Hundreds of Things

One week...

2011-12-08T20:49:00.001-05:00

Just over a week remains with days in my Google calendar that have most of my time filled up with big multicolored boxes. Then comes the little box that says, "Leave for Minnesota," and we're off so I can have some quality time with my new big-girl-now niece, and sometimes I'll let the rest of my family horn in on Auntie time for some playtime too.

While I'm on break I won't be on break; I'll be writing a long paper about things that are important to British Librarianship and me, I'll be reading up on face saving and how to code and analyze chat transcripts, and I'll be catching up on writing about all the things I've been thinking about for this blog:

Some time ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an opinion piece about the overemphasis on citations. I've been on both sides of the issue, and as a librarian who is currently seeing students freak out to no end about commas and periods in their citations, I've got to get some things off my chest.
In Letters to a Young Librarian, Jessica Olin put out a call for advice about what classes to take in library school. I like giving advice; it's why I do what I do (yeah, I get paid pretty much to give advice all day. People solicit it from me, and everything! Yes, dream career coming right up ...). Ergo, I want to write something about what I wish I knew, or what I wish someone would have told me, about a year and a half ago.
I've figured out what kind of librarian I am, and what is important for me to be able to do on a day-do-day basis. I want to share it with you.
I have books. Of course. Can't wait to show you.

Random weekend update: Almost done!

2011-12-04T00:57:00.001-05:00

Today I spent the day completing a video tutorial. The video is part of a website my colleague and I conceived of, designed, and rolled out for our User Education class this semester. We're completing the website and at least one video for class, but continuing to populate the website throughout next semester. Called "College Hacks," the website is a collection of short videos and links that offer quick timesaving tips and tricks to undergraduates to get them out of panic mode and back on track. It addresses one of my primary beliefs of library instruction -- that it's not useful until it's at the point of need.

The video I created today is about using the stand-up (KIC) scanners at UNC-Chapel Hill. We have one at the main library which gets plenty of use. The undergraduate KIC scanner does not get as much use, though, and I think that's because it's pretty intimidating, and kind of looks like an x-ray machine, rather than a scanner. Videos like these can be watched right before students need to use the scanner, and can be watched as many times as necessary to make students comfortable with the scanning process.

So that was fun, and I'm excited to do many more for the website. As far as finishing out the semester -- the next few weeks are a bit nutty, and I may become a reclusive shut-in for a few days, but I've got it under control.

Friday fun: Read your way to India

2011-10-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you just have to read a series of books that are related in some way. Sometimes you fall in love with one setting and have to immerse yourself in that setting over and over. Sometimes you just have to keep reading until you know something through and through.

That's when it's themed booklist time.

This themed book selection includes some of my favorite books about India, a place of magic for many people. The word itself evokes images of temples, mosques, and gods, of gentle guru and ascetic sadhu, of brilliant saris and shining jewels, and, inevitably, poverty, slums, and squalor. For many, India is timeless and unchanging. For just as many others, India is a whirlwind that never stops. In reality, it is always both.

The books in this India booklist have a thread of the timeless/whirlwind running through them. This thread makes India real as it highlights the process of traveling to and around India, and the comfort and discomfort inherent in the physical and cultural ways of passing through and living on the subcontinent.

The Ramayana, A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R.K. Narayan.

Penguin Classics, 2006. 192 pages.

The Ramayana is a treasure of India, an epic filled with boundless love, a beautiful woman, a brave prince, an evil nemesis, a kidnapping, fierce fighting, and ultimately, a happy ending. It is the story of Rama and Sita, a highborn prince and his wife, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom of Ayodhya. When Rama, the eldest son of the King, was about to take over the kingdom from his father, his stepmother had him banished from the kingdom so her son could rule. Rama, his adoring wife Sita and Rama’s younger brother Lakshmana made their home in the forest, but their happiness with their simple life was dashed when Sita was abducted by the evil Ravana. In the search and fight for Sita, Rama proves his bravery and Sita her devotion. This tale runs fast and engaging, with gods, demons, sages, and kings alighting on every page. This epic is required reading for anyone who really wants to understand India. Bonus: you'll want to read it over and over again.

Indian Summer: A Good Man in Asia by Will Randall.

Abacus, 2004. 242 pages.

In Indian Summer, Will Randall tells us that for him everything was happenstance in India, from the way he arrived, to his summer project teaching at an orphanage in the slums of Poona (Pune). Will was teaching in an inner city school in London when a woman hired him, out of the blue, to accompany her to Poona. There, she said, he could leave and return to London immediately, or stay as long as his plane ticket allowed. Will, overcome by Poona, was resigned to returning to London until he met a man who introduced him to Charuvat, a devout Hindu who ran an orphanage in Tanjiwadi slum. Charuvat needed an English instructor for the children and asked Will to join the effort. Won over by the children, Will signed on for the summer. This started a chain of events that took Will from the Bollywood screen to a children’s play in a fight to save the orphanage from being razed to the ground. A fast, light read, but to get many of the references you should read The Ramayana first.

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh.

Picador, 1996. 308 pages.

This novel is subtitled, “A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery,” and it is all that and more. The Calcutta Chromosome is a thriller/mystery set in New York, Calcutta, and rural North India in the not-too-distant future. The two main characters, Antar and L. Murugan, seem to overlap more and more in space and time as the book goes on. Antar relates the story of his search for Murugan, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Calcutta some years back. Through much research and sleuthing, Antar discovers that Murugan found the secret to eternal life through a scientific and mystical study of malarial chromosomes. Read it carefully ... it means much more than what it says.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Mariner Books, 1999. 198 pages.

This collection of nine stories won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. It is a quiet collection of big stories with raw emotion, which sits with you long after you finish reading. In the titular story, Mr. Kapasi is an interpreter at a hospital who works a second job as a driver. This day, he drives two immature parents, Ronnie and Tina Das, and their child Bobby, on a sightseeing trip. As the day wears on, Mr. Kapasi becomes infatuated with Mrs. Das, generating an inner monologue about their future. This continues until Mrs. Das confides in him that Bobby was a child conceived by a secret affair and even her husband does not know Bobby is not his son. She tells Mr. Kapasi, she says, because she wants him to interpret her feelings and make her feel better. Mr. Kapasi does nothing of the kind and Mrs. Das is left to interpret her own guilt.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

HarperPerennial, 1997. 321 pages

This book, Roy’s debut novel, won the Booker Prize in 1997. It is a treasure for its language, an almost invented conglomeration of prose and poetry that sweeps around you, a blanket of feelings and images contained within each word. It is a heartbreaking story of love, tension, strict social mores, and discrimination, as fraternal twins Estha and Rahel – and their community – come to terms with the death of the English girl Sophie Mol. While sad and full of longing, this book is a must-read for the poetry of language which transports you immediately to the sultry state of Kerala, one of the most beautiful states in India.

I loved these books. There were many others I loved as well but did not put on this list for one reason or another (Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, I'm looking at you!). And now, back to you ... what have I missed? What would you have me read?

Friday Fun: Book review!

2011-10-07T08:33:00.001-04:00

One of my readers requested I post book reviews ... what a great idea! I wrote the following review, of Sarah Bakewell's How to Live, or, a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer, for a collection development class. I'm so pleased to be able to share it here.

Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live, or, a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. London: Other Press, 2010. Orig. pub. by London: Chatto & Windus, 2010. ISBN: 9781590514252 (hardcover), 9781590514832 (paperback), 9781590514269 (e-book). Cost: hardcover: $25.00, paperback: $16.95, e-book: contact publisher. 399 pages (includes notes and index).

Sarah Bakewell has a penchant for writing about captivating individuals in unusual ways. Bakewell’s most recent stunner, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner How to Live, or, a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer, brilliantly weaves biography, self-help, and historical narrative genres together through the life and essays of Renaissance writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.

Montaigne, a French “nobleman, government official, and winegrower,” invented the self-reflective essay. As Bakewell explains, Montaigne used his own life as a mirror in which people recognized their own humanity (3). Montaigne answered the deep philosophical questions of his day by describing his own life in such a way as to make the questions, and his attempts at an answer, universal.

The book is propelled by the singular question which haunted Montaigne for much of his life: “How to Live?” For the answer, Bakewell offers twenty heavily illustrated thematic chapters based on Montaigne’s Essays which, along with Bakewell’s narratives, weave together the rich tapestry of Montaigne’s life and work. Each chapter, she writes, is “an answer the Montaigne might be imagined as having given” (11). Many of the chapter headings read like Zen sayings: “Don’t worry about death,” “Pay attention,” “Be born.” Others reflect Montaigne’s playful realism: “Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted,” “Do a good job, but not too good a job,” “Reflect on everything; regret nothing,” “Be ordinary and imperfect,” and finally, “Let life be its own answer.” With this unique organization, Bakewell creates effortless connections between Montaigne’s sixteenth-century life lessons and the reader’s twenty-first-century existence.

As a biographer, Bakewell has a light hand. Intertwining Montaigne’s profound yet earthy prose with her own congenial voice enlivens the historical narrative. More importantly, Bakewell converses with Montaigne as well as the reader, and this friendly banter makes the complex history of sixteenth-century France downright delightful. According to Bakewell, this conversational style is merely a side effect of years of exposure to Montaigne’s thoughtful prose. “The Essays,” she writes, “is … much more than a book. It is a centuries-long conversation between Montaigne and all those who have got to know him: a conversation which changes through history, while starting out afresh almost every time with that cry of ‘How did he know all that about me?’” (9).

Bakewell calls the years researching this book “voluntary servitude,” but it is clear she has a deep fondness for Montaigne. This fondness permeates every page and is happily infectious, leaving the fortunate reader infatuated with Montaigne as well. Montaigne as a character is vivid and round; we experience his deep contentment in simply living as well as his agony as he imperfectly expresses his views on how to live. Bakewell also assembles a cast of writers and thinkers who influenced and were influenced by Montaigne, writing that the “book [is], in part, the story of how Montaigne has flowed through time via a sort of canal system of minds” (316). This may resonate with the reader, who, thanks to Bakewell, is now an additional lock in the canal.

The recommended audience for this book is wide-ranging. Academics with a background in ancient philosophy and Renaissance history will be just as pleased as readers looking for a compelling biography, or those searching for a “new” and refreshing self-help book. Anyone who has ever wondered what there is to life will love this book.

Random (Summer) Update

2011-09-24T01:06:00.002-04:00

With a tiny push from my Auntie, and a larger push from my conscience, I'm happy to be back and blogging again. Not that anything happened, just some travel, life, and the brilliant* pursuit of my education and my new career.

Summer meant a month in London and a quick six weeks learning library management skills.
A few highlights from London:

We toured many libraries, learning so much about British librarianship along the way.
This is a shot from the Wellcome Trust.

The King's Library at the British Library. (And yes, I now have a borrower's card at the BL.)

But as always, it was so often about the food.
I ache for a proper English breakfast. Those sausages!

Here is a portrait I've waited so long to have taken: me with Tipu's Tiger at the V&A Museum.
And, of course, my husband reflected in the mirror.

This is a video of the Corpus Clock in Cambridge. Note the Stephen Hawking connection!

We stayed over a week to relax in Bath. This was a tiny bar under the bridge. Yes, that's the door.

Silhouettes, at the Roman Baths.

Reclining with a nice glass of wine at the truly amazing Marlborough Tavern on our last night in Bath.

Every time I think of those whirlwind weeks, I smile and make more plans to go back. If anyone in England happens to have a couple of jobs open for a Humanities reference librarian with a whipshot sense of humor and a passion for teaching, along with her ever-patient and wise IT-professional husband who knows a heck of a lot about university computer systems, just let me know. We'll be there in a minute.

*By brilliant I mean fantastic, amazing, soul-fulfilling, inspiring, etc. ad infinitum.

Monday Book: Epileptic

2011-03-08T00:28:00.000-05:00

Some weeks I know exactly which book to choose for Monday Book. Usually those books call to me for a week or two before they are featured, and the post writes itself.

More frequently I end up browsing our bookshelves here at home for a while, thinking about our (yes, I say "our" but Scott would tell you I really mean "my") library, thinking about when and where and why we acquired certain books, thinking about what makes each book special -- and whether or not I can convey the "bookness" of each book in a short blog post.

This week was a browsing week. I came up with some nice books for future Monday Books, but as soon as I pulled this one out I knew, with a thrill to the back of my neck, that it would be tonight's Monday Book.

L'Ascension du Haut Mal ("The Rise of the High Evil"), known in English as Epileptic, is one of many autobiographical graphic novels from David B. Epileptic is the only graphic novel, Maus included, which left me unsettled and in tears through to the end.

David B. (the nom de plume of Pierre-François Beauchard) is a French artist and illustrator who works in a strangely effusive, slightly surreal style. In 1990, David B. and a number of other artists founded L'Association, an alternative publishing house for graphic novels and comic collections. David B. has received several awards, including the French Alph-Art award in 2000 and the Ignatz Outstanding Artist award (for this graphic novel) in 2005, and was cited as European Cartoonist of the Year by The Comics Journal in 1998.

Epileptic is David B.'s memoir of growing up with an older brother, Jean-Christophe, who started having seizures at the age of 11. The novel is mostly about how their family coped with and searched in vain for a cure for Jean-Christophe's increasingly intractable seizures. It features all manner of boorish, unthinking onlookers, hippy-dippy-trippy healers, and crazy alternative medicine practitioners. But it's also a novel about David B.'s early life as an artist, and how his brother's epilepsy was a catalyst for David's whirling, brilliant creativity.

So why was I so unsettled while reading Epileptic? Mostly because David B. has done something I never thought possible, and he doesn't even have epilepsy: he made the invisible, visible. That is, through his depiction of his brother's seizures, he shows the experience of a seizure from the inside.

I know this because I've lived with epilepsy for 23 years. My first seizure was at the age of 13, and I had undiagnosed seizures every couple of months for nearly two years before I was diagnosed with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME) at the age of 15. Since then, I have had myoclonic, absence, and tonic-clonic seizures, but thankfully have been well-controlled on medication for most of my life, with nary a whiff of a seizure for nearly a decade. I know I am one of the lucky ones.

I have been trying to describe, in poetry, prose, anything really, the sensations of my seizures, the actions (and non-actions) of my brain while it's going haywire, for two decades. Although seizures are not strokes, I sort of related to Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her stroke during her 2008 TED Talk. My brain functions much the same way during my very extended aura state.

But when my brain is fully taken over by a tonic-clonic ("grand mal") seizure, something changes, and just before I lose consciousness there is a wordless, breathless, helpless, slightly terrifying but also comforting sensation of giving in and giving myself over to nothingness. I also nearly always have a distinct premonition of pain, which won't come until I wake up and figure out on which body part I fell this time.

David B. knows this, all of this, somehow. He doesn't have epilepsy, but he may as well be one of the millions of us who do. He draws out our demons, our dragons, and makes them present themselves to us. He knows what it's like to go into the darkness and come out again, and maybe can imagine how we try to fill up (or forget) those dark parts after a while.

This book is a salt, and a salve, to those living the titular role.

