FCB

I know, I know, two weeks in a row of cat blogging. I promise I'll stop. But it's really difficult to photograph a black tortoiseshell cat with a digital camera, and in this photo Saffron looks like a Miyazaki character ("My neighbor Saffron"). When I write at home in the kitchen, this is her spot. She's kind of a spirit guardian of the laptop. More likely, it's because her food is located under the table.

Belated Friday Cat and House blogging

I'm in the midwest visiting my parents for a long weekend and I miss my cat. I almost never cat-blog but I have a cute photo of her in my new apartment and I miss her fuzziness and her little face appearing around the side of my laptop screen when I'm trying to write. The house is also gradually taking shape, so here's a double feature: cat photo and living room at night.

Little People

I've just discovered a new thoroughly addictive street art blog, which is feeding my procrastinastion. But I wanted to share it with you because it's so funny and because it's a great way of remembering London. It's called "Little People" and describes itself in a subtitle as "Little handpainted people, left in london to fend for themselves" and it's here.

See if I'm not right.

Still a Freak after all these years

The first time I took the Myers-Briggs personality type test I was 18 and heading off to New England for college. It told me I was an INFJ- Introverted-Intuitivite-Feeling-Judging. I thought I'd take the shorter online version just for fun. I felt I had truly become much more extroverted and rational and would probably become an ENTJ, fitting in more easily with the general population.

But I was WRONG! Thirteen years later and I'm still an INFJ, still part of the tiny .5%. I don't know whether to be happy or sad (that's the "Feeling" part kicking in), but I will say this: the test never lies.

Here's what it told me:

Your Score: Freak- INFJ

33% Extraversion, 60% Intuition, 20% Thinking, 66% Judging

"Well, well, well. How did someone like you end up with the least common personality type of them all? In a group of 100 Americans, only 0.5 others would be just like you. You really are one of a kind... In fact, I do believe that that's one of the definitions for the word "FREAK."

Freak's not such a bad word to describe you actually.

You are deep, complex, secretive and extremely difficult to understand. If that doesn't scream "Freak!" I don't know what does. No-one actually knows the REAL you, do they?

You probably have deep interests in creative expression as well as issues of spirituality and human development.

You've probably even been called a "psychic" before, because of your uncanny knack to understand and "read" people without quite knowing how you do it. Don't fret. You're not actually psychic. That would make you special and you'll never accomplish that.

You're also quite possibly the most emotional of them all, so don't take this all too hard. Nevertheless you most definitely have the strangest personality type and that's not necessarily a good thing. "

This mini-analysis is just there for acerbic silliness. I don't know about any hidden secrets or being hard to read- usually I'm told I'm gullible and guileless and that my thoughts and emotions write themselves all over my face whether I want them to or not (I usually don't want them to!). I'm not psychic, but I do tend to respond more to people's emotional states than to what they may be saying. I do sometimes have dreams that seem to reveal that my unconscious has been picking up on others' unspoken emotional states.

And I always thought I was easy to understand! Maybe only by other INFJs and by myself, though. Of course the part that may not fit with INFJ is that, no longer a pianist or actor, I still have a desire to perform. I'm not sure whether this falls under the category of extroverted or not, since performing for me involves intense focus and reaching a state I call "the zone" where time stands still and one is both communicating and retreating inside oneself. But everyone who knows me even a little bit would surely agree that I am not a "quiet leader" as INFJs are frequently described. I'm pretty outspoken, both a blurter and (on good days) a firebrand. Perhaps it's best not to give too much credence to Mmes Myers and Briggs, though it's fun like figuring out one's astrological signs. Speaking of which, I'm both a Piscean and a Fire Dragon, which seems contradictory to me. Hmpf. Go figure.

Take the test yourself: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/3076838567116464195/Brutally-Honest-Personality

Phew!

Can't . . . move . . . arms . . . anymore. And this even after hiring "Two Men and a Truck" (that's the moving company's name) to cart the heavy furniture on Monday. All that remains are books to unpack and pictures to hang.

Saffron has adapted quite well to the new place, lounging around on the floor, testing the stability of the dresser by jumping on top of it from the bed, sitting in the living room window at twilight and making tiny cackling noises at fireflies.

Here's a sneak peak at the interior as it stands now. Vintage dining table on its way.

I discovered a fig tree in the front garden with at least nine green nubby figs on it, hopefully more by the end of the summer. Yum and yay! There is also a little stream and water-fall fountain fed by a pump that meanders under the stone path leading up to the front, constructed by previous landscape designer tenants. My landlord has promised to set up the pump for me. In the picture to the left you can see a dark crevace near the center of the photo. That's where the stream runs under the flagstones. It then curves around to the left, behind the japanese maple, and continues down to a little stone pond. The pump sends it back up through the garden to the top.

One Day Left!

I'm sorry if I've been out of touch for the past week- I've been gradually moving into my new house. It's so wonderful having a car and moving somewhere so close to home. It's much easier than the last four moves I made over the past four years, changing countries each time. I've made five trips with the hatchback packed full of material goods. I did manage to weed out some things I do not need and will be donating to Habitat for Humanity, but I still have so much "stuff" I think Marx would cringe. Still, it's quite nice to have carted and unpacked the entire contents of my kitchen, bathroom, closets, wall and window hangings. I feel mostly moved in- the only things left are books and furniture and kitty things.

So now please permit me to wax rhapsodic about my new house. And to gush about spending money on beautiful things I don't really need that nonetheless make me very happy. It is beautiful- I had the dining room and the sun room painted and both turned out really well. The dining room is a deep slate blue (Benjamin Moore's "Evening Dove") which looks charcoal grey at night and twilight blue during the day. The sunroom is a velvety cocoa brown with purple undertones (Benjamin Moore's "Desert Shadows"). Both rooms are matte which I think makes the rooms seem bigger and the color deeper. I'm sort of focusing on the dining room first because it is the focal point of the house. It's in the center, between the living room and the kitchen. The bedroom, study and bathroom are down a little hallway off to the right of the dining room. But when you walk through the front door, you're in the living room and your eyes are drawn to the dining room, though you can see all the way back to the kitchen. I'm not going to post pictures until after the furniture arrives (tomorrow), but here's a photo of the funky chandelier I bought for the dining room. Try to imagine it hanging in a slate blue room, the poppy colored kitchen just visible behind it.


I have also gone on a vintage furniture hunt. Last year I found four bentwood chairs by Thonet. I just purchased the perfect Heywood Wakefield table to go with them (hooray for Craigslist).

So imagine, if you will, a slate blue dining room, the poppy kitchen behind, the chandelier to the right hanging from the ceiling, and blond wood dining table and chairs (with a darker patina) in a lovely simple mid-century modern style. Decorating obsessed? Who me? I tend to work best surrounded by beautiful surroundings. So I'm only doing this to enhance my overall creativity, of course.

Muse of Muse

Yes, the muse has to have her own muse. Er, mews. A regular florilegium is Saffron: She never fails to fully digest the flowers I bring home. Currently she has one cabriole paw curled over the top of the laptop screen and is winking down at me as I type.

PLD

Today I have PLD (Post London Depression). I don't know if it is brought on by the jet lag, or by the stifling heat of the Southern summer, or perhaps by the sheer emptiness of this place this time of year but it feels dead dead DEAD everywhere and I want to go back.

Thankfully I ought to have my hands full with packing and schlepping and moving. And writing. But for some reason I haven't schlepped or packed a single thing, and I've only written a few hundred words.

Maybe I'm experiencing urban withdrawal and need another week to adjust. Maybe I just miss my friends and don't know when I'll see them again. In any case, I'm sad and lonely and bored here, and I'm not due for another visit to Montreal until August.

Time to write the book. Because there's really nothing else to do.

Anglophilia

I've been in the UK for over a week now and have gotten completely assimilated. Life here would be lovely, temperate and blissful- If I only had twice as much money, or more. And didn't have to work. I'm currently in Oxford with my friends Dearest B and the evil twin, enjoying a much needed visit to planet academia with people I haven't seen in a year and a half. Soon I'll have tea and catch up with faustus. Apparently everyone is on facebook but me, where they throw sheep and soup at one another contentedly.

