Jitters

I'm giving a presentation tomorrow on a few early 20th-century illustrations from our collection and how they present a nostalgic, idealized view of women (and the implications of this), so it's rather ironic that I just spent the last 20 minutes plucking my eyebrows. I'll probably wear mascara tomorrow, too. And heels. Idealization of women, alive and well.

The paper is written, the images are picked, I've thought a bit about some questions that may arise (that is the scariest part!), and I've got my outfit chosen--purple tights, of course, though I'm not sure on a scarf.

It's odd the rituals we have when something kind of big is coming up, and I've actually gotten tremendously better at dealing with talking in front of people--teaching and seminars are making that a lot less scary. Still nervous, but I'm not pacing. Yet. I'm going to reward myself for doing this with Ethiopian food next week and seeing Shrek the Musical with some friends. I'll cook a big breakfast tomorrow morning, listen to some show tunes, and try to distract myself as much as possible.

This isn't really an important post, but this paper and archival research are the main things that I've accomplished this week. So I should have more exciting things to report in the next few days, but for now: a view into the scarier aspects of academia! Send me good vibes tomorrow at about 1 pm, and I'm going to go back to watching Iron Jawed Angels. I get to talk about suffrage, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mad Men in this paper--and really, what is better than that?

Routines

Sometimes, life as a grad student is exciting and challenging, and those times are fun. And sometimes life as a grad student is super mundane and busy, and those times are usually a little less fun. The past few days have fallen under the second category, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it. Take today, for instance:

--sat in on Art 102, Renaissance to Modern, which is the class I am associate instructor for. I like this professor a lot--he's an oddball, but he has a good sense of humor and is seriously smart (rumor has it he trolls on Jstor and reads articles to find grammatical errors, for fun), and he has been remarkably helpful to me as I start to teach for the first time. Today we were talking about Northern Altarpieces, which is one of his research interests, and it was great. I'm learning a lot from this class, actually, as I never took 102 as an undergrad (weird) and have never been that exposed to Northern Renaissance art. And as some of you have told me over the years, Northern art is amazing. It is. And the professor even cracked some David Sedaris jokes today, so what's not to love?

--did errands, ate lunch with a friend, and sat in on the professor's section of the class in the puzzle library. I am taking my three classes there on Friday. So I've gushed on here before about the rare books library and how it is mind-blowingly great, but it turns out we are also the only academic institution in the United States to have a puzzle collection, which is also housed in the rare books library. A man donated all his puzzles to us (he'd been collecting since 1939), because he wanted them to be housed in a place where people could actually use them. It was cool to watch the students, especially when they figured out something. A few goals in this class are to get them to 1. visually tackle problems, and 2. realize that sometimes the things that look really simple have hidden complexities, and that prolonged study and looking are not bad things. Either way, unlike in a museum you actually get to touch things. Intrigued? I finally figured out how to solve this one today:

Also try this on for size: a regular coke bottle with a wooden arrow stuck through two rectangular holes in the size. The arrow is one solid piece of wood. How did it get there? I thought I had a good theory but the professor shot it down.


--was in my office (I have a shared office! How cool--nerdy--is that?) and suddenly there was crashing from the secretaries office down the hall. My office-mate went to check it out, and it was the secretary, the Byzantine art professor, and my advisor playing ring toss. My advisor is pretty proper, so this is especially awesome, especially since it turns out that he is pretty good at it.

--went and got my hair cut which was a relaxing time. I got the purple streak in my hair dyed blue and so had to sit around and read People magazine while it set (I mean, I could have read my theory homework, but I have my priorities straight). My hairdresser is super cool (she is also a hen farmer, and has some great tattoos) AND I hedonistically love having other people wash my hair, so that was good.

--am now baking a peach cobbler, writing cards, and getting ready to start some reading.

My mom and my sister visited last week, which was great (so much eating out in awesome ethnic restaurants! so much shopping at cute stores! so much wandering around the town square and poking around in used bookshops!) and I have some really amazing weekends coming up, so it's not like my life is totally uneventful. Happily, so far, this year is reinforcing some things for me--that I want to (attempt) to get a PhD and that I want to teach. I've only had 2 days of solo teaching so far--3 classes each, back to back, with about 56 students total--but it turns out that I both like it and am not terrible at it, so that is nice. For now, though, I'm happy to have intellectually stimulating and busy days, as long as there is enough silliness thrown in too. So far, so good.