Monday Book: First Aid and Health

2011-02-28T23:29:00.002-05:00

Today's book, First Aid and Health, was published in 1927. It was, as it states on the title page, "Prepared by the American Red Cross and the American Telegraph & Telephone Co. for the use of Bell System Employees." This was a book we found in the Johnson's house some months back. It was an easy decision for Scott and me to keep it for our library.

If one is to believe this book, back in the '20s the Red Cross knew how to do two things: wrap people in bandages and treat vague illnesses with crazy home remedies.

This is an intricate bandage for a bleeding ear. Or perhaps a wacky a new hat craze?

Either way, I don't think I'd have the presence of mind during a bleeding ear emergency to do such fancy tucks and rolls.

These are men traversing an obstacle with another (wrapped up) man on a stretcher. Or, inventing a new state fair game.

And here, finally, the ultimate fix for your lumbago: the trusty household iron. And newspapers.

Here is a note from the former owner. No matter the value of the book itself, this is what makes us hold this book so dear:

"When in need, call Johnson."

That's Walleen Johnson, and yes, we did need him plenty.

Monday Book: The Story of the Alphabet

2011-02-15T00:00:00.001-05:00

This book may look a little nondescript from the outside, but on the inside it's a gem for a girl like me. I received this as a gift from the Bookshop during my first weeks as a lucky bookseller. My copy is completely disbound (the threads have rotted away), but the boards and pages are intact and bright as ever.

The Story of the Alphabet, by Otto F. Ege (of the Cleveland School of Art), is a sweet little book. In it, Mr. Ege asks, "Do you know your A B C's?" He writes, "Each Letter Character Has a History and a Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and Significance of the Alphabet?"

Printed in 1921 by Norman T.A. Munder & Co., The Story of the Alphabet has so many pleasing little touches. The drop cap on the first page is an homage to the book trade.

That it happens to be an "O" is a bonus, I think.

In the center fold, Mr. Ege presents a genealogy of letters "... from the Phoenician Alphabet." From this chart we see that, according to Ege, the Phoenician "gimel" eventually became our letter C. He explains it further in the text:

"The ship of the desert." I will never look at a camel the same way again.

Delightfully, it does not end with the alphabet alone. The printers, Norman T.A. Munder & Co. of Baltimore, also have their say.

The ABC's of the Munder Printing plant are Art, Business, and Courtesy. As to courtesy, all they say is, "Who cares to deal with a firm that is discourteous? How pleasant business can be made if all participating in it are pleasant and courteous! Really, people will not deal with those who are discourteous. On the other hand they turn to those who are courteous and kind." A lesson for all of us, I guess.

Monday Book: In Tschina

2011-02-07T22:56:00.002-05:00

Cover.

Today's Monday Book comes to us courtesy of The Bookshop. Yes, that's also where it's available for sale. I'm featuring In Tschina today because, frankly, I need your help. This book is a raging curiosity for me, mostly because I don't read German well at all.

In Tschina is, with the exception of the "motto" page, a handmade linocut or woodcut book handcolored with watercolor. The type appears to be cut out of the same block as the full-page illustrations. The book measures approximately 6" x 8". It has 14 leaves printed on the recto only, and the covers are printed glassine covers over paper wraps. From the inscriptions on the front free endpaper, I believe it comes from the first few decades of the twentieth century. Even more exciting is that it comes from the same region as the Die Brücke school. Do I think it's a Kirchner or a Heckel? Probably not. But I'm not a scholar of German Expressionism, and I would love to be proven wrong.

It's nearly completely disbound, but still interesting for its scarcity and subject matter. From my poor Google-assisted translation, I think it's kind of a shocking book, and perhaps a little offensive. Chinese men murdering a European couple, kidnapping a kid, then getting hanged for their crimes? Okay, perhaps a bit more than a little offensive. And it's so sad, too ... I hate to ruin it for you, but everyone dies in the end.

The inscription page, I think.

Title page, same as the cover.

"Motto"

Printer/illustrator/artist's imprint?

If you can help me with any of the translations, please do leave a message in the comments below.

Random Weekend Update: one word

2011-02-07T01:52:00.000-05:00

Busy!

Yes, so busy. A quick rundown:

Husband!
He's doing well, getting over the creepin' crud that had me down for the past few weeks too. I try not to hold it against him when he passes things on to me without getting full-on sick himself. He gets quite tired for a week or so, but his leonine immune system usually fights it off without much of a whimper.
He's still stocking up on dudes and tanks and whatnot for 40K. Seriously, these things are fascinating. I can't wait until he paints all of them the way he has them envisioned in his head. He's been to several tournaments in the past few months and is starting to Not Lose. This is Good.

Cat!
Our dear Devotion wasn't doing so well last month. We tried to change her food too quickly, so she stopped eating. We also stressed her out with a visit from the vet directly before having a houseguest, so she was not herself for a few weeks at all. We got her back on her regular food, so now she's eating again. Throwing up every few days again (ahh ... kitty bulimia ...), but at least she's eating. And acting normal again.

Teaching.
I adore my big lecture class. These students are so engaged, they're having intelligent discussions as a class while seated in the huge 350-person lecture hall! My TAs have also told me they're having rousing discussions in sections, as well. This makes me so happy. I always hold that it's better to encourage curiosity and inspire delight than to instill fear and require rote memorization.
I mean, of course we still require rote memorization, but hopefully with a bit of curiosity it'll be easier for the students to remember all the things they need to remember.
This mean, though, that I'm up at midnight the night before Monday lecture trying to construct a new lecture about colonial archaeology (subtitle: So just how the heck did they reconstruct the Sanchi stupa wrong when they put it back together 150 years ago??). Hmm, yes, fascinating stuff but so much to talk about in just 15 minutes.

Rare books.
Second quiz on The ABCs of Book Collecting. Cross your fingers that it goes well. We're starting to get into the history of the book and descriptive bibliography. This is so exciting to me.

Archives.
I'm starting to poke around in the archives for our first assignment, which is due at the end of the month. Tonight in class we'll talk about archives development and curation.

Popular materials.
The old bestseller/new bestseller week was great! I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and compared it with the lovely The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Both are character-driven novels with a palpable sense of place, and both feature a protagonist who is at once in this world and so far beyond it.
In the coming few weeks we are to read historical fiction, and, if possible, a work of nonfiction about the same era/place. I was going to read a novel about the Sepoy rebellion in India, but realized I already have historical fiction on my TBR ("to be read") pile. I'll be reading Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks. Now I'll have to dig up a companion nonfiction source on the Black Death. I'm thinking the Moote's The Great Plague: the story of London's most deadly year looks just as enjoyable as the novel, perhaps even moreso.

Monday Book: One-night stand as woman found

2011-01-31T23:35:00.000-05:00

Today's Monday Book is a bit of a brag, as this is my own book. It's a semi-memoir about my life as a single gal in Minneapolis, MN in the late 1990s.

From the introduction:

There were many men. These are the ones she doesn't mind remembering.
In the summer of 2002 on a collaborative art web site called Nervousness.org, Anna Genoese posted a Land Mail Art Object called "Take Me Home Tonight." The mission: to write about the politics of one-night stands. Have you ever had a one-night stand? she asked. With whom? Why? How did you deal with the consequences of your decisions?
From those questions, these essays were born.
From these experiences, a woman was found.

I designed, typeset and printed the entire book in an introductory letterpress printing class taught by the brilliant Bonnie O'Connell of the Fine Arts Press at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, NE in 2002. I used (if I remember correctly) a Vandercook power press, which was absolutely delightful.

"One-night stand as woman found" is a limited edition of 20 (of which I have three copies left). I used Waverly, Kennerley, Alternate Gothic, and Melior typefaces on Rives BFK paper. Illustrations were culled from the Fine Arts Press collection and printed in a deep red color. The endpapers are Chromatica Black and the covers are a wonderful paper called Red Snake. It is a simple accordion-fold binding.

The dedication reads:

For Scott, my one true love, who knew it all and married me anyway

Despite the tawdry details (I share too much, always have), this really is a love letter to my husband. After my year of wild oat-sowing, I made a conscious decision to stop going out to nightclubs, to stop hanging out at the coffee shop with people who didn't know or care about me at all.

She met the man who would eventually become her husband, the very next day.
They didn't even kiss until the third date.

And the best part? That last bit is actually true.

Random Weekend Update, or, have things gone astrologically haywire?

2011-01-31T01:30:00.000-05:00

Quick randomness, since my brain is on the scrambled egg side of things.

Things seem to have gone haywire this week, especially at the Bookshop. Co-workers have had to leave abruptly for family emergencies. One of the handsome and wonderfully cuddly shop cats, Red, had to go into the vet after he sprained his paw leaping down from atop a (very tall) bookshelf. The creaky old heating system gave out one day (thankfully, just one day). The local USPS has decided to enforce a rule which makes our shipping process a bit more complicated (also known as: "well, technically, if it fits *flat*, it ships"). And yes, while I was filling in on evening hours this week, I was sick enough that I should have been home most of that time.

Seriously, is something rising or falling, astrologically speaking? And will it stop, soon, please??? We can't take much more of this.

I have not been crowned/"made royal" -- my dentist politely requested that I reschedule my appointment, so now I must wait until late February. Thank goodness this temporary crown is wearing like a tank.

The first archives class went really well. I'm looking forward to the final project, which is an annotated bibliography about an archival topic. I think I'm going to choose something about the treatment of special collections as archives (and vice-versa). Possibly zine collections? I don't know. I'll keep you updated.

The popular materials class is moving on to bestsellers. This week, we're to write a short paper comparing an older bestseller and a newer one. I've chosen to re-visit two of the books I read earlier this month: Madame Bovary and The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Cross your fingers that this week will reset itself to "neutral" after a good sleep tonight.

Monday Book: Tea Planting in the Outer Himalayah*

2011-01-24T00:10:00.000-05:00

This week's book comes to you courtesy of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Rare Book Collection at Wilson Library. It is Tea planting in the outer Himalayah (Google Books link), a travelogue-cum-memoir penned by Alexander Thorburn McGowan in 1860 and published in London by Smith, Elder and Co. in 1861. In Tea planting, McGowan extols the virtues of British settlement in India, describes life and work on the tea plantation, and urges the British government to underwrite the efforts of retired military men to establish tea plantations in beautiful Kangra Valley and other parts of North India.

McGowan's text is extremely colonial; he, like many of his period, shows his bias at every turn. More than the text, though, there are two illustrations of interest in this small book. The first, shown above, is reproduced on the cover and title page as an illustration of what McGowan calls a "bird’s-eye view of the whole" plantation and valley. Sketched by a lieutenant traveling the valley with McGowan, it was reproduced as a lithograph for the title page by a captain associated with the Trigonometrical Survey of India.

Two vignettes, one high and one low, set off the title. The journey to the plantation is depicted in the upper left corner as four porters laden with baskets pick their way up a steep hillside. One porter pauses to view the valley and the estate bungalow in the distance while another turns towards the viewer, as if waiting for the reader to follow and share in the view. In the lower left corner, the destination of the Holta tea plantation awaits. Minuscule workers toil among orderly rows of tea plants, while across the smoky valley Kangra Fort overlooks the plantation like a Panopticon of sorts from atop a craggy ridge. The author’s name hovers, as if sky-written, between the plantation and the fort. With the lazily crooked river and the awe-inspiring mountain ridges, the lieutenant’s sketch may have been guided by the picturesque ideals first championed by William Gilpin. Gilpin advocated the appreciation of rough, rugged landscapes, with rich colors and sublime vistas incorporating ruins and mountains.

The second, and I think most compelling, image is the frontispiece of Tea planting in the outer Himalayah, “A Tea Garden Drawn by a Native Artist of the Kangra Valley.” It is a departure from the title page (as well as many of the images printed in English magazines of the time) as it plainly depicts the plantation landscape in a grid pattern. The composition is regimented and direct, highlighting the tea plant and the specific work of the plantation workers. Executed in a pale green wash, the engraving places eight mature and flowering tea bushes in each of twelve rectangular boxes. Three men and one woman attend to the plants, plucking, watering, weeding, and hoeing. Each figure has a distinct face and body, and each tree is individually built up leaf by leaf, two common painting techniques in traditional Pahari painting. The spaces between the rectangular boxes are evocative of irrigation channels, a contested practice in early tea cultivation.

By creating a landscape of straightforward trees and boxes, the "Native" artist disentangles the engraving from the influence of the plantation owner, manager, or overseer. The laborers in the engraving occupy the land from within, the geometric construction of the landscape demarcating the internal space of the workers. Contrary to the title page, which is suffused with the overseer's and plantation owner's gaze, the Pahari engraving is a habitus just for the laborers. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Pierre Bourdieu explains that habitus is the appearance of reality afforded by the practices, structures, and external conditions that produce an individual or group. For the laborers on the tea plantation, the community with whom they work, their level of education, and their gender marks the habitus. The structures are embedded in the physicality of the plantation: workers, buildings, and especially tea plants. An additional, but essential, condition of habitus for tea pluckers is simply the continual act of plucking, hour by hour and day by day.

The unknown artist who painted this frontispiece was undoubtedly part of the 200 year-old tradition of Pahari painting. Although Stuart Cary Welch writes, in Room for Wonder: Indian Painting During the British Period, 1760-1880, that "landscape was the least Indian of subjects, seldom more than incidental in Mughal or Rajput pictures ..." (see especially page 177), the romantic landscapes of Pahari painting may beg to differ. There is an abiding history of a visionary love affair with the land that makes the hills, trees, rocks, and waterways of Kangra more than just an incidental player in seventeenth and eighteenth century miniatures.

“The Village Beauty” from the Bihari Satsai (700 Verses of Bihari), is an excellent example of a traditional Pahari landscape with agricultural aspects. The Bihari Sat Sai is a collection of short, sensuous poems relating the messages that Rādhā’s maids carry between Rādhā and the god Krishna. The lustrous illustration of “The Village Beauty” presents a village girl, the “beauty” of the title, standing guard over a paddy field, weapon in hand. A lavender scarf marks her as a peasant while the garland of flowers draped around her neck draw attention to her mango-shaped breasts and curvaceous waist. In the background, an older woman regales Krishna with tales of the younger woman’s beauty. The paddy field is demarcated into rectangles, with euphorbia flowers edging the field. A small irrigation channel runs out of the hedge and snakes off to the right of the picture plane.

The beauty of the village girl is described textually in verse, but her beauty is also echoed everywhere in the landscape of the image. For instance, the circular forms of her breasts are repeated in the forms of the rocks to the right, while the curving tree trunk directly behind her echoes the curves of her body. Only Krishna, centrally ensconced in a planar white terrace, stands apart from the verdant landscape.

“The Village Beauty” allows us to garner a sense of the traditional elements in Pahari painting. Typically, the buildings are highly geometric. A sense of depth is achieved by layering the constituent parts of the landscape: clouds, architecture, hills, trees, and so on. Styles of trees and grass are dependent on the artist’s geographic area; according to M.S. Randhawa, the boulders in “The Village Beauty” “are very characteristic of the Kangra Valley, and are not seen anywhere else in the Western Himalayas” (See Kangra Paintings of the Bihari Sat Sai).

