or maybe it's like Blake's Songs (one from Innocence is pictured above): we can only talk about innocence from a position of experience, and experience is always haunted by innocence.

Over the course of three years, I've blogged about attending five conferences, throwing four parties, and obliquely charted the courses of two romantic relationships. Somehow the numbers seem so small, compared to the amount of text and emotional, intellectual output.

{Four parties? Is that all? For someone who professes to like entertaining, I haven't thrown a dinner party in almost two years. We all have our tastes, but the blog tells a different story.}

Here are my 5 favorite posts in the history of this blog, from earliest to most recent:

1. "Strindberg in the Kiddie Room": Ikea Trip
2. Jew in the South = Hispanic? Indian?
3. The Grammatology of Anthropologie I, II, III
4. My best conference liveblog (SAA 2008)
5. "A Bracelet of Bright Hair"

Bonne Anniversaire, blog.

Weird . . .

2009-05-04T17:41:00.004-04:00

So I get alerts now from certain sites I'm registered with (like Academia.edu) when people google my real name. It's ordinarily just business stuff- they're looking for someone else with my name, or they're looking me up because they lost my e-mail.

But this one site sends me an e-mail any time someone googles me with the search terms entered. And just today someone entered "my real name + blog." And apparently someone entered multiple search terms related to my name at 5:30am yesterday.

Should I be flattered, or . . . ? I'm not sure I like knowing that people are searching for me in this way. I mean, we all google people we're curious about. But no one should know that everyone is doing it for real. Suddenly it's creepy!

Sincerity v. Flattery

2009-05-03T19:56:00.011-04:00

I once wrote a grad paper about the ethics of flattery in Renaissance culture. Or lack thereof- flattery was always characterized as a negative thing, a manipulative rhetorical stance devised to get the flatterer something. It was described as effervescent, cloyingly sweet, embodied in the tongue, and exerting a feminizing, emasculating force on any and all who were tempted by it. Hamlet says as much to Horatio, spelling out their Platonic love (married souls) as one beyond materiality (though I've often thought he's being rather rude to Horatio too, by drawing attention to the difference in their classes):

'Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue has but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. "

So Renaissance flattery is a sweet, poisonous kiss that conceals an ulterior motive (usually a financial one). And I think flattery today still carries that sugary venom, though the motives are frequently less clear.

This wonderful thing happened to me at the Shakespeare conference last month: an old friend who also happens to be a newly distinguished Shakespeare scholar came up to me out of the blue, gave me a hug and told me I was absolutely gorgeous. He wasn't hitting on me- he has a brand new baby - he wasn't just being "nice" because we haven't been in touch so he couldn't possibly have known that my self-esteem was floundering. He simply wanted to tell me this. It was so deeply sincere and compassionate and charming, that I was sort of bowled over by it. And then it happened twice more, at the same conference- various people told me I was beautiful. People I've known for years who never said it before, and people I'd just met.

The thing is that I rarely feel attractive- I'm still 15 pounds overweight, my clothes don't fit the way they should, and I'd been dealing with a lot of frustration over the past two months.

But I soared on those words. I know it's silly to let something superficial like a compliment on my appearance lift my mood, and it's not as if I haven't heard the same words many times before (given the choice, I'd much rather be told I'm smart). But this was different- it was not in the least flattery. This wasn't about him wanting something from me. This was sincerity. And it was magical: it conjured respect and joy out of sorrow and insecurity.

There's something about people being truthful and guileless at the right moments that I find incredibly refreshing, though it's rare- I can't tell you the number of kind, well-meaning things that have been spoken or written to me that conceal other intentions. Though it frequently takes me a while to get there, the truth always comes out with me, even when it's not wise or useful. But now I think this is a good thing.

The upside of stress

2009-05-03T01:14:00.012-04:00

Roses beginning to open outside the bedroom window.

I'm losing weight- I had to remind myself to eat today, ate only some veggies and smoked salmon. This is really good because normally I crave a bagel with lox and cream cheese on the weekends (a bad habit I developed with my New Yorker and Montrealer exes) and if only one of those three ingredients is in my fridge or freezer, I usually go out and buy the rest. Especially because my garden is now full of fresh herbs in pots and the ground (oregano, tarragon, thyme, cilantro and fennel) and wild chives, which are actually a nuisance, but which go really well with the cream cheese.

But today, I had to force food down. And I nearly threw myself out doors to get to the gym this afternoon, where I knew peace of mind was waiting for me. Maybe I'll even get back to my normal weight, the weight I had before I moved here to this barren, sidewalkless suburban city and put on 15 pounds driving everywhere. I've got to get into good hiking and city-walking shape anyway, because in a month I'm off to Turkey and Israel with my family for three weeks!

So the plan right now is weights plus cardio every other day at the gym, plus yoga and belly-dancing 3 times per week. And any and all hikes I can wheedle my friends into going on. This area is great for hiking and I've explored only three of the excellent nearby mountains and trails. Between that and tending to the tiny organic vegetable garden I've started (heirloom tomatoes, yellow and purple bell peppers, herbs, spinach, radishes, cukes and swiss chard- ok, maybe not so tiny), the review and article I've got due at the end of the month, I should be fairly busy.

My tiny heirloom vegetable garden in the back of the house.

I'm a little sad about the doves and fig tree, though. The mourning doves have moved out of their urban loft on my porch. The babies grew up and the whole family took off. It's probably best for them, given the nest's proximity to the porch railing and the neighborhood cat. But the garden doesn't lack for bird activity- I've spotted at least 8 or 9 different species and calls in the late afternoon. And I think perhaps there is a bit of a Robin overpopulation problem- they're everywhere! I had to drive them out of the upper garden the other day, where the spinach and radishes are growing. I'll try to post a picture of one of the more enterprising ones.

Alas the fig tree that was so productive last year has fallen victim to the late snow and ice storm that consumed my birthday. The entire trunk has split in several places, there are no new leaves, it's wobbly and hollow and grey and most of the upper growth turned black. I cut off the black parts, but I think it's pretty much gone. Thankfully there are a few tiny shooters coming out of the base of the trunk, so it's not entirely dead, but the yield will be much smaller this year. And so there's this sad, dead looking tree in the middle of my lush front garden.

So the doves have apparently moved out for good. The fig tree is mostly corpse-like, but for a few tiny green shooters at the base.

I'm trying not to see this as a metaphor. Like the tree, I've had a rough couple of months. Man, sometimes I hate being a literary scholar.

Fan Mail

2009-03-28T17:37:00.014-04:00

Last week as I blithely drove to work in the morning, obeying all the rules of traffic, I noticed a car attempting to turn left out of a gas station across four lanes of busy traffic without regard to the cars around him. I honked to let him know I was coming and couldn't slow down (there were cars behind me) and he slammed on his brakes just as he hit my passenger-side fender with a very unsatisfying crunch. Ugh. By the time I got to the gas station (about three minutes later), he was long gone and my car was crumpled in front.

It was annoying (and will cost an annoyingly high amount because we couldn't track down the perpetrator), but I'm fine. Since the other driver stopped as he hit me, the impact was only enough to hurt the exterior of the car.

Two days later, my car is in the shop, I'm going about my life fairly normally, when I return home in the evening and check my mailbox. Imagine me opening the mailbox and letters pouring out like a cliche film montage. Yay- letters! I don't usually get this many letters. People are writing to me!

After I brought the initial bunch inside, my joy was somewhat diminished when I discovered that seven of them were from legal firms offering their services, and three were from chiropractors. But still, they took the time to write to me! Fun! I opened them all.

Despite despising the sleazy ethics involved, I find this hilarious. Only one of the first seven legal letters actually spelled both my names correctly, another one addressed me correctly, but in the body of the letter referred to me alternatively as "Mrs. Johnson" and "Mrs. Jackson" (I am not married, nor is my last name "Johnson" or "Jackson").

My favorite was the letter that resembled a belated birthday card, in a pretty canary yellow envelope. I excitedly tore this open revealing a card bearing photograph of a droopy sunflower in a vase and the cursive letters "Sorry about your accident . . ." I opened the card and inside it read "If you're fine, WONDERFUL! If not, you may need to see a chiropractor." Inside the card were two coupons for $10 off a first visit, plus a second card. This card informed me that it contained a simple test to see if I might need chiropractic services: "Think you don't need to see a chiropractor? Take this simple test to find out!" (In other words, "Think you don't need a chiropractor? Think again- your alignment sucks!")

After careful inspection I discovered that most of the envelopes had minuscule lettering on the back stating "this is an advertisement for services" so I'm guessing there's some sort of state law that allows such blatant solicitation providing the disclaimer is barely visible.

Recommendations Bitch

2009-03-27T22:41:00.012-04:00

Here follows a transcript of an e-mail exchange between myself and a student I'll call Junior Birdman:

On 3/27/2009 6:44 PM, junior birdman wrote:

Professor Pamphilia-

I apologize to email you both so late and on a Friday, but I was inquiring this week about Professor Constanza's Honors program next year and was hoping you'd be able to write me a recommendation. They are due Monday, and I completely understand if you cannot find the time. I'm sure with grading our papers along with all of your other classes you're swamped. Please let me know if you are unable to write one so I can know to ask someone else. No matter what, I look forward to class and presenting next week. Thanks and have a great weekend!

-Junior Birdman

My response:

Hi Birdman,

I'm sorry. It is too late for me to write for you.

If I had known about this earlier, I would have been very happy to do so, but I require at least one face-to-face discussion, some materials (transcript, cv), and preferably at least 2 weeks notice before I can write a letter. Also, given that I have not taught you in any classes before English 000, and have not yet graded your first full length paper, I don't feel I know you well enough to write a proper recommendation.

