Veteran's Day

Today is Veteran's Day. Ever since I can remember, my sister and I would go outside with my dad and we would take a shot at 11:11. We started with shots of orange juice and then moved up to Fuzzy Navel and harder spirits. Today I had a shot for my dad, and also for my grandfathers and my dad's good friend Dave, who is a sweet teddy-bear of a man (he makes a mean fruit salad, and also does a killer Beverly Sills impression.) It's a strange "holiday" as such, one that doesn't get much play in this country, other than as a day off from school. Three years ago I was in England for Remembrance Day/Armistice Day, and it is a MUCH different affair there.

My parents and godmothers were visiting me, and we just happened to pick the Saturday before Remembrance Day as the day we'd go to Westminster Cathedral. We thought it was slightly odd that there were metal detectors up, and that everyone else was pretty elderly, but they let us through to the courtyard, where we saw this:

"Plots" for every branch of military service, nurses, drivers, etc. Everyone kept saying, "get to your plot" and of course we had no idea what was going on, having been let through in the first place only because we were wearing red poppies in our lapels, as was everyone else. (note: this starts in late October and runs 'til Remembrance Day. As my American Foreign Policy tutor, the legendary Andy Patmore, told me, "I wear the poppy for everyone who has died in war, not just the bloody British.) So we ended up hanging out with Ken the Veteran from Birmingham, and a passel of old women, who explained to us that this was the big Remembrance Day service, and that usually the Queen comes, but "her back was playing up" so it would be Prince Phillip this year. There was a procession from the church with trumpets and be-robed people, and at 11 they recited part of the For the Fallen poem by Laurence Binyon. Everyone (except the Wayward Americans) said the last part in unison,

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."

It totally sent chills down my spine. Just to see all the people who were there, and eavesdrop on their stories, was amazing, and the fact that everything stops at 11--even traffic--while people observe a moment of silence. It's much more potent there for many reasons. When we returned to Norwich, there was a Remembrance Day parade and there was another service at the Norwich Cathedral, as you can see from these pictures:


Most of my meaningful military experiences seem to start in England, oddly enough, and here is what happened on the Thanksgiving that I was there. A friend and I had gone out for waffles and chocolate mousse to console ourselves for being so far away from our families, and afterwards she headed to the shops and I headed to the market (Norwich has a HUGE open air market). There were lots of people milling about, so I stayed to see what was happening. It was the returning home parade for the East Anglian Regiment from Afghanistan, so we were standing there, and they processed down the road with bagpipes and bands, and the guy behind me yelled, "there's my son!" and everyone around me cheered. You could tell the soldiers were supposed to be serious, but they kept sneakily smiling and were so happy to be home, safe. Even though I was 20 at the time, they looked even younger than me.

The old woman next to me (we had been chatting about how short we were before the parade started) turned to me at one point, and lightly touched my arm, saying, "ach, my dear, they are barely more than boys." I burst into tears. I was trying to be quiet about it, because the Brits are, by and large, not big on the emotional displays. It was a combination of things that set me off--the youth of the soldiers, the happiness of their relatives, the fact that it was Thanksgiving and I missed home, the fact that so many people, in so many countries were fighting each other and not returning home, and on and on. The old man in front of me turned around and said, "you should be able to see better, young lady. Come in front of me." I tried to protest, but he was having none of it. So I moved up, and he smiled at me. "It's all better now," he said. "They're alright now."

This post, it turns out, has nothing to do with Indiana. I spent today doing 3 loads of laundry, cleaning my apartment, and translating part of a simplified version of The Decameron. And as this post has instead turned into "Anna's Greatest Hits England Stories" and needs to be wrapped up, I will end with two recommendations:
1. if you are interested in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, do check out Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War (2004) by Evan Wright. My cousin and I both read it after watching the miniseries (of the same name) on HBO. The miniseries is great too. Both are powerful, crazy, funny, moving, and horrifying.
2. As a creature of ritual, I have of late been listening to Masters of War by Bob Dylan and Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on Veteran's Day. Both sum up a lot of what I feel about fighting in general.