When the nineteenth-century “Tea Garden drawn by a Native Artist of the Kangra Valley” is compared to the earlier “Village Beauty,” and the title page of Tea planting in the outer Himalayah, we see that the frontispiece, because it is neither a traditional British landscape nor a typical Pahari landscape, disavows the panoptic gaze of the British reader and creates its own strategy of seeing.

*Full disclosure: much of this post is based on a thesis written for "Empires of Vision," a history seminar taught by Professor Sumathi Ramaswamy at Duke University in the fall of 2009.

Random Weekend Update: a crown, a romance, and more

2011-01-23T23:59:00.001-05:00

Another random weekend update about school and such, before I turn in to sleep, before another week comes upon us.

Things are still slowly settling into the semester. I finally went to my first Ackland docent training meeting on Tuesday, and then observed a tour on Friday. [Note: I had no idea third graders are so squirrely! Third grade teachers have to be saints. Really.] I just have to say, although the kids were bundles of energy, they behaved well and were very smart. I've not had that good a time at the museum in a while.

This coming week: busy! I've been broadcasting this on Facebook and all over the place, but I'm fighting off a cold while I look down the barrel of one of my busiest weeks in quite some time. Unfortunately, I get a most amazing sore throat and lose my voice when I get a cold. Thankfully, I have more-than-competent TAs and a movie I can slot in for my intro class tomorrow, so we all (the students, TAs, and I) don't have to suffer through a painful and croaked hour-long lecture.
For Thursday: Mauryan art. Question of the day: Didarganj Yakshi (below): Mauryan or not? Why or why not?

Archives class meets for the first time tomorrow night. We're looking at going well over three hours, since we missed the first week's session. If I don't pass out by 8:30pm, I'll consider it a success. I'm looking forward to my first intro to archives, since it's been mostly a mystery to me thus far. I mean, I've been on the user side plenty of times, but getting into the practice of arranging and classifying archives is thrilling.

Crown, you ask? What crown?
Cross your fingers my cold doesn't get me thrown out of the dentist's office. If not, then tomorrow I finally get my permanent crown on my cracked molar. A month ago I had a root canal, and have been babying it ever since. I hate the dentist, although this dentist is the best of the bunch so far.

Romance?
Well, of course I have plenty of romance courtesy of my lovely husband. But I'm so happy to "have" to read a romance for class this Thursday. So happy, in fact, that I'm reading two of them. One of my classmates loaned me Sisters of the Heart, an Amish romance by Shelley Shepard Gray. Since that was so, um, chaste, I decided to find out what a "regular" romance was all about. I picked up Dark Prince by Christine Feehan. I've got to say, it was quite the switch. Fair warning, if you do read that first chapter -- there is a lot of satiny skin and burning nether-regions. And by burning, I don't mean in a clinical sort of way. Both were good and very educational for someone who doesn't normally read romances of any stripe.

Next week we're to read two bestsellers in order to do a short comparison paper. One must be a late 19th-century/early 20th-century bestseller, and the other is an accompanying recent bestseller. Any suggestions?
I'll let you know what I've chosen and how the paper went next weekend.

Ephemeral Wednesday: Octagon House

2011-01-19T23:00:00.001-05:00

I found this great brochure, about the Armour-Stiner House in Irvington-On-Hudson, New York, in a book which came through The Bookshop some time ago. It appears to have printed for a open house or special tour approximately around 1965.

Octagon Houses became popular in the United States in the nineteenth century mostly due to the work of Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist, sexologist, and "amateur architect." Fowler published The Octagon House, a Home for All in the 1850s, touting the concrete construction and octagonal shape as "new, cheap, convenient, superior and adapted to rich and poor."

This particular house was built in 1859-60 for Paul J. Armour, a New York City financier. It was then purchased by Joseph Stiner, a tea importer, on May 31, 1872. Stiner enlarged the house and added the dome and cupola. Stiner embellished the exterior of the house with dozens of ornate architectural details, such as an amazing slate roof and dog-head medallions peeking out from the railings. Stiner also built a triangular tea room in the inner recesses of the home.

Author, poet, and historian Carl Carmer and his wife Elizabeth lived in the house from 1946 until 1976, during which time Mr. Carmer believed the house haunted. The current owner, noted Preservation Architect Joseph Pell Lombardi, is restoring the house and grounds to its former Victorian splendor.

Lombardi has painstakingly restored the interior of the home to jewel box-like perfection. He has filled it with antiques, even going so far as to replace phones, plumbing fixtures, and the stove with period antiques.

Random Weekend Update; or, the first week went by so quickly!

2011-01-15T02:22:00.002-05:00

A personal post once a week can't be that bad, can it? Besides, I love this new design (and that fabulous picture in the header! Hooray Flickr Creative Commons!) so much that I want to post something new to celebrate it.

This was the first week of the semester, and yes, it went by like a flash. Because of all kinds of circumstances half my class sessions were canceled this week. Monday evening into Tuesday classes were canceled because of an ice storm in the area, and my only class on Wednesday was also canceled because of professorial illness. I did manage to hold both of my own lectures, though, and got things off to a fine start there.

This semester, I'm over the moon about my library classes. And I don't mind lecturing for profit, either. I really think everything is going to work out.

Mondays and Wednesdays I start the day with an hourlong lecture about South Asian art to 100 students. I've taught this class before, but to a small classroom. It's a bit more overwhelming to speak to three times as many, but if the first week is any indication, it'll be just as fun. And I am blessed with three of my great friends from art history as my TAs. They do all the hard work; I just get up there and do the soft-shoe routine for a couple of hours.

After I finish my lecture (at 10:50am on the dot, thank you...), I run across what I now know to be half of McCorkle Place and all of Pike Place (the old and new quad, respectively) to attend the class that I have a huge crush on: Rare Books and Special Collections. We meet in Wilson Library, home of the university's Rare Book Collection, and pretty much will be inspecting and discussing rare books for two and a half hours a week. We're starting off the semester reading Carter's ABC for Book Collectors and Pearson's Books as History, which to me is like coming home. Our final project is a book exhibition. Yes, a virtual book exhibition.

Monday evenings I will (eventually) attend Intro to Archives for nearly three hours. It is going to be intense, I know it -- just like Cataloguing was last semester. We're already two weeks behind, though, so I kind of fear for my brain once we do start up on the 24th.

Thursdays I joined, at the last minute, a class I know for sure is going to be a delight: Seminar in Popular Materials. Essentially, we're learning all about the different popular genres and figuring out how to be good readers' advisors in the library or, in my case, at the Bookshop. I have a soft spot for rare and collectible popular materials prior to the nineteenth century, so this just brings me into the 21st century. The first week of reading we have a discussion piece about the history of popular reading, but the second week we're to pick any romance novel and, um, read it! My co-worker at the Bookshop guffawed when he heard that. I'm determined to read some unusual sub-genres in this class, though, so I hope I'll be able to find some Amish romances to read in the next few weeks.

Ephemeral Wednesday: Mother Kali's Bookstore

2011-01-12T23:45:00.002-05:00

Finally, I get to my first Ephemeral Wednesday.

This is just one of the many bookmarks we have found in the used books we put up for sale at The Bookshop. It's from the now-defunct (perhaps?) Mother Kali's Bookstore in Eugene, OR. This is especially cool because of the Mother Kali's logo. What do you see? A moon, a face, or a double-edged parashu?

Kālī is a fearsome Hindu goddess, but also a protecting and loving deity. I wrote this description some time ago in a term paper about a few of the more interesting depictions of Kali:

Kālī’s role in Hindu mythology is unique. Kālī is revered as both warrior and mother, and is the only divine female born of female will and power. A description of one of the many forms of Kālī can be found in the Devī-māhātmya, 7.5, which begins: “From [Durga’s] broad forehead of curved eye-brows suddenly sprang forth Kālī of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and a noose.” [Devī-māhātmya, The Glorification of the Great Goddess, Vasudeva S. Agrawala, trans. (Varanasi: All-India Kashiraj Trust, 1963).]
Kālī, a destructive avatar of Devi who was formed from the head of Durga during the battle against the demon Raktabija, is most often depicted in her daksinakālī pose as she adorns temples, doorways, and roadside shrines throughout India. Arms outstretched, mouth agape, and blood-red tongue down to her chin, she dances on her consort Śiva. Kālī is not simply a destructive force, however. In India, she is also revered for her life-giving properties and worshiped as an emanation of the mother goddess – indeed, as the female life force itself, Śakti. Regardless of her role, the traditional iconic representation of Kālī, as with all figural works secular or divine, usually follows a strict iconographic program based on descriptions from classical scriptures such as the Devī-Māhātmya.

One of my favorite depictions of Kālī is by the great Raja Ravi Varma. Ravi Varma established the Ravi Varma Press in Bombay in the 1890s to print and market his paintings of Hindu deities.

"Kali" by Raja Ravi Varma.
Reprinted in Neumayer, Erwin and Christine Schelberger. Popular Printed Art; Raja Ravi Varma and the Printed Gods of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Here Varma’s Kālī stands as an iconic superwoman with one foot perched on an unconscious Śiva. Her arms are outstretched and her shoulders squared off in front of a long mane of dark hair. Her rightmost hand is held out, as if to present the body of the demon whose head she holds to the left. Underneath the head, she holds a bowl to catch the dripping blood. She also raises a scimitar high to signal her victory over evil. Kālī is clothed in her traditional garb of men’s heads and severed arms. Her chest is bare, but her body lacks definition. Varma's Kālī is muscular, angry, and victorious.

Other "versions" of Kālī can be found all over the Internet. I am kind of partial to Nina Paley's very divisive (just read those comments!!) but, to me, very personal and feminist Desire, though do also see Judy Chicago's Kali place setting at her Dinner Party, and this wonderful Kalighat Kali at the Victoria and Albert in London.

Monday Book: The Art of Conversation

2011-01-10T23:16:00.001-05:00

Mahaffy, J. P. The Principles of the Art of Conversation. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons/The Knickerbocker Press, 1888.

This Monday Book comes with fine timing. It's the first day of the semester here at UNC, and with that invariably comes plenty of conversation with new classmates and acquaintances. For me, here in snowed-over Chapel Hill, the day started off with a rousing lecture to my Introduction to South Asian Art students, segued into a very exciting Rare Books seminar, and finished off with half a snow day as the precipitation formed into nice little ice pellets on our way back from dinner.

If I had perused The Principles of the Art of Conversation before tonight, however, I'm sure things would have gone even more smoothly during the day today. After all, according to the author, "... it is agreed among us that people must meet frequently, both men and women, and that it is not only agreeable to talk, but that it is a matter of common courtesy to say something, even when there is hardly anything to say" (1-2).

This book was published by the Knickerbocker Press (which is now a loft community; also see the New York Times article on the conversion) for G. P. Putnam's Sons in New York in the late nineteenth century, in the heyday of self-improvement and etiquette publishing.

What I like the most about this Monday Book is the decoration on the front and rear boards. The book has (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) green stamped titles with green stamped double-ruled boxes, floral corner ornaments, and two additional floral ornaments at the head and tail of each board.

Even more lovely than the green stamped double rules are the floral blind stamps which run throughout the paper covering the boards and are, as you can see if you look closely, situated under the green titles. I wonder if the sheets of binding paper were pre-stamped (or possibly embossed?), and then printed and cut for binding. The endpapers have an equally delicious floral pattern. The publishers really made sure that people who wanted to "better" themselves would want to associate with these books.

These tiny details are what make books so precious to me.

Tuesday Tea: Jasmine Pearl

2011-01-04T22:15:00.001-05:00

Today is sort of a Monday Book on Tuesday, as well as a Tuesday Tea.

I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, over the new year, and was entranced by her prose. As much as I was put off by the ending of the book -- yes, I believe the last nine pages were an inelegant trick played on the patient reader -- I still hold that the book itself is a luminous character study that can leave one thinking, thinking, for days. A rapturous way to start off the new year.

One of the characters, in a way, is Jasmine tea. It reappears at integral points to stand in for beauty, ritual, substance. How do we know this? Renee Michel, one of the main characters, tells us as she describes her feelings about taking morning tea with one of her only friends, Manuela:

I pour the tea and we sip in silence. We have never had our tea together in the morning, and this break with our usual protocol imbues the ritual with a strange flavor.
Yes, this sudden transmutation in the order of things seems to enhance our pleasure, as if consecrating the unchanging nature of a ritual established over our afternoons together, a ritual that has ripened into a solid and meaningful reality. Today, because it has been transgressed, our ritual suddenly acquires all its power; we are tasting the splendid gift of this unexpected morning as if it were some precious nectar; ordinary gestures have an extraordinary resonance, as we breathe in the fragrance of the tea, savor it, lower our cups, serve more, and sip again: every gesture has the bright aura of rebirth. At moments like this the web of life is revealed by the power of ritual, and each time we renew our ceremony, the pleasure will be all the greater for having violated one of its principles. Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time. ... So, let us drink a cup of tea. (90-91)

Renee, with a bit of her lofty hyperbole, goes on to describe the tea ritual:

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed. (91)

In the book, Jasmine tea stands for growing up, acquiring taste, assuming a station -- not of class, but of elegance -- and coming into one's own. This, I think, is apt.

Jasmine tea is a green tea lightly scented with jasmine blossoms. In the case of Jasmine pearls, longer leaves of Pouchang green tea are handrolled and then dried to form little balls of tea goodness. In Pursuit of Tea has a good description of how this particular type of tea is produced.

When I can, I buy my Jasmine Pearls from the good people of The Tea Smith in Omaha, NE. They are a small, family-owned company who has made big strides in converting a coffee-drinking city into tea lovers. They make tea accessible to everyone by having a huge selection of teas for every palate. They were responsible for turning my love of tea into an unremitting passion.

To make Jasmine tea:
For the purists: Warm the pot and your mugs/teacups by running them under warm water and drying them off. Place 1 teaspoon of pearls for every 6-8 ounces of water in the infuser. Add 180-degree water, steep for 2-3 minutes, pour, and enjoy.

For the heathens (like me!): Spoon about a teaspoon of pearls in the bottom of your best tea mug. Boil water until you just see the first wisp of smoke come out of the kettle spout. You should not hear a boil. Pour water directly over the pearls and watch them bloom. After a few minutes, when the water is cooled enough to drink, take a deep breath, sip, and enjoy!

Monday Book: Hen-sparrow Turns Purple

2011-01-03T18:20:00.002-05:00

Hen-sparrow Turns Purple. Chennai: Tara Publishing, 2002.
Text adaptation of a traditional story by Gita Wolf, with illustrations by Pulak Biswas, a fantastic painter and children's book illustrator from Delhi.

This offset, accordion-bound copy of Hen-sparrow Turns Purple is published by Tara Books, an independent book publisher out of Chennai, in south India. They publish, as they say, "picture books for adults and children," but they also offer so much more. They have come up with some of the most amazing pop-up books I've seen in the past few years. They have released books handprinted by regional artists featuring unique village-based painting styles from all over India. They have used traditional stories as well as cutting-edge design firms to represent artists from all over the world. In short, Tara Publishing does books the way books should be done.

Cover detail.

Hen-sparrow Turns Purple is the story of a little Hen-sparrow who fell into a pot of purple dye. Her husband, Cock-sparrow became upset and pulled out all his feathers. The story follows the trail of sadness and mourning to the king himself.

The first two leaves.