In London I've seen two Mozart operas, two shakespeare plays, and two early modern manuscripts at the British Library. I've also eaten the best curry in my life and some very good Turkish food, and encountered people who have actually heard of the university where I teach, which, in London and Oxford is a miracle in and of itself.

More proper blogging later, I just wanted to post a quick update and let everyone know all was well. Please send money.

London-Bound

I leave for London the day after tomorrow. At the moment I'm drawing up a research and writing plan: I need to figure out what to do with my first chapter, whether I want to toss it and rewrite it entirely with a new argument about the same old text, or whether there are salvageable bits; I need to finish researching and writing my final chapter.

But the reading rooms of the British library aren't open all night long and they're closed on Sundays. Plus it can take up to half a day to get the books I need and I can only look at manuscripts until 5pm.

So I'll have some time to do a little exploring. I've spent lots of time in London, but I always stayed out of the way in Crouch End with my family friends. This time I'll be in Bloomsbury. I don't feel as if I know London particularly well. It's so big. The only place in the UK I know really well is Oxford, and that's because I lived there for a year and then dated someone there for almost two years. But back to London: I'm planning on doing some London walks, and already have plans to see an Opera with my mom's best friend, visit family friends, catch up with Oxonians and catch Othello at the Globe. And a pilgrimage to Ormonde Jayne, my favorite perfumer, which has a tiny shop in the Royal Arcade between Albemarle and Old Bond street and makes otherwordly scents out of black hemlock and violet and coriander, and of course I'll hang out in Islington and the East End. But I was wondering if any of my loyal readers (do you still exist?) who have much more London knowledge than I do, might want to make some suggestions of places off the beaten path for me to explore whilst there. Am I missing anything great? What are your London secrets that you don't mind divulging? Where is the best curry? What's your favorite pub? Which parks are hidden and beautiful?

And the Livin' is Easy

So I've been traveling a little bit this summer. Immediately after grading I dropped everything and headed off to Montreal for a week. It was relaxing and, well, at least there were two days of good weather! I saw lots of old movies and plasticized corpses and I ate really well (the advantages of dating someone with a newfound cooking obsession) and generally had a very nice time.

I returned to get everything in order here before going to London for two weeks. No fun- research only. I keep saying this again and again hoping that maybe it will come true and I'll actually get a lot of work done there instead of spending a lot of money I don't exactly have at the moment and pubbing it every evening . . . I'm really looking forward to it though. Haven't been to the UK in a year and a half and I miss the green and pleasant land terribly, along with all my friends there. I've also got a large number of academic pals who will be in London and Oxford whilst I'm there, including my closest colleague friend, who will actually be staying in the same B&B as me. No fun- research only. No fun- research only.

Then I'll return June 20 and begin packing and carting my things over to The New House. Once I'm settled there, I'll divide my time between planting lovely things in the garden (roses, rosemary, lavender, thyme); hunting for mid-century modern furniture, and cranking out my manuscript in my office on campus. Probably mostly cranking in the office, hopefully not sans manuscript and articles.

Yee-Haw

Done with grading. The summer awaits. Not thinking about the book and the articles. Not thinking about the book. Maybe thinking a little about the articles. Mostly thinking about sleep.

House Love

Yeah, you know you want it. You feel the love. Rooms you want to paint in Benjamin Moore "Evening Sky" and "Incense Stick." Arts and Crafts furniture you want to purchase and place in the rooms. Rose bushes you want to plant outside the bedroom window. Ooh, baby. Feel the house love.

I'm moving there in two months. I sometimes stay awake at night decorating and redecorating the rooms, adding a back patio rose garden and purchasing countless imaginary kilims for the back sunroom at imaginary Ottoman bazaars (don't forget to bring me back some from Turkey, M&D! Just because I can't go to the wedding there doesn't mean I don't deserve kilims!).

Here's an old picture of it from last summer before it was painted (now it's light green with white trim). The previous tenants were landscape designers who practiced in front and on the sides of the house. They ran a little stream through the front like a brook that is really a pump-fountain. I can turn it on if I like. The backyard is huge and hilly and unfinished. I wonder how much it would cost to cover it with daffodils. In the living room there is a working fireplace with the original iron "summer door" which will keep out the drafts and birds and also the cat. I can burn logs there in the winter and roast marshmallows even.

I can't wait.

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

Some time early in the semester I was randomly contacted by William Niederkorn to complete an online survey about the "Shakespeare Authorship Question" in my teaching. I duly completed the survey and have just received a follow-up e-mail with a link to the survey's results in The New York Times.

It's not particularly interesting. 82% of us (295 randomly selected Shakespeare professors at colleges and universities) think the authorship question (did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?) is irrelevant to the study of the works, and only 6% thought there was a good reason for discussing it at all. 11% said that possibly there was good reason.

What bothers me is not the fact that this poll tells us what we already knew, but that the New York Times didn't really do or say anything new or thought-provoking with the survey. The article ends with an anonymous Shakespearean wishing more people were as interested in the plays as they were in the authorship question, evidently a sentiment most of us echoed in our responses.

But why do a survey like this anyway, if you're just going to conclude that "Professors believe in him"? The tin echo of the language of religious faith aside, what's the point? It would've been far more interesting to interview professors about their pedagogy and methodology- how do they teach Shakespeare to undergraduates? To graduates? The authorship question has never been taken seriously by most of us, but the stability of the body of work known as 'Shakespeare' has already been toppled by scholars of material textual studies, and that some 14 years ago.

Do we all combine history and research in our teaching? Do we talk about "the genius" of Shakespeare in our 100-level courses, push students to discover textual contradictions (perhaps put there by Shakespeare himself) in our upper-level undergraduate seminars, and then ask our graduate students to accept the fundamental instability of the material text and the consequent loss of 'Shakespearean' identity? Has anyone been able to present a consistent picture of Shakespeare scholarship to their students of all levels? I think we are constantly lifting 'Shakespeare' up and breaking him (or it) down in our teaching, and also in our scholarship. I would have liked the New York Times survey to have done something more with its assessment: It's not simply that most of us don't think the authorship question is relevant; it's that we're asking our students to engage with the text in (frequently contradictory) ways that will seem new and exciting to most armchair Shakespeareans. Shame on this article for not articulating that.

Stuff I Learned in English Class

It's that time of year again. The time when students write silly things in their papers and I feel guilty for pumping them full of insufficient and erroneous information.

Today I learned that:

"Raping women was common in medieval times. Men would frequently rape women as a means of expressing their power and demonstrating their dominance over women."

I also learned that:

"When I say romantic love, I mean a love that hits you like a brick wall when you first see someone."

More coming up . . .

Pick Yourself Up

This is my all-time favorite number from Swing Time (1936), my all-time favorite Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. And it is here, on Youtube (though you have to click on the box above twice and watch it on the Youtube site but it's worth it).

Why do I love it so much?

- Because Fred mischeviously pretends he doesn't know how to dance

- Because she's a terrible teacher

- Because when they finally dance it's like they just discovered that they speak the same language

- Because of the art deco dancing studio with the little white fence

- Because they make it seem so easy and so egalitarian

Poking my Head Up Briefly

I'm buried under a mountain of final papers and exams. Oh, about 90 of them by the end of the semester which is in about two weeks. I also have two students defending their MA theses this week and I only got the theses last week and weekend. When did MA theses become like dissertations? 153 pages, 4 chapters, a scholarly introduction and it will be longer when she adds all the footnotes she's missing. Oy, Gevalt!

Ok, that's enough for now. I must return to my little house built out of papers.

Postscript: Pseudonymous Cat

In a conversation last night at the hotel bar, another blogger asked me what my cat was called.

"Saffron," I replied.

"Oh, so it is Saffron," she said.

"Yes," I replied, looking at her quizzically.

Then we both laughed because of course she thought I might have come up with a blog pseudonym for the cat, the way we do for our friends, colleagues, partners and institutions.

"An Antic Blogsposition": On Playing a Part, Disguise, and Being Funny

I'm at a big important annual conference. And I am having a wondeful time.

