Don't You Watch the 10 O'Clock News?

Having returned from my month of travelling, I was putting off my first post because -- eesh, the pressure! So many fun adventures, so much archival dorkiness, so many folks to thank for a fantastic trip. R and A -- thank you so very much for your hospitality and fabulous fun! An afternoon of candy-making, an evening of ravioli-making, a night of a murder mystery game (with lawyers, which makes the "questioning" portion ten times better), and two fairly creepy movies about magicians, along with lots of other fun. In fact, this trip made me reevaluate DC, a place I had formerly written off as my least favorite place I've ever lived -- I think it was just where and who I was living with then that made it so, I really enjoyed it this time around and I'm happy to be wrong.

As for the first week back, not much to tell other than unpacking and doing lots of catch-up work on the to-do list. E & I watched an episode of Colonial House last night, a PBS reality series from a few years ago that I got on Netflix, and wow. A group of fifteen people settle on a 1,000 acre plot of wilderness in Maine and have to live like they're in 1628. It's a show about (surprise) class and gender and race, in history and in how people today live. We weren't even twenty minutes into the episode when the "governor's wife" (actually a Texas Baptist Republican preacher's wife) spewed some frightening racism to her little kid about native Americans (see title). I can already tell what a great teaching tool this show would be. It's reality TV, public television history nerd style! Bring it on.

Things Learned at the Archive

1. My digital camera is the single most useful, valuable, helpful and all-around awesome tool I could ever have purchased for grad school. The camera makes my research speed set permanently to “lightning.” The resolution of the document photos is flawless, like an enlarged version of the actual document, complete with authentic scribbles and highlighter marks, and I don’t have to spend the precious little time I have for archival "on-location" research actually reading through each document and scribbling down (or typing) random sentences or quotes that might be useful or pay tons of money to the copy machine gods. I can scan something, ascertain quickly enough that it may be helpful or that it likely won’t be, and then snap, snap, snap and it’s mine. I can read through everything more carefully when I’m back in my home office, rather than on the expensive travel dime. Awesome!

2. Some old men are incredibly helpful and courteous to me. Some act like I’m an idiot and assume (based on gender? Relative youth? Clothes? No idea.) that I must not be doing serious work or that I might not even know what the difference is between a Supreme Court case and a children's book. And nine times out of ten, the information they’re trying to boss me around with isn’t even accurate. Which I already knew, thanks to my law degree. Maybe I should just wear my HLS sweatshirt. But then I wouldn’t look “professional.” Maybe I should get a crimson necktie to identify my Ivy credentials and just start wearing men’s clothes to the archive in order to look professional. That’d be kind of hot.

3. I think I’ve heard before that you either love research or you don’t, and if you don’t, academia is probably not your bag. Since most of my previous research has been of the computerized variety (hello law students who can’t use a law library!) or some half-assed two-day pop-in, I wasn’t entirely sure how this would work for me. Turns out, well. Time totally stops when I’m in the archive. It’s pretty awesome, except when I leave, blinking like a mole person and suddenly realize I haven’t eaten in eight hours and I’m totally dehydrated, since you can’t bring a water bottle in the manuscript rooms. But in the moment, in the archive, I really am loving it. There’s something fantastic and fascinating about handling all these pieces of paper, letters, motions, arguments, agreements, momentous decisions and nonsensical rants – all these little slips of passion and pain and pettiness, boredom and bathos, the remnants of humanity left behind by the Big Events that swept these people along.

Among Justice Blackmun’s files, for example, were reams of hate mail for decisions on abortion and desegregation. Reading these did, for a time, solidify in me a desire to take political power out of the hands of the “people” – I’m back to being optimistic again, but it was a struggle for a while. There were also the notes, tiny 3x4 slips of paper, passed between justices while the Court was hearing oral arguments. Sports scores were well-represented on these notes, as were trivia questions on opera and U.S. geography, and several jokes and sexist comments that would make a 12-year-old’s sense of humor look mature. These solidified in me a desire to take political power out of the hands of the judiciary. I’m not sure I’m back to optimism on that score yet, though.