In the future, I will be happy to write letters for you, please just ask me at least 2 weeks in advance, and come see me first.

Best,
Pamphilia

Here's the deal: our students must have a 3.5 gpa in the major and be nominated by at least two faculty members in order to get in to honors. There's no recommendation involved, normally. But students can get professors to write letters for them if their major gpa is below 3.5 and/or they weren't nominated and they're dying to be in the honors seminar and write a thesis. So JB's chances of getting in to honors were very slim to begin with, since he didn't have a 3.5 or higher.

What's your policy on recommendations? Are you strict or a pushover? How often do you say no?

My policy has changed over the years but generally I tell students asking for serious recommendations (scholarships, grad school etc) that if they didn't receive an A- or higher in my class, it might be a good idea for them to ask someone in whose course they did better, instead. I will, however, write any and all recommendations for study abroad. Other than that, I have a few nitpicky requirements designed to weed out the serious students from the less serious ones:

Students must come meet with me in person to discuss the recommendation
I need at least TWO WEEKS notice.
I need stamped, addressed envelopes, filled-out forms, and a list of deadlines
I need copies of transcript and cv.

At the meeting, I usually ask the student about the thing she's applying for, and- a little tip from my dad, a former professor himself - ask her what she would like me to say about her in my letter.

I figure at this point if the student isn't totally freaked out, if she's come this far and done all I've asked, I owe her a recommendation.

Hawk and Dove

2009-03-17T15:39:00.016-04:00

Last week I went to Big City to give my talk, and to see friends and family. It was chilly and grey, but I had a great time. The best part, I think, was staying with my friend A and getting to know each other better. I'm one of those people who finds it fairly easy to meet people, but much more difficult to become good friends. I get shy, and sometimes awkwardly share too much information too soon. Or end up talking too much about myself in an effort to counteract any awkward silences. But this time, I felt like I got to know A a lot better, and by the end of the visit I think we're much better friends. It makes me very happy.

Although I spent 6 years in an adjacent metropolis, and another year in one further north, it's been almost three since I've spent time in a big city. And one of the things I had forgotten about was the sounds pigeons make in the early morning. Not just the "croo, croo" noises, but the obscene sounding "Mmm-HMMM" crescendo, which really sounds like they are rather shamelessly sharing their pigeon intercourse with any and all in the vicinity with ears. It turns out that those noises are actually the sounds they make when they're being territorial with one another ("Get off. It's my airconditioner!"), but it's a very distinctive sound nonetheless, and one I had completely forgotten. So much so, that in the foggy half-wakefulness of the early morning I thought I was hearing an owl hooting, which is sometimes what I hear outside my window at home near dawn.

This led me and A to a discussion of the representation of the owl in her favorite artistic Russian animated film, Hedgehog in the Fog (which I highly recommend). And a few minutes later, lo and behold, a raptor landed on the fire escape opposite her window. "Oh my god, it's an OWL!" we shrieked, softly.

Of course it wasn't an owl (it was a sunny afteroon and the bird didn't have a flat face). But it was definitely a bird of prey, and it was looking down avidly at pigeons and other things scuttling around below. We thought perhaps it was a peregrine falcon, and A took some pictures. The next day, it was back around the same time (5pm-ish), and decided to literally pay us a visit, sitting right outside A's window, looking in at us with a detached curiosity. I swear it raised its right talon in salute, then soared off into the air to hunt. I've since identified it as a red-tailed hawk (my precocious 5 year old cousin showed me pictures of peregrine falcons, and after comparing them to A's photos, he correctly identified it). The city has a few famous RTH couples, including one that nests on the shoulders of a statue of John the Baptist at the cathedral near A's apartment. It's most likely that the hawk who paid us a visit was one of these two birds.

When I returned home to a chilly Southern spring, I noticed there were mourning doves sitting on the porch railing right outside my living room window. I watched one for a couple of minutes, and noticed it flying up to the space between one of the porch columns and the porch roof, right next to the wooden porch swing. There at the top of the column, resting on the Chocolate Vine, was a tiny nest, with another mourning dove brooding on it. I've never had birds nesting so close to the house before. It's fascinating, though now I'm very worried that the neighbor's enterprising cat who frequently hangs out on my porch will devise some way to infiltrate it. But so far, he's oblivious. And the birds don't seem to mind me wandering around on the porch. I think they are safe.

I can't decide whether this is a good or a bad omen: it's lovely to have such beautiful birds making their home close to mine. But they are mourning doves, and their call is both comforting and melancholy. My folklore research has turned up some mixed symbolism. On the one hand, doves represent peace, love, and marriage, as they are associated with Roman Venus and the Christian holy spirit. On the other hand, a mourning dove circling above or tapping at the window signifies sickness or death. Luckily, there has been no circling or tapping. Mourning doves' calls are supposed to indicate an end to drought, and they are supposedly a good omen where love and relationships are concerned, so I'm inclined to see this little dove family in a very favorable light.

33 and a Snow Day

2009-03-03T14:05:00.028-05:00

Yesterday, on my thirty-third birthday, my university cancelled classes because 6 inches of snow fell overnight in the midst of a storm that started out rain, then turned to hail, then to winds (which knocked a tree over my colleague's roof and car) and then to snow. And this snow decided to stick around. Which is really something, down here.

Ordinarily this time of year the daffodils are starting to wake up, the forsythia puts out little yellow star-shaped flowers and the early cherry trees are covered in pink fuzz. Instead I woke up to snow covered bushes, icicles and blinding white. My house, which faces north, doesn't get a lot of light in the main rooms. Yesterday, however, it was searingly bright indoors.

It was actually nice, though I spent the better part of the morning pushing snow off the front walk with a broom (who owns a shovel in the south?), and hacking at the masses of snow and ice on my car. It's funny how everything shuts down here. Honestly, 6 inches shouldn't cause all schools and offices and Borders (yes, Borders!) to close for an entire day. I recently learned that this is because my city has absolutely no budget for snow. The town where I grew up, on the other hand, which is in the so-called "Snowbelt," annually budgets about $5 million for snow removal. So basically we had a snow day because there wasn't any money to pay for workers and equipment to get out and clear things away before everything froze again over night.

I appreciated the free day, though, and enjoyed a nice long birthday walk in a transformed universe. It's been a difficult week for me- first the break-up, then a troubled student advisee passing away unexpectedly (it doesn't seem to have been a complete accident, given that no one has released any information about how or why he died). So I was grateful for an extra day on my own to enjoy the snow and curl up at home with the cat, work and a good book or two. Saffron celebrated her seventh birthday with "vitakitty" chicken breast treats, a couple of bites of smoked salmon, and much cuddling and lap-sitting.

My new ex texted me 'Happy Birthday!', which I guess is less shmucky than forgetting or ignoring, but shmuckier than calling. (It's a fine line of shmuckiness exboyfriends have to tread. How much is too much?). My parents got me a beautiful art deco style watch, which I keep forgetting to look at because I've been without one for over a year. What will I use my phone for now? Making calls? How preposterous. In the evening I went out for drinks with a few loyal, die-hard friends, and even though the swanky-ish downtown bar I wanted to go to was closed for a private party, we found a cozy one with an earnest, waistcoated, pony-tailed bartender near my house to serve as a good substitute.

33 wasn't a particularly exciting birthday, and it wasn't without its share of reflection and sorrow, but it was warm, relaxing, and I was okay most of the time, which I suppose is all I can ask for right now.

Professionally I've got a lot on my plate at the moment- a talk next week at a big research institution in a big city, a review due next month, 2-3 MLA paper/session proposals to submit, a new article for a new anthology to collaborate on, plus the Shakespeare Association meeting next month ("Shakes Ass" as Flavia's blog has christened it), a piece under review at ELH and another one almost ready to send out. I'm excited that my SAA seminar organizers have partnered me with a leading scholar in my field who is also someone I respect and know from previous conferences. And of course there's this book to finish and a few fellowships still to hear from. So at least I know that the first 3 months of 33 will be full of work and opportunity.

I hope 33 surprises me with a little happiness too.

Sole

2009-02-22T18:53:00.014-05:00

Last week I had the students in my upper-level English seminar do an OED exercise. They were to look up a word we had encountered in one of the readings (Golding, Browne, Shakespeare), produce a sense of its historical and etymological trajectory, then illuminate its use in the context of the passage where they found it.

One of my students looked up the word "sole." When I started reading her assignment I scoffed inwardly. I mean, what could the OED possibly add to a modern understanding of "sole"? It means "only." It means "alone."

My student surprised me. She revealed that in early modern England, "sole" specifically referred to an unmarried woman. It's actually the first three definitions in the OED. She produced a lovely reading of "sole heir" in Cymbeline that connected Innogen's status as Cymbeline's "only" and unmarried daughter, with another meaning of "sole" which is "soil." In her reading, it mattered not only that Innogen was Cymbeline's only unmarried daughter, but that her claim to inheritance tied her to the very soil of Britain.

Tonight I am feeling all sorts of "sole." I am alone again- my relationship with Mr. 19C ended this evening. I don't want to go into any details, but there was no anger or resentment. Only sorrow and a feeling of defeat.

But it has left me terribly saddened. It's always sad when things don't work out. And I will miss being part of something. I don't relish being alone again.

I went outside on the porch and smelled the frozen air, wandering around the garden. Just last week the sunshine and damp earth held the promise of spring. But right now it is cold outside- even the soil, which was beginning to show signs of warmth, pushing bulbs and worms to the surface, is chilled.

I haven't laughed so hard in a while . . .

2009-02-18T23:28:00.006-05:00

Many thanks to my new friend Miltonista for this tidbit:

Obama Talking Trash (but quoting a friend)

Minutes later, the Techno Remix and "Got Nothin' On Me" surfaced on Youtube.