And I'll close with a line from M*A*S*H: You've gotta understand. I'm not working on sick people here. I'm working on hurt young people, with essentially healthy bodies that have been insulted by ammunition. -- BJ

Anatomy of a Saturday

8:00 am: Wake up. Am annoyed because set alarm for 7:00 to write paper, a paper which I present in class on Monday. Curse alarm for technological deficiencies. Check alarm and see that I have set it for 7:00 pm. Curse self for brain deficiencies.
8:05-8:45 am: Shower, eat cold piece of pizza, check email.
8:45-9:15 am: Waste time on internet creating paper-playlist and reading Stephen Fry's blog.
9:15-10:15 am: Outline Velazquez section and start writing. Do not accomplish much.
10:15 am: put on multiple layers of clothing, plus a hat and gloves, and get picked up by two friends.
10:20-11:00 am: go to Starbucks, get hot chocolate, return to friends apartment where we put Baileys in the hot chocolate. Resuit up with multiple layers.
11:00-11:45 am: Walk to football field, partially through a field and partially on the road. Am feeling quite warm again. Take off some layers.
11:45-12:05 am: Buy tickets, wave enthusiastically at some people we know in the band, meet up with two other friends, get seats by the band. Prepare for Iowa-Indiana game.
12:05-2:00 pm: First half. Indiana was ahead, of all things (Iowa is ranked either number 1, or very close. IU is..not.) Also, in other hilarity, the two guys in front of us looked like noisy frat boys, but both of them had brought reading to do. We were slightly more raucous:


(some classy art historians do a touchdown dance)


(marching hundred rocks out "Livin' on a Prayer")

2:00-3:30 pm: Second half. We lost. It involved an intercepted pass with 25 seconds left. It was kind of a bummer.
3:30-3:50 pm: Band post-show. More interesting than the game. As one of my friend's said, "the band always wins!"
3:50-4:30 pm: Walk home. Sing a variety of walking songs as we are on the road--Hit the Road Jack, Highway to Hell, On the Road Again, etc.
4:30-5:00 pm: stare at computer. Curse Velazquez. Curse self for spending most of the day outdoors, and for having face hurting with both sunburn and windburn.
5:00-5:30 pm: On the phone.
7:30 pm: Velazquez section complete!
7:30-8:30 pm: Dinner break. Eat more cold pizza. Watch an episode of Jeeves and Wooster. Wonder for the 3,000th time why I do not live a life more like Bertie Wooster. Must make more friends named "Gussie Finknottle."
8:45 pm: Start Gentileschi section. Try to make sense of 6 pages of typed Gentileschi notes.

(desk/kitchen counter/sunglasses repository)
9:30 pm: Catch self singing along to Dolly Parton's Jolene and staring aimlessly at wall. Change music to Bach.
9:34 pm: My sister texts me from Bob Dylan concert. Have a Jealousy Moment.
10:30 pm: Go to mailbox in my pajamas. No mail.
11:45 pm: Trip over Mary Garrard's 900 pound divine Gentileschi textbook. Curse Mary Garrard for her divinity and gigantic book.
12:00 am: Walk around apartment, punching air and saying, "go to the mattresses!"
1:45 am: Final paragraph. Put on Eye of the Tiger for motivation.
1:57 am: Paper finished! Paper is eighteen pages long and for this presentation should be ten-ish. Which means tomorrow will be spent hacking chunks out, but eighteen pages is almost as long as it needs to be for the final, so that is pretty cool.
2:00/1:00 am: Ring in Daylight Savings Time. Hello, extra hour of sleep!!
2:25 am: finishing blog post. Emailing paper to self. Going to bed.

Grrl Power

I've had three random cultural experiences lately that involve female empowerment in varied ways; some positive, and some not. Here are my thoughts on them:

1. Legally Blonde: The Musical
Now, before you scoff, I should say that I really like Legally Blonde the movie. (Not as much as Spiceworld, but not everything can be Spiceworld, I suppose.) It's funny and cute and Elle Woods is a smiley role model who makes it through Harvard Law and takes on her sexually harassing professor and wins her court case and gets her man! So when one of my friends suggested we go to the musical version to blow off some academic related steam, I said sure.