Perhaps it's because I'm surrounded by Shakespeareans, but I'm thinking about plays and players today. One of the best things I've discovered about blogging anonymously (though most of my dear readers know I am much less anonymous than those blogs I love to read and support), is that it is rather like play acting. One takes on a new identity that permits a liberty of language and expression only associated with performance and with assuming a role. In the same way that Rosalind-as-Ganymede really begins to relish the rhetoric, wit, and play of her newfound pants role, and Hamlet is able to transcend class barriers by insulting Polonius and ceding the platea to the grave-digger's joke routine, blogging under a pseudonymous identity permits a certain freedom and jouissance.

Which makes me think about a discussion I had over lunch yesterday with a gentle and sage senior professor at a small obscure university who expressed such a delight for our profession that it momentarily humbled my vaulting ambition. We were talking about Shakespearean clowns. He laid out his theory that clowning and "clowniness" is transferrable from character to character on the Shakespearean stage. Wit is, in other words, infectious, and easily picked up by characters surrounding a clown. He cited Viola's playing with Feste in Act V of Twelfth Night and of course Hamlet and the Gravedigger.

Since I have been investigating the philological and cultural impact of "antic/antique" for some time, I brought up the connection that Margreta de Grazia makes between Hamlet's "antic disposition" and clowning, that to have an antic disposition means to play the fool on the Renaissance stage (and to play the medieval vice character on the Renaissance stage). He concurred with me very graciously.

But what my research on "antic/antique" has also uncovered is that "antic" frequently meant "disguised" in the Renaissance, so in many ways it's not just about clowning but also about the way an assumed identity allows for a freer circulation of wit, humor and social critique.

Which is precisely what pseudonymous blogging at its best is all about. And that is the reason why it has to continue. At the conference, I may or may not have privately "made discovery" of a number of pseudonymous bloggers I greatly respect and depend upon for their humorous critique and celebration of the profession. However whether this is true or fabricated, I shall vehemently refuse to "delate" on them. Also, if wit is indeed transferrable, perhaps some of it might rub off on me.

In order for the academic blogging community to survive, we need to maintain their antic dispositions: Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of our time. And they are also very funny.

Spring is Here

Spring arrived yesterday. There are blossoming trees, soft green grass and chartreuse buds everywhere creating a kind of green haze in the air. Or maybe that's just the pollen.

Spring Break was deliciously relaxing and fun, full of cooking, hiking in the nearby foothills, and watching Lubitsch, Godard, and Murnau. Although we learned that rabbit shouldn't be roasted, and that quick rising yeast is not the same as Fleischmann's instant, I still enjoyed the best Italian meatballs and tomato sauce made from scratch I've ever tasted, pulled off a pretty decent creme caramel, and our morning crepes outdid any crepe I've had in Montreal.

No matter how hard we looked, we couldn't find a "comfort station" of any kind near the parking lot on our second mountain hike/clamber unless you count the poorly stocked bathrooms and the 65 cent soda machine from 1981. We did, however, find some pretty amazing barbecue in a local joint furnished with an excellent jukebox playing the Orioles, and decorated throughout with vintage tin advertising signs including one very old and rusty sign for the emerging "Goody" aspirin brand that read: GOODY: "They are good."

After bidding farewell to my dear visitor - who didn't believe we had a "Billy Graham Parkway" until we were actually driving down it - I took off for the exhausting and disorienting (disorientating, for you brits) conference. I don't think there is anything that leaves one feeling quite so uprooted and repotted than taking off for a weekend of intense and heavy conferencing and returning to teach three classes and hold office hours Monday morning. I felt as if I'd stepped in to understudy an actor in an unfamiliar play at the last moment and had somehow lost the script.

Thankfully, the library book sale redeemed me at the end of the day. I purchased an old 50-volume set of seemingly randomly labeled literary "classics" that don't seem to be quite so canonical anymore for $10. What made the editors decide to follow Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" in with Vergil's Aeneid, and Vergil with Cervantes? For $5 I also got a possibly complete (lacking only "The Two Noble Kinsmen") Yale Shakespeare, adorable tiny faded blue clothbound editions of the plays and poems edited in the 30s. It's fun to see what earlier editors have done without explanation, but of course more fun to fill my mammoth floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Now my students will think I'm smart and educated.

RSA Annual Venting

This was quite possibly the poorest organized RSA conference I have ever attended. I was stuck out in the boonies near the Miami airport in one of two "overflow" hotels that somehow cost more than the rooms in the conference hotel, despite being farther away and very close to a major highway not to mention low flying planes. I may have depleted my cash supply in my current checking account simply to pay for the cab rides back and forth to the conference, and this even includes cab rides split between two and three people.

Then there was the difficulty of getting to the beach, the ash-strewn South Beach (or so I heard-- I never actually managed to see it) populated by loud, hormonally challenged undergraduates.

Yes, there was good food to be had in South Beach. There were also beautiful Art Deco hotels. And $12 mojitos, which were good, but not $12 good. It was also ridiculously noisy. Maybe I'm just getting too old for that sort of thing, but half the time I could barely hear what my friends were saying.

Most of my gripes have already been stated with more panache by my colleagues (collblogs?) over at Blogging the Renaissance, so I won't prolong the vent.

But I will say this: We Renaissance scholars are not generally a bunch of complainers. We usually neither cant nor rant. Ok, we do a lot of both, but when we go to conferences, we like to forget about all we have to cant and rant about. We like to stimulate our minds, share our work, and enjoy good food, good company, and good wine.

Most of us, when provided with some basic comforts, find this relatively easy to do. This year it was much more difficult. Because of this, I would like to propose that some changes be made for the safety of future RSA conferences:

1. Don't name panels silly things like "Perspectives on English Literature IV" and "New Technologies and Renaissance Studies I, II, III, IV and V: Exploring the online Archive"

2. Don't stick Stephen Greenblatt's panel in a tiny side room that seats 10.

3. Don't make us pay $3 for crappy Starbucks coffee and $1 for a teaspoon-sized muffin.

4. Don't make it impossible for us to print out our papers without paying $5 to use your crappy computers in the business center. Don't cut off my internet connection every three minutes, crappy airport hotel! I'm trying to write!

Needless to say, I doubt I'll be at RSA next year in Chicago and I'm sure SAA in San Diego can only be loads more fun. Or at least loads more comfortable. At least I think it may be so in Denmark . . .

Despite the monumentally crappy organization of this conference it was still nice to see my dearest scholarly friends and to make new ones. And I met those I'd wanted to meet, who turned out to be generous and kind and silly and fun. And I may have solved a little mystery I wondered about.

So it really wasn't so terrible. But 50% of the time, I really rather would have been at home with my cat.

Spring Break Woo-Hoo

It's "Spring Break Woo-Hoo!" The campus has entirely emptied out, and I've got plans for a much needed drink with three of my gal pals this evening.

So why am I still here, you might ask.

Well, my friends, I am still here because I have thirty Shakespeare midterms to grade and another thirty revised first papers to mark from my writing seminar. Those I don't have to return immediately after spring break, but I don't want them hanging over my head.

Yes, I am that good. I will stay in my office until all of the midterms are graded and most of the papers are re-marked. Then I will go out with my friends. Then I will go home and sleep, getting ready for The Big House Clean. I am soooooo good. Then I will have a visitor from the Great White North for a whole week when it will finally be "Spring Break Woo-Hoo." We plan to sample off-the-beaten-path barbecue, wander around the artsy-fartsy, hippie-dippie mountain town, and partake of that oh-so-forgotten-American-diversion, the drive-in.

Once More unto the Thirties

31 today. Officially into the Thirties. And a prime number. That has to be worth something.

It's been a good birthday. I don't know if it's because 1) I'm an only child with parents who miraculously are still together, 2) I'm just ridiculously optimistic sometimes against all odds, or 3) I'm self-centered and spoiled (refer back to 1) but in 31 years I've never had a bad birthday. Kinne hurra.

Today has been no exception. The wind and the rain raged last night, turning off the power and causing some trees to fall. But I awoke this morning to a cloudless blue sky and the sun glinting off tree branches laden with buds almost ready to open.

It is also Saffron's birthday today- she's 5. We celebrated at breakfast: I had a cupcake; she had salmon flavored hairball remedy.