Peanut Butter- or Something Else?

2009-02-09T14:38:00.006-05:00

I've been browsing the FDA website listing the vast number of peanut butter products affected by the Blakley, Georgia processing plant salmonella re-call. The highest number of products containing peanut products from the factory is candy.

Candy that bears a strange resemblence, nominally, at least, to something else, and I quote from the list:

Bear Poop
Bear Scat
Buffalo Chips
Chicken Coop Poop
Cow Patties
Cow Pies
Deer Droppings
Moose Droppings
Osprey Poop
Prairie Dog Pebbles

I think these packages of chocolate coated peanuts are widely available in airport gift-shops, packaged as local "delicacies." Seriously, though- Osprey Poop?!

Why name confectionary after animal droppings? Is this perhaps the ironic, post-history of early modern fewmets? Coincidence? You decide.

Oh, and I have to include the names of some other peanut candies, just because they seem pretty funny to me:

Crew Rations
Torn Ranch
Zachary

The full list is available here: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm#Candy

Armoured Cat

2009-02-09T11:25:00.010-05:00

I was chatting the other morning with my boyfriend, Mr. 19th Century, about cats. He's thinking of maybe getting one. I'm thinking of maybe fostering some kittens. More importantly, it's that time of year just before early spring, when the ground warms up and the worms start to crawl toward the soil surface, and the air and earth are plastered with robins and crested titmouse (titmice?).

And the cat is going insane because she's an indoor cat. She sits in the window all day making predatory clicking and chirping noises at them. Lately, she's been so frustrated that she's given up chirring for wailing. She sits at the window and cries. All day long.

Mr. 19C wanted to know why I didn't let her outside to hunt. There are several reasons, but the main one is that I'm scared I'll lose her. My colleague's cat was nearly destroyed by a car, and my neighbors across the street had their kitten mauled by a nearby dog. That and the fact that Saffron has never been outside before in her life- I adopted her as a kitten in an urban environment rife with FIV (feline AIDS) and Leukemia and cars and buses.

So we discussed putting her in her harness on a long leash, for supervised periods of outdoor hunting. But the trouble with the harness is that whenever it's on, she acts like she's in a straightjacket, creeping along the floor, pretending that she's so encumbered that she cannot possibly even jump on to a chair (jumping on the chair and then falling off dramatically, wailing all the time).

Mr. 19C had a much better idea: Kitty Armor. We joked about it, and said something like "I bet it totally exists."

Well, it does, in the work of the artist Jeff Deboer, whose meticulously filigreed and chased helmets and breastplates for a war between cats and mice recall the arms hall of the Metropolitan Museum of art. I keep thinking that someone must have written a mock-heroic epic about such a battle, like the Batrachomyomachia (which pits mice against frogs), or Ebeneezer Mack's The Cat Fight: A Mock Heroic Poem (1824). Any takers?

But back to armor: Saffron is seriously considering it.

Spectacles of Sameness

2008-12-14T15:01:00.011-05:00

One of the great highlights of my conference experience last month was going shopping with my good friends Urania and Veralinda on the last day. We started with breakfast and coffee at a chic little cafe and then headed directly to Anthropologie (which many of my readers already know I have an ambivalent relationship with). But one of us had store credit to burn and the other two were game.

We had a great time, spent too much money and each ended up with the same sweater. Two of us hadn't noticed the green "knotty pine" cardigan until Urania tried it on. I should mention that Urania is tall and fabulous looking. Veralinda and I are shorter and a bit more zaftig. We also look fabulous, but have to pay attention to things like waistlines and hems. We all thought it looked like a Grecian breastplate on Urania, making her seem exotic and powerful. Immediately Veralinda and I had to try it on too. It looked fabulous on us as well. I felt I looked a bit less amazonian, and more like some sort of wood-sprite. Veralinda looked like an art collector from the 1930s (to my mind she very frequently looks like she walked out of a 1930s film). It was on sale. All three of us bought the sweater.

We rationalized that since we each live and work several hundred miles away from one another, no one will ever know. Unless we decide to do a panel on "sameness" at the next conference.

The following week, I went home to chilly, snowy "God's Country" and wore the cardigan at my family's Thanksgiving dinner party. My mother has excellent taste but lately she has found my color and texture combination a bit too complex. I was anxious to know what she thought of the sweater. She liked it a lot. I said, proudly, "doesn't it look like a grecian breastplate?" My mother looked utterly surprised. "What? No, it looks exactly like a funnel cake."

There you go. Urania gets to be Penthisilea and I get to be sugary fried dough.

What I want for Hannukah

2008-12-06T15:35:00.002-05:00

Chocolate type. From Germany.

(To put in my antique California Job Case).

Conferencing la la la

2008-11-22T11:36:00.008-05:00

I'm at a nice, young conference, in a lovely East Coast city. It's been incredibly busy but basically a lovefest. I get to see my dear friends, talk scholarship and collaboration, get inspired by brilliant but short papers, and pass notes with friends when the papers are less than brilliant. One paper was particularly dull (or maybe Veralinda and I were just sleepy after our delicious vegetarian dim sum lunch), but when the speaker said something that sounded like "their semi-autonomous wombs" and I wrote "semi-autonomous womb"? on my notepad, Veralinda drew a round belly with little feet and I nearly fell over trying to suppress my giggles. It felt a bit like summer camp in high school- giddy and silly and fun. And utterly naughty. We were told we looked like we were up to no good. We won't do it again, I promise. Not at a serious conference, anyway.

My talk and panel actually went quite well, it seems. All of the talks on our panel seemed like great fun to listen to, though I was particularly nervous because my adviser from QSU (Quill & Stylus) was sitting in the front row wearing her serious listening face, which does not include a smile. This is not a conference I usually get nervous about- it's full of short papers, grad students, and down-to-earth people, genuinely interested in new scholarship and collaborative activities. A friend calls it "the little conference that could."

And yet when I saw my adviser, I became anxious. I think it's a little funny that she can still intimidate me like that, even though she is perhaps the most devoutly supportive senior scholar I have known (also the most rigorously critical, but I believe that's part of her being supportive). Thus I found myself making eye contact across the room with complete strangers, especially when I got to the dirty joke in my paper, rather than confront her face of intense concentration. Thankfully, she was encouraging and enthusiastic after the talk, reminding me to send her more of my manuscript, so I was able to relax and finish the evening off with delicious sushi and conversation with a dear friend and two new ones, and then several drinks and general camaraderie in the swanky hotel bar.

Voice of the Voiceless

2008-11-18T14:02:00.011-05:00

When I was growing up, my parents had a game they played: my mother would talk to one of the pets, and my father would answer for the pet, not in a high pitched or animal-like voice, just in his own voice. He called it the "voice of the voiceless."

About two and a half months ago my cat Saffron literally lost her voice. At first it sounded like she was a little hoarse. And then, I thought, maybe she was meowing silently- opening her mouth and puffing out her chest - deliberately, as a kind of cat-like politesse. As if she were trying to say: "I really want this, but I'm too polite to cry for it, so I will just indicate my interest with a gentle, unvoiced bleat."

But in fact, much to our consternation, she was unable to produce any sound whatsoever. She would wheeze and rasp but nothing would come out. Then she would exhaust herself. This went on for a week or two, and thus began the first of many visits to my local veterinarian, who took a blood test, listened to her chest, sedated her and looked at her larynx, took x-rays, gave her antibiotics, listened again to her chest when I noticed wheezing, and finally referred us to a cat-internist a month and a half (and $250) later. There was talk of cancer, of laryngeal paralysis, both serious conditions requiring thousands of dollars of surgery and no guarantee that the cat would survive.

The specialist was wonderful, but she ordered a few of the same tests since she didn't trust the family vet's interpretation of the results. She also ordered general anaesthesia, a tracheal wash, and several diagnostics on cells she collected from the wash. $757 and a zonked, partly shaved cat later, the diagnosis was probable mycoplasma-induced feline asthma. Saffron was put on 3 weeks of liquid doxycycline and I had to switch to a less dusty litter.

So I did so, and- miraculously, it seems -her voice has finally returned in full. It started out as tiny, faint, mews, and then gradually matured into what someone close to me recently described as a touch-tone phone's beeps.

Saffron got her voice back around the time Obama won the election, and I started spending time with someone new (sometimes I wonder if this is more than coincidence). There is no sign of asthma and no sign of infection. We have been very happy ever since. But we are switching vets and we are getting pet insurance. I'm trying not to think about the $1000 it took to put my cat on liquid antibiotics.

Election Observations

2008-11-05T16:14:00.016-05:00

1. I didn't think I'd actually react so emotionally when Obama won. There were tears. There were hugs and cheek smooches. There was shouting and wahooing and jumping up and down and delirious texting. I must have embraced at least 8 or 9 people I have never met before. Unfortunately, I was suffering from an awful case of anxiety-induced indigestion which made it feel like there was a phantom lump in my throat the whole time, so I didn't enjoy the Obamalove as much as I should have. I should have let a certain person kiss me.

2. It was also a night to bridge generations, a night for all the parents who fought for peace and civil rights to share with their kids. I saw a very sweet neo-bohemian middle-aged mom (You know, with scarves and boots) with her arm around her hipster teenage daughter at the election results party I attended. The mom couldn't have looked prouder to be sharing this night with her daughter. Right before Obama's speech I was on the phone with my own neo-bohemian middle-aged mom (in another swing state that went blue) marveling about Obama's big win, and most of my friends took jubilant cell-phone calls from their moms too, well past the bedtime of most moms, neo-bohemian, middle-aged or not. Yay moms!