The naked Cock-sparrow speaks with Pipal.

The Queen dances.

The King reaches for his lute.

In the end, we find Hen-sparrow by herself, as everyone around her mourns her fate. It appears Hen-sparrow is quite unaffected by her new purple plumage.

"She quite liked herself purple!" (As do I, some days...)

What I think I like best about Hen-sparrow Turns Purple is the binding. It is styled in what the publishers call a "scroll design," and can be hung on the wall. It makes a colorful addition to our office space.

The cover, with hanging fob.

The book as a wallhanging.

Also: be sure to watch this wonderful video of how they made Do!, a children's book featuring Warli art.

Monday Book: Brooklyn Pops Up

2010-12-27T23:52:00.003-05:00

Brooklyn Pops Up. New York: Little Simon, 2000.
Presented by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Movable Book Society. Concept by the amazing trio of Ann Montanaro, Ellen G.K. Rubin, and Robert Sabuda. Written by Pamela Thomas.

Brooklyn Pops Up was developed in concert with the exhibition "Brooklyn Pops Up: The History and Art of the Movable Book," presented by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Movable Book Society at the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza in 2000. The exhibition was reviewed by the New York Times. The Pop-Up Lady has some fantastic photos from the exhibition at her site.

Brooklyn Pops Up includes pop-ups by Maurice Sendak (cover), David A. Carter and Tor Lokvig, Bruce Foster, Robert Sabuda, Ken Wilson-Max and Keith Finch, Biruta Akerbergs Hansen, Iain Smyth, Kees Moerbeek and Carla Dus, and Chuck Murphy.

I came across Brooklyn Pops Up at the fabulous, now-defunct J. O'Donoghue Books in Anoka, MN. [Jean retired a handful of years ago and sold her shop to Rebild & Romain, who are now, sadly, liquidating the shop.] My parents lived across the street as caretakers in the assisted living facility, where we gathered for the Christmas holiday. My brother brought his new girlfriend, who is now his wife and my dearly-loved sister-in-law. I was delighted to learn she was (and remains) an avid reader, and we were both excited to make a field trip my first favorite used bookseller across the street. There, we found a whole long shelf of pop-up books. I was enchanted by all of them but managed to buy just a few special favorites. I especially love Brooklyn Pops Up because it is a unique amalgamation of many of my interests: libraries, (book) exhibitions, (book) art, and of course, Brooklyn.


"Grand Army Plaza & Brooklyn Public Library" by Bruce Foster

A detail from the Brooklyn Public Library Page

A detail from "Brooklyn Museum of Art & Brooklyn Children's Museum" by Robert Sabuda

A detail from "Coney Island" by Chuck Murphy

My favorite page: "Brooklyn Bridge" by Iain Smyth

A detail of the fantastic mylar cables of the bridge

A detail from the Grand Army Plaza/Brooklyn Public Library page:
"A Good Book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
Milton

Plan for the new year

2010-12-06T01:20:00.000-05:00

In addition to revamping my website and blog design, I'm planning on re-visioning my blog in the coming year. While it's fun to update the family on my schoolwork and hobbies, I'd like to fashion my blog into something a bit more professional, a bit more in line with my passions.

So starting on the 27th, I'm going to schedule my blog posts, which will focus mainly on books and ephemera, with occasional forays into tea and/or fiber. On Mondays I will do the "Monday Book," which will be posts featuring books I'm reading or books that are well-loved in our personal library. "Ephemeral Wednesdays" will feature examples of printed ephemera, or everyday things that have "a transitory existence." We find so much interesting ephemera tucked into books at the store, and I'm determined to collect and research some of the most compelling examples. I'd love to cultivate a collection of such things, especially things pertaining to women and women's work. If I share a post about tea, look for it especially on Tuesdays, and of course fiber can't help but be on Fridays.

But since it's not yet the 27th, I can also share a school update ... I've uploaded the PowerPoint for my online class, and have another couple of days to finish up the paper. In my last cataloguing class I found out about two! more quizzes that our group needs to finish by the 13th, and a final quiz that also is due on the 13th. Gracious! It's a good thing I have the most awesome cataloguing group ever ... and I really mean that. We seem to have so much fun even while we're banging our heads against the table discussing the minutiae of Dewey's Decimal Classification. (And really, how often do you get to say, rather loudly for a library, "Remember the panda sex? Don't we do the same thing with magickal owls?" and 1) have it mean something about cataloguing, and 2) have everyone in the group know precisely what you're talking about? The strange looks are just a bonus.)

And also, it snowed here! It started on Saturday afternoon, when I was at the Bookshop. It was so beautiful. I was standing at the front of the store among the collectible books, looking out our expanse of windows framed by twinkling holiday lights, when it started ever-so-lightly dropping the tiniest flakes. Within half an hour the snow was coming down in earnest, but it still seemed delicate and refreshing. One of our customers came in and said, "I feel like I'm walking around in a Christmas card!" and I couldn't help but agree.

Halfway through, halfway done, all the way full

2010-11-30T14:54:00.000-05:00

Checking things off my list. The early Italian Renaissance art reference sources site is live. As for the rest, the operating principle now, as ever, is "don't panic." This week: PowerPoint and paper for my online class, a group quiz on Dewey Decimal Classification for cataloging. Next week: the cataloging final and completing the online exercises for the same class. The week after: a PowerPoint presentation for Info Tools to wrap up the semester.

The Most Fun Ever part of the next few weeks is a visit from a great friend. Sharyn and I were co-workers at the management consulting company, and we talked every night, sometimes for hours, on and off over IM. She is such a positive, creative influence for me; I wish I lived next door so we could visit over martinis every weekend. I'm so happy she decided to come this way to see other friends who moved into the area, and over the moon that she contacted me to let me know she'll be in town!

We weren't able to get back to the Midwest for Thanksgiving, so we celebrated with friends here in town. Our friend Josh is a great cook; he cooks by intuition and it always comes out amazing! This year, his first cooking a whole turkey, he brined the bird in orange juice and lemon and wrapped it in bacon before putting it in the oven. So delicious, I can't even tell you. The bacon lent a smoky flavor to the juicy turkey. They were so kind and made all the sides gluten- and dairy-free just for me. I don't know how Josh managed to get dairy-free mashed potatoes so creamy, but he did, and it was divine. I made my own gluten-free stuffing, which tasted just like Stove Top (and so I was in heaven), two pounds of roasted Brussels sprouts, and gluten- and dairy-free pumpkin bars. We stuffed ourselves silly, then played a few rounds of UNO, then called it a night so I could get home to my homework. Wish I had pictures to show but the food definitely wasn't around for very long.

So we're looking forward to the holiday break. Sad, a little, that we're not going back to the Midwest for Christmas either -- but also kind of glad to really take a break. We're going to cocoon in and just rest, get re-inspired, and wrap up loose ends in order to start fresh at the beginning of the year. I'm planning on Skyping in to watch the family open gifts, get a glimpse of the baby, and just have fun watching the madness from afar.

One more Fall beauty shot

2010-11-24T15:18:00.001-05:00

This is a block in downtown Chapel Hill, on Franklin Street. These trees go wild with blooms in the spring, letting off an odor I can only describe as eau d'urine. But in the fall they blaze, and we get to walk under an archway of fire.
This is just past that time, when many of the trees have dropped their leaves. But still, an amazing sight.

A parking lot view

2010-11-24T15:13:00.001-05:00

This is the view from the parking lot outside our building, near the entrance to the covered parking. I can also see it from our office window. It's been a striking fall season this year!

Beautiful fall holdout

2010-11-24T12:57:00.000-05:00

This gorgeous bush is right outside my door, still opening up blooms every day.

Things to be happy about today.

2010-11-23T12:35:00.000-05:00

1. The high temperature for the day here in Chapel Hill is projected to be in the mid- to upper-70s. Yeah, that.

2. I finished my Chinese art incomplete in the wee hours of this morning. It feels so brilliant to have it off my plate. I won't know if it's even decent (I have reason to believe it may not be ...) for a little while, but I'm just so glad to have it done.

3. My group finished out our Access database in class today, many days early. Look for the link to go live later on this evening. It's so nice to not have that hanging over us for the holidays. I think that, yet again, we worked really well as a team. I have the basic knowledge of the program down, so I didn't try to keep up with the manic pace of completing everything along with professor as he did each subtask in class. Instead, I went home and tried portions of each task to ensure I still remembered how to do it. Then, as a team, we took the strongest and most robust complete database and tweaked that to make our final product. I'm glad I've had some time designing Access forms and reports behind me, because I was able to drive the final push and feel like I contributed something to the team effort.

4. I'm going to the dentist again today, but only to talk. He won't drill until after the holidays, at least (I think!). It's the endodontist, actually. My new regular dentist, who is a dear woman (and I am being sincere -- really!!), sent me to a specialist to consult about my cracked molar. Cross your fingers that I don't need another root canal and can instead just get a crown! It's a long road ahead for my teeth, though. After this tooth gets fixed, I get fitted for a biteguard to keep me from clenching my teeth while sleeping, (probably) get crowns on the other semi-cracked molars, and (yay!) get veneers for my front teeth. Lots of work, lots of phobia-facing, but I hope it all comes out great on the other side.

5. I got a paper back from my on-line class professor. And wow, it is so much fun to read comments from a teacher who likes my prose, who doesn't mind my phrasing and storytelling. I've never done a journal for class readings before, and I've never relied so much on my own life for "evidence," but personal anecdotes seem to be appropriate for this field. Coming from a storytelling family as I do, I guess there's another reason I feel like I fit so well here.

What do you have to be happy about today?

Quickly, quickly

2010-11-20T00:18:00.001-05:00

Some things of note:

I put my name on the ballot for treasurer of our Art and Museum Library and Information Student Society. I find out soon. Cross your fingers that I get elected!

Things are coming due! It feels so nice, not to have to kill myself getting huge research projects done. Instead, I have a cascading series of smaller projects taking me to the end of the semester.

By Monday: The annotated bibliography from last year's Chinese art class needs to get back to the prof in time for him to put a grade in. (It might not be perfect, but it will be done.) The access project with my Info Tools group should be mostly complete. The last week of discussions for my on-line class occurs (post by midnight).
The 25th: Happy Turkey Day! (No classes held 24-26)
By the 28th: The second half of my on-line class journal is due.
By the 29th: A PowerPoint for my on-line class comes due. We're to summarize our final papers about the information needs of a particular user group, post it online, and comment on one another's projects on our discussion board. The access project is due.
By the 30th: My pathfinder for reference class, describing reference sources for early Renaissance art history, goes live on my website (look for it on the ART270 research tools page).
The 1st: My last cataloguing class.
The 8th: Last day of classes. My short paper for my on-line class is due.
By the 16th: A PowerPoint for my Info Tools class is due.

Plenty of projects, yes, but they're all eminently do-able. Small projects let me dive deep for shorter periods of time, so I can wrap my head around each and every one of them. Further, each project seems to link in with the others as I accumulate tools for good reference-fu. Not scary. Fun.

Raining outside ...

2010-11-16T15:16:00.000-05:00

... all tucked in at the sweet shop inside. I've made Sugarland my official unofficial office for the next month; I meet students here when they need to discuss their ART270 (Early Renaissance Art) research papers. Apparently most of the students think I'm a TA (I'm not!!), so I've got "coolest TA" status going because I meet with them here. I also actually have the time to respond quickly to their emails, and have the luxury of being very flexible with my meeting times.

It's nice to not have to be the bad guy for once; I don't have to do any grading or deliver any bad news. It's nice, instead, to just help students be successful. Now ... on to my own work while I still have the time.

Wednesday photodump

2010-11-10T17:02:00.000-05:00

I'm off to cataloguing class in a little bit, so today's update is more of a random photodump than anything else ...

Scott's going great guns on the new 40K hobby. It's a whole new game for which he has to acquire the paraphernalia, learn the rules, and practice, practice, practice! He just purchased two different armies. The first is from EBay; it was painted pretty well and can be played pretty much out of the box. The second he cobbled together from new "dudes" (as I call them) and poorly-painted models purchased from someone around here. The poorly painted ones needed to be stripped down to the plastic and repainted. I'm so excited about all the little dudes -- I think it's such a cool hobby. (And yes, I've already apologized in advance for the inevitable time when I'll get way too excited about a dude and accidentally break him while I'm looking at him....)

I should have put pennies in the pictures for scale. See the bases those dudes right there are standing on? They're a little larger than a penny. And Scott has to paint that one that's primed (all black) to pretty much match the one that's mostly painted already. The macro on the picture is crap because I took it with my cell phone, but believe me, the detail on these things is wicked cool.

When he's done painting and goes to his weekly gaming sessions, he'll take his armies in this cool bag. It's got perforated foam on the interior, so he can make sure every little dude gets to the game safe and sound.

*****
Last night we went to Milltown, a local bar where we end up far too often for late-night dinners (home of "frite mountain" -- how lovely!), and we were happy to discover they now carry Green's gluten-free beer! Scott tells me it's a pretty light beer (there is a dark version, but they don't yet carry it at Milltown), but I think it's sparkly. And really quite yummy.

The label not only says gluten free, but it's free of just about every other crazy allergen (even, as they say, "crustaceans"!). For years I wondered why beer made my eyes kind of flutter back in my head ... since this one doesn't, I'm guessing it has something to do with all the gluten, and perhaps sulfites, in just about every other beer on the market.
The only drawback? Green's is imported from Britain. What's so big about that, you ask? That means it's costs about twelve bucks for me to drink beer with everyone else. Yep, for the price of a case of Bud, I get one (admittedly fairly large) bottle of Green's. But at least it's tasty. And gluten free.

*****
It's finally getting chilly here in North Carolina. And by chilly, I mean it hovers around 65 degrees in the middle of the day. But I'm pulling out my long-sleeved shirts and keeping track of my hat anyway. We're also getting fall color, so I thought I should leave you with the shot of the day, the view out of the windshield as we drive away from our apartment complex:

A little more about the Ackland (a request from my fans! :)

2010-11-04T21:19:00.026-04:00

The Ackland Art Museum is the university's art collection. It's in a fairly small building, but with a powerful collection and great exhibition space. Currently there are three portraiture shows and an art glass and ceramics collection on view, along with six permanent collection installations.

I've been going to the Ackland since I started at the art history program, but usually for teaching purposes. I gave a Buddhist sculpture talk to a teachers conference there this past June, and I enjoyed the talk and the people in the Ackland education department so much, I asked about becoming a docent. They were thrilled and told me to show up whenever I could start attending training. Essentially, at the Ackland docents lead tours and facilitate interactive learning sessions for students of all ages. Docent-led sessions are designed to get kids, especially, comfortable in a museum setting. If we get them to start looking critically at art in the process, that's a great bonus!

While my schedule doesn't permit me to volunteer at the museum this semester, I've still been giving talks here and there, mostly to senior citizen groups, about Buddhist sculpture along the Silk Road. There are two local groups in particular who hold lifelong learning classes, one through Duke University and one based at a local church. Both have a class about the Art and Cultural Exchange along the Silk Road exhibition, which is installed at the museum until next June. I have to admit, I was more than a little nervous about today's presentation, because I was presenting in the middle of some august company -- my professors from the art department! But they gave or will give their talks in other weeks, so they weren't sitting in the audience. Apparently, I can handle presentations to kids and seniors, but art history professors ... not so much anymore! My nerves were unfounded, though, because the OLLI group (like the Shared Learning group on Monday) is wonderful; such a giving audience. They, like many lifelong learners, seem to appreciate new knowledge presented plainly, with not a lot of theory or froo-froo hypotheses. Since that's how I roll, so to speak, we all synced up just fine.