The first thing we noticed was that the audience was about 98% female and about 95% blonde. After we sat down in our balcony nosebleeds, my friend said she'd never smelled so much perfume in her life, and I would agree. Elle is a sorority girl, and these, I can hazard a guess without overgeneralizing, were her people. And they were excited to be there! Sorority culture is pretty foreign to me, as my undergrad didn't have them, nor, admittedly, would I have probably joined one if they did. But, apart from the (alleged?) cattiness and (alleged?) superficiality, I think anything that promotes female solidarity and sisterhood is probably a good thing.

Okay, so Legally Blonde is not amazing, musically, but so help me, some of those songs are CATCHY. It has numbers titled, for example, "Omigod You Guys", with lines like "they're just like that couple in Titanic/except no one dies." Aaand, that was stuck in my head for way longer than I care to admit. "Bend and Snap" lived up to it's expectations, and "Ireland" was actually pretty lovely. Plus, Paulette is the best.(Yeah, that's a lotta pink. Thanks to alkpop for the image!)

2. A graphic novel about Isadora Duncan
This was the weirdest thing I've ever checked out of a library, I think. I was there to get another graphic novel, which wasn't there, so I just grabbed this graphic novel instead. I'd like to say that I liked it, but I didn't. So much of it was Duncan saying, "no one understands my art! I believe in truth and beauty! I'm so misunderstood!" Which was, I'm sure, true, but a little bit preachy. I did learn a lot, as the only thing I knew about Duncan before this was her untimely death, and she was actually a pretty cool lady. She was uncorseted at a time when women didn't do that, and she had multiple relationships and children with different fathers, and she didn't really care what people had to say about her. And she formed a school, which is still in existence. Duncan had success and lived in some amazing places (Paris, the French countryside, Moscow, Munich, Athens, New York, Chicago) but her story ultimately just made me feel vaguely depressed. The underlying message of this retelling of her story was that history was not kind to unconventional women. But oh my, could she dance.

(Thanks to Duncan Dancers for the images!)

3. Little Women: The Opera
I have, oddly enough, seen this opera twice. The first time was at Chautauqua, and mainly what I remember is that it was 9000 degrees in the balcony, and at one point my sister leaned over to me and whispered, "if Beth doesn't hurry up and DIE soon, I am going to get onstage and KILL HER MYSELF." Which kind of sums it up. The musicality of the Little Women I saw this past weekend was very good--especially Professor Bhaer, who had a nice aria about Goethe. So the singing was delightful, but I am not fond of the music itself, which meant that I couldn't really enjoy the opera as much. This is going to make me sound very stuck in my ways, but modern operas don't do it for me. This was composed in 1998, and it's too choppy for my tastes, although for that reason, the one aria that was a telegram actually worked pretty well.

At its core, Little Women is about sisterhood, about the four March sisters, and especially Jo, who doesn't want things to change. The point being, of course, that things must change, which eventually Jo realizes too (although it takes a LONG time, and a lot of whinging on her part..) I would imagine that it's physically a hard opera to sing. "Write Soon" was, to me, the best ensemble bit, and I did enjoy that.

Jo is a proto-feminist, a smart, savvy, independent writer. I don't remember if this is in the book (having last read it/had it read to me when I was about eight years old), but in the opera at least, Aunt March gives Jo her house in her will. And Jo turns it down, because there is more to life than "being surrounded by books and living in a house of stone" I would heartily agree, but as my life, currently, is being surrounded by books, it was a definite buzzkill on my mood.(I thought Jo was my favorite, but it might be Meg. Thanks to Book Group Buzz for the image!)

And to close with the immortal movie, Spiceworld: "They're hot, Chief! They've got fire in their eyes, hunger in their bellies... and great big shoes on their feet!" Something, indeed, that Elle Woods could get behind.

Mi piace. Non mi piace.

When you want to say you like something in Italian, you say, "mi piace xyz" which literally means, "xyz is pleasing to me". So then, of course, "non mi piace xyz" would describe something you don't like. I am tired and tired of thinking in a thematic, logical way, so here are some things that I piace and some things I non piace.

