1) Teaching Research Methods and Photographing American History.
Both classes are a lot of fun so far. Great students--smart!!
I've been reading a good deal for Photographing American History and writing lots of lectures--most recently about Photography and ideas of the "West" particularly survey photographs after the Civil War, Edward Curtis' Native American Indian Photographs, and images taken at the Carlisle Indian School.
2) Coaching the "Throws" for the USM Men's and Women's track teams.
I was a volunteer assistant coach up until two weeks ago when I became an assistant coach.
We're having a fantastic season [lots of personal bests recorded the last 2 meets] and I am so glad to be back in the world of Track and Field. Our Conference Championship is this weekend.
3) Thinking about my Maine/Moderns book [and looking forward to doing some writing over February Break next week]
4) Spending too much time on Facebook [I try to limit to morning when I wake up and at night before bed--it's working].
It's such a treat to connect with old friends--especially since we don't physically see each other enough.
5) Skyping: Have you tried it? This video free chat is free, easy and futuristic. It's fun.
6) Doing more yoga and pilates.
7) Making a concerted effort to cook more. Today I made Irish Guinness Beef Stew. Good Stuff. Sunday I made Snickerdoodles.
8) Not blogging.
9) Spending more time in Portland. Walked around the Old Port Tuesday afternoon.
10) Listening to Howard Stern in the early morning and late evening.
12 February 2009
20 January 2009
Transcript of the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery's Benediction at Obama's Inauguration
I was so moved by this today [among so many other things], and was glad the Associated Press published a transcript. I think this might be the **coolest** prayer ever! This old gentleman has seen so much, and his benediction was so lovely. Welcome President Obama. Hope.
"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.
We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.
We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.
He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.
Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.
For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.
We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed — the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.
With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."
"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.
We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.
We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.
He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.
Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.
For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.
We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed — the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.
With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."
05 January 2009
My Modernists
Good Afternoon.
So it's a bit surreal blogging while sitting in the reading room at the Beinecke, but why not. I'm overwhelmed with primary sources; I have a horrible cold and am a bit hopped up on medicine [my body hates all foreign drug substances]; and I need to start putting things together for myself and start to draft an outline to the book I'm working on. Having just returned from a weekend in NYC at the American Historical Association Conference [lovely to see old grad school friends, not so lovely to have barely left the Hilton b/c of conducting interviews and because I'm so sick], the wheels are beginning to crank again and I feel the need to put some order to what I've done and what I'm doing.
I have found, in the past two and 1/2 weeks, an absolutely surreal amount of information. When I won this fellowship, I thought I would find some stuff and maybe have a hard time filling four weeks. Now I know four weeks won't be enough. I'm also wondering why no one else has pursued my topic [though I'm glad that they didn't]. I shan't reveal all my amazing discoveries [lest there be any modernist project poachers in cyberspace], but let's start at the beginning.
In 2000 I wrote a seminar paper on the photographer F. Holland Day. From this paper sprung forth a dissertation: Against An Epoch: Boston Moderns, 1890-1905 where I argued, among other things, that Boston was aesthetically 'modern' before NYC, that it was a different sort of 'alternative' modernism based less on the individual artist genius and more on the cultural productions made possible by friendship and collaboration among like-minded artists, photographers, writers, poets, architects, etc. At the heart of the dissertation were aesthetic Bostonians [and transplants] of the 1880s and 1890s--a sometimes decadent crew that included [among others]: the publisher and photographer F. Holland Day, the Irish Catholic poet and essayist Louise Imogen Guiney, the architect Ralph Adams Cram, the poets Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman, the impressionist painter Thomas Buford Meteyard, the regional prose author Alice Brown and some others. The group individually published a good deal of singular work, while at the same time collaborating on small magazines like: The Knight Errant, The Mahogany Tree, and Le Courier Innocent [while at the same time publishing mainstream--Harper's, The Atlantic, etc.] as well as being members of clubs and secret societies--Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, The Visionists, etc. They hung around Harvard, they spent time at Meteyard's house by the shore in Scituate; they were visible members of major movements like Arts and Crafts in Boston and were celebrated among peers for accomplishments in Boston and beyond. They weren't pleased or sold with the currents of the nineties--industrialization, a world moving ever faster, a disconnect between art and life, a diminishing natural world--but they fought their dissatisfaction with their art, and stemmed the tide of progress away from communal ties and collaboration with their friendship. They were NOT as Jackson Lears has argued, "anti-modern." They didn't wish to stop progress, but they didn't wish to lose their souls and identities in the sweep of progress either. For more about them--you can see my dissertation.