ALSO: blog housekeeping! Have added two blogs to my sidebar and y'all should check them out. One is by my sister as she navigates post-college life (with her usual wittiness): http://hueandcaste.tumblr.com/ And the other is by my sister's college roomate and Bloomington native, who is starting grad school in Cardiff, Wales next week for art conservation: http://talesofwales.tumblr.com/

Thank You For Riding the Pain Train

I'm done-done-done-done with Arabic, as of about 4 hours ago! Since then I have: made a tomato and basil salad for iftar tonight (my professor is having us all over for when he and his wife break fast for Syrian food, awesome), watched Moulin Rouge while lying on a friend's floor while we ate chocolate chips out of the bag, and walked around downtown. Now I'm lying on my couch, listening to Mack the Knife on repeat and writing this. It is perfect weather right now, blue skies and high-70s, with only a few clouds. Lovely.

I think I passed, but more importantly, I'm DONE (done! did I mention that I'm done?) Not just done, though, but mentally checked out. One thing about intensive language courses is that they do not leave much time for anything else. Yes, I was at dinner and a bar for a friends birthday last night when I maybe should have been studying (whoops, but I have my priorities straight!) but by and large my summer has been reading, thinking, speaking, and writing Arabic with a good deal of socialization thrown in for good measure. I had grand plans about doing PhD research, reading some faculty books, starting cover letters, updating my resume..none of which happened. I did read two chapters of one Venetian art book, but that's nothing to write home about, is it? I meet with my supervising professor tomorrow and the other AI tomorrow (I'm an associate instructor for Renaissance to Modern this fall, ye gods) and I keep forgetting that I have to teach in 2 1/2 short weeks! Gahhh. (excited!! but gahhh.)

In glancing over this I see that I am abusing exclamation points a bit, but I'm actually pretty impressed that I can still write semi-coherently. I've been having trouble forming sentences (even more so than usual) over the past week or so, which shows how much brain drain I've been feeling. For instance, two days ago I was on the bus and tried to say "heated seats" and instead said "seated heats." I've taken to gesturing a lot and just believing that people will figure it out. (they usually do, but not always.) And it's not just me--my entire class and all of my friends in language classes this summer have sort of been unspooling lately. This conversation happened last night:
Friend: My paper is all wet from that..you know...
Me: Spill? What?
Friend: Starbucks juice...
Me: What?
Friend: Starbucks water..on the glass.
Me: Sweetie, what are you talking about?
Friend: ...CONDENSATION!

Rather stupidly, we've also been doing a lot of crosswords lately--we attempted one while watching Moulin Rouge and got decently far into it, but my brain just needs a break. I've been trying harder Sudoku lately too and may need to lay off that for a little while.

So anyway, the Pain Train has pulled into the station and I have disembarked. It's been a pretty fun ride, but I'm ready to be on non-moving ground again. As we say in Arabic, al-hamdu lillah! (it's not super translatable, but mostly means, "by the grace of god." It's very close to Hallelujah!) AL-HAMDU LILLAH!

Snark-Academia

I do apologize for the lax blogging of late, but 1. I moved apartments, and 2. my 6 year old IBM crashed its poor harddrive, so I've been sans computer for 2 weeks. Which was a bit liberating, actually--I checked my email a lot less and spent more time reading actual books, but I'm glad to have it back.

In the meantime, I had a few academic run-ins that were both amusing and slightly scary, and so will share them with you now.

Case 1: I had my Arabic midterm 1 1/2 weeks ago, and prior to that a friend and I were studying by making up sentences, which became slightly ridiculous sentences as we were trying to practice plurals and indefinite vs definite nouns. So sentences like "we used to listen to music in elementary schools" or "I lived in a large house with Arabs." We came up with a few questions, so I emailed them to my professor, who is a Phd student whom I am on good terms with. Now, some of these questions I definitely knew the answer to, but for some reason I either panicked or blanked on them the night before the test. This is what he sent back:

"DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT SECOND GUESS YOURSELVES.

I think you guys have learned an awful lot in a short period of time and you are not sure if you know what you are doing. Go back over your homeworks and quizzes and assess yourself. You will see that you DO know what you are doing. To answer your questions...

1. You have only learned to use كل before a definite noun, roughly meaning "all..." you have SEEN it used before indefinite, but have not been drilled on it. so don't try to learn it now.

2. when will you ever need to say "we listen to music in elementary schools" vs "we listen to music in THE elementary schools?"

3. You have not been taught to use ان between verbs. So don't use it. You will shoot your eye out.
4. Arabs are arabs until they are THE arabs.