In addition to Saffron, two of my closest friends share my birthday and one of them is my evil twin. We were born half an hour and 1500 miles apart on the 2nd of March, 1976. Both friends are brits and oxonians. Happy Birthday, you two! Maybe some day we'll spend our birthday drinking one another under the table in a pub in Jericho. I'll lose.

When I got to work and turned on my computer today I received another unexpected birthday gift: a letter from the university president. And no, I am not being sarcastic, which I normally would be. There is to be a salary increase. Remarkably, it will affect me, and may indeed be more than 10%:

"With regard to faculty increases, we must consider carefully those in the assistant professor ranks, where the greatest salary disparity exists between us and a group of peer institutions. I have encouraged the Dean to give special consideration to those departments whose salaries lag furthest from their peers at other institutions."

Yay, yay, YAY!

New Perspectives

We're almost all done with our tenure-track hiring in my department. We did pretty well-- we made four offers and three of our top choices accepted. The fourth one turned us down for a bigger research institution in a really cool city and who would blame her? We had another person out just this past week and the department split along generational lines for the first time. All the junior faculty and only two of the senior faculty voted overwhelmingly enthusiastically to offer this person a job. The remaining senior faculty had already made up their minds and refused to be swayed by our attempts at persuasion. It was kind of fascinating to me, because it marked the first time we were unable to reach a consensus as a department despite everyone's attempts to understand one another. It was as if we were speaking different languages: They could not understand why we were so excited about this person's scholarship, and we could not understand why they were not. It was the first time we really disagreed, and everyone-- both generational camps -- felt a bit morose at the end of the day. It's a good thing the weekend appeared to give us some distance and perspective. And in the end, we did really well. We managed to agree on our first four candidates and to get three out of four, three really phenomenally good scholars and teachers from the top universities and programs in the country. And it's kind of heartening to know that even though we couldn't see eye to eye on the last candidate, there was a general sense of sadness that this happened, rather than anger or resentment. I'm sure this kind of thing happens in every department, especially in one like mine at a school that is in the midst of redefining itself; it's a sign of the times.


This weekend I'm buried in fellowship applications for summer research and I've got to write my SAA paper and book flights to Miami and San Diego for conferences and New Orleans for a wedding. I also have to study the state driver's manual and get my state license. I've put it off for too long and my license expires next week. There was so much to do I felt a bit nauseated and overwhelmed yesterday. So instead of jumping in to it, I cleaned house. It was warmish so I opened the windows and aired it out. I vacummed and swiffered and laundered and scrubbed. I baked cornbread and made Assam tea. I bought a bunch of fresh parrot tulips, emptied them into a large mason jar and plopped it on the dining room table. And I rearranged the furniture in my living room. Which is possibly the best thing I could have done because it feels fresh and new and has given me a subtly revised perspective. I now have to orient myself in this space in a different way. It's oddly mind-opening. After all the cleaning and re-organizing I was finally able to sit down with a clear head and pound out my research proposals without feeling a single palpitation or stomach somersault.

The daffodils are up and it's raining which is turning all the tree-trunks and limbs green-brown. The power just went out on my block so I've lit candles. It smells like cocoa, tuberose, red amber, and lemon basil. Spring break is in two weeks and my birthday is in six days.

Lagging behind in blogging

Dear Readers,

I'm sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I'm tired. Exhausted, in fact. I've got over 60 students this semester (no, those of you at big research institutions are not allowed to mock me with your laughter-- you don't have to mark 32 "composition" papers every other week, composed by students with little command of English). I'm teaching three days a week, and on the off days I'm required to attend all these job talks, lunches, dinners, and interviews with our job candidates (three searches) as they plough through their campus visits.

Time for my own work, you ask? Ha! The best I can get in is a stolen hour here and there in my office between classes and meeting with students. But it's better than nothing, I suppose.

End of sob story. I'm not asking you to pity me; I'm just explaining why I haven't had much time or energy to blog.

March and April will be full of conferences and a wedding, all in warmer climes. Summer will hopefully follow with trips to London and Montreal, and maybe a move to a new abode -- a craftsman style cottage with a beautiful garden I've been coveting since my friend moved there. Now she's got a job at an Ivy, so the house will be vacant in June. I know my current apartment is no hovel, but it's rather isolated and the place I want is near the Art School and a beautiful park. It's also got a wrap around porch, jewel-toned rooms, and a working fireplace with an original antique iron door (useful against adventurous kitties).

A Charmed Life

Sometimes I think I'm leading a bit of a charmed life (poo! poo!-- that's me spitting over my shoulder to avert the evil eye. I'm also rubbing my blue eye bead and muttering kinne hurra and im sh'allah).

I recently made the hour and a half drive to Prestigious Research Institution to attend a mini-conference. There were a number of well known invited speakers, including one of my former dissertation advisors. Although I wasn't greatly inspired by any of the talks, I miraculously managed to relax and have a nice time. And for the first time I wasn't nervous about making a good impression-- in part because I was so exhausted from the week before, teaching 3 classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and courting and evaluating three job candidates (with 3-5 more to go), not to mention reviewing all their materials.

Lunch involved trading silly stories and going for a walk with senior scholars who have majorly influenced my field. They were all very easy-going and kind.

After the closing reception, I began to say my goodbyes but suddenly found myself pulled along to dinner-- a catered dinner in a private room in a very fancy restaurant, arranged just for the occasion of the conference. It wasn't until the pause between the second and third courses (chicken breast poached with squash and currants and flourless tea-scented chocolate cake with meyer lemon ice cream), and long after the appetizer (lobster and white bean soup), that I suddenly realized I was the only person at the table who hadn't been invited to give a talk or chair a panel. I was also the youngest, but that probably doesn't matter.

The main thing was that somehow or other these good people opened their arms (and their restaurant) to let me in. And I didn't plan for it. But now I've got some new friends and colleagues at Prestitgious Research Institution, and equally important, an active community of early modernist scholars with which to correspond and share work.

I spent the remainder of the weekend with a good friend who lives nearby and works in medicine at Important State Research Institution. We wandered around the charming college town and she took me to her favorite coffee house, which has a glassed-in terrance and sits in the middle of an overgrown garden. And there I ran in to an old accquaintence from grad school who has been teaching at Important State for three years and loves it and loves the area. It was serendipitous (I'd forgotten he was there) and delightful. I felt as if I could finally breathe.

Clapping Baptists

A small anecdote about Life in the South.

A friend of mine here was dating a local boy this past fall. One evening, as they walked along a relatively quiet downtown street, they stopped to kiss.

A large white van drove by and the people inside of it made a loud noise clapping their hands together sharply: "Smack! smack! smack!" The people in the van stared straight ahead but continued to rap their disapproving palms together, jolting my friend and her local boy out of their embrace.

My friend asked the local boy what on earth had happened.

"Oh, they're probably just ______ Baptists," he replied. (She couldn't remember what kind of Baptists he said they were).

Welcome to the South. Where your romantic moments might once in a while be disrupted by Clapping Baptists.

Job Candidates

I haven't been posting very frequently because we are inundated with visiting job candidates this semester. Two searches, and we are hoping to hire two of each, so really four searches.

It's interesting sitting on the other side. Not so long ago I was a job candidate, trying not to appear nervous fielding questions, trying to precariously balance professional expertise with deference and modesty and passionate interest, when all I could think about was how desperately I needed a job.

So far we've had three candidates visit. They've all been brilliant. They are all talented and professional and generous and all of them had the most amazing letters of recommendation from the top scholars in their fields, possibly the top scholars in THE ENTIRE WORLD. In a word, I was jealous.

And I know it's silly because they are coming here because (I think) they want a job here. And I already have a job here.

But I'm still struggling with getting my own work done let alone getting it published, and I'm still struggling with a department in flux that seems to be losing and gaining people right and left, and I'm coming down with a cold and missing people who are all over the world anywhere but here, so forgive me if I'm not thrilled that the next few job candidates got articles published in Representations as graduate students.

The Best Kind of Motivation

So today I was just sitting on my ass, drinking tea and reading the Sunday Times, when I decided to check my e-mail.

And in it was a message from a scholar I'll call Primary Influence, with whom I correspond rather less frequently than I'd like. It should be more frequently, and that is my fault-- she's incredibly warm and inspiring and has always taken an interest in my work.