I finished that project in 2005, and was, for awhile DONE with it. I pursued other threads. I have a side interest in friendships among disparate generations of 19th century women writers; I learned more about 19th century Boston; I thought about the transatlantic flow of ideas among art colonies [all the ideas didn't come from Europe to America--the currents flowed both ways] and I kept working on F. Holland Day, and particularly his initial friendship and later rivalry with the famed Alfred Stieglitz. It's the classic Boston vs. New York, but it's something more too. It has a lot to do with who gets remembered from the past, who gets called the father of American Art Photography, and who falls into the annals of history remembered infrequently and pigeon-holed as a pictorialist whose influence waned. I'll eventually write the article that tells everyone how Day was more famous at the turn-of-the century; that Day was more interested in mentoring a generation of photographers who were his friends than in mentoring the movement as a whole--that was Stieglitz's passion. Day chose to leave the mainstream and keep his friendships. Stieglitz prized the movement above the individuals who comprised it. I spent a semester teasing out the simultaneous rise of both photographers and their allegiances--culminating in Day's 1900-1901 New School of American Photography Show in London and Paris and Stieglitz's 1902 founding of the Photo-Secession. Day refused to join--his name was soon forgotten--this was not a game he wanted to play. Stieglitz soldiered on, took pictorialism to what he felt was its natural end in 1910 and ushered in his modern--straight lines--the city--currents from Europe. The Armory SHow Came to NYC in 1913. Stieglitz opened his galleries to painters and sculptors. He supported photographers with no pictorial pasts--Paul Strand, especially, and reinvented himself as the main promoter of modern art in America. He married the promising female modernist Georgia O'Keeffe. He was reborn--he divorced himself from his first wife and from his first life. He turned from photographer to promoter to businessman to demagogue. He got very good at alienating his ever-evolving stable of artists. He was the Axis; and, by default, so was New York.
So here comes my new project--rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the old. And it all centers around a small coastal town in Maine: Georgetown.
Guiney and Day went to Georgetown to escape Boston. It was a retreat, but a place in which they brought all the friendships but not the city. It was quiet, it was on the coast, it was lovely, it was rejuvinating. Day bought the place from Guiney; he built a huge Chalet there in 1910-1911; he brought up all his former pictorialist friends--Clarence H. White, Gertrude Kasebier, George Seely, etc. By 1910--both Kasebier and White had split with Stieglitz in unpleasant ways. Day was the other pole-star; he received them and nurtured. White bought his own house in Georgetown--his family was happiest there--away from the city. He started a summer school for photographers there--he brought up other modernists to help--including the painter Max Weber. Day stopped coming to Maine in the late-teens. He died in Norwood, MA in 1933. White died in 1925 on a photographic trip to Mexico with students. In short, Georgetown is where many of the pictorialists found escape from Stieglitz and New York.
Fast forward a decade or more. There are more modernists in Georgetown--the sculptor Zorach and his painter wife Marguerite, the sculptor Gaston Lachaise--they both set up summer residences there in the 1920s--they're part of the Stieglitz circle. Come to 1928--Paul and Beck Strand and Marsden Hartley spend a good chunk of the summer there with the Lachaises--they all write about the collaborative environment--how energizing it is to be together there. Strand takes photographs unlike any others he's done before--he shows them all at Stieglitz's gallery in NYC. But more people come: Hart Crane, Charles Sheeler, Hartley spends another summer--1937. This is the extremely short version.
But the question remains:
Why do they all come to Georgetown? What do they find there? And what's the connection between the early pictorialists and the later modernists being inspired by the same place? And what's with the later more individualistic modernists finding the same sort of collaborative possibilities in friendships deepened in Georgetown? Georgetown becomes an alternative site of American modernism and also a site of Alternative American Modernism. Let's de-center from New York but not run into the "regionalist" camp too quickly.
It's the place AND the people who come there. And they all come to Georgetown to flee New York. And they all find new work and inspiration there. And despite two very different eras, the common person they're all, in a sense, fleeing, is Stieglitz.