Mi piace hot apple cider
I've had some amazing varieties of this wonderful seasonal beverage lately. The Scholars Inn Bakehouse on 3rd has a lovely one, with caramel syrup. I had some at a party over the weekend that incorporated some sort of--bourbon? something from Kentucky anyway--which reminded me of glögg. I'm drinking some hot apple cider from a packet now, which is not quite as great but reminds me of my first year roomate, who introduced me to it. When we were very stressed she would boil up some water in our illegal water heater and make the cider, and I'd turn on the Christmas lights and we'd stop doing work and have a Harry Potter reading night. I miss that a lot.

Non mi piace being so far from home
An ongoing thing I dislike, nay, hate, but it's usually ok. I will fly home for Thanksgiving, which I am SUPER excited about, and otherwise I haven't been so homesick. But then this weekend, the father of one of my best friends from college was in a very bad car accident and things are a bit better than they originally thought, but still not good, and I hate that I can't be there for her. I think we're all sort of dealing with this, now that our college group of friends is spread out, and this is the first major crisis that we can't all be there for, and we're not quite sure how to emotionally handle it. And it's horrible. And I haven't met my baby cousin yet. I keep missing my families birthdays. I want to walk around Chautauqua when all the summer people are gone. I miss Prospect Park. There are many other examples.

Mi piace rain hitting the window when you are cozy in bed
Yesterday morning my alarm, which is NPR, went off and I didn't have to get up right away, so I lay there for a bit, listening to soothing British voices and listened to the rain and leaves smack on the window.

Non mi piace when the rain hitting your window turns out to be a tornado
So either I'm deaf or was in the shower, but I missed the tornado sirens, but I did hear my phone beeping a text alert, which told me to go to the lowest level of my building and "take safe shelter". Which I ignored, seeing as how I'm on the first floor and although the sky was a creepy pewter color, it didn't look too awful. And it wasn't, as the warning lifted about 20 minutes later.

Mi piace the fact that midterms are done
Self explanatory, really. I've got my seminar presentation in 10 days, which might actually be worse, but I will enjoy my mini-break while it lasts.

Non mi piace the fact that I made annoying mistakes on my midterms
So, I had an Italian test last night and an Islamic test today, about 15 hours apart. I'm quite certain I passed both of them, but mixed up some verbs on the Italian, which is annoying, and mixed up some dates on Islamic, which is even more annoying. I was 400 years off on a mosque, which then meant I wrote the wrong dynasty, and confused my brass basins (because, let's be honest, they sort of look the same). This is not a genuine problem, nor are midterms in general. Art history professors always tell you that they want the content right, and the dates don't matter as much, but something deep in my knit-picky nature is bothered by this.

Mi piace my friends here
After the exam today we met up outside the classroom to compare notes and console one another, and one of my fellow grad students had made Funfetti Halloween cupcakes, which is really what everyone needed! Over the weekend the Art History Association had a Halloween party (I was Nancy Drew) and got to hang out with some of the older students, which was really nice. And one of them (the only other NYer, which doesn't really count, because he's from Long Island) had brought his fiance, who got her MA in NYC and was from Rochester, so we had a good chat about Pinkberry and WEGMANS. An hour ago I somehow sliced my hand on my wall (sidenote: I just told this story to my father, who said, "that is the lamest thing I have ever heard") and didn't have bandaids. I prevailed on my upstairs neighbor for one, and we talked for awhile about England and how much we love it. All really sweet people.

Non mi piace missing Das Rheingold because I had to run errands
Actually, I don't mind missing Das Rheingold, as such, because I'm not in love with Wagner enough to want to listen/watch his operas for 3 1/2 hours. But anyway, I was supposed to go to Met at the Movies tonight with someone and was trying to think how to beg off, because my apartment was a disaster (one thing about midterms that I had forgotten is that you just eat whatever you can, whenever you can) and I needed to do dishes and pick all the papers off the floor, where I had shoved them off the bed before I went to sleep last night. Fortunately, the person I was supposed to go with is also stressed and bailed first, so I didn't have to feel guilty.

Mi piace the smells of Fall
Wood smoke. Musty leaves. Mud. Clear air. You know what I mean.

Non mi piace the current smell of this apartment
What is smells like is burnt, because I was attempting to toast an English Muffin in the oven for dinner and burned it (how?? why?? who can say).