5. I won't even...!@#

But seriously, these have become philosophical questions. If you are still not satisfied, just spend the rest of the night and morning memorizing the following ridiculous sentence:

كنت اسكن في بيت كبير مع عرب ولكن الان هم يستمعون الى موسقى كل اليوم في مدارس ابتدائية .

I used to live in a big house with Arabs but now they listen to music all day in elementary schools.

*smirky laugh*

elijah
let me know if you have any more questions...i'm enjoying your panic attacks :) jk"

Oh, and if you notice the plurals above, it is because he sent this to the WHOLE CLASS. Because as he told me later, "if the others saw that you were freaking out [I interjected, "I WAS NOT FREAKING OUT"], I figured it would make them realize you were all in the same boat." My response was:

"Thanks for sending this to everyone! ;) have a great night, y'all.
ps for your information I plan to use ALL of these sentences all the time, everywhere, on every quiz, forever. jiim kaaf!"

I proceeded to memorize the sentence:

كنت اسكن في بيت كبير مع عرب ولكن الان هم يستمعون الى موسقى كل اليوم في مدارس ابتدائية .

(I used to live in a big house with Arabs but now they listen to music all day in elementary schools.) And the next day on the test, we had to write a paragraph about ourselves. Being a slight smart-aleck when the mood strikes me, my paragraph began, "I used to live in a big house with Arabs but now I live in Bloomington. My parents work in Jamestown and now they listen to music all day in elementary schools." He drew a smiley face next to it. I got a 96% on that midterm.

Case 2: Slightly less-positive but more expected, I got back feedback on my seminar paper from last semester--my professor has been out of the country and just scanned us her comments. My comments start off with:

"First, with regards to language, your sentence structures and word choices are weak; the switches of topics and paragraphs are abrupt; your prose is neither crisp nor energetic; and your syntax is wobbly."

And it just got worse from there: my reasoning was fallacious, my source-citing egregious, and my overall approach laconic. An 18 page paper and no positive comments to be found, and she wrote all over it, which included crossing out entire paragraphs. I really appreciate the time it must have taken to write all those comments, I agree with a lot of her points, and I wasn't overly proud of this paper, but as this is a professor who referred to "clouds" in one of her articles as "aerial cumuli" I suspect that we might have a difference of opinion in certain areas. Still and all, though--I've been wanting more constructive criticism, and I've got it!

Successes and Failures of the Day

Success 1: I read a poem in Arabic in front of my class.
Actually, I read two stanzas of a poem, rather than all five, because we were running out of time, but still. Four weeks ago I couldn't read the alphabet, so I'm rather pleased. And here is the poem (in English!), lest you were curious:
This Is Forgetfulness by Mahmoud Darwish

This is forgetfulness around you: billboards
awakening the past, urging remembrance. Reigning in
the speeding time at traffic lights,
and closing up the squares

A marble statue is forgetfulness. A statue
staring at you: Stand up as I do to look like me.
And place roses on my feet

A hackneyed song is forgetfulness. A song
chasing the housewife in celebration of the happy
occasion, in the bed and in the VCR room,
and in her vacant salon, and in her kitchen

And a monument is forgetfulness. Monuments
on the roads shaped like bronze trees
adorned with eulogies and eagles

And a museum empty of tomorrow, cold,
narrating the seasons already chosen from the start.
This is forgetfulness: that you remember the past
and not remember tomorrow in the story.

Words that I have actually learned thus far: remembrance, housewife, room, trees, and tomorrow. Darwish was Palestinian, so read into that what you will. My professor recommended him and he is quite good.

Failure 1: I cannot spell in Arabic.
I'm really, really close most of the time, but that doesn't really count, does it? I put in the wrong "s" or "d" sound (d vs dal vs dthal vs dthol) or put in a long vowel when it should only be a short vowel. It is slowly getting better, but I have been pulling only a 75ish on quizzes. The last time I got a C was in high school math. I reallllllly do not want a C. I have a quiz tomorrow, so hopefully that will go well!

Success 2: I can sort of write in Arabic!
Exhibit: A snippet of homework from a few days ago. I've been experimenting with a fountain pen.
I think this is particularly relevant since Indiana public schools are not requiring cursive to be taught as of next year, which I am really sad about. Because I love love love handwriting!!