2. My state went Democratic all the way (Senate, Prez and Gov) for the first time since I was eight months old. I don't know if this changes how red-statey it still feels on a day-to-day basis, but only time will tell. If my formerly red state is now main-stream blue state, will that affect the conservative students on campus? I've only been here 2 years (minus the summers), but I tend to think of my students as mostly conservative- but more pedestrian and politically apathetic than anything else, which I attribute to our state (and country) having been conservative for the past eight years. With the country democratic, will blue be the new pedestrian? One can only hope . . .

3. Despite the wonderful progressive sweep across the nation, I am so saddened to learn that 52% of Californians voted to ban gay marriage (along with Florida and Arizona). Although it shows that Rovian tactics won't work this time as they did in 2004, when the five states with an anti-gay marriage refferendum all went for Bush, it is disheartening and truly disappointing. Add to this Arkansas' decision to diminish the rights of gay and lesbian couples to adopt, and we have a strangely divided country still.

4. I highly approve of Obama's first promise: to get a puppy.

The Next Chapter in Academic Clothing

2008-11-03T13:49:00.002-05:00

A colleague sent me this link. I think it says it all:

The English Department

Addicted to Electoral Mapping

2008-10-28T21:55:00.015-04:00

I've always loved cartography. I spent the better part of a month in the map room of the British library this summer, looking at Renaissance illuminated printed maps (Mercator thought there were camels in Siberia!), figuring out a way to work them into my last chapter, and my book in general. My book isn't about maps per se, but I wish it were. Literary landscapes have always appealed to me and I'm anxious to get back to working on space again after this book is finished.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that I am hooked on those interactive electoral maps connected to polling, the ones that help you predict who is going to win what race. The main reason playing with these electoral maps has become my latest addiction is because new polls come in every day and the numbers are different every time. My favorite map by far is Pollster's, which delivers the results of the most recent poll when you mouse over each state, and can also be changed to reflect the races for senate, house and governor across the country. Click on a state, and you get a line graph based on the state's poll history. It's fun to see the blue and red lines crossing back and forth. It is updated daily, sometimes hourly, so although its results are more up-to-date than the maps at the Times and the Washington Post, they also shift fairly frequently. If you like Pollster's state graphs, try fivethiryeight for more graphs and creative visualizations than you can imagine.

Of course as my mother and I discussed this evening, the actual physical space of the map matters not at all when translating polls into electoral votes. In other words, the geography of the map- it's very mappiness, if you will -is not the point of colored, clickable states. But I like the map just the same. I like being able to have the cursor meander from Virginia over to North Dakota, then down to Nevada. Pollster has N. Dakota leaning towards Obama, whereas the New York Times dubs it "Solid McCain Territory."

As of this moment, the Washington Post gave Obama a slight lead with 207 electoral votes predicted, the Times gave him 196, and Pollster has him at 272. When I check again tomorrow, the numbers will probably have changed for Pollster's map. It's scary and exciting and fun and totally, utterly addictive.

Yes, I know I'm a little nerdy about the map thing. But I do happen to have an excellent sense of direction- I once spent 6 hours cutting a crazy swath through the non-touristy parts of Venice and brought everyone back safe and well-fed. I have no sense of how this election is going to turn out. I'm lost. But as I mouse over the changing landscape of opinion, it feels for a moment like I do.

Observations in October

2008-10-22T21:54:00.007-04:00

It's starting to get chilly. The fall color is gorgeous. My heat has been shutting off intermittently for no reason and is really hard to get back on. Today the landlady finally hired a specialist who fixed a number of things and installed a fancy new thermostat. It seems to be working fine, but the next 24 hours are key. There is some sort of an animal in the attic, or was. My landlady sent her ex-boyfriend-turned-handyman up there and he cleaned up a lot of critter-refuse. So far it has not returned.

I gave a talk at Nearby University today for my early modern reading group- a talk on part II of my final chapter, the one I'm calling Chapter That Is Spiraling Out of Control. My audience was really gracious, sitting through all 45 minutes of me throwing various forms of information at them, including bits of history, philology, inventories, travel writing, commodities, and some Really Difficult poetic syntax and language. Their comments and suggestions were remarkably helpful and I'm blown away by the fact that they appear to have actually understood what I was trying to say. Maybe I need a new nickname for my chapter.

No more fellowship applications due for another two months. Yay! To take advantage of this small respite, I'm dreaming about throwing a "Great Depression" party. We could dance to early jazz, wear fedoras and boas, drink gin out of teacups, and party like it's 1929.

13 days left until the election.

2008-10-22T21:53:00.000-04:00

Eeeek!

That is all.

"A Bracelet of Bright Hair"

2008-10-07T14:26:00.024-04:00

I've been working with Donne's post-mortem love poetry for several years, and I always like to teach "The Funerall," "The Relique" and "The Damp" together, since each one imagines what happens to the lover's corpse after he has died. The first two poems describe the lover's corpse wearing "A bracelet of bright hair about the bone" (Relique, 6) and "That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns mine arm" (Funerall, 3).

Today I decided it would be good to show students an image of a memorial hair bracelet along with some memento mori jewelry before turning to the text (who knows, maybe I'll inspire a student). I usually show a Victorian braided hair bracelet and locket with hair, since hair bracelets from the Renaissance are less likely to have survived. But I wanted to see if there were any earlier examples and so turned, naturally, to my dear friend the giant searchable database of images from the collections of the V&A, which houses one of the largest European jewelry collections in the world. This database of digital images, by the way, is completely open to the public. So I searched the collection for "human hair" between 1300 and 1700. And remarkably, I found these artifacts.

These are finished pieces of needle lace worked in human hair c. 1625-1665. Very few survive, as they were quite fragile. The V&A has a few, two of which have been photographed for the online database. They had a button on one end, and a loop or hole on the other, and were most likely worn as bracelets and made by women (the V&A cites "The Relique" as evidence that they were very likely love tokens).

The delicacy and ingenuity of the work is astounding. Both display birds and crosses, but the first piece is freer in style, depicting a dog, an owl, a stag and several species of flowers and fruits (click on the images to enlarge them). The animals have eyes, feathers, rendered muscles. The flowers and fruit have seeds, petals, shadows. The second has an oak and acorn motif. They may have been finished with horsehair, and some kind of resinous gum.

Both of Donne's poems imagine that the bracelet contains a portion of his beloved's soul, corresponding with the early modern belief in corporeal resurrection. In "The Relique," the bracelet functions as a kind of homing device, calling his beloved's corpse back to his grave on Resurrection Day. The idea is that since the body houses the soul, everyone's lost body parts would summon one another across the earth at Resurrection- teeth, skin and bones seeking one another out for reassembly like the dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel 37. This would be particularly arduous for Catholic saints, whose several body parts had been dispersed across the world as relics.

I had always imagined the "subtle wreath of hair" as a simple braid, never as something so gossamer, intricate, and figural. Yet it's easy to see why such a beautiful product of one person's handiwork might be thought to contain a portion of her soul.

Gun-totin' Obama Guy

2008-10-05T15:58:00.010-04:00

I haven't posted here in a while- things are very busy for me this semester. I have lots of essays and grant applications due, as my last post intimated. And when I'm not trying to make these deadlines, I've got talks to write, search committee work, papers to grade, and volunteering to do. So my plate is full. I miss sleeping late- I did that this morning for the first time in two weeks. It was luxurious. But I felt guilty afterwards.

Yesterday I went out canvassing to a diverse, poor, working-class neighborhood north of the city. I only registered one person to vote, but I did meet a very pro-gun Republican who emphatically announced that he and his whole family would be voting for Obama this time around. His rationale was strange, so I'm repeating it here. First he quoted Bill Maher, calling the Republicans "Daddies" and Democrats "Mommies." He said that he felt Republicans were better for the country in times of stability, but that Democrats were better at "cleaning up the mess." (I guess that's what he thinks "mommies" do). He said he believed we need at least 12 more years of Democrats in the white house before it will be stable and safe enough for the Republicans to take over. To me, this sounds like he thinks Republicans are pretty incompetent over all. But I didn't say anything. Can anyone explain this logic to me?

Dead Lines

2008-09-24T15:33:00.019-04:00

I've always found the term "dead-line" so morbid, so fixed, so unalterable, so threatening. No wonder it's a modern (rather than early modern) word. Good little historical materialist that I am, I much prefer my lines to be plastic, alive, unfixed.

What exactly is a dead line? Is it a condition of modernity?

According to the OED, the first use of "dead-line" as a kind of boundary (1864) described a circumference of safety drawn around a soldier. Outside the "dead-line," the soldier was liable to be shot.

Deadlines are also the early 20th century term for guide-lines "marked on the bed of a printing press."

In the second decade of the 20th century, "dead-line" came to be associated with the time limit for submitting a piece of writing to a journal or newspaper publication.

This last definition is the one that obtains today. It suggests that if the piece of written work isn't turned in within the given time limit, it will not be given literary "life" in publication, thus it falls outside of the invisible time line, and "dies." Of course we sometimes internalize this and worry that if we miss a deadline, a part of us- like an opportunity at posterity, prolonged literary life - will die too.

But for most academics (fellowship, job and conference deadlines excepted), deadlines are more like guidelines. Nobody wants us to turn in or be held responsible for publishing shoddy work, so we ask for a reasonable amount of extra time to get it right. How much time we request depends on the work we are doing. And, in general, the more prolific and well-known we are, the more that deadline, like gold to airy thinness beat, is stretched out.

Anthropologie, Eat Your Heart Out

2008-09-21T16:00:00.017-04:00

As part of their "College Issue," the Sunday New York Times Magazine today ran a series of photographs of professors who "make academia look good." One is a dear family friend, who is pictured looking smart and debonair (as usual).