She wanted to know where my Quixotic Old Warrior article was being published, so that she could cite it in a book chapter that explores many of the same issues.

This prompted me to spend the next five hours fine-tuning the piece to send out again this week. I'd done some work on it last semester and then basically put it aside, too fearful to take it out and risk rejection yet again. But suddenly my lost enthusiasm and focus returned with this lovely e-mail.

And so I wrote back to her right away. And for the rest of the afternoon, we e-mailed back and forth as I edited The Don, polishing his armor and readying him for battle once more.

I've got to get it published, otherwise I'll be footnoted in three pieces before any of my own work is out! I mean, I guess she could just footnote the dissertation, but it would be so cool if my first important piece were footnoted in Primary Influence's Next Great Book. Then I wouldn't have to hem and haw as much when people asked me how my work differed from hers (this was what Dream Job That Got Away asked me at my MLA interview two years ago).

Teach-blogging

First day back! It's a very jolly department. The sun is out. It's a bit chilly compared to the apocalyptic weather we've been having (trees in bloom, crocuses and daffodils up. Yes, spring comes early to the South. No, not this early).

In between classes. Two sections of writing and one big Shakespeare, this semester. Shakespeare went well, even though I was nervous. When the students introduced themselves, I discovered they were a very sophisticated bunch. At least 10 had just returned from a semester abroad in London, Dijon, Paris, Rome. They are also the best dressed group of students I've seen on this all too preppy campus. After class, a student in a mod all black ensemble complete with booties and maroon dyed hair came up and complimented me on my Katherine Hepburn widelegged trousers. Apparently she has the same pair. I don't know whether to be flattered or intimidated. Hopefully my knowledge of Renaissance scholarship will make up for the fact that my students have surpassed me sartorially.

Off to teach a writing course organized around fairy tales.

Bonne Annee

Some Highlights of my vacation in Montreal:

New Years Eve. I made another Pear tarte tatin, wore my red silk Marc Jacobs dress ($31.95 on Ebay!), played celebrity heads, got deliciously tipsy on Asti and Rum Toddies, and got kissed.

Wandering through Chinatown and discovering a tiny interactive art gallery.

The “brainball” game in said interactive art gallery: two players sit opposite one another across a table. They affix metal sensors to their foreheads and attempt to beat one another at being relaxed and lowering their brain activity. On the table, a little ball moves back and forth across a track, scoring a goal on the opponent’s side if and only if you manage to relax your mind enough to let it go. Another exhibit was a little bar rigged up with a cup on a conveyor belt programmed to fix a drink based on one’s brainwave function. Apparently I was thinking too much because the minute I attached the sensors to my forehead the cup made a beeline for the Cointreau.

Julie Taymor’s “Magic Flute” live from the Met on a movie screen for the first time in broadcast history.

St. Viateur bagels, coffee from Little Italy, Marche Jean Talon, tagines, tea, Truffaut and von Sternberg, a cuddly cat, Sleeping In, Reading all afternoon, abundant freudian slips and a crazy man with long shaggy hair wearing a mink coat, gesticulating with an umbrella and shouting at the top of his lungs on New Year’s Day.

Onward and Upward

I finished my grading yesterday at 5:22pm (only 22 min. late) and dutifully entered my grades online (O brave new world).

I'm done! I'm done! I'm done!

Now all I've got left: one letter of recommendation and two articles to send out.

One of the articles reminds me of an old warrior I'm sending out to battle for the fourth time. He's got a limp, a cripped left arm, and is creased with scars from previous battles, but his spirit is high and his heart is true. Please, someone, give him a home in a distinguished scholarly journal. It is the last wish of his old age. Don't make him tilt another windmill. He's also bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the one who keeps getting his limbs chopped off but defiantly won't give in: "I'm invincible!"

The trouble is that I know this is probably my best piece of work to date: It got me a job and a postdoc and important connections. But because it has inspired such vehemently mixed reactions (I love it! I detest it!) it has been rejected three times already, twice with no explanation or readers reports. Thus I'm a bit scared to send it out again. If you reject him once more, at least send him home on his shield.

Tomorrow I leave for "God's Country" in the midwest. I haven't been home in 6 months so it will be good to see everyone again. My parents throw a big party on Dec. 25th for all the non-Christians in town. It's called "Our thing on the 25th." It's become a big deal because it is the only event of its kind in town, so the house is completely packed with people and we usually run out of bagels and lox and wine early on. I haven't been home on the 25th for three years (because of MLA) so it will be good to catch up with people, though I hope they don't notice how much weight I've gained since grad school (I was pretty emaciated from 2003-2005).

Then I'm back here for three days to recuperate. Then I'm off to Montreal where I will happily spend the first two weeks of the New Year. I can't wait.

A Professor's Complaint

With apologies to Shakespeare . . .

From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sist'ring vale
My spirits t'attend this double voice accorded
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle Prof full pale,
Tearing of Papers, breaking pens atwain,
Storming her world with marking's wind and rain

Upon her head a beret black of wool
Which fortified her visage from the cold
Whereon the thought might think sometime it held
The carcass of her manuscript, growing mold
Time had not scythed all the semester had begun
Nor work all quit; but spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some energy peeped through lattice of seared age

Oft did she heave her papers to her eyne.
Which on them had conceited characters,
Laund'ring the mismatched figures in the brine
That seasoned woe had pelleted in ink
And often writing "why" and "what do you think?"
As often scribbling undistinguished woe
In phrasings of all size, both high and low.

Okay, I realize that some of you might not recognize the first three stanzas of Shakespeare's poem "A Lover's Complaint," even without my horrid emendations. Because not many people read it anymore. Which is a shame. Because it's actually quite interesting for a complaint poem. I'm particularly fond of it because the language is so dark and dissembling. It's also a great parody/one-upping of Spenser. But yes, grading is hell. And grades are due the day after tomorrow. Chappy Chanukah everyone.

Success!

Good lord, I had no idea tarte tatin was this easy. I used my cast iron skillet.

Everyone is welcome to a virtual bite, with or without creme fraiche.

The tea party was a delight. I relaxed and had a fine time. Could this be the beginning of a new era?

It did help that my guests numbered in the single digits (8). I think I can do tea. Maybe I'll be able to work up to an intimate soiree. Baby steps.

Happy Birthday Milton

Now we are 398.

Happy Miltonmass, everyone.

One of the professors I worked with last year on my postdoc (a Miltonist) holds an annual party in honor of Milton's birthday instead of a Christmas party. It takes place in her gorgeous Victorian in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal, around the corner from the all night bagel shops, where you're likely to encounter frum housewives wearing headscarves, groups of yeshiva students in streumels, Portuguese hipsters, and university professors all on one block.

Students and faculty and the local used bookstore owners attend. There's usually a birthday cake for Milton, and everyone gathers around the piano and sings carrols. In the front hall the boots and slush pile up, and people wander around in their socks or in nicer shoes that they bring along in plastic bags. The compulsively obedient border collie trots from room to room, checking up on everyone, whimpering and whirling when another guest walks in the front door. It's cold and wet outside, but warm, bright and jolly inside. Everyone gets drunk and can't stop hugging everyone else goodnight.

I've always wanted to be the kind of professor that throws parties like this. But whenever I throw a party I spend too much time worrying.

It didn't used to be like this: during my year at Oxford I had people over constantly, cooked up a storm. Dinner parties in grad school were haphazard and fun. Then things seemed to deteriorate. The first party I threw post grad school was mediocre: too large for a dinner party and too small for a party. By the time the last of us found ourselves stuck in an entirely un-engrossing conversation about drywall I knew it was time to shoo everyone out the door.

The next time I tried too hard. I burnt the fiddleheads for the morel risotto, filling the kitchen with smoke. When my guests arrived (coughing), the risotto wasn't done, so they took turns helping me stir while I wrung my hands and paced from room to room. Then I accidentally froze the creme brulees and had to put them back in the oven which for some reason turned the caramelized tops a crestfallen shade of gray. As I took them out of the oven, one of them was so disgusted with my attempt at french cuisine that it abandoned ship, skidding off the tray and sacrificing itself on the kitchen floor. Meanwhile I'd invited a guy I'd fancied who didn't return the sentiment but couldn't figure out how to break it to me. I contemplated telling him it was okay, but my attempts at semaphore went unnoticed. It was months before I could have people over again.