4. Finally, I’ve learned (through not being able to find the right sized envelopes – it’s been an ongoing, futile search for envelopes that are apparently only carried in Oregon) that I will not be sending out holiday cards this year. I usually try to be more on top of things than this, especially given my love of all things decorative and holidayesque. But between travel and research and some fun times catching up with fabulous folks not seen in many months, it just hasn’t gotten done. So the blog version will have to do. See, I did make the cards – silkscreened them my very own self. Just couldn’t get the rest of the scene together. Here they are, from me to all of you – happy holidays/break/vacation/prospectus writing/excuse to eat a lot! In my (dad's) family we eat panettone on Christmas morning, my stepmom and I do a ridiculously large jigsaw puzzle together, and the events with the extended family include a lot of drinking and Irishness and arguments about politics. Enjoy, eat, relax, rejuvenate, whatever your holiday traditions are I hope they are extra delightful and enjoyable this year, whether quiet and peaceful on your own or loud and raucous with long-lost relations. Peace and joy!

Praise Be!

I am thankful for many things this week:

-- Birthdays of some of my favorite people: E, M, R, my sister-in-law. And, yes, the BCC made some delicious cakes, if I do say so myself, so I'm kind of thankful for sugar in general, because there's been a lot of it lately. Check out the cookies we made this week (thanks for the decorating help, E & M)!

-- Seeing many of my other favorite people very soon on the Atlantic side -- can't wait!

-- Passing my dissertation prospectus defense with minimal pain. The defense was fairly short and sweet, and the best part was the go-around, in which my bow-tied committee member started off with phrases about how amazing the prospectus was and important, and etc., etc., followed by two other committee members saying comparably (overly) glowy, love-festy things and not really even asking questions, or at least not hard ones. Followed, finally, by my adviser, who said "well, this is much better than the last draft I read." Ha! I love, love, love, that my adviser is not someone who will shine me on. As nice as it was to hear all the exaggerated compliments from the other faculty, I feel lucky to have an adviser that I can rely on for honesty and support, because in the end, I tend to not trust uncritically complimentary statements. And I left feeling good, proud, and also aware of how much work I have in front of me in the next two years, but super enthusiastic and excited to get to it. Which is, I think, how they probably intend students to leave the defense.

-- After the formal defense (such as it was) was over, I appreciated the beaming professors around me sending me off to do my research like they were dropping me off for my first day of college with a hamper full of new towels. Since I'm leaving Monday for a month in the archives, they were very cute and even seemed a little nostalgic about it. Like, "did you pack your laptop? did you get this program?" -- I think one of my profs was close to asking if I was packing a warm winter coat for DC. It was sweet, and I realized how much like a kid I still must be to them.* In the sense that they've been doing this all for so long, and I'm still, in their eyes, starting out. I felt a little like a toddler who'd used the potty for the first time. All the adults were proud and patting my head, but seriously, I'm still miles away from being where they are, we're on different planets in many ways. And I'm kind of OK with that, because I am in one of those rare times where I'm happy to be exactly where I am -- I'm excited to go start my research (ridiculously so, in fact), I get to see lots of friends, it's my favorite time of the year, and all my grading and other work from the fall is finally done!

-- I'm thankful for the students who work hard and truly get most, if not all, of the material and concepts we tried to communicate this quarter. Aside from that 10%, I'm thankful for the ones who are utterly entertaining in their misapplication of information. For example, one student talked about "the growth of the middle class (also known as the working class) in the 19th century." You know, the bourgeoisie, also known as the proletariat. Another discussed how Thomas Jefferson seemed Marxist, given his interest in equality. For white, land-owning farmers. Totally what Marx said. He must've stumbled across the lost copies of Marx/Engels' Yeoman Farmer's Manifesto. I also love the automatic conclusion that anyone who supports equality in any context is suspected of being a dirty commie. Hee.