Check out the slideshow here: Class Acts

Though I wonder how many of them actually own those clothes, it's still a delight to see professors looking and acting cool and awesome (though of course it might be more fun to see them letting down their hair and totally rocking out). I'm convinced that some of that awesomeness contributed to my decision to become one myself, superficial though it may be.

Postscript: a rapid e-mail communication between my mother and our family friend revealed that not only did they not get to keep the clothes, they didn't even get to choose them. You can sense some of them gently disapproving in the accompanying text.

Do you think they were nominated by their students, or by their colleagues?

Found in Translation

2008-09-16T14:06:00.010-04:00

If only this room actually existed and we could send writers there.

This is from Engrish.com. Sometimes the paradoxes of Engrish (mis-translated English) reveal odd, wistful truths. As in this rather Existential example:

Not all Engrish derives from mis-translating Asian languages into English. Some of it is found in British and American English as well:

http://www.engrish.com/2006/06/its-portable/

http://www.engrish.com/2008/06/thats-no-hockey-puck/

OMG- Anthro Update

2008-09-11T01:11:00.013-04:00

In the comments section to my annual back-to-school-clothes post on Anthropologie's "Archive Trousers" (second generation "Tenure Trousers") the wise and delightful Renaissance Girl archly said she'd "like to see the adjunct trousers."

Well, here's something that comes close: The "Visiting Professor Cardigan."

I swear I don't make these things up. But they're too good not poke fun at (and surreptitiously consider buying).

This is a cardigan anthro has had up for sale for the past two years, and I've always wanted one.

Its haphazard buttons make me think of Robert Herrick's lyric "Delight in Disorder" ("A sweet disorder in the dress / Kindles in clothes a wantonness"). But by the time it gets cold enough around here for me to consider the exorbitant cost of what really just looks like a sweater buttoned up the wrong way, it always sells out.

$198. Because of course a Visiting Professor can afford to look artfully shlumpy.

Feel the irony, people.

Early Modern Show and Tell

2008-09-06T15:05:00.010-04:00

My upper-level undergraduate Renaissance Poetry course is the most fun I've had teaching- EVER. And why? Because one of our rare books librarians decided she wanted to collaborate with me on the course. I said "yeah, sure, why not?"- I already bring my students up to rare books several times a semester. It might be nice to bring the rare books to them for starters. So long as she let me lead the discussion. And it's working really well.

Every day she brings a different old book to class, sometimes 2. Her choices always tie in to our discussion and reading.

Last week we read "Astrophil and Stella," and for our second day with the sonnet sequence, for a discussion on Sidney's "school-boy writer" persona, she brought along a 1591 edition of the poems, plus a 1627 book of grammar-school rules. When I suggested we read a few of the sonnets aloud, we passed around the early modern book, and the students got a chance to struggle with reading from a 16th century text. Which generated quite a few giggles, but also brought the experience down to earth. Pretty soon, they were volunteering to read, which is rare at a place like this (maybe rare everywhere? Except for the peppering of theatre majors in most upper-level English classes).

Anyway, teaching's fun this year. Every day, actually. I highly recommend that everyone try this out- if you haven't already. I'd be interested to read in the comments section about some of your own experiences with collaborative teaching. Did it work? Did it backfire? (I'm still a bit worried that the students will remember the old books but not Sidney).

Little Post On Feeling Appreciated

2008-08-27T23:14:00.023-04:00

I used to chomp at the bit and stomp my feet waiting anxiously for people to notice me, to invite me to contribute to books, give talks, be on panels, anything. My colleagues ahead of me told me to calm down, do my work, forget about it. Eventually, things would happen.

So I did. Sort of. Having a blog helped.

Then this summer, things changed- quite suddenly, actually. It wasn't tied to anything important of mine coming out in print (the important things are still forthcoming for, like, EVER). It just started happening. First I got invited to contribute to an anthology. Then Major Important British Scholar took an interest in my work. Then another anthology invitation, &c. I think maybe The Library fellowship helped.

Yesterday I was invited to give a talk at a Very Nice (and Important) Place, which I shall call University of The City (UTC). And there is a small honorarium.

(By the way, the person who invited me was a remarkably talented and mature UTC grad student I met during one of my research trips this summer. So don't ignore the grad students. They can and do make things happen).

I've not yet been invited back by my graduate program at Quill & Stylus University (QSU), but I'd rather not go back just yet. It's only been three years and I'm still relishing my time away. Besides, that particular kind of evisceration is best endured after securing a book contract.

I hope this is the start of a good semester- first day is tomorrow. I'm bringing along a rare books librarian (and some rare books) for first day show-and-tell.

Anthropologie outdoes itself with "Archive Trousers"

2008-08-20T00:47:00.025-04:00

I didn't think it was possible to tap the professorial and grad-studenty market any better than with "tenure trousers." I was wrong. What can a woman who already has tenure trousers possibly want? More research leave, obviously. May I present to you:

Archive Trousers

Made with a bit more stretch than tenure trousers- as the catalog puts it rather coyly (channeling the male gaze) "the better to allow you to reach that leatherbound volume on the highest shelf," which I take to mean "your ass will look great in these if you want to show it off." I doubt any of us archival researchers will be reaching up high for leather-bound volumes, but maybe the added stretch will help us contort in our chairs during all-day laptop transcriptions from giant foam book-rests. These, then, are perfect for the MLS market- but what's with the Minnie Mouse buttons in front?

And for the woman with both tenure trousers and tenure (presumably at an imaginary institution that pays Really Really Well), there's the vaguely Elizabethan influenced:

Lady-of-the-court-dress

She'd probably buy the dress because she's enchanted by the "Basque waistline," something only those with tenure trousers can possibly understand.

Finally, of particular interest to my own field are the Via Appia and Trade Route trousers, and for the early Modernist (as opposed to early-modernist), Suffragette T-straps and Buckminster's Reverie Tieback.

Not quite as pretentious as J. Peterman, but certainly appealing to intellectual, rather than financial capital. The irony is that without financial capital, one cannot afford to buy their frequently poorly constructed clothes. I'm not ashamed to say that I've added "Archive Trousers" and "Suffragette T-straps" to my wish-list. But I'm waiting for them to go on sale.

Araucana in America

2008-08-17T15:30:00.009-04:00

Yay! . . . Also:

Arden Shakespeare Controversy

2008-08-15T12:55:00.012-04:00

Seldom does the rigorous, time-consuming work we do as editors get any press, even though edited editions probably reach more readers in one week than our academic monographs will in their brief lifetimes in print. The gold standard for scholarly editions of Shakespeare has always been the Arden Shakespeare, which is not only thorough, informative and sometimes challenging but also an excellent teaching apparatus. As an esteemed colleague at the Folger confirmed, these editions usually take upwards of 6 years to complete. It is not unusual for them to take a decade.

As an early modernist of the philological persuasion, I am most fond of Arden Shakespeare editions for their historical attentiveness to Shakespeare's language. It is thus very disappointing that at this moment, when a highly anticipated Arden edition is in the spotlight- one that promises to shed new light on language and the material text - it's because we may not get to see it, read it, enjoy it or use it:

Chronicle Article

Reinstate Pat Parker Website

I don't give a fig

2008-08-11T16:44:00.010-04:00

I picked these off the tree a few minutes ago, and there are 10 times as many still ripening.

Two days ago I wrapped the tree with biodegradable breathable tree tape, then smeared the trunk up and down with something called "Tanglefoot," an environmentally safe sticky-stuff (made of wax and resins- it actually smells lovely and reminds me of my Ormonde Jayne Black Hemlock perfume from London) that keeps ants and other crawlies from climbing up the trunk and eating all the figs. Note to self: cover head and arms next time. Tanglefoot is also tangle-tress.

I love the color- kind of a golden turning to mauve (click on the photo for an extreme close-up). I was expecting a purple, so I actually let a few get too ripe and start to shrivel up on the tree- the darker ones in the picture are beginning to sport wrinkles too. I guess the light color is just part of the variety- I think these are Celeste figs.

I plan on stuffing with goat cheese, skewering on rosemary, drizzling with olive oil and tossing them on the grill. They are also really good like this wrapped with prosciutto, for those of you who are not veggie or kosher (or like me, lapsed in both).

Anyone have any other recipes? It looks like figs are going to be a major part of my diet for the next month and a half.

Blush, blush.

2008-08-10T19:07:00.017-04:00

Emily, adrift on the The Seacoast of Bohemia, nominated me for this virtual hat tilt, and I am tickled pink.

I wish I could nominate Emily, but she's already received one, so here's my list below.

I nominate the rather dormant but still quite brilliant Blogging the Renaissance. Because it started this whole Renaissance blogging thing and this blog has a virtual blog-crush on it.

Beautifully written, perceptive and fun is Sign of the Spider, another blog that this blog is crushing on. Plus, it's got great virtual ink-blot visuals.

Jonathan Sterne's hilarious academic blog is not in the least dormant. It is also very smart (and very funny). In sum, it's Super Bon!, and totally blog-crush worthy.

Also dormant and good is Northern Humanist.

Two of my favorite blogs (and people) recently documented their trips to Israel with compassion, wit, and a keen sense of social history. These are A Wisconsin Yankee in King David's Court and From the Couch in New York.

I've begun reading Green Thoughts regularly and am generally in awe of its elegant openness.

Finally, Rants of a Feminist Engineer remains brave, funny, poignant, and admirably feminist, whether its writer is anonymous or not.

Okay, I've just noticed that all the blogs I've nominated are authored by academics who are also my friends (except Green Thoughts who is an academic but I don't think we know each other in real life. Yet. Or I could be wrong, maybe we do!). I should really branch out a bit more . . .

If I've nominated you and you want to play along, then follow the rules below. If you've got better things to do, then go do them. I know I do.