Failure 2: I totally missed the bus
And not just missed it, missed it in pathetic fashion. I was standing at the bus stop tonight to head back to campus for a workshop on Ukranian Egg painting (Pysanky?) and looked up as the bus was driving away. The fact that I was zoning out enough to NOT notice a bus right next to me suggested that I would be better off staying home anyway. I've been feeling sick to my stomach the past few days--I blame either stress, having to eating too many dinners on the run or standing next to my kitchen sink, or some bad shredded cheese, but in any case--I stayed in, studied with a friend, heckled the kids on Jeopardy, and ate that all-curing food: toast with cinnamon sugar on it. And now I'm (almost!) going to bed!

al-arabia, week 2: flash card explosion

It is a good thing I put off posting until today, because if it had been yesterday it would have been all about how much I hate Arabic, how this is the most boring, frustrating, hermit-like summer I've ever had, and how I don't know why I'm doing this. Now, those feelings are still there a bit, but I've calmed down. Because here is the thing--I'm understanding it, bit by bit. I now know the alphabet, and my professor has been speaking to us almost constantly in Arabic--I've mostly had no idea what he was saying until he gestured, but today I totally got, "turn in your homework, please," "write with your pen or pencil" and "are there any questions?" and I was really excited. We started our second textbook a few days ago, so I'm getting used to that, too. Texts are usually unvoweled, as all of the short vowels are shown through diacritical marks over the words and not as actual letters, and suddenly the vowels are gone. So I was totally freaked out yesterday. I couldn't read our syllabus (which is suddenly all in Arabic), homework took me eight hours, and I just felt stupid. But then I got to class and most other people were just as baffled, so that is reassuring, in a way.

The thing of it is--I really do genuinely refuse to be stressed out about school. I like to get good grades, but if non-great ones sneak in there, so what. But the stakes are a bit higher now than they were in the past, and I don't want to totally wreck my GPA, and I would LIKE to pass. Well. I'm hopelessly Type A (I'm sure you're shocked to learn this, ha ha), although certainly not as bad as a lot of academics, and I'm just trying to loosen up and have fun with this. I try not to stress out about school, but I stress out about stressing out about it. Does that make sense? I don't like how I feel when it takes over my life. Nine arduous weeks is not very long in the grand scheme of things, and I am having fun, even though all of my daily details are completely uninteresting, which does not a gripping blog post make. I'm serious: my only two pieces of "news" when I talked to my mom tonight were that I've been really good about drinking milk (she harasses me about calcium) and that I used my dishwasher for the first time ever and didn't flood my kitchen with suds.

But, as I said, fun is had. We went to an art fair this past weekend and I got a small print--I'm not usually big on impressionism, but the way this artist had applied paint it was almost 3-D, which was cool. Then we got delicious Thai food and stopped at the best chocolate-bakery here for a truffle each. Tomorrow we're celebrating a friend's birthday, then one of the girls in my class is having a dinner party Friday, or there might be birthday celebrations for another friend, and then Saturday there is the Farmer's Market, then maybe a lunch-session with the other members of the art history association exec board (I'm treasurer for next year, despite not having the greatest track record with math), THEN My Fair Lady at one of the theaters downtown. Sunday I might go looking for a used-bike.

So, goals: keep perspective. Memorize the stack of vocab that I have to for a quiz tomorrow. Read some for fun before I go to bed (although does Anna Karenina count as fun? I'm dubious. Another goal: finish that). Speak more at our language tables. And learn some stuff. Doable? Doable.

Oh, ACK. I'm lying on my living room floor (just so you get a sense of this) and a big ol' spider is shuffling along my baseboard, so I'm going to go usher him out now.

al-grad student

All the news from here is that I survived my first week of intensive Arabic! There are 28 letters in the alphabet (none of which are vowels, exactly, by the way) and I have 25 of them learned. Normally, classes spend two months doing the alphabet, and we'll be done with it by Monday, which is a little bit crazy. I just don't know how much I can force into my head at once--there isn't that much available space, if you take into account random facts about 90's British TV or General Hospital plotlines or Renaissance art nuggets of knowledge. Trying to learn an alphabet is a weird sensation, too. I mean, I did it once, and I've added in tildes and umlauts and such throughout the years, but nothing this in-depth or immediate.

So, since Monday, I've had class for four hours each morning, then homework until 5ish, then dinner, then homework, then phone time and/or walks/drinks with friends for my sanity. I've been doing NOTHING intellectual for the past month (I don't think the jumble counts..) so it's been hard to get back into the game--plus homesickness, general laziness, etc. All in all though, I'm excited. My classmates are a nice bunch, and I actually like the professor a lot. It's a different mix, since about half of the class is ROTC-affiliated or Army-bound, so that's eye opening. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about the US industrial-military complex (and if not, well, you can guess), but it's been cool hearing about what my classmates want to do in Somalia or with linguistics or the CIA.