Thinking about next semester -- already!

2010-11-03T00:41:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note ...

Registration is already underway for next semester at UNC. Thankfully, my registration time was relatively early; just fifteen minutes after I registered my most-desired class was full (I was the second-to-last student in).
I'm so thrilled that by January I'll be able to start drilling down into my specialization. Kind of a switch from registering for this semester: I was admitted so late that there weren't a lot of the "interesting" classes left. But it worked out well, as I took so many required classes this semester that I'm already done with many of the prerequisites.
Best of all, even with four courses I still have much of the week free to work and volunteer. I made sure to keep Tuesdays free for the Ackland -- I can't wait to docent!

So here's the list:
Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30-10:45: INLS509, Information Retrieval
"Study of information retrieval and question answering techniques, including document classification, retrieval and evaluation techniques, handling of large data collections, and the use of feedback."
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00-12:15: INLS857, Seminar in Rare Book Collections!!!
"A study of the nature and importance of rare book collections; problems of acquisition, organization, and service."
Mondays, 6:00-8:45: INLS556, Introduction to Archives
"Survey of the principles, techniques, and issues in the acquisition, management, and administration of records, manuscripts, archives, and other cultural and documentary resources in paper, electronic, and other media formats."
Fridays, 12:30-2:45: INLS754, Access, Outreach, and Public Service in Cultural Heritage Repositories
"Explores user needs, information seeking behaviors, and provision of access to primary source materials in archives, manuscript repositories, and museums. User education and outreach are major focuses."

So did you notice? I'm only in class Monday and Wednesday mornings, Monday evenings, and Friday afternoons. I can attend docent training Tuesday mornings, lead tours at the museum throughout the week, volunteer on Friday mornings, and work Friday afternoons and all weekend. And, I believe, still get my homework done.

What a life.
What. A. Life.

October? It's in the bag, baby. And I have pictures to prove it.

2010-11-01T21:45:00.003-04:00

Halloween marks the end of fall and beginning of winter around here. Luckily, we get to party before November rolls around and it starts to mean business, weather-wise (and work-wise, too!).

This weekend was a fun way to cap off an extra-fun month. We were scheduled for no less than three parties and a night out at a local club (to hear the Guy-brarian DJs spin their groovy tunes), but made it to just one festive shindig hosted by our friends Lindsay and Jon. (Yes, Jon-who-got-Scott-into-40K Jon.) I think one out of four ain't bad, especially considering we're the old folks of our set. Since Lindsay went all out and decorated the heck-and-gone out of their new pad, Scott and I decided to actually dress up this year.

V/Guy Fawkes, accompanied by a witch.

The witch, sans hat; V, sans mask and wig; the hostess witch, looking lovely.

I think we did okay, don't you? I slathered on the makeup, which always makes me feel like a drag queen, but people seem to like it. The witchy dress was a last-minute addition. I was going to wear some of my own clothing (because I apparently dress a bit like a witch...), but found the dress at a thrift shop for $12 -- and who can resist the $12 witch's dress? Lindsay wore her own witchy ensemble, which (hah!) was !gorgeous! and hand-made for her by the fine seamstress at Davenport & Winkleperry out in Pittsboro.

Today, to start off the last push of the semester, I gave a talk to a class at the Shared Learning Association of Chapel Hill. I gave a bit of a re-run of my Buddhist sculpture class from this summer, and it went swimmingly. Can I just say, I love seniors? This was a class of about 10 "students," and they were all really wonderful folks. One woman was thinking ahead the whole time, and would ask me a question that would lead right into the next slide. Another woman was watching me with bright eyes, nodding at me the entire time I spoke. Another gentleman was nodding off in the back row, but then the gentleman in the third row made up for him by cracking jokes about Republicans. It was a fun hour and half, and I left thinking what a joy it was to share what little knowledge I have.

This lecture portends the one I am signed up to give on Thursday to well over 100 more seniors. This is for the Duke Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which gives me a bit of the vapors. I think I'm going to rewrite the lecture a little bit into a proper "talk," so I don't stammer as much as I did today. I'm also very excited to fold some theories I have recently discovered about relevance and information processing in with my discussion of how Buddhist sculpture was a conduit of information for travelers and pilgrims around the turn of the common era.

So I promised a picture of the other Bookshop cat, Red. He is our front window cat, and he certainly earns his keep by bringing customers in the door. He sleeps literally all morning, so people constantly poke their heads in to ask if he's real, or alive, or a robot, or what-have-you. Yes, he's real, and alive, and no, he's not a robot or whateverelse. He's our wonderful loverboy, Red.

This is clearly a Red-size bed.

I'll leave you with a funny sign, found on campus a couple weeks ago. It's a head-scratcher, for sure. Tuna sandwich? Peace of mind? I dunno.

"J" seems to have lost more than a tuna sandwich, I think.

Yes!

2010-10-26T13:35:00.000-04:00

I met with my SILS adviser in the flesh today. What a delightful man! We spent twenty minutes laughing and just generally getting to know one another. So easy, so stress-free.
With any luck, next semester I'll be focusing on rare books, special libraries, and archives. We decided (well, I decided & he agreed) I'd be taking a seminar on rare books, the introduction to archives class, Information Retrieval (another reference class), and a course called "Access, Outreach, and Public Service in Cultural Heritage Repositories." All of them sound so great! I'm absolutely going to be geeking out during rare books. The last class really, really seems to be exactly what I'd like to do in my everyday life: "Explores user needs, information seeking behaviors, and provision of access to primary source materials in archives, manuscript repositories, and museums. User education and outreach are major focuses."
Lovely! Wonderful! Sign me up!!

***
To confuse things a bit, though, today in reference class we learned about and did a bit of chat reference. Literally, it is what it seems: answering reference questions via chat clients. It brought me back a little; my lifeline to everything at McKinsey was through our instant messaging chats. This reference chatting just takes it to the next level. To the next AWESOME level. I was so excited during class my teachers started laughing at me.
I stayed after class (naturally) to introduce myself to our speaker/trainer, the chat reference head, and she gave me the contact info for a regional (within the Triangle area) chat reference service, who might be looking for people to "(wo)man the desk" next fall. They're trying to get librarians for those awful wee hours (WHICH I LOVE), and they'll pay me to do it, too!
So ... reference? Maybe? Rare book reference? Perhaps?

***
In other news, I made cookies two days ago. (I'm laughing at myself. Do you want to know this? I'm sure not...but I blog about my life. This is my life.) But holy mother of God these cookies are amazing. Peanut butter, chocolate chips, brown sugar, an egg, some baking powder and vanilla extract. That's it. Free of everything that's tummy-bad. I've been forcing myself to take just two at a time. Of course, that means I walk into the kitchen, grab two cookies, walk to the couch, eat them, walk back into the kitchen, grab two more, etc., etc. Scott likes them, but he's not as much of a chocolate hound as I am, and a cup of the mini chocolate chips makes a very chocolate-y cookie.

You don't believe me, how nom nom nom this cookie-ness is? Okay, see if you can resist ... here it is ...

COOKIE!!!

Newest oldbook find

2010-10-23T00:06:00.001-04:00

At the Bookshop I come across plenty of books that leap into my cubbyhole because they need to be mine someday. Once the books are in our cubbyholes, we can hold them for as long as we want to before we purchase them. Sometimes, though, books leap into my hands and to the register before I know it. This was one of those times:

Sorry for the blurriness.
I still have to get a charger for my amazing new camera.

Yes, it's a book entitled "The Dictionary of Love." The subtitle is thus: ... "containing a definition of all the terms used in the History of the Tender Passion, with rare quotations from the ancient and modern poets of all nations; together with specimens of curious model love letters, and many other interesting matters appertaining to love, never before published; the whole forming a remarkable text book for all lovers, as well as a complete guide to matrimony and a companion of married life. Translated, in part, from the French, Spanish, German, and Italian, with Several Original Translations from the Greek and Latin by Theocritus Junior."

A remarkable text book, indeed! It's the 1858 red cloth hardcover edition from Dick & Fitzgerald. Starting with ABSENCE ("... considered the great bane and torment of lovers"), it traipses through such things as BOLDNESS ("... as applied to woman, means that she is brazen, and destitute of the modesty which belongs to virtue"), PROCRASTINATION ("... a thief of time that often steals from a lover an occasion which may never return), ROSES ("... the favorite flower of lovers"), and ends with YOUTH ("... in love, youth is no doubt a great advantage. It is the youth of the heart, however, which ensure the greatest happiness in the tender passion").

The appendix, however, is perhaps the best, as it is "a few words upon Matrimonial Advertisements." And, even better, after the appendix comes pages and pages of "Popular Books sent Free of Postage at the Prices annexed." What I wouldn't give for a copy of Martine's Hand-Book of Etiquette & Guide to True Politeness! (Bound in cloth, gilt sides, just 75 cents!) Or maybe The Ladies' Complete Guide to Crochet, Fancy Knitting and Needle-Work -- that one must be fancy; it's $1.25 with gilt sides.

I adore these books.

Fall things.

2010-10-21T17:41:00.003-04:00

It's Fall Break! ... and time for the sort-of monthly blog update for my #1 reader (Hi Auntie!). This is a sort of random post, so bear with me as I download all the goings-on.

"Yo. What'chu doin'?"

Family things
Scott and I made an unexpected visit to Omaha last month after his grandmother passed away. It was sudden, and yet it was expected. She was 89 and was absolutely ready to reunite with her daughter and husband. She was not and has never been in poor health, but has lived with more than her share of heartache in the last six years. Her passing leaves yet another deep ache in our souls, but I for one will remember Grandma J.'s spunkiness, the twinkle in her eyes, her boundless giving, and, of course, her chicken and homemade noodles. I'm surprised I don't have a digital picture of her to share with you, but then again she wasn't one for pictures. She pooh-poohed any fuss over her, and always found something to do in the kitchen when cameras were pulled out. I'm certain Grandma's glad Elmo is up there at the top of this post, instead of a big head shot of her. Nevertheless, we both think of her every day, and I am thankful she was a part of my life.

Also, a shout-out to my sis: you have my full support and love now and always, no matter what. Remember to treat yourself with compassion, develop a calm sense of self, and from that things will settle into place. My heart is with you!

Hobby things
The Ramblin' Rose sprint triathlon was last weekend, and sadly I wasn't able to race. The Monday prior I broke my toe, and shortly afterward came down with a crazy chest cold. I was all set to power through with the broken toe, but breathing is a far more necessary tool for exercise -- so I went as a "coach" to my friend Katie. Aaaaand in her first sprint tri, with no practice on a borrowed bike, Katie took 12th place, and won an award as first in her age bracket. She is a wonderment. This tiny cell phone video of her celebration after being the second runner in gives some indication of her energy...

Yes, that was about five minutes after she pounded out the two-mile run in approximately twelve minutes. We're going to continue training together this winter and do the next Ramblin' Rose in May. She's got me in the pool twice a week, so that's a start, right?

Scott has a new hobby, too! I'm so pleased. He's still just dipping his toe in, but I hope he takes to it; I think it has the right elements of geekiness + creativity to keep his interest. I don't understand all the details, but it's a gaming thing called Warhammer 40K. He gets to paint a bunch of little dudes like this ...

Check out my fingernails, too. 8/10 are pretty, pretty!

(sorry for the blurriness -- it's a really small dude!!) and then play war games with them. You laugh, but geeks are sexy.

Work things
I continue to get hours added at the Bookshop. I'm up to 17.5 official hours a week, though I usually come in early for every shift, so I'm there about 20 hours a week. Things are so delightful there that I just want to hang out and do whatever needs to be done. And the cats, I love them. Not more than my cat, of course, but close.

I am one big dude.

This is the most hilarious shot of Elmo in Red's bed; I'll follow up this weekend with a picture of Red curled up there so you can get an idea of how funny this is. Red fits perfectly in the bed and is usually sleeping with his paws covering his eyes (passers-by think he's fake, no lie). But fatty-boombatty here, well, he's just showing off his people skills by getting some window time in, too.

School things
The semester has flown by so quickly; we're now just past week eight and I'm still feeling well. That in and of itself is wonderful, but I also feel great about the work. I still don't have any idea what I'll be doing in a year and a half, but I'm okay with that. No one is pressuring me to declare a focus or to do anything but learn and meet people. Things will happen as they should, and I'll figure out where my talents lie soon enough, really. For now, I know I adore reference and cataloguing pretty equally. Next semester I'll be taking archiving and rare books classes, so by the time Fall comes around again I should be able to start getting field experience for credit in my preferred area.

I finally put up my own website, which links back to this blog. You can also get there by clicking the "home" button overhead. I did it for an assignment in my Info Tools class, but I like it well enough to keep it going. I know it's sparse; I wanted it to match the blog and didn't have time to redesign the blog and do the whole website in time for the due date. I'll get some color and punch into it sometime. Or maybe not; it's nice to have a restful place online once in a while, isn't it?

Holy Moley, Batman, now THAT'S a book!!

2010-09-07T22:05:00.003-04:00

Takes some muscle to lift that thar book!

So I've been at Library Science for a couple weeks now (we're starting week three of the semester), and it's such a change from my old program. For the so-much-better. My classes are busier, and there are more of them, but even the theory seems more applicable to me. And nearly all the work intertwines, overlaps, complements. AND, since it's a professional program, I have a lot in common with most of my classmates, even though there are 20-30 people in each class, instead of six (or, um, one).
But yet, the work isn't overwhelming. I can read Other Books, and eat Real Meals, and spend time with my Darling Husband, without feeling too guilty. [Side note: except that nagging feeling of needing to wrap up my incompletes in my previous department. Must do that. Soon.] Our professors encourage us to socialize, volunteer, and take time off.
Yes, I've started volunteering again! There's a great program SILS started a few years ago called the Community Workshop Series. They describe it on the site better than I ever could:

During spring semester 2005, the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill teamed up with public library colleagues in the area to offer computer and information literacy classes free to the general public. The classes began at the Chapel Hill Public Library in the spring, and expanded to the Carrboro Branch Library and the Carrboro Cybrary during the summer of 2005. In the fall of 2006, the program expanded to the Durham County Public Library in downtown Durham. Volunteer librarians and library students from UNC-Chapel Hill design and team teach the classes, while the librarians from the public libraries coordinate registration and promotion. Class topics range from beginner-level computer basics to more advanced Internet research skills on everything from evaluating health information to writing a resume. Some classes are also offered in Spanish.