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

No News is Good News

2008-08-09T23:49:00.003-04:00

Is what my father's doctor said two days ago.

So when I say there's not much going on here, what I really mean is, Thank Goodness.

Nothing Going On is a very good thing, considering what the options were just three days ago, as my family anxiously awaited the results of some very scary tests my father had to undergo quite suddenly. And the doctor called the next day as soon as the first round of results were in to tell him that it's not what we feared. We still don't know what it is, but it appears not to have an evil plan to achieve world domination over him, which is for some reason what the word "malignant" conjures for me- Mordred and Edmund and Pinky and the Brain. Anyway, it's not. And we are relieved for now.

Bad Epic

2008-08-09T22:57:00.018-04:00

I've been thinking about my Next Big Project. Well, sort of. It changes frequently. It's a fun little exercise, to imagine completely uncharted work (as opposed to at least twice-charted work which is what most first books are).

Last week, hanging out in London with a particularly entertaining group of Renaissance friends, I mentioned to them that I was anxious about the lack of a chapter on epic in my current book project. One friend understandably asked me why no epic chapter, then? My immediate, unthinking reply was that Elizabethan English epics a) aren't classical enough for the likes of my book and b) just aren't that good. In fact, they're hideous.

My second, only slightly more considerate reply was that no one really did classical epic right until Milton, who then undid it- everyone before (Spenser et al) really just did Romance with a dash of epic. Think of Thomas Mann's analysis of Beethoven's late piano sonatas in Dr Faustus (or just bear with me here): In doing, surpassing and then un-doing the epic, Milton finished the epic, just like Beethoven finished the sonata. Anyway, said charming friends immediately collectively decided that my next book would have to be about these pre-Miltonic attempts, and they also decided that its title would be Bad Epic.

The funny thing is that I think in some way, they might actually be right. I already teach acourse on epics, from Homer to Philip Pullman. I'm obviously interested in questions of genre and pushing those boundaries. And I have Greek (and am perhaps a little too proud of that fact). Better, it's the perfect response to the question "why is there no chapter on epic in your book?"

"Funny you should ask. Well actually, that's my Next Big Project."

Back Stateside

2008-08-09T18:36:00.010-04:00

Ants are eating the figs off my fig-tree. The shtarkers are fast!

Not much else happening here. It's warm and sunny and quiet, perfect for writing, which I am happy to say I am doing a lot of.

I miss London.

That said, I've sent off two essays and am polishing up a third one to send out before Sept 1. I also have two new opportunities for publication, which is nice & unexpected, but both will be new essays, unrelated to the book. New essays that I have yet to write. Meanwhile, I'm nearly finished with my last chapter and new intro, and will be sending out my book proposal in the fall. Go, little book proposal . . .

So my plate is full. But still I miss London, pints with friends, flirtatious men, obnoxious drunken yobs, the hilariousness that ensues when women follow high street fashion trends without any regard to body type, 10 pound plays at the national, BBC 3 and 4, and easy access to blue eggs.

Suspension

2008-07-31T11:30:00.007-04:00

I'm sort of suspended in time at the moment- nearing the finishing of my chapter but unsure how to end it nicely, nearing the end of my visit to London but still not having seen my three closest transatlantic friends yet (hopefully this weekend).

Last week my mother visited and we had a wonderful time, though I think I may have exhausted her with all the walking, especially when I took her up Tottenham court road where I was convinced there was a wonderful tea house, only to discover the teahouse was in Soho, and also when I confidently took us down Commercial st. in the east end in the wrong direction for four blocks. Don't even get me started on my greatest flub: when I got to the library I told her she could easily get a reader's card since the website says all you need is proof of address and signature. Instead the guy there quizzed her about her research project and asked what specific texts she wanted to see. She didn't know, so he refused to give her a card. Luckily there was still a lot for her to see at the library, so when we met up after I'd finished looking at my rare books she stopped me from groveling. Note to non-academic, formerly academic or partly academic friends: make sure to check out the catalogue and invent a research project before you apply for a reader's card at the BL.

I've seen three plays so far: Michael Frayn's Afterlife at the National- brilliantly written but hampered by its own conceit; The Female of the Species in the W. End- excellently acted by Eilieen Atikins, Anna Maxwell Martin and Sophie Thompson, but ridiculously behind the times and heterosexist. I mean, how can you write a play about feminist criticism and not have heard of Kristeva and Butler? And jazz-age Twelfth Night in Regent's park- not quite jazz-age and a little bit imbalanced. None of them thrillingly good, but all very entertaining.

I've seen a French film (L'heur de l'ete) at the Curzon, had divinely good and affordable Dim Sum (in Paddington, of all places! Better than Royal China and Wong Kei- it's called Pearl Liang and it's transcendental) and returned to Whitechapel for my favorite curry, which was still excellent though I noticed they'd upped their prices by about a pound all around. I also discovered that the bus I take to the British library stops around the corner from the divinely inspired curry place (which is near the Whitechapel Bell Foundry), which means I'll probably get to have the curry twice more before I leave. Yay! I've also spent time with my oldest friend from home and her family, along with family friends old and new, all of whom live or stay in North London.

I still have to return to Islington to my favorite pub, meet up with various friends from the early modern blogosphere, catch a prom, and see the aerially acrobatic Timon at the globe and the Goth Revenger's Tragedy at the National.

And I have to finish this chapter.

Londinium

2008-07-17T12:29:00.007-04:00

A selection of random observations about this particular trip to London.

1. The flat I'm occupying is owned by perhaps the nicest 60-ish couple I have met other than my parents. He's a distinguished prof on the West Coast, she's an artist. The flat is large for London, though it doesn't get a lot of light. It's furnished with English antiques and books. There's a small bookcase near the doorway to the bedroom, full of books on the topic of which this professor is an expert. I pulled one off the shelf, thinking I'd learn a bit more about his subject- and discovered that everything in the shelf was authored by him.

This makes eight books published in the US plus 2 or 3 published in Europe, plus a 7 volume translation. Okay, so he collaborated on the most recent book and on the translation. But not one is an edited anthology, so still, it's a phenomenal amount of work for any one professor, and even more when you consider that every one of these books is about the work of the same author. Grand total of books authored, edited and translated by this professor: 18. Grand total of books authored, edited and translated by Pamphilia: 0; 1 in progress. (.75 Down, 17.25 to go).

2. I just finished Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was hilarious. There's no television in the flat, so I've been reading novels (not that I'd watch TV in London anyway of course). Anyway, it's sad and hilarious. At one point the hero decides to go on the lam with his partner and they check in to a hotel "under the name of Saunders." Hee- they think they're being obscure and literary but it's Winnie the Pooh.

Anyway, at the back of the book was an essay by Chabon about writing his first novel. He says that there are three parts to being a successful writer: talent, discipline, and luck. And the only thing anyone ever has any control over is discipline. So that became his work ethic. I keep thinking about this while I'm here because I've actually become a lot less disciplined than I used to be. I mean a long time ago, when I was in high school and did all my homework every night and practiced the piano every day for 3 hours. I was fairly disciplined in College too- I don't mean that I drafted my papers in advance, but I did turn them in on time. I wonder what happened- when or where I lost this rigorous discipline. Was it in graduate school when I had the luxury of focusing only on one thing? Or was it living by myself that eroded my discipline- there was no one around to tell me what to do, or to set a good example? In any case, I've resolved to become more disciplined.

3. Taking the bus from where I'm staying to the BL today in the rain (I sat up on top), I overheard a lovely elderly British couple narrating the bus-trip to one another. He was pointing out landmarks to her, so she must have just come in to town. It was sweet the way they talked with wonder about all the newfangled technology taking over the world- cellphones with email and pictures and music and such. When we passed Mme Tussaud's the man said that he went once, but that was "before the War." I don't know which war he meant, but "things were different then."

4. I didn't really know what "Expensive" meant until I had been here a week. "Expensive" is basically the fact that everything that should cost what it would cost anywhere else, is not available for anything less than a ridiculously high price. Sandwiches are $7, and lunch is $30. EVERYWHERE. It's July and lots of things are "on sale." This means that tee-shirts are only $40 instead of $80.

5. The British Library is full of people you think you know, but don't. Everyone looks vaguely familiar and you will inevitably bound toward someone thinking he or she is your friend or colleague and then be embarrassed when they turn around. This meant that when I did see a colleague from a neighboring university, I approached him timidly and barely whispered his name. Which of course meant that our entire conversation was conducted in barely audible whispers because he thought I was being extra polite (sssh, it's a library).

6. Timeout London knows everything. Where else can you find information about the London Bat Watch and nude men's yoga in Islington?

Old Cotswold Legbar Pastel Eggs

2008-07-12T16:08:00.007-04:00

I love London supermarkets (Waitrose especially).

John Milton: Sexy Rockstar

2008-07-10T16:33:00.029-04:00

So I'm heading off to London today, to catch the tail-end of the Milton conference and mostly really to finish writing my book. That sounds equally satisfying and fictitious, "to finish writing my book," as if I were some sort of creative genuis, when really all I'm doing is finishing a chapter, fixing another up, and writing a new introduction. Hardly qualifies as "book writing."

Waiting for my flight, I decided to catch-up on some older issues of the New Yorker, where I found Jonathan Rosen's little piece on Milton, which I think a colleague had recommended I check out. Much as I love the way a kicky modern word or phrase must be employed where no other will do (like when Rosen describes Satan and Gabriel "trash-talking" for instance), I did find myself biting my lip with disapproval. Rosen portrays Milton as a sexually avid rockstar well-versed in kamasutra and polyamory: "Nevermind that there were actually three Mrs. Miltons, and that Milton, who defended divorce and even polygamy, was a sensuous Purtitan, exquisitely attuned to the "amorous delay" of life in Eden." This is clearly a case of the poet being confused with the poetry.