Mi piace ALL OF YOU
Good night!

Please Put on Some Pants

Events have transpired this week to make me feel old, and not in a cool way. In a curmudgeon way. Such events include:

1. A worrying pain in both my knees. I do have one torn ACL, so that makes sense, but I think climbing into and hopping out of buses is doing them no favors. They also have been aching in the mornings when it is cold. This makes me feel approx. 105 years old.

2. This morning I was buying wine (amongst other things) at the grocery store, and the cashier kept staring at my ID and staring at me. I smiled in a sort of disarming way, and she handed it back, saying suspiciously, "well, I guess that's you. It looks enough like you. I also had trouble finding your birthdate on there." Now, the confusing nature of NY licenses is not really my fault, and if I were to use a fake ID, it would NOT be with the picture that is on my license. I look better now than I did at age 16, I feel pretty confident in saying. So maybe not looking like my license is actually complimentary? Either way, my 16 year old self seems to be mocking me, with her blondeness and youth and slightly surly mug-shot expression.

3. The way that underclassmen seem to look younger and younger every year. My senior year in undergrad, I thought the incoming first-year class looked like they were 15. It's even worse now.

This final point is the main crux of my curmudgeon tendencies of late, in that I've been seeing a lot of female students wearing leggings in place of pants, and my immediate mental reaction is something along the lines of, "please put on some pants. Do you want people to respect your mind or your body? What would Gloria Steinem say about this nonsense?!" I'm about two horrifying mental steps away from, "listen honey, he won't buy the cow when he can get the milk for free. Cover it up."

I think I make a distinction between women who wear revealing clothing because it makes them feel nice and confident (rock on!) and women who wear revealing clothing to attract the opposite (or same) sex. Which concerns me. But a part of feminism is that women should be able to wear whatever they want, without having to justify their actions to a predominantly male gaze. One of my favorite sections of The Vagina Monologues is called "My Short Skirt," and it ends defiantly and wonderfully with: "But mainly, my short skirt--and everything under it--are mine. Mine. Mine." We deserve to be respected, demand to be respected, no matter what we wear. But that's not the reality, is it?

I am worried for these girls (and I do mean girls). We were coming home late last Saturday night and drove by a student, walking alone, tottery in high heels, shivering, and wearing a very tiny dress. My friend who was driving slowed down a bit and we did a quick check of her as we went by. "Do you think she'll get home ok?" "I don't think she's drunk, she seems to be walking pretty straight." "Her friends must have left her at a party." "I wonder where her dorm is." "There are enough lights here that she should be ok, right?" We weren't fussing about her outfit, but about her safety. And that is a much, much bigger problem for more than just one girl, alone on a Saturday night.

At least I've got company in my mothering/judging tendencies. My close friends all joke about how we're like prematurely old ladies (the knitting, the wine, the love of Murder She Wrote, the early bedtimes, etc), but my new friends here are on much the same wavelength. A few weeks ago I was asking one about the home football game she had gone to, and she said, "it was really fun! Oh, except, oh..this is mortifying. There was this idiot drunken frat boy behind me, and he kept swearing, and finally I turned around and said, 'Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?!' And then realized I sounded exactly like MY mother, AND he was 5 years younger than me, and he looked at me like I was from another planet."

The summer after my first year of college I was working in the Children's Room of the public library in my home town, and a boy came up to me--he was probably about 9 years old--and said, "you look like my friend's mom! Are you his mom?" Since I was 19 at the time I was suitably horrified by this, and proceeded to wail about it on my break. One of the reference librarians told me that she was doing a tour once for a first grade class, and they kept telling her that their teacher, "Old Lady Rizzo," would be coming in soon. When she arrived, "Old Lady Rizzo" turned out to be in her early 20s, the point of this story being that to a 9 year old, anyone older than 18 looks like someones parent. And that I should just embrace it.

And the point of this post is that I might not agree or approve of what you are wearing and the message it gives off, but I will always defend your right to wear it, and to be proud of yourself. Even if you make me feel old. And maybe that doesn't make me quite so curmudgeonly, after all.