I started last Friday as a floater (assistant) in a basic computer skills class, and jumped in with both feet afterward, signing up as the teacher for this Friday's Internet Basics course [Side note no. 2: It begins at EIGHT AM. Just like my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If this doesn't make me a Morning Person again, I don't know what will. I will be either a Morning Person, or a very irritable girl, by the end of the semester]. If they don't get any takers for next Friday, I'll probably end up teaching Email Basics then, too. I'm excited to get back to teaching, and it's really nice to have people who actually really want to be there, and really want to learn. Last week we started the class with at least 3/4 of the participants looking at the computer in front of them warily. Most of them didn't really know what the parts of a computer were called or how it all worked together. Within an hour, the teacher, Julie, had them clicking around the screen in a mouse tutorial -- and most of them left happy, I think. Isn't that wonderful? Yes, I do think it's a Good Thing.

Also in the past three weeks: our darling Omaha Friends came for a decent-length visit. I was blessed to have them here for my birthday celebration, which I now share with my dear friend Diane. It was so wonderful to see them. I think we wore them out with all the walking around, but with all the new people I've been meeting it was a breath of fresh air to be with our familiars again. I truly love those folks, and I'm glad they know my soul -- even if it's a bit cranky sometimes. (And I'm infinitely glad they always forgive me for my crankiness!!)

And more recently, my precious niece was baptized. I couldn't make it back to MN for the ceremony (and anyway, I sizzle when I go into churches), but my heart swells any time I see pictures and videos. Her papa just posted one on Facebook where she was standing up in a chair -- at four months!

Work has been truly amazing. I'm up to 15 hours a week at the Bookshop, and things are dropping into place. I still feel all thumbs, but after just 5 weeks I should still feel a little uncomfortable, and I haven't yet done anything truly idiotic, so all is well.

Yes, all is well. Now I'm off to go read the introduction of that tome I'm hefting at the top of the post. (Ahem. That's the 2005 Update of the 2002 Revision of the Second Edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. I can't even tell you how many pages are in it because the publishers didn't paginate it sequentially, but it's at least three inches thick.)

Life is sweet

2010-08-27T17:45:00.000-04:00

Seriously. Books and cats - what more could you ask for?

Which way is north?

2010-08-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I am officially oriented to SILS, and whoa, it took some doing.
We had a six hour orientation schedule, wherein they informed us of manymanymany things. My brain was plenty melty by lunchtime. This was even before they took my group on a tour of the library, where our lovely guide, a second-year SILS student and SILS library worker, informed us that five floors of books and offices somehow fit in a three-story building.
Yes, I am apparently going to school at Hogwarts. [It's not just the library thing. It's also that there are three separate staircases to get to different parts of the building. One staircase, near the entrance, goes up to a single third-floor classroom, while a second, in the rear of the building, goes to the remainder of the third floor, and the third, inside the library, winds up five whole floors. Malkovitch, anyone?]
I met my mentor, a fine and chatty fellow who knows many other fine and chatty folks, made new acquaintances, and awkwardly introduced myself to my new adviser.

Tomorrow comes early as class is still at EIGHT.

Here's my baby, asleep in my lap as usual

2010-08-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

What I'm doing now

2010-08-17T16:31:00.005-04:00

Around this time of year I answer the same question time and time again.

"... so, what classes are you taking this semester?"

I have to admit, I ask it, too. It's a go-to question for grad students of all stripes. And for my family, who are all extremely excited about my new master's program, but maybe don't exactly know what kind of classes make up a Master of Science in Library Science.

So here's a taste of what I'll be doing, starting next Tuesday.
This semester, I'm taking all-intro-all-the-time. I managed to get into the first four required SILS classes, which will make it so much easier for me as I progress through program. Two classes are lecture-style courses and two are on-line, which means I'm in class from 8am to just after noon Tuesday and Thursday. Yes, I'm forcing myself to re-adopt my professional hours, so I won't go into shock when I get a Real Job in a few years. I left MWF open so I would have plenty of flexibility to schedule work, an internship, or volunteering in between my coursework. (Cross your fingers that I get my Dream Assistantship over in Wilson Library this year ... I'll find out soon!)
On weekends, I am scheduled to work at The Bookshop, a wonderful used bookstore on the west end of Chapel Hill. It's a delight, a real pleasure and an honor, to work there. My coworkers are all true book people and the shop cats, Red and Elmo, make it really feel like home. My second day on the job commenced with my manager telling me that playing with the cats is part of my job description, and no, she wasn't joking! My job is cool.
Here are my classes:

At the unholy hour of 8am I will be in INLS501, Information Resources and Services. This is the class in which I will learn how to cleverly answer reference questions by using (and teaching patrons how to use) waaaay more than GoogleFu. There's nothing wrong with GoogleFu, of course, but oh! how many other wonderful reference tools are out there, waiting for me!
By 9:30 I will be in our required computer class, INLS461, Tools for Information Literacy. I could have tried to test out of it, but about 30% of the syllabus covers new-to-me technology. I already like how this professor has organized the syllabus. He has created a clear workflow with established deliverables that have easy-to-follow directions. As long as I keep up with the day-to-day tasks, this class will be delightful.

After lunch on Tuesdays and Thursday I intend to hunker down with some tea and log on to my on-line courses.

INLS500, Human Information Interactions, seems like a theory class. If the syllabus is similar to other INLS500 sections, the big project is a review of an on-line cataloging system for a fictional client. I'm really psyched about doing something like that. It's so ... concrete.
Finally, in INLS521, Organization of Materials, I get to learn the Dewey Decimal system! Is it wrong for me to be so excited about this? I want so badly to reorganize my personal library according to Dewey. I think it's roughly there already, but now I can redo it according to the Actual Rules.

Beautiful, no?

Actually, it just might be hundreds of things.

2010-08-17T01:33:00.000-04:00

I wrote just over a year ago, "It may not be hundreds of things, but it will be many."

Back then, I was a graduate student specializing in South Asian art history. I took the summer in which I received my master's to study Hindi halfway across the country at the University of Wisconsin. I started this blog, as I wrote back then, as a witness to the rhythm of the Midwest juxtaposed against the discomfort of learning what is to me a very difficult language.

I also chronicled my discovery of a new healthy life. After many months of a mysterious illness, I finally discovered what had been wreaking havoc with my health. Last summer, I felt I had been given another shot at being well. However, being well meant deliberate living and intelligent choices, not to mention an ironclad will that, amazingly, did develop from somewhere. I continued (mostly!) on that same path, eating gluten- and dairy-free. With those changes in place, I decided to take a deep breath and do the thing I most feared.

I quit.

Yes, I quit my doctoral program, mere weeks before I was set to leave for India. Instead, I applied to another master's program, this time concentrating on something I want to develop into a passionate, yet manageable, career: library science, with a focus on archives and special collections.
I start my new program in just one week. Wish me luck.

What's here now, then, you ask? Well, plenty of discussions about books, library and information theory, and art, of course. Some coursework that's required to be posted on-line, perhaps. And recipes, I'm sure. Not to mention a lot of gab about fiber arts, and odes to my one true love.
And naturally, there will be plenty of tea.

{The quote is from a short story called "Tea," by Saki, an author who neither inspires nor sustains me. The sentiment, however, is perfect.}

Seester!!

2009-08-02T01:43:00.007-04:00

I was rewarded after the week from heck and gone by a visit from my sister. She drove the 4.5 hours from Anoka to get here on Friday, and left to go back to work on Saturday evening. Her visit was short in duration, but long on quality! We packed in a host of touristy jaunts on Saturday during the day, starting with the Henry Vilas Zoo. Well, actually, we started with Lazy Jane's, if I remember correctly, then went to the zoo. Yes, I like Lazy Jane's, and cannot go a week without it now.

At the zoo, we saw many animals, and most were not sad. The lion was pacing, though, and that's never good. The peacock fluffed his feathers for us, which was nice, and although the goats' feeding time was over, we (and by "we" I mean Traci) still got to pet them. Traci also experienced life as a zookeeper:

Yeah, she's gonna love me for posting that one.

After the zoo, we wandered up to the State Capitol and made it up to the observation deck just in time to grab five minutes of looking out onto greater Madison. It was windy and a little bit scary, but we took some decent photos. Even though I have hat hair and we both look a little demented and it's a little blurry because it's a cell phone pic I really love this photo of us waaaay at the top of the Capitol.

After our run to the highest point in town, we went down to State Street for some more walking and shopping and eating. I introduced her to my Himal Chuli loveliness, and tried to teach her some Hindi with which to order her food, but she wasn't down for that. She thought the food was deliciousness, though, and I'm almost sure she wasn't just saying that to make me happy. We stopped by Art Gecko, where she looked amazing in everything she put on, dammit!, and therefore had to purchase several items. (I made the mistake of trying on the same little dress that she did ... note to self: do not try on the same dress your younger sister tries on, especially if it calls attention to the bust-al region. You will not be happy when you come out of that dressing room and look in the mirror. Trust me. Be happy for your sister, but do not try to wear her clothing.) When we got to the end of State Street, it was time for my dear sister to take her leave. She had a long drive ahead of her and was on call in a matter of hours. But, oh! so nice to see her for a day.

As a postscript to the week:
My master's thesis was approved, everyone signed off on it, and I am officially over that hurdle on my way to the doctorate. I'm happy, it turned out well, and I look forward to continuing to hone my writing in the next few years. After I submitted and everything was accepted, I rewarded myself with this:

A banana mango strawberry blueberry smoothie from a cart outside the library. Sweet, like success.

The week from heck and gone

2009-08-02T01:12:00.002-04:00

In the week between family visits, the intermediate Hindi class wrote, translated, shot, and edited a 30-minute video for our SASLI skit day. When we wrote the skit, we had no idea it was going to end up being thirty minutes long. I'm sure if we were more fluent readers/speakers, it would have been about twenty minutes, but most of us read like second-grade doofuses.

Our storyline was great, the script was fantastic, but our class is so unmotivated that it came down to the wire. Literally, I was putting the subtitles in and burning the DVD up until twenty minutes before the program started. And this was after a full week of 16-hour days dealing with the skit. Brutal.

Our skit was called "Three stories for Arjane" and involved a character named Kris Nah (Krishna ... and Arjuna -- get it?!?) telling morality tales to a very unmotivated young lady, Arjane, to get her to treat her friends right, trust the ones who love her, and follow her heart. I got to dress up in a sari and be an old Indian grandmother admonishing her granddaughter to stick up for herself and do what she loves in college, instead of just unhappily doing what's expected of her. YouTube links to come, but for now all I can give you is a photo:

Husband, in the flesh.

2009-08-01T19:20:00.006-04:00

Two weekends back my dear husband hopped on a plane and came for a weekend visit. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it was to see him again. I know it had "only" been a month and a half, but since it feels like I'm existing in dog years this summer, that month and a half took a long time.

We didn't make much of a big to-do or do anything overly special for the weekend. We just spent time together. We went to Maxwell Street Days down on State Street. I introduced him to the lovely people at Himal Chuli. We experienced two interesting meals: dinner at Ocean Grill and brunch at the Orpheum Theatre Restaurant.

The Orpheum brunch was okay. Kind of expensive for a buffet with a line that moved at a snail's pace. I thought there would be carving stations and whatnot, but there weren't. I must say, I would have rather ended up at Lazy Jane's. More interesting food, lower prices.

For our fancy dinner out, I was hankering for a piece of fish at a place that understood and could accommodate my gluten/dairy issues. After doing some poking around on-line, I saw that Ocean Grill had a nice gluten free menu. And while the food wasn't stunning or over the top, it was nice. Scott and I both had a grilled piece of fish with the vegetable of the day, asparagus. The fish was cooked very well (in manner, not done-ness), and the vegetables were quite good. The surroundings, once the loud couple from freakin' Hoboken left, were comfortable and appropriate for a nice chill dinner. However, our waiter is what set the meal apart for us. He was attentive without being overbearing, and knowledgeable about the food and the wine. We got into a really great conversation about the characteristics of a few of the wines on the list, and he gave us a little tasting of a handful of the wines before we settled on a glass each. I got a Riesling that didn't bloom too well, or match so nicely (but the name was so showy, I couldn't resist. I guess the waiter should have waved me off, but I was adamant.) Scott ended up with I think a Chardonnay, but it was surprisingly smooth and interesting.

For dessert, we had a sorbet that was called something like "fruit punch," because it had a gazillion types of fruits in it. By this time, Scott and I were a little tipsy, so we had to make the geeky point that, technically, many of the fruits in the sorbet were not fruits at all. For instance, the strawberry is characterized as a "false fruit" according to that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia. Which, of course, we both pulled up on our respective smartphones. The waiter played along, and even re-named it the "false fruit punch" for the couple at the next table. Yes, I laughed so hard when he said that, that I snorted.

Yeah, we're geeks. But the sorbet was divine.

Time.

2009-08-01T19:15:00.002-04:00

In the shortened, surreal, summer space of Madison, time seems to go both fast and slow. It happens in class, in the afternoons after class, and on the weekends. There's never enough time for all my homework, or for my fall semester class preps, and certainly not enough time to spend with my lovely visitors and my new friends here. And of course, I can't ever get time for the blog.

So now that I can catch a breath, a flurry of blog posts will commence. You have been warned.

The first time is always the worst.

2009-07-11T00:56:00.006-04:00

In the middling town in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis, where I grew up, there was a park. In this park, there was a fantastic slide shaped like a rocket. (Yes, the park was named after this ... Rocket Park, imagine that.) As a wee child, I was fascinated by this slide. To my five-year old mind, it was taller than anything I could imagine. The steps up to the top seemed to go on forever, and the slick metal slope back down was wide and fast, with a terrifying blast into space as the slide transitioned out of the covered nosecone, past a section with metal side grating, over a "bridge" with no visible means of holding kids back from falling what seemed to me to be hundreds of feet to the ground, and then quick to the bottom and out. At the bridge, it was probably about four feet down, but all I could think of was the fall when I teetered off the bridge and to my demise below. Yes, the fear of falling started early.
Despite this crazy fear in the back of my mind, one day I got up the gumption to go up and, eventually, come down the slide. Ah, the adrenaline! It coursed through my veins as I began to pick up speed on the metal worn down by countless little bums. The bridge was coming up fast, too fast, and there was no way that my tiny mind could figure out how to either A) slow myself down, or B) not fall off the bridge. So what did I do? Grabbed the metal grate as I slid past. Well, I "grabbed" it -- with my foot. Or rather, my pinky toe.
Yep, to stop my entire gradeschool body, I put my baby toe on the line. And, well, it slowed me down. It also made me not care so much that I went over the bridge anyway, now with a sad and broken toe.

That was the first (and now that I think of it, the last) time I went on the slide in Rocket Park. Yes indeed, the first time is always the worst.

Such as it was today, during our first, and only, exam for the first "semester" of summer Hindi. I think I did, uh, not too well. But in my defense, I don't know how well everyone else did, and we were all in agreement that it was hardcore tough. It was completely the bridge, the matching section was the metal grate, and the massive (to me) reading comprehension section at the end was my doomed fall into nothingness. My mind isn't equipped to memorize that much material, and to do well on the exam I would have had to commit eleven long conversations and four short essays to memory. Which could never have happened this week. Or any other week, really.

But we'll see how it's graded on Monday. There's nothing any of us can do about it now, so on to the weekend.