The only party that was not an entire flop happened at the end of the summer. And I had help. Still, I fretted. Of course it was ok. No one got into a fist fight, there were no awkward silences, no one ended up having to sit in the corner. We invaded the backyard patio belonging to my landlords and sat outside in the candlelight. It was difficult to get folks to leave, actually, because I think some of the people were having a very good time. But a very good time has a price: After the last person departed the two of us left passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Which brings us to December, 2006. I can't seem to have parties on my own. I need someone to pry the vacuum cleaner from my shaking hands at 1am the night before the party when I'm terrified that my allergic friends won't be able to breathe, or that my fastidious friends will frown at the giant dustbunnies snuggling together under the bed.

Tomorrow I'm having 8 or 9 friends and colleagues over for tea. I went to Whole Foods, got some interesting cheeses. And I'm going to try my hand at a pear tarte tatin. I purchased ready-made puff pastry so I won't do it all from scratch. I've vacuumed and dusted, but I'm not going to mop or polish the bathroom sink. I think this is a nice compromise. Fingers crossed.

Maira Kalman Day

The first Wednesday of every month is Maira Kalman Day. That's when the writer and illustrator Maira Kalman publishes her blog, The Principles of Uncertainty, on the New York Times website.

Kalman has written and illustrated a number of children's books, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," and produced some very famous New Yorker covers and back pages, including "Newyorkistan," and "Ask Your Doctor," a made-up list of new drugs that I remember reading aloud to my adorable mildly hypochondriac parents, laughing until we could barely breathe. She is also a professor of desgin at the School of the Visual Arts in New York.

Her blog is out of this world. Or rather, very much in this world, in an ethereal, tragicomic way. She makes me miss New York and Paris. She makes New York and Paris more beautiful even than they are.

And she has fabulous hats.

We should all be so lucky.

The Cat is Too Smart for Her Own Good

It's about half an hour before "kitten dinner" time. Saffron's started meowing and probably won't let up until I feed her.

Two seconds ago she ran up to the Grape Ivy plant, stood on her hind legs and took a large bite out of it, munching vigorously and loudly, purring as she munched. Then, still munching, still on her hind legs, she turned around and looked squarely at me, her mouth full of leaves. Still staring hard at me, she uttered a plaintive, muffled, questioning mew.

A berating mew that seemed to say, "See how your Great Neglect has forced me, a poor, starving, helpless animal, to forage for my dinner like a savage beast in the forest?" A mew that concluded, "If you don't feed me This Instant, I will mangle your plants and vomit all over your beautiful Turkish carpet."

Of course there is nothing I can do but feed her.

Of course she knows it.

Huzzah!

I taught my last classes of the semester on Thursday: Huzzah!

I am now free until 17 January. Free to work on my own articles, fellowship applications and manuscript, free to read what suits me, free to sleep past 8am, free to take a while to respond to e-mails. And I'm not going to MLA, so free to Not Be Anxious Dec. 27-30: Huzzah!

I love my new car. Thanks to some excellent family bargaining, I managed to get the fancy, souped up Impreza for close to the same price as the no-frills version. So now I am the proud owner of a Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. With a tremendous sound system, satellite radio, automatic climate control, ipod jack, four wheel drive. If I wanted to, I could even drive up to "God's Country" (Midwestern Family Seat) and Canada this winter instead of flying, though it would probably even out in gas and motel costs. I'm already fantasizing about road trips this summer. My first longish drive will be Friday, when I drive east to Big Fancy Research Institution's Medieval-Renaissance Seminar to hear a talk on Islam in the Renaissance. Maybe if I ask one of my "Look at Me!" questions I'll get noticed like I did at SAA and then they'll invite me to present or collaborate with them. (Oh come on, a girl can dream). I'm so excited. Mobility and comfort are beautiful things: Huzzah!

And I've been added to the Graduate Faculty here, so I can be a reader on two Masters Thesis committees. Both are smart, talented young women writing about Renaissance drama. One single-handedly created the Early Modern Reading group. The other is applying to a number of very good Ph.D. programs: Huzzah!

Practicality Rules

So as much as I love the Prius, I've decided to buy an Impreza.

At my salary, my very new salary, my very young salary, my "lowest paid assistant professor in the state salary," it makes more sense to buy the cheaper car that gets better highway mileage. That way I can drive up to the big fancy research institutions more easily, and probably pay off this car in 3 years.

I do still want a Prius. But I think it would be better for me to wait and get one when I have more money.

But the good part of it is that I think a Prius will join my family-- after the test drive my father was really impressed! So although there may not be a Prius in muse's future, there may be a Prius in muse's family, which muse would get to drive now and then.

Thanks for all your suggestions and recommendations. The Mazda 3 was also a great car, but the Subaru has four wheel drive.

A Banquet of Words

In which your writer, who had the last word in the comments section of her last post, is spoon fed her words on a silver plate.

Make that a battery-powered, digitalized 60 mpg-in-the-city plate.

Yes, I test-drove a Prius yesterday. And it was FABULOUS. You just press a button and it goes. You press another button to put it in park. It has a little LCD screen that runs the whole thing. When you stop it is entirely silent. Whenever you drive under 15 mph, you can't feel it moving at all. It's the battery. And the digital positioning instead of gear shifting.

Yes, it is about $5000 more than I really wanted to spend, but a large part of it is tax deductible. And broken down, it would only cost me about $50 more per month for an extra year (5 instead of 4) to do it.

And I'd easily make that up in money I saved at the gas station. 51-59 mpg in the city! Imagine going to the gas station half as often. I can't.

I also tried the Subaru Impreza, which was a bit more Imprezzive than the Mazda 3, I found, and only about $2000 more. It has four wheel drive where the Mazda 3 doesn't (and the Mazda 3 doesn't even have Electronic Stability Control, I think). Not that I need to worry about that here in the South, but what if I wanted to drive up north to see my family in the midwest? Or further north just for the fun of it?

Tomorrow I shall test drive the Mazda 3, but I do think I've narrowed it down to the Imprezzive and the Priapus.

Car Fancy

I'm in the market for a new car.

Having bashed up the old vehicle (I'll call her Ingrid) rather too much, my insurance guys are telling me to take the check and not look back. Ingrid was old and perhaps not that trustworthy. She had a nice life but needs too many repairs for it to be worth either my while or the insurance company's while. They've bought her from me and will fix her up and sell her on their own.

Yes, this is what we call "totalling" the car.

No, I wasn't hurt nor was there much damage. Ingrid just happens to be very old, very Swedish, and very expensive to fix.

So I'm buying a new car. And suddenly I'm taking an interest in cars, seeing as I thoroughly depend upon one now to get me really anywhere in this town. I'm looking for a small hatchback with good gas mileage. Hatchback so's I can fill it with all the cheap, "previously owned" vintage and antique furniture I want.

I've pretty much narrowed the search down to the Mazda 3 and the Subaru Impreza, but if anyone has any suggestions or opinions, please do post here and let me know.

I had originally wanted a Honda Civic, a nice, dependable little sedan with the highest mpg and safety ratings on the market. My friend Nick calls it "The Assistant Professor Car." But the Civic doesn't have a 4 door hatchback, only a 2 door one. Which wouldn't be able to carry precious antiques. Then I thought about the Toyota Matrix. My parents have one. My dad calls it "The Mattress." But he complains about its lack of horsepower. And it's a bit too expensive. So I don't think I'll get a mattress. I'd rather have a car.

I have this amazing senior colleague who knows everything there is to know about cars. She's a little obsessed. It's kind of cute. She's obsessed with Renaissance drama and cars. Anyway, she thinks Subarus might be a bit pricey to repair. She seems to be rooting for the Mazda 3.

My cousin here in the South seems to think I should get the Impreza. Both his daughters drive them, and apparently his neighborhood is "The Subaru Capital of the World" so I might be able to get a good deal there.

I'm going to test drive both models and maybe a couple of others next week (the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving). I've never done this before. Anything I should look out for? What should I do on the test drive? Where should I take it? Will there be a salesperson with me pitching the car the length of the ride? I loathe salespeople. I don't want to "give poor Gil a break." I just want a car.