*This sense was reinforced by walking to lunch with another professor this week, during which he actually said "C, don't walk through the mud, walk on the sidewalk, you'll ruin your shoes." Um, yeah. And yes, I did move to the sidewalk.

Waiting for Cookie Monster

Three things:

A lovely holiday was had -- the snow was gorgeous, the hot mineral springs were amazing, the hippies were entertaining. And then, what seemed like three straight days of eating and drinking -- very yummy. Followed by the Griswold family Christmas tree adventure yesterday -- more on that next time. I need to get my quality tree time in before I depart for the East Coast on December 10th. In "yay for the department" news (a new category I think), they just checked out a laptop to me for the entire trip, which will make my life, blog, research, etc. so much easier. Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend as well!

Quote from a student paper: "Women played an important role in the revolution because without them the men would have had nothing to come home to when the war was over." And before you ask, it's from a female student. Much like an armchair, women make many important contributions by waiting around for men to get home.

On the viewing of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special as an adult: oh, dear. I'm not even going to get into the special on the Mayflower, but as we were watching the Thanksgiving show, J. suddenly noticed that there was something strange in the seating arrangements. I tried to find a screen shot, but couldn't, so picture this: Marcie, Sally, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy are ALL FOUR sitting on one side of a long table, with Linus and Charlie Brown at the either end of the table. Alone on the other long side of the table, across from the FOUR on the other side, is Franklin. Remember Franklin? He's Charlie Brown's black friend. Charlie Brown's Segregated Thanksgiving Special! It's disturbingly eye-opening to watch stuff as an adult that you saw as a kid, the little things that are slipped in or normalized. It also ties in with this Sesame Street news -- the early season DVDs are apparently appropriate only for adults, only this time it's because kids today need a more gentrified, less explicitly working-class/mentally ill/obese puppet show. Because it would be wrong to reflect in any way the lives of all the children who are not white suburban upper-middle-class yuppies. We're a nation of aspiration! Kids just need to believe that if they don't have the sane, shiny celery-eating lives of TV, it's because they or their parents aren't working hard enough. Even though this recent study on economic mobility pretty much proves that it really doesn't matter, 99% of the time, because you don't get out of the class you're born into. But you can still make a very important contribution, by waiting for someone that matters more to get home.

*By the way, I'm not actually attached to keeping Cookie Monster old-school either, given that he was originally designed as a marketing device for cookie and snack companies and then incorporated into a show for kids. Whatever, CM -- go talk to the Marlboro Man about karma.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am a bad blog updater lately, but this weekend it was due to an annoying virus that laid me up for three days. You know how your body saves up whatever sicknesses it's been collecting for a while and then, when whatever stressful task(s) that have been weighing you down are finally completed and the adrenalin at last clears out, wham, it hits you? Yeah, I turned in my latest draft, finished teaching for the week, finally didn't have any encyclopedia articles or fellowship applications due the following Monday and my body clearly took all that as a sign that this was the ideal time to get sick. Which I can't exactly disagree with, but it would have also been a great weekend to get to have fun and talk to people (since my colds tend to invade my throat and render me mute). So not so much fun, but I did get to enjoy some fine sick movies, such as the ever-classic Neverending Story. I thought briefly that perhaps a new name would cure me of my illness in the same way it apparently cured the child-like empress in that story, but nobody shouted any out any windows at me. It's kind of hard to imagine yourself with another name, actually, I didn't get far in my musings. Also, I would like to affirm that the Lemony Snicket movie is just as good on second viewing as it was in the theater, I like that story quite a lot.

Finally, a few random points of order that never found their way into blog entries of late. This list of events is from one 4-hour period last week, in which I was reminded anew of what an ivory-tower bubble I live in.

You might be a nerd if:

1) The students who work the counter at the library recognize you as the girl who checks out more books at once than "anyone they've ever seen" and every time you approach you have to say "no, it's only a few this time!" Even then, they don't trust you until they've checked the hold shelf themselves.