I mean, really. Just because he happened to have three marriages- hastened not by two tame divorces as Rosen suggests here, but by two tragically premature deaths - and wrote stunningly beautiful passages about angelic and Edenic sex, we are supposed to believe that Milton was great in bed?

"Exquisitely attuned to the 'amorous delay'"? What is that supposed to mean? Milton was Casanova? He knew all about foreplay? (Maybe delay is the reason his first wife ran away for three years).

I, for one, would rather not try to imagine what Milton was like in bed, though I'm sure an historical novel is already in the works (by Philippa Gregory). Suffice it to say, it will not be taking up residence on my nightstand. . . unless some idiot buys it for me.

Sparks of Light

2008-07-04T21:57:00.018-04:00

It's Friday the 4th here in the land of legalized fireworks. I'm still getting used to that. People start setting them off a full two weeks before the holiday, in their backyards, on the street. Yesterday evening I wandered over to my colleague's house to say hello and her husband nonchalantly gathered about six or seven (on sale at Walmart!) and lit them in the street. If she hadn't objected, he would have lit them all at once. We sat on the terrace and watched, her four-year-old son rapt.

Tonight the 4th conincided with a local gallery hop, which happens once a month. It's not much- about three blocks of galleries and shops that stay open late with free food and sometimes wine. But I'm very glad it exists. It's nice to see the sub-culture here (aka liberals) getting a chance to strut its stuff.

Going to the gallery night and watching fireworks reminded me of the city where I attended graduate school. It's a place I will always associate with a combination of joy, melancholy and irony. Probably because that's what it feels like to be a graduate student, more than anything else.

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but it's become the story I tote out once a year on the 4th of July. Like on my birthday when my father tells me the story of the Great Ice Storm of '7_, and how while I snuggled under my mother's arm in the hospital as she slept off the anesthetic, he had to stay at home without power, grading papers in the bathtub surrounded by shabbos candles with the cat on the toilet and the dog on the bathmat.

Anyway, one summer, towards the end of our careers as doctoral students, my friends and I hovered in a liminal state of not-being-quite-done, not knowing where any of us would be in two years time, and I think I was heading to Oxford in a few months.

My dear friend e__ had been volunteering as a docent at a crumbling, dilapidated 19th century former prison- a Panopticon -on the top of a small hill in the city. At the time, the place was applying for historical landmark status, though it was in such a state of ruin that everyone who visited had to wear a hard hat. It was great fun, though- in addition to tours of the cells there were ongoing art installations during the year and film screenings in the summer. Anyway, this friend of mine had keys to the place, and since the lookout tower of the prison was very near the location of the city's main firework display, she contrived to sneak us into the prison and up into the lookout tower. We had brought picnic food, wine and beer too, I think. Since we had to sneak in, we used flashlights. It was still very dark.

It was deliciously thrilling, in that somewhat illicit way that makes you feel like a teenager breaking curfew or a kid playing "ghost in the graveyard" at dusk, near a real graveyard. [Edit: I have since learned that this place is featured on a documentary about real ghost hunters. Apparently the electromagnetic reverberation thingies or whatever they call them are off the charts]. Once we got to the top of the lookout tower, we waited for it to get darker and for the fireworks to start. We saw far-off ones bursting over one of the rivers, little pocks of light. Suddenly they were right overhead. I mean, literally over our heads and larger than any of us had imagined. If it weren't so beautiful, I might have compared it to what I imagine a psychedelic alien abduction might feel like, with lights as big as spaceships reaching their fingers down toward our heads.

This city also had a monthly gallery night, to which I and my friends duly repaired. And I remember for the first time (in early September) wandering into one that was unlike the others. For one, it was completely dark. There were black velvet curtains in the window blocking out all the light. A small card rested on the window sill stating that the gallery's hours were "By chance or appointment." There were velvet curtains in the vestibule (dark purple, I think). It was hushed inside, but there might have been faint, ambient chords struck now and then. At least that is how I remember it.

When I got inside, it was still dark, with black walls illuminated softly by chandeliers, pendant lamps, and sconces constructed out of collected ceramic and metal objects. These lights seemed magical, iconic in a sort-of Jungian way. And funny. A ceramic rabbit standing on two legs dressed in a suit, holding an umbrella made out of a sieve through which tiny points of light sparked. A chandelier like a medusa's head of twisted copper pipes, with tiny flame-shaped bulbs flickering at the end of each snake. And my favorite, a chandelier made entirely from teapots, their spouts pointing down and out away from the center, ending in bulbs the shape of little jets of water.

I know it's still there. But I checked the website and couldn't find the teapot or the rabbit lamps.

London Countdown

2008-07-02T12:40:00.003-04:00

8 days. God, I cannot WAIT to get there- it is beautiful but almost a wasteland here in the summer, and I seriously think I might go insane here with nothing but the book I'm writing, an internet connection, and the cat.

Addiction

2008-06-30T13:54:00.013-04:00

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm totally addicted to Apartment Therapy. I like looking at "sneak peek" slideshows of other people's houses (people and houses far more creative than anyone I know). And I like reading about DIY vintage furniture rehab projects, how to make hanging lights out of mason jars, wacky color combinations and the "smallest coolest apartment" contests. I spend too many hours reading about beer-keg balcony planters and staircases that double as bookcases on blogs like Design Sponge out of Brooklyn, and the twee Oh Joy! out of Philly.

I'm an apartment-geek. I confess it freely. I don't know where this obsession comes from- maybe it derives from living on the cheap in tiny urban apartments over the past 10 years. Or maybe it's because even now that I live in a (tiny) house, I live in the South, where interior design generally falls between suburban "Country" and overstuffed Louis XVI.

Despite the fact that I am insanely jealous of the cute couples who blog about their urban domestic bliss (most of which has to be- just has to be -literary fiction: No one's life is that perfect, and if it were why would you blog about it?), I keep coming back. So I guess maybe this addiction is really about fantasy- that domestic bliss can be had at all.

End of confession.

Inaugural Gazpacho

2008-06-30T09:47:00.004-04:00

First of the summer using (almost*) all local produce, with homemade Minimalist Bread.

*illegal immigrant bell peppers

Fruits of Summer

2008-06-29T12:55:00.002-04:00

Picked today.

Back Home

2008-06-25T13:40:00.004-04:00

Bunnies ate my rosebush.

Dog-baby Afternoon

2008-06-22T01:51:00.015-04:00

Spotted, Saturday afternoon, at Eastern Market:

1. cute guy with baby in snuggly and two dogs, one in each hand.

2. cute guy with baby in snuggly and adorable puppy.

3. Two cute guys, each with baby in snuggly, each with dog(s), buying ice cream for their wives.

Cute guys: 4
Babies in snugglies: 4
Dogs: 5 or 6- who cares any more?

Fun with History: Wikipedia Date Search

2008-06-21T10:54:00.011-04:00

I just discovered something neat: Wikipedia date search. Type in a date, any date, and you get a list of happenings around the world. I tried 1327 and got Edward III crowned king of England and Petrarch meeting Laura, plus a list of famous births and deaths.

Type in 1453 and you learn that the Ottoman capture of Constantinople coincided with the end of the Hundred Years War and the invention of Guttenberg's printing press. All in one year.

Being the narcissist I am, of course I typed in the year of my birth. And learned that the first commercial Concorde took off into the air around the time the UN vetoed a resolution to create an independent Palestinian State. Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth II sent the first royal e-mail and the DC Metro opened. In music, the first Eurovision song-contest coincided with the Ramones releasing their first album, U2 getting together for the first time, and the Eagles releasing "Hotel California." Along with the first known outbreak of the Ebola virus and the death of Mao Zedong.

(Supposedly. It is Wikipedia, after all)

So- how old am I? (More importantly, what search term did you enter to find out? Ramones, Mao, or Eurovision?)

Why I am not (yet) a Miltonist.

2008-06-20T15:32:00.005-04:00

Because studying Milton is like studying Kabbalah: it is preferable to do it when you are over 40 and have read and studied everything else there is to read, in every language.

Okay, so I know that's not true, but it's a funny I came up with at Tea and a Real Miltonist told me it was good material.

Milton's a little later than most of the authors I study, and even though I am enraptured by his writing and teach it as often as I can, I just don't quite feel mature enough to write about it. It's not about the Hebrew, Latin and Greek- (sm)all of which I have (boast much, Pamphilia?). It's about the ideas contained therein. Sure, I might reference Milton in my writing now and then, do a reading of a passage, that sort of thing. But a reference does not a Miltonist make.

I think I'll wait to publish anything seriously devoted to Milton 'till I'm 40. Or after tenure. At this rate, they'll both happen sooner than I'd like to think.

Progress!

2008-06-20T13:48:00.023-04:00

The loose ends of my argument are finally coming together. I've also written large chunks of the chapter and I think I might be able to corral them into a solid document quite soon. Finally.

I've got only a few more days here and I'm doing all I can to continue writing and to call up any old books I need to investigate before I leave. It's making me kind of hyper.

I also just e-mailed a Major Important British Scholar, who has done a tiny bit of work on my Material Objects of Study and he a) remembered my critique of a paper he circulated at least 6 years ago at my graduate institution and b) was interested in my project and said he'd love to read more! He also directed me to his latest article on the subject, which just came out, and has helped me even further.

Even more exciting, today I went down to the PRs and finally surveyed the canon of scholarship on one of my Renaissance authors. I was thrilled to learn that there is still very little treatment of this text. More important, a Major Book that examines his work in relation to the sexier of my two Scholarly Territories does not even mention this text. This is a golden elipsis for me! And the other Renaissance author? Not to worry- everyone hates him.