A few days ago we were learning how to say, "I like, do you like, he/she likes," and my professor was asking us questions. He asked me if I liked to read (hibti kitab'a? something like that) and I said yes, "na'am," and he asked if I liked to write (hibti qira'a) and I said "na'am" and he said, "al-grad student?" and I said "yep." (I forgot to "na'am.") He asked the guy next to me, who was nursing a large mug of coffee, if he was "al-grad student," and he was, too. You can usually pick us out, for sure, from our excessive notetaking to caffeine consumption. They both were totally offended because my professor (who is a phd student) was talking about how much he loved coffee ("ah heb" coffee, I can't remember the transliteration for coffee and I can't be bothered to look it up) and he asked if I liked coffee, and I said "laa." (no.) He looked at me in confusion--"laa?" "Laa. No really. Ah heb shayyi (tea)."

Those are about the extent of my sentences, and it would take me awhile to write them. It's odd--even though I'm learning the alphabet and can sound out words, they still don't MEAN anything. So I can decipher what still looks like symbols--and not letters--and realize the word sounds like "dthob" or "ashwuala," but that I still don't know what it is. And, the sounds are so guttural that I always feel faintly ridiculous practicing them, even alone in my apartment. I caught myself at the library yesterday, touching my throat and trying to drop my tongue back to try and produce a "ghoch" sound, which sounded like I was gagging. Fortunately, no one witnessed that (I hope!!).

What is cool is that I have been writing words now and recognizing some of them. "Baab" is a door (we talked about them a lot regarding Medieval Cairo architecture) and is one of the first words you can write, since alif (A, sort of ) and baa (B) are the two first letters you learn. Another fairly easy word is "hijab" which we all know. So that's exciting.

My main motivation for sticking with this is that even if I never end up being able to read anything in Arabic (which seems unlikely, as I already can), it is a nifty thing to be able to write in it. I like how it sounds (not as much as Italian though!), and I LOVE how it looks. And, at the end of the nine weeks we get to go to a mosque for a service and follow along in the Qur'an, which I would love to do.

Oh, and I picked my Arabic name--Khadijah. I need to practice the "kh" sound, so that is helpful, but mostly Khadijah is just awesome. She was Muhammad's first wife, and by all accounts was strong and independent. She was a merchant in her own right, she was 25 years his senior, and she proposed to him! He treated her as a confidant and was devastated when she died. Cool lady and a cool name.

So, I'm bruised, but still standing. I just had a delightful dinner (pasta with tuna, escarole and olives, caprese salad, ice cream with blueberries, and dry pear wine) with friends and am going to an art and food fair tomorrow, if the weather holds. But right now, I'm going to bed and it is gently raining out and I'm very excited about all these things! Goodnight, or masaa' al-khayr! (you'd respond masaa' an-nuur, FYI.)

I say Qur’ān, you say Koran

As I sat in the library yesterday for four hours performing "quranic exegesis" for my Prophet Muhammad seminar, all I kept thinking was, "this time, girl, you have got in over your head." Quranic exegesis, like Biblical exegesis, is looking at a religious text and critically examining it. A lot of it has to do with word choice, so, for instance, why a translator translated Hebrew one way, and how another version might vary slightly, or why certain passages are important. I had Biblical exegesis coming out my ears two years ago, so I figured the article on the translation problems in the Qur’ān wouldn't be too awful. Well, I figured wrong.

Two problems arose early on: I know very, very little about the Qur’ān, and this author presupposed that I had read it, and apparently remembered every chapter and verse number, as he had a tendency to say things like, "obviously, in Q 6:112 this is also evident," AND I unfortunately can not read Latin, Hebrew, Greek, or Arabic, which, along with German and Italian, were used by this author WITHOUT providing translations.

An example of what I'm talking about. This is from the eighth page.
"Instructive examples of parallel phraseology for divine and satanic inspiration are generated by Quranic application of the verb alqā (literally to cast, but often synonymous with arsala, or with awhā, in the sense of dispatch), e.g. Q. 40:15 [arabic phrase] (cf. 4:171; and a similar construction with nafakha 21:91), 20:39 [arabic phrase]. The imagery was perpetuated in the exegetical tradition, e.g. [long arabic phrase] describing the activity of Gabriel."
(Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, 60.)

So if I could read Arabic, this wouldn't be too bad, and I'm planning on locating a translated Qur’ān and at least checking some of the verses. But even just ignoring all of the non-English words, the friend I was working with and I had to get out the English dictionary, because half of his English words were ones I had never even HEARD of. We are also two of four people in the seminar who can not read Arabic, so I just had this feeling that everyone else would be breezing through the article, gamely reading the Arabic, while I stared at it, hating it. You had to have professorial permission to get into this class and she obviously let us in, so she must trust us well enough. But feeling like you're the one person at the party who doesn't know what is going on is not a great feeling to have.