And so, what I've been looking for, in all this correspondence between these artists and writers at Yale, are mentions of Georgetown, and what that time meant to them. AND it meant ALOT. And they took this work back to NYC and sold it. So what's the role of the market here, what's the role of region? Of Maine? And what's the role of retreat, and informal colonies? And how might one go about analyzing the cultural productions? And what might it all mean?
Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. What I know, however, is that it's more than coincidence. And I need the missing link between Pictorialism and Modernism, and I think it's Georgetown.
So it's a bit surreal blogging while sitting in the reading room at the Beinecke, but why not. I'm overwhelmed with primary sources; I have a horrible cold and am a bit hopped up on medicine [my body hates all foreign drug substances]; and I need to start putting things together for myself and start to draft an outline to the book I'm working on. Having just returned from a weekend in NYC at the American Historical Association Conference [lovely to see old grad school friends, not so lovely to have barely left the Hilton b/c of conducting interviews and because I'm so sick], the wheels are beginning to crank again and I feel the need to put some order to what I've done and what I'm doing.
I have found, in the past two and 1/2 weeks, an absolutely surreal amount of information. When I won this fellowship, I thought I would find some stuff and maybe have a hard time filling four weeks. Now I know four weeks won't be enough. I'm also wondering why no one else has pursued my topic [though I'm glad that they didn't]. I shan't reveal all my amazing discoveries [lest there be any modernist project poachers in cyberspace], but let's start at the beginning.
In 2000 I wrote a seminar paper on the photographer F. Holland Day. From this paper sprung forth a dissertation: Against An Epoch: Boston Moderns, 1890-1905 where I argued, among other things, that Boston was aesthetically 'modern' before NYC, that it was a different sort of 'alternative' modernism based less on the individual artist genius and more on the cultural productions made possible by friendship and collaboration among like-minded artists, photographers, writers, poets, architects, etc. At the heart of the dissertation were aesthetic Bostonians [and transplants] of the 1880s and 1890s--a sometimes decadent crew that included [among others]: the publisher and photographer F. Holland Day, the Irish Catholic poet and essayist Louise Imogen Guiney, the architect Ralph Adams Cram, the poets Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman, the impressionist painter Thomas Buford Meteyard, the regional prose author Alice Brown and some others. The group individually published a good deal of singular work, while at the same time collaborating on small magazines like: The Knight Errant, The Mahogany Tree, and Le Courier Innocent [while at the same time publishing mainstream--Harper's, The Atlantic, etc.] as well as being members of clubs and secret societies--Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, The Visionists, etc. They hung around Harvard, they spent time at Meteyard's house by the shore in Scituate; they were visible members of major movements like Arts and Crafts in Boston and were celebrated among peers for accomplishments in Boston and beyond. They weren't pleased or sold with the currents of the nineties--industrialization, a world moving ever faster, a disconnect between art and life, a diminishing natural world--but they fought their dissatisfaction with their art, and stemmed the tide of progress away from communal ties and collaboration with their friendship. They were NOT as Jackson Lears has argued, "anti-modern." They didn't wish to stop progress, but they didn't wish to lose their souls and identities in the sweep of progress either. For more about them--you can see my dissertation.
I finished that project in 2005, and was, for awhile DONE with it. I pursued other threads. I have a side interest in friendships among disparate generations of 19th century women writers; I learned more about 19th century Boston; I thought about the transatlantic flow of ideas among art colonies [all the ideas didn't come from Europe to America--the currents flowed both ways] and I kept working on F. Holland Day, and particularly his initial friendship and later rivalry with the famed Alfred Stieglitz. It's the classic Boston vs. New York, but it's something more too. It has a lot to do with who gets remembered from the past, who gets called the father of American Art Photography, and who falls into the annals of history remembered infrequently and pigeon-holed as a pictorialist whose influence waned. I'll eventually write the article that tells everyone how Day was more famous at the turn-of-the century; that Day was more interested in mentoring a generation of photographers who were his friends than in mentoring the movement as a whole--that was Stieglitz's passion. Day chose to leave the mainstream and keep his friendships. Stieglitz prized the movement above the individuals who comprised it. I spent a semester teasing out the simultaneous rise of both photographers and their allegiances--culminating in Day's 1900-1901 New School of American Photography Show in London and Paris and Stieglitz's 1902 founding of the Photo-Secession. Day refused to join--his name was soon forgotten--this was not a game he wanted to play. Stieglitz soldiered on, took pictorialism to what he felt was its natural end in 1910 and ushered in his modern--straight lines--the city--currents from Europe. The Armory SHow Came to NYC in 1913. Stieglitz opened his galleries to painters and sculptors. He supported photographers with no pictorial pasts--Paul Strand, especially, and reinvented himself as the main promoter of modern art in America. He married the promising female modernist Georgia O'Keeffe. He was reborn--he divorced himself from his first wife and from his first life. He turned from photographer to promoter to businessman to demagogue. He got very good at alienating his ever-evolving stable of artists. He was the Axis; and, by default, so was New York.