2) The night of one of the biggest football games (apparently) for your school, like, ever, you are not only unaware it's happening until it's almost over (at which point you still don't really care), you are instead just bummed that you are missing the Ursula LeGuin reading in order to teach formal logic in a test prep course.

3) In trying to "engage" with your students about a letter from Jefferson to William Henry Harrison regarding Indian policy, you use the phrase "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" from the 1840 election campaign to explain who Harrison is/was, thinking they will surely have heard that before, since you had heard of it when you were a teenager. Um, no. More successful -- Thanksgiving cartoons from today's lecture. Also, based on the reaction in the room, any images of pumpkin pie elicit strongly positive student feelings. Declaration of Independence -- meh. Pie -- yeah!

I have lots more fondness for Thanksgiving after the lecture today, I must admit. I leave tomorrow for a day and night at a hot springs before driving back on Thursday to an already-prepared meal (menfolk are doing all the cooking this year), so the holiday seems extra good this year. I wish you all feasting, relaxation and no stress! Enjoy your "inoculation against Christmas consumerism!"

We Eat a Lot of Cheese and Wear a Lot of Costumes

That might be the conclusion from the last several weeks of events and/or photos. This weekend we had a little get-together for Erin's birthday, involving magical creature costumes, fondue (again!), and a trip to a redneckety bowling alley where we caused, shall we say, a splash among the toothless locals. I haven't even uploaded the Halloween party pictures yet, but then I noticed my flickr account is also packed with photos of costumed square dancing and fondue. OK, let's be real: cheese + costumes = awesome time. Add publicly bowling in those costumes, followed by "boozy cake" = extra awesome. The black forest cake was yet again a hit, doused in liberal amounts of kirsch. We may have reached a BCC consensus that all future birthday parties will be celebrated with some sort of costuming theme involved.

This week my goal is to finish draft three of the neverending prospectus. My other goal is not to get infected with the yucky that is spreading like wildfire all of a sudden. Vitamin C & I are BFFs right now. Finally, I aspire to make my students think in complicated ways about slavery, freedom, founding fathers, ideas of progress, and the justification of self-interest. Ha! OK, not all my goals will be accomplished. As long as I can stop myself from flattening the LSAT student who keeps challenging me on irrelevant crap, it will be a successful week.

Addendum: 9 out of 11 encyclopedia articles finished and submitted as of yesterday. Woo-hoo! And -- never again!

I Smell Turkey!

Random: Last night being E's bro's birthday, and because he has lacked that little joy called sleep for several weeks, we made a full-on Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner with all the trimmings. All the better to knock him out with tryptophan -- which appears to have worked, as he's still sleeping. Ah, the magic of tryptophan. You might ask about two vegetarians buying and cooking a big slab of flesh, and there was definitely some whinging involved, as my stepmom would say. We didn't buy a complete turkey, because it was just for B. & of course J., who could not have been happier about the situation. So we got some largish "part" -- I have no idea what -- at Trader Joe's and threw it on a broiling pan with some butter. Apparently, according to the menfolk, it was the best turkey they'd ever eaten, melty and moist, which makes me suspect that turkey is perhaps not best cooked in a giant entire bird all at once format. Whatever -- that information is unlikely to do me a whole lot of good in life. Here's the point: I woke up this morning to the realization that turkey smell, like fish or curry or garlic, permeates everything. My clothing smells like Thanksgiving dinner. The entire house reeks of dead bird avec buerre. I'm about to go to a meeting and I sense that everyone afterward will be craving a leftovers sandwich with cranberry sauce. I'm not exactly complaining, it's just really an odd sensation for me to smell roasted meat in my house or on my clothes.

Since I have been remiss for weeks in posting, I promise to have better things to say in future -- including a story about a student that I will unfortunately have to wait until winter quarter to fully tell, because if there's anyone who could track me down online and identify my blog at 3 am on a friday night, it's this kid. Oh the glamorous life of a teaching assistant! Also, photos of our Halloween party and my final -- sniff -- work in the silkscreen studio. I'm buying a slab of plywood and setting up my own studio in the garage, I swear.