Bare Quires

Last time I checked, it was still fall here. How bizarre! It's 71 degrees outside, the trees are flaming like drag queens, and students are trudging across the quad in tee-shirts and flip-flops. And the only "bare, ruined quier" I behold is the blank document on my laptop screen. (Check out Flavia's excellent post on "that time of year thou mayst in me behold").

I'm getting a little antsy at all this pleasant weather. Somehow it doesn't feel at all close to the end of the semester to me, because I'm not chilled to the bone. It's disconcerting. It's making it hard for me to write.

More importantly, how can I wear my new lofty merino wool funnel neck and my duffel coat with the red beret if it's 71 degrees outside? How can I feel remotely academic without a turtleneck and a steaming mug of tea? I need the cold to make me stay inside and write for hours on end. As it is, I can't sit still for more than 40 minutes at a time. I keep jumping up and running outside into the sunshine.

Anyone can take this Quiz

(Thanks to Jonathan on Superbon!).

How Canadian are you?

Like Jonathan, I scored a whopping 91%. Which means that all true Canadians must score something like 400% (it's a really easy quiz).

I think I lost the 9% because I refused to order pizza from Tim Horton's. There are just some things one does not do.

http://www.gotoquiz.com/how_canadian_are_you_1

Time Keeping

There are only 5 more teaching days left in my semester.

I can't believe it.

It happened so fast.

And today, for some strange reason, it's 81/30 degrees outside. Some of the trees have lost their leaves. Others are golden, rust, and pale celery. A lot of them will stay green year round.

It's kind of shocking to think that in 3 and a half weeks I'll be done with the semester.

Then I've got December and half of January to work on sending out essay number three and an anthology proposal, as well as writing and editing my ever-changing book manuscript.


December also witnesses my trimuphal return to the Midwest, to see my totally amazing and wonderful parents and their totally amazing and rather excitable dog. And I shall catch up with all my family friends and maybe even my very oldest friend.

I'm excited about New Years' too, which I get to spend in one of my favourite cities, with clever and delightful people and the Second Most Clever and Delightful Cat (aka "Trouble"). It will be 20 Below but I Won't Care. I seem to be into capitalization At the Moment.

I just have to get through the next three and a half weeks. Teach my classes, mark my essays, buy a new car, pay my bills, and drive safely.

Fall Color

Today I did some exploring.











And a mysterious package arrived.
It was from Tashkent.











It was a lovely day for a walk.
We went all the way up to the top.

We were very careful.

The colors were beautiful for November.

There was even a waterfall.


And inside the package were more colorful things.

Commonplace Blog

I can't think of anything original to say. My brain is exhausted. I have too much work to do between now and Thanksgiving and the end of the semester.

Instead I've decided to make this into an online commonplace book until I can think of something more interesting to write about.

Last weekend I found myself leafing through a poetry anthology. It was fun.

Here are two old favorites, both of which do much with the traditional 14-line sonnet, not only formally but also in their use of light/dark imagery. Though different in subject, I still like to think they're talking to one another.

Milton, Sonnet IXX

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask; But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

Millay, Sonnet VII, from Second April

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause; and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.

On Eating

How far would you travel to taste the food of the gods?

It wasn't just the warm interior of the little restaurant nestled on a dark anonymous corner. Not the shiny tin ceiling, the full, animated room, the twinkly lights or the mirrored walls. It wasn't the wooden tables and chairs, and it wasn't the no-nonsense dinner ware, the flushed faces of the servers. It wasn't the open kitchen or the blackboard. Or the cold outside. It wasn't smiles on faces, or the excitement of dressing up.

It was the cloud-like foie gras and the sharp sweet wine-cassis reduction on the (almost raw) venison and the crispy tendrils of shaved leeks everywhere and the simplicity of the brasied lamb which was humbly named after a mouse and the bitter darkness of chocolate and sorbets too intense to describe in terms other than platonic because they captured something essential about fruit, something that made all other fruits seem like so many shadows.

I remember little of the conversation. I do remember that we nearly forgot our coats.

The Paradise Lost Teaching Chronicles, Part II

Is this more likely to happen in the South? I wonder if any one else has had a similar reaction:

Today we began with Satan out of Hell and approaching Eden, the beginning of Book IV.

A lot of students were really moved by his opening speech, where he seems to have come to some pretty profound self knowledge and is aware of his mistake and his eternal burden. It's the one where Hell is redefined as something Satan carries with him, as well as his distance from God (similar to Mephistophelis' definition of Hell in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus).

We began to talk about how Satan becomes more human, more sympathetic in this book, and how we begin to appreciate the view from his perspective.

I had one student who resisted sympathizing with Satan.

This student contended that, as pure evil, Satan is just deceiving us, getting us on his side so that he can win; his remorse is false. An interesting perspective, I acknowledged, and since Milton's text loves reversals, this seems like a possibility. But when I asked her to support this idea with textual evidence from the passage, she faltered, even though she's an excellent reader, very good at using the text to back her claims.

And yet she refused to see it any other way. So in response I stressed that perhaps as PL is a prequel to both Genesis and Christianity, it's also a prequel to the creation of Good and Evil, and that it might be a narrative about how Satan becomes the Prince of Lies, rather than assumes that he's always embodied some essential evil quality. The student seemed unwilling to accept this interpretation too.

I can't quite figure out why this student kept insisting that Satan's grief and remorse were false, but I could tell that she was struggling to resist the urge to sympathize with him, and I liked that she wanted to try to see things a different way. And then I wondered if maybe it had something to do with fundamentalist or evangelical christian belief. In other words, I wondered whether my student was afraid to weep with Satan, that the devil might make an entrance if she did.

And and then I became afraid-- that I'm stereotyping my devout Christian students too much.

Maybe she was just trying to get on top of the reading which is already full of reversals. Maybe she was just trying to play "devil's advocate" with the devil's advocate. And in this sense, she was probably thinking more like Milton than anyone else.

Just Procrastinating

I still have about 16 more papers to mark, another course to prep, and a gazillion meetings this week before I can relax. I've insanely offered my house as the spot of the next Renaissance Reading Group meeting, which will happen over dinner tomorrow night. The Renaissance Reading group here is made up of MA students and talented undergrads and it was basically created because the students in my senior colleague's class just didn't want it to end.

So I'm opening my house up to students, before I've even opened it up to friends. Crazy, I know. Then there are departmental meetings, a trip to the Rare Books Room with my Renaissance poetry students, and more papers to hand back on Thursday.

I should be doing all of this without a break, but I can't, so instead I took off half an hour to blog and read the new york times.

In the yesterday's times, I found this expose of Montreal. It was pretty much on the mark for what to do as a rich, boring tourist in the city (shopping and eating), though it recommended cylcling in the wrong direction on the Lachine canal and named a lot of the big cliche places to eat like L'Express when everyone knows the smaller "m'as tu vu" places on the side streets are better. But I'm not telling which ones are best. Go find your own.

However, it also said this, which made me snort and almost spill my tea: "With the city’s debilitating 1990’s recession behind it—and the specter of Québécois secession all but forgotten — a lively patchwork of gleaming skyscrapers, bohemian enclaves and high-gloss hideaways now outshines the city’s gritty industrial past." I think a whole lot of people would disagree with that statement about "the specter of Quebecois secession all but forgotten." And what's wrong with a "gritty industrial past" anyway?

For some reason I'm glad it got a lot of Montreal wrong. I'd rather the best things about Montreal remain the purlieux of the cognoscenti. And that's why I'm Not Telling.

This made me laugh, then sigh

One of my newest bourgeois indulgences on the weekends is looking at catalogues. It's a luxury in which we truly middle class citizens have the right to indulge, and I intend to make the most of it, especially whilst I still have a house to furnish. One of my favorites is the Sundance Catalogue. Yes, it's that Sundance, Robert Redford's estate, company, independent film institute, and the location of the annual film festival. The goods are overpriced but the aesthetic is wabi-sabi, weather beaten, environmentally sound, water washed antique. My kind of thing, if I could afford it.