So here comes my new project--rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the old. And it all centers around a small coastal town in Maine: Georgetown.
Guiney and Day went to Georgetown to escape Boston. It was a retreat, but a place in which they brought all the friendships but not the city. It was quiet, it was on the coast, it was lovely, it was rejuvinating. Day bought the place from Guiney; he built a huge Chalet there in 1910-1911; he brought up all his former pictorialist friends--Clarence H. White, Gertrude Kasebier, George Seely, etc. By 1910--both Kasebier and White had split with Stieglitz in unpleasant ways. Day was the other pole-star; he received them and nurtured. White bought his own house in Georgetown--his family was happiest there--away from the city. He started a summer school for photographers there--he brought up other modernists to help--including the painter Max Weber. Day stopped coming to Maine in the late-teens. He died in Norwood, MA in 1933. White died in 1925 on a photographic trip to Mexico with students. In short, Georgetown is where many of the pictorialists found escape from Stieglitz and New York.
Fast forward a decade or more. There are more modernists in Georgetown--the sculptor Zorach and his painter wife Marguerite, the sculptor Gaston Lachaise--they both set up summer residences there in the 1920s--they're part of the Stieglitz circle. Come to 1928--Paul and Beck Strand and Marsden Hartley spend a good chunk of the summer there with the Lachaises--they all write about the collaborative environment--how energizing it is to be together there. Strand takes photographs unlike any others he's done before--he shows them all at Stieglitz's gallery in NYC. But more people come: Hart Crane, Charles Sheeler, Hartley spends another summer--1937. This is the extremely short version.
But the question remains:
Why do they all come to Georgetown? What do they find there? And what's the connection between the early pictorialists and the later modernists being inspired by the same place? And what's with the later more individualistic modernists finding the same sort of collaborative possibilities in friendships deepened in Georgetown? Georgetown becomes an alternative site of American modernism and also a site of Alternative American Modernism. Let's de-center from New York but not run into the "regionalist" camp too quickly.
It's the place AND the people who come there. And they all come to Georgetown to flee New York. And they all find new work and inspiration there. And despite two very different eras, the common person they're all, in a sense, fleeing, is Stieglitz.
And so, what I've been looking for, in all this correspondence between these artists and writers at Yale, are mentions of Georgetown, and what that time meant to them. AND it meant ALOT. And they took this work back to NYC and sold it. So what's the role of the market here, what's the role of region? Of Maine? And what's the role of retreat, and informal colonies? And how might one go about analyzing the cultural productions? And what might it all mean?
Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. What I know, however, is that it's more than coincidence. And I need the missing link between Pictorialism and Modernism, and I think it's Georgetown.
29 December 2008
2008 Lists: An Itemized Reflection
I'm thinking that I'm feeling listy [which is not unlike listless] and since I have a moment or two of time to myself today to spend as I please, I thought I'd blog. Most of the rest of the week is spoken for, what with New Years Eve, the annual New Years Day working at Moogys, syllabi to write, and interviewing job candidates at the AHA, so, today I'm just being a sluggo and procrastinating from taking all of the ornaments off of the tree, which I will do upon completing this entry. I think, in the waning days of 2008, it's appropriate to reflect on the year:
LISTS:
Top 5 movies I saw this month [in no particular order]:
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Wall-E [I love this movie--really--I think I just love Wall-E]
5 movies I wanted to see this year but haven't yet: [Have you seen them? Are they good?]
Rachel Getting Married
Happy Go Lucky
Religulous
Gran Torino
Revolutionary Road
Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Wrestler
[Okay, that's 7....]
5 movies I saw this year that really made me laugh:
Role Models
Pineapple Express
Zach and Miri Make a Porno
Mamma Mia [even though it was silly]
Tropic Thunder [even though it was ridiculous]
Number of Movies on Moviefone's 50 Best Movies of 2008 that I have seen: 18
Conclusion: I love to go to the movies.