The two of us are slated to lead discussion on this reading and three others next Wednesday in class. Send us some scholarly vibes, please.

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Charlie Brown always had to write a report about what he did on his summer vacation, but I've never had to do that. (Did anyone have to do that? Maybe it was just Charlie Brown.) Anyway, I am back in Indiana after three weeks at home/my relatives on the other side of the state, all of which was lovely, fun, relaxing, and too too short. I spent a large chunk of my time curled up on the couch either reading or eating, in some cases reading about eating, and in two cases, reading through letters. And that is what I'm going to mention today.

While I was at my aunt's I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It's about the German occupation of Guernsey during WWII, something which I didn't even know happened! It's told through letters between a writer based in London and some people in Guernsey, and then she goes to Guernsey because she connects with them over books. I know it's been out for a few years so I'm a little behind the times, but it is such a good book. And a fairly quick read--I'm usually pretty slow and I finished it in a day and a half. It's sweet without being cloyingly so, and it's clever and the characters are people you genuinely would like to have tea with. But they don't feel one-dimensional either. The people in Guernsey had horrible, horrible things happens to them, and the descriptions by one character who was in a concentration camp are hard to get through. At the same time, some of the German soldiers who occupied Guernsey were kind too, and they were also starving and scared, which made me think about the German Army in a way that I normally don't. Having the book conducted through letters was a great way to do it. It's lovely.

Since I was on epistolary book kick (epistolary meaning something which consists of letters--I just looked that up), happily for me my mother got for Christmas As Always, Julia: the Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, edited by Joan Reardon. It is fabulous. Having been raised watching Julia Child on PBS, I have known for a long time that she was a witty, opinionated dame, but so is Avis DeVoto, it turns out. Their friendship started because Avis's husband Bernard had written an article on knives which Julia, who was living in Paris with her husband Paul, had read and liked, and wrote to thank him and mailed him some knives. Avis, who answered her husband's letters from readers, wrote back. And they became friends.

Avis and Julia were penpals, so their letters were a bit different than letters between people who know each other in person. They sent pictures of themselves and their families, and eventually they met. They stayed in close contact for the rest of their lives. What is so cool about this period in Julia Child's life is that the letters started in 1953ish, when she was just beginning to work on her revolutionary French cookbook, which would eventually become Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Avis was instrumental in getting it published, through her connections with publishing houses. This was also the time when McCarthy was wrecking havoc on civil liberties, and as the DeVotos and Childs were all liberal, they had much to talk about.

As Always, Julia, encompasses 7 years of their letters, during which time Bernard DeVoto had a heart attack and died at a fairly young age, and Julia and Paul moved from Paris to Marseilles to Bonn, Germany to Washington DC to Oslo to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Avis also lived. One thing this book did was make me want to travel--I found myself getting quite jealous of Julia, who frequently zipped over to Paris while they were living in Marseilles and Bonn. Avis, too, spent all of her summers on the Cape or Maine or out West. I was also jealous about how passionate they were about politics. Avis was so proud of Adlai Stevenson that she wrote many letters about him, and helped fundraise for him. I can't think of any politicians I am excited about, and that is sad. This book also made me want to cook, but then also made me lose my appetite. I will never be excited about chicken livers or the best way to bone a duck. I don't need sauces on my vegetables, and though someday I would like to make beurre blanc, but it's not high on my list of life-goals. Still, it's fascinating to read about someone who is so focused on food, who wants others to love it as much as she does.

Both of these books got me thinking about letters, and really how important they are as a record. Yeah, we have email, but it's not the same. Emails won't be in archives for dorky researchers like me to someday pore over. Getting a letter from someone you care about is such a good feeling. My friends and I do send a fair amount of non-email mail, but my New Years goal is to write two letters a week. If you get one from me, you certainly shouldn't feel obligated to reply. But do think about writing a letter to someone.

How the Rare Books Library Blew My Mind

The highlight of what has been an increasingly academically frustrating week was a tour that my Research Sources class went on of the rare books library, which is handily right across the square from the art building. I was expecting just some background of the collection, how we get access to the books, how to use the card catalog (they still have one!), etc. But it was actually something much more wonderful.

I've used the rare book library on two occasions now, the first for a 1608 copy of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, and the second to view a page from a fifteenth century Iranian manuscript for a response paper. Both times I totally dorked out, while still being totally incredulous that I can touch things that I've not only studied but that are contemporary to so much of the art that I'm interested in. Thanks to his inventory, we know Velazquez owned that same edition of Ripa. I mean, totally cool.