To celebrate our first test/knock the edge off, my classmates and I beelined for the Orpehum Theatre lobby restaurant for a few drinks. We went because we heard there were good snacks during happy hour, which we soon found out occurs during the week, but not on Fridays. We decided to try it anyway, especially since they had tasty drinks on the menu. My classmate started with a lovely watermelon-and-something:

No, he did not want that picture taken. But he was a good sport and let me keep it on my camera and therefore publish it here, there, and everywhere. After my first drink, a vodka bloody mary-ish thing with an olive, yay!, I went sparkly:

Nice for the day. That's my arty shot of white wine sangria with a splash of fizz and a ridiculous amount of fresh fruit. It was refreshing and fun. I think I'm going to keep some fizzy water on hand for the next bottle of white that's only eh, like the Wollersheim I got last week. As for the surroundings, the theatre is great, and the restaurant in the lobby a wonderful idea. I had a green salad for dinner, which was a bit light to balance out two cocktails, but the Italian dressing was spot on and the mixed greens so fresh. I snarfed it down, and yep, that's a technical term. I even ate a few of the tiny yellow tomatoes they halved and kindly placed at the side of the plate. And I cheated: I ate the three tiny globs of chevre on top, too, and loved every second of it.

On second thought, maybe it's just the adrenaline that makes the first time the worst. Because it seems there are plenty of restaurants I'm finding here in Madison that please me greatly, even the first time around.

Fourth, and today

2009-07-06T23:15:00.007-04:00

I cannot give you any pictures from our cookout. I know we cooked, and then we had some things to drink. I stuck with the slightly sweet, slightly cloying, but obviously easy-to-drink Wisconsin Riesling all night, and put away nearly the whole bottle.
Thus, no photos. However, the food was a success. We fed one of our friends, a vegetarian, marinated tempeh for the first time, and he loved it. It was nice to give the vegetarians good food with no (meaty) stress for once. We cooked the veggie kabobs until we were sick of cooking, and then ate. Divine.

So, because of the no cookout photos, I give you: my trusty steed. I have him until August 6. And I am making good use of him, I swear. After Friday's full day of riding, I took a day off, celebrated Our Country's Birthday, then on Sunday my roommate Kaitlin and I rode out to a hangover brunch at Lazy Jane's. I'm so excited -- they have gluten-free bread there! So I had fried eggs and bacon and TOAST. Toast that was GOOD. Granted, it had sugar in it, but I'm willing to give in slightly for that AWESOME TOAST. Heck YEAH. I'm going back this week for lunch. When I shall have a beautiful sandwich on some beautiful bread. And I shall be happy.

Today I determined that I would bike to Wells Fargo, all the way across town, to deposit my rent in my lessor's account. I do hate writing checks, yeah. So, it was about 6 miles one way, and I added on a bit of riding to and from class this morning. I'm calling it a 15-mile day. Can you believe that? And I loved it. And I feel fine. Stinky, but fine.

The bike trails in this city are amazing. I was able to wind around the most beautiful parts of town, get away from cars and people and craziness, and end up at the mall, of all places! On my way out, I saw this sign:

Art.

A coffee shop! Right off the bike path, with lots of room to lock up bikes. With a view of this:

The community garden!

It was glorious. I stopped on the way back, after several hours of riding. If I would have had my homework, I probably would have stayed longer. However, I needed to get home and do dinner, and I was dreaming of a Mediterranean-style pasta. I stopped at Jenifer St. Market (so cute!) to pick up some of the ingredients. Home, +25 minutes, aur vah hai:

Rice spiral pasta, with Mediterranean red sauce. I used Trader Joe's marinara, and added chicken, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and olives. (Note to self: rinse the salty olives next time!) Really good, for such a thrown-together thing.

Tonight: I've been studying flash cards. We've a major test on Friday ... cross your fingers for me.

A week of eating

2009-07-04T15:30:00.008-04:00

Yes, a whole week! Let's take it day by day. You've already experienced Monday with me, so we start with the next day:

Tuesday

My roommate loves the squash curry at Rising Sons, a Thai restaurant down on State Street. I went in for a late lunch, and since I never pass up a chance to find another good purveyor of tom kha gai, I ordered a bowl with some summer rolls on the side.
I knew it would be a problem when I overhead the waitress discussing how to make tom kha with the cook, who apparently didn't know what lemongrass looked like. The waitress herself was having trouble with the galangal. It sounded like she was on the phone with her mother, and relaying those instructions to the cook. About halfway through their conversation, another gentleman came sailing into the kitchen and, thankfully, took over.
I was presented with my summer rolls only a few seconds before the tom kha came out. The summer rolls, in their veg form, were dry and completely devoid of any flavor. The tom kha was a good effort, for a group that hadn't prepared it many times before. The gigantic slice of galangal was new to me; I think most chefs slice it a little more delicately. There was a nice spice to it, and the chicken was plentiful enough to fill me up, thank goodness.
If I go back, which I might not, I'll probably get the squash curry.

Wednesday

Wednesday was cooking day in Hindi class! We made palak paneer, mattar pilau, moong dal, pakora, puri, and kheer. I was (sort of) in charge of the dal, since I have attempted it quite a bit here. However, I've apparently been making the too-easy ghetto version. I had quite a bit of "madad" (help) from Mishra-ji and Kashika-ji, and it still needed salt after we were done. What did I learn from the experts? Well, that I need to acquire more spices, fry them in a lot more oil, and add a lot more onion and veggies to the lentils. The dal we made for class was runnier than my version, but I guess thick dal is just my personal preference.

All the other food was amazing. Speaking Hindi all day in this kind of situation was amazing. A little frustrating at times, but it was nice to be able to sort of communicate and not feel like I was "on the spot" for a skit or something like that.

Thursday
I took the bus to Willy St. Co-op, where I finally became a member. I like getting vegetables at Willy St. as everything is bright and clean and fresh, and most are organic, too. And I can go in with a list of things I need, which ends up making it not quite as expensive as the farmer's market. (Yes, the farmer's market preys on my proclivity towards instant gratification: "oooooh, that's pretttty! I want to eat that right now!!")
I haven't been eating much meat since the beginning of summer, and I'm starting to feel it. My energy levels are dwindling, and I think I'm still losing weight. So I bought some pork chops and a chicken breast for two nights of fabulous dinners.
Thursday's dinner was Mexicali Pork Chops with Black Beans. That's a go-to recipe for me. The black bean and salsa mixture keep the chops from getting too dry, and the spice can be as intense or as mild as you like. I used to eat this with sour cream, but don't include that anymore, of course.

Friday
Yesterday, my classmates and I rented bikes and explored the bike trails around Madison. We stopped beside Lake Wingra for a picnic of wine, cheese, bread, fruit, and veggies (I brought my own rice cakes and peanut butter), then ventured into the Arboretum. After letting the mosquitoes get their fill, we biked down Monroe Street and recharged with some custard (I had an apple ... sigh).
I was beat and starving when I got home, so I threw the chicken breast and some vegetables in the oven. I rubbed everything with plenty of olive oil, and put too much salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic on every surface possible, then chucked it in the tiny oven, with a whisper of a good-luck prayer. 30 minutes later, it emerged victorious. The vegetables were caramelized, the chicken juicy and delicious. I had just a few dirty dishes, and my stomach was full -- and stayed that way for the remainder of the evening.

Saturday
Today, the fourth, my roommate and I are having a bit of a cookout. We'll be grilling some vegetable kabobs, tofu and tempeh, and corn, beets, and kohlrabi. I'm going to make some doctored baked beans, and Kaitlin will do a quinoa salad. The kohlrabi is a late addition, after I couldn't resist the three-dollar (head-sized) monstrosities at the farmer's market this morning.
I found it after I had my brunch on Capitol Square, this time at Cafe Continental.

I had a really interesting version of eggs benedict. Two poached eggs sat on grilled portobello mushroom caps, which were nestled on a bed of crispy (read: deep-fried) spinach. Instead of hollandaise, they topped it with pico de gallo. Yeah, I said it was interesting. But how did it taste, you ask? Well, the first few bites were good. I like the creaminess of the eggs combined with the earthiness of the mushroom, and the spinach offered a little crunch. However, after a while, it got a bit heavy. The spinach was just a little too greasy, and the whole thing needed salt and pepper. I managed to eat all the eggs, three-quarters of the mushroom caps, and not much of the spinach. It would be so good with steamed or boiled spinach, but unfortunately the kitchen isn't set up to do special orders like that.

I'm looking forward to cooking for a big group today. I'll follow up with pictures tomorrow!

Cool down

2009-06-29T21:11:00.005-04:00

It's nice here in Madison, cool even. Class today was in a frigid building, but it went fast and well. Another week, another test; I think I did okay -- not great, but okay. Things are getting hard, but I just have to remember to breathe and speak without fear.

After class every day I'm getting in the habit of rewarding myself with a nice little meal, and then a few hours in a coffee shop for homework time. Today I went to Capitol Square, and had soup and salad at Cafe Soleil, the little French cafe attached to the fantastic, critically-acclaimed L'Etoile.

The side salad was fantastic. Fresh greens, onions, cukes, in a nice cool vinaigrette. The soup was okay, not great, but good. I messed it up by having them hold the pasta, and that made the sausage the main player. The oils kind of balled up on the top, and it lost its balance somewhere along the way.

The tea, though, made up for it. Black tea infused with citrus. I don't normally like citrus-y accents in my tea, but this was fresh, brilliant, and not bitter at all. I'm going to go back next time I'm jonesing for a salad and some tea.

Then my coffee shop jaunt took me to Ancora Coffee. The place itself looks a little chain-like, but it was bright and I snagged a seat by the window and did my homework with a view of the Capitol.

The little flower on the table, cheerio!

The food wins continued with dinner this evening. I made dal (red lentils) with Bhutanese red rice. The colors were a bit weird together, but the taste was right on. The rice was nutty, the dal spicy in a good way, with heavy but not overbearing overtones of ginger and cumin. For dessert, I whizzed up a fruit smoothie in my tiny chopper thing. Can't believe it worked, but it did! I'm now enjoying a cold banana-strawberry-soymilk smoothie. Sweeeeeet.

Accomplishments

2009-06-28T21:29:00.003-04:00

Laundry day! Since I (finally) found the laundromat only two blocks away and I'm down to my last pair of shorts (shorts! not undershorts!), I figured it was time to do laundry. It was relatively painless, with no creepy people hanging around. It made me miss my washer and dryer, though. Which, in turn, made me miss my husband, since I know he's doing laundry today. Yeah, weird, I know.

And since I missed the Farmer's Market yesterday, I officially have no easy food in the house; just various lentils and beans that need at least a half hour on the range. Not happening in this weather! So I ventured out to Burrito Drive for dinner, about eight blocks away from my apartment. Burrito Drive is a fairly new establishment, and they serve fresh, interesting Mexican food. The woman who took my order was fairly well-versed in food intolerances, and even whipped out the recipe book to figure out what had sugar in it for me.

The tacos really were delicious. I had chicken on what was assumed to be corn tortillas (more on that later), with pico, lettuce, pickled onions, and a slaw. The slaw gave it a nice crunch, and the onions a bit of a bite. The chicken was nicely seasoned, though a bit dry. I added some guacamole to wet everything down, and it was perfect.

So I was all set to come home and write a glowing post about tonight's dinner. I was composing it in my head as I walked home, full of chicken taco-y goodness, when I felt that familiar tightening in my tummy. Good lord. After all that investigation, I still got glutened. I'm sure it was in the tortillas. They were just too soft to be wholly corn. I know corn tortillas, and these were not crumbly enough to just be corn. I should have stopped at the first bite and asked, but I figured if I was in for a bite I might as well just eat the meal and deal with it later.

So I came home, dealt with it, and tossed my leftover taco in the trash. So sad.
Next week, I'm going to try Lazy Jane's. Can't wait!

(Also can't wait for Scott to come visit -- he's making the plane reservations now! Yippee!!)

Sleepy Saturday

2009-06-27T21:43:00.004-04:00

I'm suddenly discovering the joys of "sleeping in." A few weeks ago, I considered myself a night person, and usually didn't get to sleep before 4am. Nowadays, a normal day has the BlackBerry alarm singing its little song around 6am. So now, Saturdays bring the thrill of getting to sleep until 9, or even 10.

Today, I did just that, and rolled over for a couple more hours of shut-eye after my first glimpse of the clock around 8:30. It was glorious. I got out of the house by noon and went to Marigold Kitchen for brunch. One of their specials was a scramble with spinach, portobello mushrooms and bacon (and some sort of cheese, which I of course withheld). They served it with something called Marigold potatoes, which turned out to be a sort of cross between home fries and scalloped potatoes.

Since this was my first time at Marigold, I didn't realize the service was going to be interminably slow. Luckily, I also ordered a bowl of their fruit salad, which was nice and fresh, with a low melon-to-berry and pineapple ratio. I snagged a seat by the window ate it while people watching and reading The Idiot.

The potatoes were a bit too greasy for me to enjoy completely, but the scramble was done well. The spinach, mushrooms, and bacon balanced out the egg and enabled me to finish off the eggy part of things despite my general aversion to, yeah, eggs.

Because of the slow service, however, I wasn't able to make it to the Farmer's Market. Instead, I spent a few hours visiting the shops downtown. Places like fromagination, a really beautiful artisanal cheese shop on the Capitol Square. Yes, I went in, just to smell the cheese. I had the briefest thought that it might just be torture, but I left happy. The smells were divine. I also stopped in at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Their current shows are "Curator's Choice," which highlight's new works added to the permanent collection; "An Art of Inner Necessity," a collection of expressionist works including a handful of amazing German prints; and "Return to Function," a collection of functional art objects -- including a coffin made from the IKEA Billy bookcase. (With the tagline: "How to kill yourself anywhere in the world for under $399." Nice.)

I stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home and found out that they sell cheeeep versions of small kitchen appliances. Since the kitchen here gets to about ten gazillion degrees when we turn on the stove for more than 5 minutes, I picked up a tiny little slow cooker. Can't wait to try it out -- send your favorite recipes my way!

It's a matter of attention

2009-06-24T00:00:00.002-04:00

Just spent 30+ minutes crabbing to Scott about how craptacular I feel: achy joints, headache, spacey, the whole deal. We went through all the things that could be causing all of it, and he gave me a great pep talk up to and including giving me ideas for breakfast and lunch. Then I went into the kitchen to make myself a late-night peanut butter and awesome jelly sandwich, picked up the tamari to put it away, and noticed something.

Hey! THIS tamari has wheat flour in it! Says so right on the label!

That is no fair at all -- tamari is a safe, gluten-free alternative to soy sauce, or that's what I thought. Guess not. That gorgeous picture of last night's dinner down below? Filled with gluten. Curse you, SAN-J!

Achy joints, headache, spacey, and and upset tummy? Congratulations, you've just been glutened!

Next time, I promise to read the label on everything.

Quiz results are IN.

2009-06-23T22:46:00.004-04:00

We got the results of our quiz test today, and I got 22 points out of 25. Not bad!
I'm starting to get a little more comfortable in class, and only go off my rocker every so often. I gape at the professor a little less every day, and can now occasionally remember the last part of the sentence I'm to say even after I'm done with the first part! I'm remembering tenses better, which facilitates good thinking in the language, and that's the first step to becoming (more) fluent.

First quiz!