I can feel that this is going to be something big. So much so that I'm having to check my enthusiasm at this point. I want to keep most of what I've found in my research to myself and guard it well, until it's ready for print. This is a new feeling for me, protectiveness of my ideas. I guess it stems from my belief that anyone could make these connections, if they just knew where to look. And the more I read, the more it becomes clear to me that what I am going to say about my genre and my two Scholarly Territories not only needs to be said, but needs to be said now.

Whew! If I smoked, I would definitely reach for a cigarette.

Fish slime and Brine

2008-06-10T14:53:00.012-04:00

So without giving anything away, I've been working with English translations of a racy (to early modern people, apparently) text for this book chapter I'm finishing.

This is only a sampling of one terrible Greek-to-English translation from the middle of the 17th century:

"Fish slime and Brine have made thy penance great,
Come now, into my bosome drop thy sweat."

Hmm . . . I think there's actually good reason why it didn't garner as much acclaim as the more famous version.

Archival Interior Decorating: Brûlé à Gant

2008-06-07T11:43:00.022-04:00

My room here is HUGE- three large windows facing the street and the front garden, which at the moment is full of lavender, roses and hydrangea plus some kind of huge bush with glossy laurel-shaped leaves, covered with little sprays of white flowers (they look like miniature lilacs) putting out a too-sweet, very heady scent. The room is twice the size of my bedroom at least.

It's got some nice posters on the wall from the library, one an enlarged miniature portrait of Elizabeth which I quite like and couple of John Austen drawings. But directly above the couch is something a little disturbing. Two facsimile engravings. The bottom engraving depicts what I think are French or Belgian Protestant martyrs at the stake, but after being burnt, all charred and skeletal, with bits of hair and everything. A giant lumbering peasant is poking one of them with a pitchfork. The caption says "David et Levina etrangler et brûlé à Gant, Anno 1554." Anyway, it's kind of cool, but a bit gruesome for a bedroom. (If I had little kids, I'd have to hide it).

The top engraving is much less creepy- it's a portrait of Simon Mercier's arrest in a marketplace in 1553. There are some lumbering, drooling catholic friars in the background ready to pounce, but Simon seems in good health. Nonetheless, the caption reads "Simon Mercier, brûlé à Bergue-ap-Loom, Anno 1553." I thought I knew who Simon Mercier was but I googled him and couldn't find anything. And who are David and Levina and why do they have Jewish names?

Don't even get me started on the anti-Catholic woodcut of bishops at a feast over the bed. As a friend said, it's a good thing I'm not Catholic. Or Vegetarian.

Major Breakthrough

2008-06-04T15:33:00.002-04:00

Hooray, I've made a major breakthrough in researching this final chapter. I don't have the whole thing written yet and I'm still ironing out the kinks in the argument, but I finally know exactly what to do with the second half of it, and I've discovered something really interesting about the text I'm working with.

Today the rain is coming down sideways in sheets. Its green outside and there's thunder and lightning. This library is already fairly dark inside, and I usually prefer to work in the better lit modern wing, but with the storm outside it's dark in there too.

And I can think of nothing more pleasing than being here, with my books, while it storms outside.

Dogs and Roses

2008-05-31T13:58:00.005-04:00

Ah, how good it feels to walk again! I've been exploring my new neighborhood (no longer with cousins, but in one of the library's apartments), and it reminds me a lot of where I lived in grad school, only with more rose gardens and more dogs (if that is even possible). The smell of roses, lavender, clematis, jasmine and honeysuckle is dizzying. But how good it feels to transport oneself on one's legs. And I'm starting to feel more grounded and less tired too- all it took was a week.

Today and yesterday evening I went exploring, and this afternoon I discovered the nearby market, which expands on the weekends to include local farmers, artists, jewelers, craftspeople and a flea market. I picked up some amazing local strawberries and artisanal cheese, and spent the better part of an hour taking in all the people, including many babies, dogs and cute guys, some with babies, some without- is there anything more adorable than a cute guy wearing a snuggly facing out with a wiggly 2 month-old, I ask you? No, there is not. Except maybe if he were also holding a puppy. Then I think I'd faint.

Now it's gotten very dark and thundery, and rain pours down in buckets. The library's only open for another two and a half hours, and there's tea at 3. I had planned to explore a different neighborhood this afternoon, but I do like a good cozy library and a nice cup of tea, especially when it's raining outside.

Marionetta

2008-05-26T20:49:00.009-04:00

Good Lord, I am Out of Shape. I arrived in DC last night after a lovely 6 hour train journey and today I decided to go for a nice long walk, explore some shopping neighborhoods by metro and then walk back. The metro stop is only a 12-15 minute walk from where my cousins live, but it was 90 degrees in the sun. I was out of breath and sweating by the time I reached the cool, subterranean metro. And then while trying on clothes, I took stock of my figure and noticed flab in places I never thought could get flab before. And the strain in my lower back, oy vey! Since I moved to suburban southern city to teach, I stopped walking for transportation, started driving. According to a recent visit to the doctor, I have gained 10 pounds over the last 2 years in the south. So my body has not been accustomed to this much walking.

I felt like a marionette, my joints swaying with every step I took.

Thankfully, by the end of my five and a half hour expedition I started to feel more grounded and less out of breath.

This month I'll be walking everywhere again, but for good measure I've also decided to purchase an unlimited monthly pass at a yoga studio near Dupont Circle, which offers Ashtanga 3 times a week, along with Pilates and four levels of Vinyasa flow. I intend to go to class 3-4 days a week. I may not lose those 10 pounds, but at least I will feel like a Real Girl again.

So there you have it. My schedule: 9-5 library; 6:30-8 yoga; 8-whenever, blissed out post-exercise happiness.

Dramatic Fugues

2008-05-22T15:26:00.010-04:00

Yesterday I had a delightful coffee with Hip Colleague, and we talked about our book projects. He's writing his second book and had a question for me about Renaissance drama. One of his chapters is on Tony Kushner's play Homebody/Kabul and he described the way that play (and much of the Kushner oeuvre) explores a theme or issue through one character, then pass the theme on to the next set of characters, who in turn pass it on to the next, etc. He wondered if there was a literary or dramatic term for this.

I thought about it. And truth to tell, I couldn't find it operating in early modern drama or classical drama. I tend to think of political issues in Shakespeare operating in a somatic way (the body politic, the humors, the veins, the trickling down), and I tend to think of ethical dilemmas in Greek drama and tragedy working vertically downwards from the top to the bottom. Nowhere could I find an early modern or classical drama in which a problem is passed from hand to hand the way my friend was describing.

So I volunteered the term "transference," which sort of sounds literary and theoretical, maybe psychoanalytical too, though I have no idea why it popped into my head at the time. This term, of course, made me think of the pattern my colleague described as a kind of viral movement, which would make sense for Angels in America, though perhaps less so for Homebody/Kabul.

Then I thought of music- fugues in particular. In his fugues, suites and partitias, Bach takes a theme, breaks it down to its smallest elements ("motifs") then works it through different voices, inverting it, turning it inside out and upside down, and augmenting it into larger chord progressions. By the time the fugue finishes, we have seen the theme and its motifs carried through a metamorphosis.

And this kind of musical fugue happens on the 20th century stage as well, most notably in American Musicals- for some reason especially those to which Sondheim contributes. In what I consider his best musical, Sweeney Todd, Sondheim takes the opening of bars of the Latin Mass, inverts it and it becomes "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." Then he takes the Dies Irae and uses it as a repeated counterpoint motif (as musical accompaniment to a different melody) to signify Sweeney's descent into insanity. You can hear it in the background when he sings "We all deserve to die" in "Epiphany" and it appears in the same song when he returns to the tragic fate of his wife ("My Lucy lies in ashes"). It comes back significantly in the very end in the musical surge when he slits the throat of the beggarwoman.

A concurrent motif from the Dies Irae theme is the tritone interval, a diminished fifth known in Medieval and Renaissance music as diablos in musica, or "the devil in the music." The tritone has a hauntingly unresolved feel to it. It's dissonant and begs for a resolution. Sondheim and Bernstein made great use of it in "Maria" and the opening "Rumble" in West Side Story- you can hear the tritone on "Ma-REE-", and it's resolved on the "-ah." But it's really used to much better effect in Sweeney- you could even say the tritone is the main musical calling card of Sweeney Todd. It shows up in the male ingenue Anthony's ballad "Johanna" which is very similar to "Maria," but much creepier because Sondheim doesn't resolve the tritone into a major triad for a several lines; he keeps it suspended longer. And it shows up again in the harmonies of the hilariously macabre duet "A Little Priest," which closes Act I. When Mrs. Lovett joins Sweeney in cadencing the refrain, they are usually a fourth or a tritone apart, and at the very end, the orchestral accompaniment rises to a series of fast syncopated tritones, an antic and uneasy way to pull the curtain down.

So musically, Sweeney Todd passes the themes of demonic possession, Judgement Day (dies irae or day of wrath) and tragic loss from character to character until they culminate in the "Final Sequence," the tragic denouement in which Sweeney kills his wife and learns of Mrs. Lovett's deception too late.*

So I said all this to my friend and he said he had actually spoken to one of our colleagues about musical motifs in Kushner before, which kind of validated what I'd said, even though I was sort of stretching.

I think one of the reasons why I don't write about Renaissance drama (I prefer poetry and book history) is because if I wrote about drama, I'd really prefer to write about American Musical Theatre.

* I highly recommend the Original Broadway Cast recording from 1979 with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou, though nearly as good is "Sweeney Todd in Concert" (2001) with George Hearn (Sweeney No. 2 on Broadway) and Patti Lupone with the New York Philharmonic and a number of noted opera stars, along with Neil Patrick Harris who is excellent as Toby.