Okay, enough movie lists.
5 Books I'm reading right now:
Artie Lang, Too Fat To Fish [Yes, I am a faithful Stern Show Listener]
Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
JK Rowling, Tales of Beedle the Bard
Donna Cassidy, Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation
Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: WEB Dubois, Race, and Visual Culture
My Favorite Blogs to Read:
Perez Hilton
Tales of a Postdoc Nothing
Sweetpea Cooks
Seriously?Seriously.
All of the Historical Site Visit Blogs my History of Maine Students Made [they're great].
Five Favorite Things I Ate Over the Extended Holiday Season:
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
Homemade Cranberry Sauce
Blueberry Gingerbread
My Mom's Iced Sugar Cookies
The Deep-Fried Thanksgiving Turkey
The Best Christmas Card of 2008:
Morgan Lake Adams and Tim Schneider's 2008 Lexicon
The Ten Best Places I Visited in Maine this Year [Okay, 11]:
Acadia National Park
Fort Scammel on House Island
Moosehead Lake
Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village
Peaks Island
Fort McClary in Kittery
The Victoria Mansion in Portland
The Andre Kertesz show at the Portland Museum of Art [also the O'Keeffe show rocked!]
Sebago Lake State Park [our campsite was amazing]
Abbe Museum[s] in Bar Harbor and Sieur de Monts
LISTS:
Top 5 movies I saw this month [in no particular order]:
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Wall-E [I love this movie--really--I think I just love Wall-E]
5 movies I wanted to see this year but haven't yet: [Have you seen them? Are they good?]
Rachel Getting Married
Happy Go Lucky
Religulous
Gran Torino
Revolutionary Road
Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Wrestler
[Okay, that's 7....]
5 movies I saw this year that really made me laugh:
Role Models
Pineapple Express
Zach and Miri Make a Porno
Mamma Mia [even though it was silly]
Tropic Thunder [even though it was ridiculous]
Number of Movies on Moviefone's 50 Best Movies of 2008 that I have seen: 18
Conclusion: I love to go to the movies.
Okay, enough movie lists.
5 Books I'm reading right now:
Artie Lang, Too Fat To Fish [Yes, I am a faithful Stern Show Listener]
Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
JK Rowling, Tales of Beedle the Bard
Donna Cassidy, Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation
Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: WEB Dubois, Race, and Visual Culture
My Favorite Blogs to Read:
Perez Hilton
Tales of a Postdoc Nothing
Sweetpea Cooks
Seriously?Seriously.
All of the Historical Site Visit Blogs my History of Maine Students Made [they're great].
Five Favorite Things I Ate Over the Extended Holiday Season:
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
Homemade Cranberry Sauce
Blueberry Gingerbread
My Mom's Iced Sugar Cookies
The Deep-Fried Thanksgiving Turkey
The Best Christmas Card of 2008:
Morgan Lake Adams and Tim Schneider's 2008 Lexicon
The Ten Best Places I Visited in Maine this Year [Okay, 11]:
Acadia National Park
Fort Scammel on House Island
Moosehead Lake
Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village
Peaks Island
Fort McClary in Kittery
The Victoria Mansion in Portland
The Andre Kertesz show at the Portland Museum of Art [also the O'Keeffe show rocked!]