2009-06-22T21:27:00.004-04:00

आज, हम ने पहला ठठ्ठेबाज लो!
Today, we took our first quiz! And I don't think I failed it!
Yes, just the feeling of "unfailure" is cause for celebration at Hindi boot camp. It's tough stuff. But it feels really great to not fail, and to have a little fun during class, at that.

My parents came to see me this past weekend, for Father's Day, which was a happy accident. It was nice to go out to dinner with my papa during his made-up holiday. My parents were very indulgent, dragging my rear end out to the co-op, then on to Target, and then staying up late after dinner to let me do laundry at their hotel.

This evening I wasn't feeling the food front, but had to get some nutrition in me somehow. I threw in some red rice, and put together another Farmer's Market Stirfry.

Ain't it pretty? Easy, tasted fine, and I've got leftovers for tomorrow. Don't think I can ask for much more!

The first of the garlic scapes

2009-06-21T15:19:00.002-04:00

Lunch was egg salad. Boiled the eggs (10 minutes produces a lovely hardboiled egg, folks!), pulled out the green onion, mayo, and mustard. Then I had a thought: Wait a minute -- why should I use one of the few scallions I purchased when I could instead try to add a little garlicky zip to my salad? So I traded the onion in for a garlic scape and diced that into the mix instead.

And holy jephesus, that was a good, very good choice. A bit strong, as raw scapes are, but so, so tasty. Gave my eggs the right amount of crunch and punch to enable me to deal with the hockey-puck bread. Not too invasive, though; I don't like lots of random "stuff" in my salad spreads. Just perfect. बहूत आच्छा! (Very good!)

No time off from Hindi

2009-06-20T23:32:00.002-04:00

I lie, kind of. Today was a long day of grocery shopping, essentially.

Met the class at the Farmer's Market this morning. I think next week I'll go early when it's cool and not as crowded. It was really unbearable, shuffling along at zombie pace as the blistering sun crept ever-higher in the sky. But the veggies there are so great, I can't NOT go. I went with a list: I was going to get lettuce, strawberries, and some sort of yummy meat. I came back with a full backpack and an extra bag and barely managed to squeeze it all onto my shelf in the fridge.

My haul for the day:
Lettuce (on my list!)
Strawberries (on my list!)
Ostrich burgers (on my list!)
Broccoli (just a little bit...)
Garlic scapes (I couldn't resist.)
Sugar snap peas
Asparagus
Fennel
Green onions
Fresh mushrooms
Pickled mushrooms (mushrooms + pickleage = how can you go wrong?)

I was a good girl and refrained from sampling the cheese and bread that haunted me at all turns. Unfortunately, I got home and realized that I should have inspected the lettuce more closely. The head is all red and soft and gross on the bottom stem. I still had my salad for dinner (and haven't gotten sick yet), but will throw it out for more appropriate greens tomorrow.

But wait! That's not the only grocery outing I had today! I took a long bus ride out to the west side of town where all the fancy houses are and shopped Trader Joe's. I was going to go to the other co-op, Regent Street Co-op, but they simply didn't have a wide enough selection for me to consider becoming a member there. It's more like a corner store for hippies than a grocery store. Fantastic meat selection, though. Luckily, TJ's is only about 5 blocks away from RSC, so I trudged on over and managed to get most of (the rest of) my list crossed off. Then I trudged back to Regent Street just in time to see the #6 bus pull away from the curb. Curses! So I hung around the bus stop for 40 minutes like a crazy bag lady and hopped a #7 back here.

Tomorrow my parents are coming to visit! We'd been planning their visit for months, but I spaced the date and never wrote it down. Mom called me today and said, "Hope you're doing well -- we'll be there tomorrow!" Ooooops. I'm totally excited they'll be here so soon, but oh boy. Must get up early to study. Mom says they don't have to be entertained but seriously. I see my folks twice a year now if I'm lucky. Of course, their entertainment might be a trip to the laundromat on the east side and then some time in the shade at the park or something while I study. (Or at a coffee shop. Dad loves coffee shops, and doesn't have too many of them from which to choose where they live now.) And since they're staying out on Washington close to the Willy Street Co-op, I might finagle round three of my grocery extravaganza while they're here as well. Hey -- what can I say? TJ's doesn't carry GF-SF breakfast cereal! And yes, had I remembered they were coming, I would have waited and done major shopping while having access to their giganto-truck.

We'll go out to dinner tomorrow, at Dad's most favorite steak place in the entire United States. Prime Quarter Steakhouse, just up the road from me. Should be interesting, as I've been eating pretty light lately; I might end up with a steak and some salad, but it looks like fun! Hope everyone else has as great a Dad's Day as we're sure to have.

How bachelorettes eat.

2009-06-18T19:30:00.002-04:00

Well, how this one eats, anyway.

Finally home after a long, frustrating day at class and orientation, I looked in my fridge for something to appease my 1) gnawing hunger, and 2) raging sweet tooth. [They served ice cream, cookies, and samosas at the orientation meeting. I drank sparkling water and inhaled deeply over my classmate's empty ice cream bowl.] On my shelf in the fridge? A half-dozen eggs, a quarter of a red pepper, a gazillion scallions that are on their last legs, peanut butter and jelly, and three or four ~~hockey pucks~~ slices of brown rice bread. Looks like ... breakfast for dinner!! I chopped up a scallion and proceeded to burn it while I beat some garlic. I threw in the peppers, mixed 'em around a bit, then tossed in the eggs with some salt and pepper.

I hate eggs, I really do. But the protein from this scallion-red pepper omelette makes it passable. Not good, because I'm out of practice - Scott does all the egg cooking around our house. Yes, I texted him for instructions before I began. So, passable enough to assuage the hunger. A bit. I shall wait an hour and then have dessert: natural peanut butter and amazing Amish jelly on ~~hockey pucks~~ brown rice bread.

Class today? Eh. Kind of depressing. We had a quiz that we were told was going to be oral -- but it wasn't. None of my classmates or I had studied the material to recall. So at least we all bombed. It's been nice; all of us are at about the same level, so I don't feel bad during class. Everyone is very friendly, and we're starting to make plans to have weekend outings. We'd like to take advantage of Madison's awesomeness while we're here. This coming Saturday I think we're going to meet at the Farmer's Market, have a picnic on the Capitol lawn, and then get a tour of the Capitol from our classmate who happens to also be an intern there.

Tomorrow's Friday already. Time is going fast.
Class tomorrow is mostly review but we have another vocab quiz. And after I met with my instructor today, he emphatically suggested I take two hours and commit the intro tenses to memory tonight. So, flash cards + tense review + journal entries = long night of Hindi.

Food, hindi style

2009-06-17T21:55:00.003-04:00

क्लस के बाद, पाँच हम लोग क्लेस से हिमाल चुलि को खाना गाए। मैं ने खिछदि खाया। क्यों कि वह अच्छा था, घर से मैं कुछ ले आना। मुझे सुश है, मुझे दाल बनाना है। अभी मुझे खाना चाहिये। उस के बाद, मैं ने हिन्दी बातचीत पढ़ूगा, ओर फिर से मैं ने सी. दी. को सुनूँ। अगज, मैं ने चाय और चायदान खारिदया। साल, मैं ने किताबें आमज़न से खारिदूँगा। मेरी फ़्लैट-मैट और उसे दोस्त ने आइसक्रीम के लिये जाया। मैं जाता नहीं हूँ ख़ास आहार कि वजह से है। मुझे उदासी है।

I hope my instructor likes food talk. I've completed two diary entries, both of which have plenty to do with food. Today's entry is all about food: For lunch, five of us people from class went to Himal Chuli [that great Nepali restaurant, woo!]. I had some khichadi, which was really good. [So good. I had no idea khichadi could be that good. I don't think I'll make it myself while I'm here; I think I'll just go to Himal Chuli!] In fact, I stopped before I was full so I could have leftovers for dinner tonight. This makes me happy, because now I don't have to make dal (lentils) for dinner.

I also wrote about what I'll do for the remainder of the evening: read the conversation book and listen to the CD again. Then a few random things to take me to ten sentences: I bought tea and a tea kettle today, and will probably buy books from Amazon tomorrow. Also, my roommate and her friend are going out for ice cream. I can't go, because of my special diet. I am sad.

I went to the fancy tea place, Dobra Tea, today. The tea: Fabulous. Delirious. Delightful. The tea place: uncomfortable as hell. I'm sure it would have been excellent had I wanted to laze about on their cushioned platforms. However, I wanted to work on my Hindi at a tabletop while I drank my first flush Darjeeling. This proved difficult, as their tables are tiny, rickety wicker setups. I couldn't even pull my chair all the way in -- my knees hit the table! Other negatives: the smoke from the hookahs, or whatever, was headache-inducing. The music, shrill and annoying. I think I'll go back with a group, when I don't have to work.

As for me, back to batchit tin. (Conversation three!)

Settled in, and going strong

2009-06-17T00:28:00.003-04:00

I'm finally settling in to the rhythm of life in Madison. I found some time to wiggle wires and jiggle connections and get the internet working here at the sublet. It's nice to have the ability to go online, but surprisingly hard to find the time to blog.
I'm a morning person in Wisconsin, apparently. I get up at 6:15, without fail. I get in the bathroom first in order to have time to make a healthy breakfast before catching the bus three blocks away at 7:45 sharp. So far, for breakfast I've made eggs (local) and oatmeal (instant), and had fresh berries from the farmers market and organic bananas from the co-op.
The bus ride is about 15 minutes. Before class I go over and get tea from the little cafe that's in the building across the way and a bit up the hill. Yes, I thought I was getting away from the hills. Not so much. The tea comes in a bag. It is not good, but it contains caffeine, a necessary ingredient to the proper functioning of my brain pre-10am. I need to buy some tea and make the good stuff here at the apartment. [There is a great tea shop in town, Dobra Tea. I have yet to find the time to sit and experience it, but I will probably go this weekend.]
Class starts at 8:30. My instructor Mishra-ji is a gem, and I love the T.A., Kaushika-ji, too. I could barely sleep Sunday night for fear that I'd out myself as a dummy on the first day of class, but the teachers are so friendly that it's not hard to make as many mistakes as possible, just so we can all get better at Hindi -- and English! I think if I continue to work hard I can maintain my status as a member of the middle of the pack.
We take plenty of breaks throughout the morning, so it doesn't feel like we're sitting in agony for four hours. In fact, it's a real pleasure, despite the fast pace. Two days in, and we already have a quiz on the first two sets of vocabulary, totaling about 50 words. I had to memorize them in about 6 hours tonight. (sarcasm) Good thing I've got this huge brain. (/sarcasm)
We get out of class at 1pm, after which my roommate Kaitlin and I come back here for lunch and a nap. Then I get to work on my homework, which usually consists of studying a scene/reading, doing flashcards, studying flashcards, and writing out my daily ten-sentence journal. I do that throughout the night, with a break for dinner, and try to get to bed by 10:30 or 11 (tonight = FAIL). Then at 6am it starts all over again.

My eyes are closing by themselves now, but tomorrow I shall post some of my Hindi journal, and tell you about the spiders that live in our front bushes. And maybe also relate our journey to the co-op, and describe some of the things I've cooked while I've been here. But not now; now I'm so very tired.

Hiding in the kitchen

2009-06-09T21:17:00.007-04:00

To-do list? What to-do list?
Spent nearly the whole day, so far, in the kitchen. Ducking out on the thought of my looming departure, no doubt. I like to think of it as getting comfortable with cooking at home while I'm in the security of my own kitchen, using my own (quite lovely) pots and pans.

Started out cooking Cowboy Beans from the Allergy Self-Help Cookbook, by Marjorie Hurt Jones. This cookbook has been a lifeline for me in the past week, but these beans turned out kind of "eh." I soaked the beans too long, got a pretty heavily-spiced Italian sausage, and added too much water to the beans while they simmered. (Notice that the recipe doesn't specify how much water to add to the beans at the beginning?) That said, they turned out okay, for my first time cooking bulk beans. Towards the end, when it became apparent that the texture was going to more closely resemble refried beans, I just stirred and stirred until they broke down, looked edible, and tasted acceptable to me. I don't know if I'll follow that recipe again, but I will probably make my beans from scratch from now on. Rounded out tonight's meal with organic hot dogs and steamed carrots and yellow peppers.

For dessert, I'm making a whole-wheat sugar-free, dairy-free banana bread. I've just now tried to turn it out on a cooling rack, which was an epic fail. I know I don't bake much, but I'm positive that quick breads aren't supposed to be gooey in the middle. I slid it back into the pan, and popped it back into the oven, and am currently crossing my fingers that it comes out edible. (Update: it's now nice and browned on the top, looks like it's cooked in the crater that opened up last time, and will be ready for tasting in 15-20 minutes.)

I did cross a few things off my list today, though. I sent emails, called the drugstore, and will put in my book order for next fall's class tonight. Tomorrow: laundry, many appointments, and maybe even a new hackable camera.

मैं हिन्दि में लिखरहि हैं

2009-06-09T01:39:00.005-04:00

Thought I'd test this out before I need to actually use it.

येह गर्मी, मैं मदिसोन में रहति रहुंगा ।

I don't know if that's right, but I gave it a shot.

Hundreds of things may be an exaggeration.

2009-06-09T00:41:00.003-04:00

It may not be hundreds of things, but it will be many.
I am a graduate student specializing in South Asian art history. This summer, I am traveling halfway across the country to study Hindi at the University of Wisconsin.
First and foremost, then, this blog is witness to the rhythm of the Midwest juxtaposed against the discomfort of learning what is to me a very difficult language. You will see both Hindi and English in my posts. Fear not. I probably don't say much in the parts you can't read.
Also chronicled here is my discovery of a new healthy life. After many months of a mysterious illness, I've been given another shot at being well. However, being well means deliberate living and intelligent choices, not to mention an ironclad will that must develop from somewhere.
Other things? Well, art, of course. And recipes, I'm sure. Not to mention a lot of gab about fiber arts, and odes to my one true love, whom I reserve the right to miss very much.
And naturally, there will be plenty of tea.

{The quote is from a short story called "Tea," by Saki, an author who neither inspires nor sustains me. The sentiment, however, is perfect.}

Can't I just bring Bop N' Beep and a book?

2009-06-08T04:05:00.015-04:00

I long for the days when all I needed for a long trip was my doll, some crackers, and a book. There's something to being absolutely sure of the things that will sustain you for days or months on end. And there's something more to those things being books and dolls -- not hairdryers and cameras and computers.

Six days until I arrive in Madison. That means five days to organize, pack, unpack, repack, and remind myself countless times that there are stores in Madison, that I needn't pack my entire apartment, and that I should just calm. the. heck. down.

Before I leave, really? Two doctor's appointments, a few loads of laundry, a trip or two to the drugstore, a couple runs into the department, oh, and returning 145 books to the library. I'm sure Scott will appreciate being able to walk into the office when I leave. My biggest challenge, though, is going to be turning my hours around before I leave. It's past 4am here now. Next Monday, I will be waking up at 7am and hopping on a bike to ride to my 8:30 class. Yes, I know. I'll believe it when I see it, too.

But I've already decided on the easy stuff. Bop N' Beep, my Uglydoll, is definitely coming with me. So are plenty of books.