David Sedaris

I've never been big on book signings, but David Sedaris seems to be the exception to the rule. I wasn't planning on waiting around until the small hours of the morning to meet him, but that is what happened a few weeks ago, when he came to do a reading at the IU Auditorium.

Here is why I wanted to meet David Sedaris:
1. His books have actually made me laugh out loud, in public, and have been familiar things to read when I'm scared or stressed in a new place.
2. His reading of the Santaland Diaries for This American Life got me through working retail in NYC last year. I listened to it a freakish amount, and it always helped to remind me that it could be worse. I could be wearing an elf costume and getting yelled at, instead of just getting yelled at. Also, his rendition of Away in a Manger, sung like Billie Holiday, is gold.
3. He sums up how I feel about so many things, except in a way that is funnier than me. Sallie Mae, language classes, Dutch Christmas legends, the way Americans act in Paris, the importance of soap operas, his love songs to NYC, the manicness of his family--all of it.
4. One of my best friends from home wanted to come out for it and couldn't, and I wanted to have a good report back for her.

David Sedaris is one of those people who is funny in print, but even better when read aloud. I have never been in an auditorium where there was so much laughing, howling even. I was next to these two older women from South Bend, and they were both doubled over for most of the night. His writing can be raunchy and downright disturbing, but there is always a kernel of truth to it, that makes you think in the midst of all the absurdities. It sounds like a cliche, but parts of his stories make you laugh one line and then tear up the next. After hearing him read, I decided to buy his newest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, a sort of book of animal fables, which he calls a bestiary, because, as he put "fables tend to imply that there are morals involved, and I don't have any of those." (sidenote: this is a DARKLY funny book. I'm not sure what to make of it, although I did very much like it by the end. If you like DS, you would like it. If you normally don't, you would decidedly not.)

What is cool is that Sedaris tries out some of his newer material on the audience, and judging by their reaction, tweaks it or adds it to the book he is currently working on. The best part was his reading of excerpts from his diary. He edits at the podium, too--you can see him circling things or crossing them out or putting stars next to them, or he'll say things like, "oops, wrong placed apostrophe! Apologies."

So afterwards I joined many other people in line, which seemed to not go forward at all as the hours went by. The reason the line was taking so long is because Sedaris spends seriously 5 minutes with each person. And the line kind of turned into a big party--people were reading his books out loud, ordering pizza and sandwiches to the line, giggling about his police protection--who looked like identical twins, or lying down coats and taking a nap. People had taken the train in from Chicago, some had 8 am classes, the woman next to me was in town from Sarasota, and we all stayed. "He'll stay until he's met everyone," said the booksellers. I wasn't the end of the line, by a long shot, and I didn't get to meet him until 2 am.

My first impression was how TIRED he looked, with redrimmed eyes and the stubble start of a beard. At the reading, he'd mentioned that his flight had gotten canceled that morning, and I checked later and he was reading in Atlanta later that day. Book tours must be exhausting, all that hand shaking and forced cheerfulness. Except, with him, it WASN'T forced. I managed to tamp down my first inclination, which was to say, "god, you poor man, you look so tired." Instead, I said (very suavely! HA), "thank you for staying here so late. I'm glad you did."

"My pleasure," he said, with a smile. Then he asked some questions about me, and who the books were for, and we discussed lawnmowers (the inscription in mine says something about lawnmowers--don't ask), and then out of nowhere, he said, "are you here alone tonight?" (when I told this to the friend who so graciously picked me up, she gasped and said, "was he trying to SEDUCE YOU?!" I had to explain that's he's gay and been monogamously partnered for years.)

"I am," I replied. (I actually ended up having a seat near an acquaintance--neither of us knew beforehand that the other was going to be there--but like any normal person she had managed to snag him for a signing before the show, and was now presumably asleep.)

"Well!" Sedaris said, pulling a box out from under his chair. "Then I have something for you. Here are some business cards that say, 'Stop Talking' on them. You can hand them out to annoying people at movies, or people on their phones, whatever. And it's much more polite than saying 'Shut Up', or something."

"People on their cell phones are the worst, especially on the bus!!" I said. And then we had a nice little vent about why we dislike cell phones. And then we shook hands. I said goodbye to the people in line, and went home to read.