Like I said, though, I'm still incredulous about this process:
Librarian: Ok, here is your book. Just leave it in the foam viewing stand when you're done.
Me: Just to clarify--I can touch the pages, right?
Librarian, giving me an odd look: Well, of course you can.
Me: I mean, because it's 400 years old. I feel like I should wear gloves, or something.
Librarian: It's survived this long, hasn't it? And you only need to wear gloves if your hands are especially oily or dirty.
Me: They're not.
Librarian: Alright then.

So I knew that the library was really excellent, but happily instead of just talking about what all they have, the director showed us. We stowed all our bags in the lockers (no pens around the books, fair enough) and proceeded to one of the back kind of conference rooms. This one looked like a library in a southwestern ranch, with a beamed ceiling, Native American and western art, rows of bookshelves and stone fireplaces, flanking a huge wooden table. We sat around the wooden table, with one of my classmates saying it looked like we were in a murder mystery similar to Clue, where we had all been gathered in the library to be told that Colonel Mustard had been killed there with a candlestick.

The library director came in with a cart, and he was the sweetest man EVER and clearly in love with his job and the books, and he proceeded to show us some things. It went something like this:

Director: This is one of the Nuremberg chronicles, which for those of you who don't know, tells the story of the world, up until 1493, when this book was published. So we can see the different maps here, and the images of "strange people" from countries where the vast majority of its readers would never go.
Classmate: We looked at that image of the man shaving with his feet in class yesterday!!
Director: Isn't that one great?? My favorite part though is that these images are hand colored for the first 30 pages of the chronicle, but then that stops, because the patron ran out of money. Oh, and this map of Venice, which folds out of the book, so you get the full effect of the canals. [He proceeds to fold it out. It's about 4 feet long, and gorgeously detailed.] Like many books of the time, the sheets in this are vellum [calfskin], which is why it stayed in such good shape. Go ahead and feel this sheet.
Another classmate: Wait...we can touch it?
Director: You certainly can! See, this is the hair side of the calf, so you can feel the slightly raised bumps from the follicles, while the other side is smooth.
Us, as we feel the vellum: Oh, ick! But cool!
Director: I know. I'm a vegetarian, but what can you do.

Director: And here is one of three complete copies of Dürer's Apocalypse in the United States. Dating from 1498, it basically tells the story of the Book of Revelations with pictures. Here's a great one, with a seven headed snake. Look at the thinness of those lines. I don't know how anyone could carve that small.
Us, hovering over it: Ahhh!
Director: And here is, of course, the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"..
Us: Ahh! Ahhh!
Director: And if you've ever wanted to say you've touched a Dürer, now is your chance!
[we touch the Dürer with reverence]

Director: Here is a binding from a contemporary binder, for a book on Islamic designs. There is a five year waiting list to have him do a binding, and it takes him about 3 months to complete one binding. He reads the book first to get a sense of it, and then makes a binding to incorporate what the book is about. He's in his 70's now and works in a small log cabin in Canada, which sounds like a myth but is actually true. The weather conditions are such that he can only do gold embossing during 3 months of the year.
Us: That is the most gorgeous book we've ever seen!
[I'm not sure how to describe the binding on this book--hand tooled in leather with gold embossing on red, blue, and yellow flowers, with some dome motifs and geometric designs. It was perfect.]

Director: Here's a copy of Hamlet, where the binding is made up of tiny pieces of leather, so it kind of looks like an impressionist painting, right? [we nod] Back away from the book, and see if you can see anything. [we move about 6 feet back]
Us: Ahh! [Once you step away from this book, much like an impressionist painting, the little specs of colors turn into an image. In this case, to the right side of the binding was Hamlet's head, wearing a crown, and on the left was Elsinore.

Director: Here is a moralizing book for children from the 18th century, with a binding designed with cats.
Us: Ahhh! [the book is about 4 inches square]

Director: Well, we have about 5 minutes left.
Us: Nooo!
Director: Do you have any questions for me?
Classmate: What is that big book on the cart that we didn't get to?
Director: Ah, that is a copy of Ulysses, bound with illustrations as a special edition for people who were willing to pay more for it. The person they picked to do the illustrations was Matisse--
Us: AH!
Director: --but the publishers didn't really like Matisse's illustrations for it, so they had him include all his original sketches for the finished drawing, and then they included them in a series before each illustration, so you can see the genesis of his work. The publishers thought people would be less annoyed about the illustrations if there were extras added. Oh, and we can see at the back that this book was signed by both Matisse and Joyce.
Us: AHH!!!