Yet paging through their catalogue today I noticed something strange and oddly nauseating. The rhetoric has changed. Suddenly it seems they're courting conservatives. It's obviously a marketing decision. But it annoys me because it sounds like even Sundance, the most liberal of wealthy liberal outfits, previously prone to wearing its green, ecologically sound, fair trade heart on its sleeve, suddenly buys in to this bogus notion that we're all becoming more conservative. This is mostly bullshit and continuing to pander to the ignorant like this will only make it worse.

Here's what made me laugh. The description of the Hemp Rug. Just so you don't start freaking out about Hemp and marijuana, you patriotic conservative:

"When the Founding Fathers encouraged colonial Americans to grow hemp, they were on to something. Strong but soft, thick yet pliant, naturally long-wearing and environmentally sound, hemp meets or beats competing fibers any day of the week, year after year after year. Ours is organically grown and woven by hand, like George Washington's. Natural materials and handcrafting make each piece unique, and sizes may vary slightly. Imported. 2' x 3', 2 1/2' x 8', 3' x 5', 4' x 6', 6' x 9', and 8 1/2' x 11'. Additional shipping $10.

hemp rug #40273 $40.00 - $500.00"

That's right. For only $500 you too can have a dining room rug similar to the one that George Washington had! And I bet you didn't know that the Founding Fathers encouraged early Americans to grow hemp. And to be organic farmers too! Well, if the Founding Fathers did so, it can't be all about crazy hippie liberals now can it?

But the best part comes at the end of the description: "Imported."

Incidentally, you may not have known that George Washington was actually all that and more.

Freudian Slip of the Day, Week, Month, Year

Scene: My British Literature survey class. I'm having the class go around the room reading Satan's elegaic speech to the fallen angels on the lake ("Fairwell happy fields / Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail / Infernal world").

One of my students, perhaps going a bit too fast reads this:

"And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy New Professor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time!"

The poor kid was pretty embarassed. But after I assured him that as a New Professor I wasn't the least offended, was really quite flattered, he seemed to relax.

It was hard to keep a straight face. It's nice to know I'm on their minds, even if it is in connection with hell.

I kept comparing Charles I to George W. Bush in class today, though not in so many words. I said "Here is a ruler who wants to make his own rules, who ignores the views of Parliament when they disagree with him. Here is someone whose power is out of control." I couldn't tell if more than two of them noticed.

Où est Charlie?

When I lived in Montreal not so long ago, I kept seeing these odd Where's Waldo posters in the Métro, only in French they bore a large silhouette of Waldo and the subtitle Où est Charlie? Which is very funny because without the aliteration and the busy scene hiding the tiny guy in the striped shirt, Where's Waldo completely loses what weak appeal it may have held. (As a toddler I much preferred Anno's Counting Book: Yes even at 2 I was a literary snob).

Nevertheless, I've been having several Où est Charlie moments over the past few days. I wake up and I can't find the cat. Or else I'll be sitting on the couch marking papers and the cat has disappeared. I call for her in every room, check at the bottom of the stairwell, peek in all the closets, search behind the plants, prod the plexiglass in the fireplace. And while I'm doing this she wanders silently and sleepily into the living room so I can't really tell where she's come from.

This evening I figured it out. Here's proof. Où est Saffron? You can hide, but you can't hide.

Damn you, A.O. Scott

I really didn't want this movie to be any good. And I certainly didn't want you to like it. There are so many things wrong with turning Marie Antoinette into a teenage rockstar, especially in this day and age. And I can't figure out which is more incongruous: Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI or Rip Torn as his father.

And although I liked Lost in Translation well enough, it seems like Sofia Coppola's films are always over-hyped, which can only lead to disappointment ("so this is this great film everyone was raving about?) or an intense scrutiny on the part of the viewer, to the detriment of his or her pleasure ("Is this really all that great? What makes this great and not just sort of interesting? Is it great because it's a little boring? Are we supposed to be listless like the characters?)

But . . .

But . . .

The pointy satin shoes, the Laduree macarons, the the the . . . petticoats.

I have to see this film. So Sophia Coppola's no Max Ophuls. We've established that. Is it possible she's actually done something right this time, and made a film that it is a pleasure to watch? I'll have to let you know.

A.O. Scott reviews Marie Antoinette

Oh, the Innocence of Youth

I seem to have been gushing perhaps a bit too much about the intellectual maturity of the students in my upper level Renaissance poetry seminar. Let me rephrase that . . .

They may be able to think and articulate fairly complex ideas. They may be comfortable talking about sex and religious turmoil in the same sentence.

But when it comes time to turn in papers (their first batch this semester, only 8-10 pages), they don't seem to understand that a due date means that the paper is due on that day.

The night before the due date I received two e-mails. In the first, a student complained that her computer had been failing all week and finally crashed late at night, she was unable to access the paper she'd been writing and thus unable to complete it until she could talk to the computer repair service and get her information off her computer. She asked for an extension.

In the second, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper arrived home at 3am and was too exhausted to write his paper so he sent me an e-mail then asking for an extension.

Both of these requests came less than 8 hours before the paper was due.

I know college students typically write their papers the night before they're due. I did that too.

Call me mean, call me unsympathetic but to blatantly ask for extensions this late in the game and acknowledge you haven't started writing until after 9pm isn't just immature: it's wimpy! Don't beg for an extension, chug back some espresso and pull an all-nighter! That's what college is all about.

For the record, the freshmen in my Brit-Lit survey class all had papers due yesterday too. Every single student arrived in class on time, toting his or her paper.

Ah, the innocence of the young. I wonder how long it will take them to get corrupted.

So what did I do? I gave Mlle Ordinateur Brise an extention until midnight of that day, and I told M. Journal that for every 24 hours he didn't turn in his paper he would lose a letter grade (from A to B, from B to C, etc). So if his paper is 2 days late (it's already one and a half), whatever mark I give the paper will have to fall by 2 full letter grades.

Am I being too harsh? It's my first time at teaching an upper level seminar, so maybe I'm holding them to higher standards than I should be.

Philip Glass, Eat Your Heart Out

Cutting through the Fog

I spent most of this week rather out-of-it. Staying up too late trying to get to sleep, rushing about preparing for class jolted to attention by several cups of coffee or extra-strong powdered green tea. I marked and handed back my first batch of papers in what seemed a daze. I did finally manage to see a doctor about this cold my students gave me along with their essays on Death, the medieval Church, and regurgitation. Which resulted in my being even more mentally unmoored in the latter end of the week due to the side effects of the drugs he prescribed, some of which I refused to take.

But through all the fog, I must have done something right because what I think was a tremendous thing happened in my upper level Renaissance class.

I've been calling it "Reading, Writing, and Poetry in Renaissance England." It's a (insert adj, noun here: "delicious romp"? "satisfying schlep"?) through Elizabethan poetry paying special attention to the materiality of the text. This means not only looking at facsimiles and copies of original editions, but paying attention to the way poets write about writing. (It's very meta). And printing. And book-making. And reading. And how their poems will be read in years to come. And whether or not they will survive, due to the instability of all the aforementioned practices.

Anyway, I've tried to get my students to really look at these Renaissance texts, to understand the many hands that shaped them, and to try to conceive of what Renaissance readers might have experienced.

And I think maybe I am actually getting through to them. Because one of them sliced through my foggy stupor on Thursday.

Every student has to do a short presentation on the reading for class. On Thursday we had one presentation on Spenser's Faerie Queene.

And my student, my undergraduate student, all on her own, prepared for her presentation in the following way: She decided to wander up to the Rare Books Room in the library, talk to the librarian, and convince her to come to class with the 1609 Folio edition of the text, so that the class could look through the books and more fully comprehend the factors at play in this particular material text (which is heavily ornamented and lavishly portrayed). As the books were passed around, students began to notice more and more. They asked intelligent questions. They handled the books with reverence. They each had something to say, something entirely original based on their individual experiences with this particular printing of this particular edition.

I keep telling them to check out the Rare Books Room, to use the Early English Books database. I keep bringing in facsimiles to class. But our visit to the Special Collections is slated for later in the year, when we look at emblem books (though the library is small, they do have some nice old books including 16th century editions of Alciato and Horapollo).

My student did this all on her own.

It totally made my day.