I said nothing witty or interesting, but I did make him laugh at one point, and was totally starstruck. And he was so nice. If you like his work and have a chance to see him, I would so recommend it.

For more on David Sedaris, if you are uninitiated, here is a bio. Check out here for some of his audio, including the Santaland Diaries. And here for a fairly comprehensive older interview. And finally, an abstract for his newest New Yorker article, and a past one on voting, since I just watched the NY gubernatorial debates (which were, by the way, as funny and heartbreaking as David Sedaris so often is.)

Frustrations

It's before 10 pm on a Friday night and I am in my pajamas, in bed. I am actually really thrilled about this, as it's been a frustrating few days--in minor ways that bother me slightly and slightly until I finally realize what has been frustrating about it. (More on that in a minute.) Today wasn't frustrating at all, though! I had some meetings (ok, a little frustrating) but also good, heartfelt chats with two other grad students. We're all trying to work through some of the feelings of inadequacy you have when you start grad school--my main one, I think, is gaps in theory, while someone else is worried about reading critically, or articulating our thoughts in class without being intimidated, or time management, things like that. It's nice to talk that over with someone. And then I went over to my sister's roommate's parents--could that be any more confusing?--house for dinner, which was great: crab enchiladas, avocado salad, pumpkin beer, and persimmon puddings, plus a game of Quiddler after dinner for good measure. They are super sweet people. And getting off campus makes for a very nice change.

But anyway, frustrations, which upon reflection fall under the broad umbrella of xenophobia. The first (and worst) instance happened on Tuesday night, at a talk given by my Islamic Art professor at the rare books library. She was talking about Islamic book arts from the 7th-10th centuries, with some snacks afterward, and a chance to look up close at some of the books. So I'd just settled in with my glass of wine for the in-depth viewing when the woman seated behind me spoke up. She is an older woman who I've seen at a few other art events, and the first genuinely grumpy person I have met here. She has a cane and I truly believe she would hit me with it. Here's what happened:
Older woman, to my professor: Are you a Muslim?
Professor, smiling: Ah, I'm equidistant from all religions. Because I'm an academic.
Older woman: Your first name is Christiane, isn't it? Isn't it interesting that you're not studying Christian art. Your first name should be Moslema or something. [the friend I'm sitting next to jabs me in the ribs at this point]
Professor: Well, as you can tell by my name, I'm likely not from a Muslim tradition! I study Islamic art because I find it beautiful and interesting. The religion, and my religion, have no bearing on it.

My professor handled it really well, but it was mortifying for all concerned. First of all, the assumption that you would study something solely based on your religion is pretty offensive, and it is something that is NEVER asked of Christian art historians. I can almost guarantee that. And the way she quizzed my professor was so accusatory, which probably has to do with the fact that my professor is young. Then there is the underlying idea that non-Western art is not worth studying unless you're a Muslim or a Buddhist, say, because those are the only people who would be interested in it--because it's not "real" art. Infuriating.

Related, and a more broad-ranging frustration, is the general xenophobia of every Western art history text I've read this semester, written before, say, 1980. I'm sure there are many unbiased, lovely texts from this period, but I haven't met them yet. The Italian bias is especially starting to really bother me, which is problematic since I study Italian art. For example, I had to read a book this week on Rembrandt, where the author's thesis was that Rembrandt was an offensive and repulsive artist until he finally accepted Vasari and Italian art theory into his life and then he was slightly a less offensive and repulsive artist. And this is from a book ON Rembrandt. Everything I read about him was comparing him to Titian, or wanting to imitate Italian artists and not being quite good enough. And there is so much underlying misogyny. I've learned to accept it from primary sources, indeed, expect it, but when it's scholars' misogyny and I don't have a proper classroom outlet for talking about it...blahh!

These are not major events, but they do point to an underlying trend of religious and cultural intolerance that I don't know what to do with. And the privileging of one culture over another. I love Italian art history. But sometimes I really, really wish I studied something else.

PS Today is my MAMA'S BIRTHDAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!! xoxoxoxoxxo ...Which also means I am 23 and a half. It's been a whizz-bang year so far!