We all left the library going, "Dürer! Wha, gah! Touched it! That cat book was adorable! I want to meet the guy who does binding! I didn't even know people still DID binding professionally anymore! Ah, gah, Matisse!"

Good way to spend a Friday morning.

All Art, All the Time

Perhaps the oddest thing for me about grad school is that I am only hanging out with art historians and art students. Until now I've really only had one good art history friend who was my age, and through some weirdness we only had one class together, and it wasn't until our senior year. So I've never really had that many people my own age to gush about art historical stuff with, or even to study with.

That's kind of all changed now. We definitely talk about things other than art, of course, but the talk always seems to morph into that, even when we're having beers at The Vid (The Vid being, other than the Mojos, the dive-ist bar I've ever been in. Clean, certainly, but dive-y, also yes.) This could become a problem down the road, I think. I really like having friends who are interested in other things, so I'm worried that I'll get stuck in a rut here. I love art history, don't get me wrong, but I don't want to think about it ALL the TIME. Happily, most of the other students seem to be in the same mindset, so hopefully it won't be too constraining. And I have my other, closer (if not necessarily in distance) friends to keep me grounded in the real world, and thank goodness for that!

The nice thing is that I feel less like an enthusiastic art freak, which is sometimes how I felt in undergrad. I sometimes felt like I had to tamp down my responses in class to seem not quite so engaged or excited. Which is silly. I feel like the nerd factor is higher here, but I'm also not alone in it. Some examples:

on the bus:
My friend: Look at that VW.
Me: What a weird color! It looks kind of like a shimmery oil spill.
My friend: I think it looks like that sleeve in the Allegory of Painting.
Me: Oh, true that. Especially that purple-y bit.
Other friend: Yo, nerd alert, you two. Remember, we're on the bus.

Another friend, to me: That's a cute cardigan. You know what the feather design reminds me of? Daphne's leaf-hands.

Me: did you get a mocha?
Another friend: Nah, I just got a regular coffee. I'm avoiding temptation. Like St Jerome.
Me: Did you just make a Jerome reference?!
(note: that fact that someone other than me is making Jerome references in normal conversation is very refreshing. I try not to do that too often.)

Me, walking into the art building before an Islamic test: Hey.
Another friend: Hey. Hazarbaf. Define, ready...go!

And these are the things I'm remembering from the past 3 days. But at least it's reassuring that when I start living at the library, as will be happening over the next few weeks, these people will be there with me.

Talkin 'bout my Education

I start classes tomorrow, and am almost eerily unconcerned. I normally get really nervous about the beginning of a new school year--will I fit in ok? What will I wear? What if I'm not smart enough? What if I'm too smart and no one likes me? What if I can't find the classroom and am, saints preserve us, late??

Either I am 1. totally apathetic and don't care anymore, or 2. have gained some [misplaced?] confidence along the way--but in either case, I'm feeling quite ready. I have some theories about what has contributed to this. I had a comprehensive, excellent undergrad education, and I think I am very prepared for my classes. The seminar I took my senior year was the hardest, most rewarding academic experience I've ever had, and I honestly think that if I can do that, I can do this. Having met most of my sister students (there is one fellow student my year, but I don't think I have any classes with him) I know that they are nice and not likely to shun me. The faculty seems, by and large, humane--not likely to call you out in class for not knowing something. And, I generally keep up with the reading, so any gaps will fill in that way.

So, here's what I'm taking: Foundations in Islamic Art, a seminar called Caravaggio and Velazquez: Art Writing in the Baroque, Beginning Italian, and Research Sources, which is apparently v. boring but necessary. I'm excited about all of 'em (minus Research Sources). I've never had a class on Islamic Art, and the professor is supposed to be phenomenal. I'm a little-bit-of-a-freak about Caravaggio, so that should be my cup of tea. And Italian?! Now I can understand what is happening in operas!

For my last day of "freedom," I cooked some Jacques Pepin recipes (Fricassee of Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, and Caramelized Peaches, ooh la la), went grocery shopping, bought notebooks, went swimming (yes, my apartment complex has a POOL, I feel like I'm living in a resort), made and addressed some cards, watched an episode of White Collar, and started reading, erm, Dead After Dark. Yes, it's about vampires. It's also only marginally interesting.

Now all that's left for tomorrow is to double and triple check my schedule (still worried about being late!) and write some more cards. There are a lot of birthdays coming up!

Good vibes welcome. But I think this will be fun.