Sebago Lake State Park [our campsite was amazing]
Abbe Museum[s] in Bar Harbor and Sieur de Monts
Admiral Peary's House, Eagle Island
My favorite Local Maine Restaurants of 2008: [in this order]
Local 188, Portland [for brunch]
Frog and Turtle, Westbrook, if it wasn't so pricy, I'd eat there more often. Mmmm French-Canadian Fusion
The Treehouse Cafe [great sandwiches--right across from USM Gorham--glad they moved in]
Rosemont [Great Bakery and Local Foods on the way to USM Portland]
DuckFat [Fries were sublime]
Bangkok Thai
Norm's
Bintliff's [love their pancakes]
Magazines/Journals I currently subscribe to [and wish I had time to read]:
The New Yorker
DownEast
Harper's
US Weekly
Maine History
Databases I wish the USM Library Could Afford:
JSTOR
Artstor
Books Assigned this semester that resulted in the best overall papers from my students:
Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs
James McPherson's For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
Leon Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
Best New Recipes I tried this year: [Ask if you want them]
Blueberry Gingerbread
Grilled Chicken With Blueberry Salsa
Thai Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Pork and Pineapple
Downeast Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
Most Unique Party We Attended:
Morgan and Tim's Hard Cider Tasting
Best 2008 Moment:
Obama's Election
Best Consequence of a Shitty Economy:
The lowest gas prices in recent memory [at one point in 2008, it cost me $54 to fill up the subaru--now it's $23]
Ten Most Listened to Songs in my Itunes [for 2008]:
Artist, Song
Sufjan Stevens, Casmir Pulaski Day
Alexi Murdoch, All of My Days
The Decemberists, My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist
Adele, Hometown Glory
The Decemberists, Here I Dreamt I was an Architect
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Alone Apart
Sia, Breathe Me
Bon Iver, Skinny Love
Fire, Augustana
Varied David Sedaris Spoken Word Stories
Best thing I started Listening to Religiously this year:
This American Life [Better Late then Never]
Favorite TV Shows I Started Watching this Year:
Gossip Girl
Friday Night Lights
Happy 2009 to All!
xoxo,
Libby
Addendum Lists [After Reading Megan's]
Things I'm most grateful for this year:
Getting a tenure-track job [that technically happened in 2007, but started in 2008]
No melanoma recurrences
Our lovely new home
My super husband
My family
Kate moving back to the east coast ;)
A continuing friendship with Jonathan and Chris from Santa Fe
Things I'm most proud of this year:
My ever-increasing knowledge about Maine
Getting 2 new fellowships [and maybe more]
Deciding to move on from revising my dissertation and work on my new book instead
Sticking to [most of the time] Steve's budget
My favorite Local Maine Restaurants of 2008: [in this order]
Local 188, Portland [for brunch]
Frog and Turtle, Westbrook, if it wasn't so pricy, I'd eat there more often. Mmmm French-Canadian Fusion
The Treehouse Cafe [great sandwiches--right across from USM Gorham--glad they moved in]
Rosemont [Great Bakery and Local Foods on the way to USM Portland]
DuckFat [Fries were sublime]
Bangkok Thai
Norm's
Bintliff's [love their pancakes]
Magazines/Journals I currently subscribe to [and wish I had time to read]:
The New Yorker
DownEast
Harper's
US Weekly
Maine History
Databases I wish the USM Library Could Afford:
JSTOR
Artstor
Books Assigned this semester that resulted in the best overall papers from my students:
Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs
James McPherson's For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
Leon Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
Best New Recipes I tried this year: [Ask if you want them]
Blueberry Gingerbread
Grilled Chicken With Blueberry Salsa
Thai Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Pork and Pineapple
Downeast Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
Most Unique Party We Attended:
Morgan and Tim's Hard Cider Tasting
Best 2008 Moment:
Obama's Election
Best Consequence of a Shitty Economy:
The lowest gas prices in recent memory [at one point in 2008, it cost me $54 to fill up the subaru--now it's $23]
Ten Most Listened to Songs in my Itunes [for 2008]:
Artist, Song
Sufjan Stevens, Casmir Pulaski Day
Alexi Murdoch, All of My Days
The Decemberists, My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist
Adele, Hometown Glory
The Decemberists, Here I Dreamt I was an Architect
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Alone Apart
Sia, Breathe Me
Bon Iver, Skinny Love
Fire, Augustana
Varied David Sedaris Spoken Word Stories
Best thing I started Listening to Religiously this year:
This American Life [Better Late then Never]
Favorite TV Shows I Started Watching this Year:
Gossip Girl
Friday Night Lights
Biggest Life Changes:
Starting a Tenure-Track Job and Buying a "Grown-up" House
Most Interesting and Picturesque Place I Visited this Year:
Aghada, County Cork, Ireland.
Most Interesting and Picturesque Place I Visited this Year:
Aghada, County Cork, Ireland.
Favorite Things About Our New House:
It's in the White Rock Section of Gorham [rural, granges, cows, old barns, etc].
The kitchen is big and well-laid out so many people can cook at the same time.
It has lovely light all throughout the downstairs.
The dishwasher [haven't had one in years].
The Color of the Dining Room [A sort of dusky plum].
Plenty of Room for visitors [stop in!]
Plenty of Room for visitors [stop in!]
Favorite Grocery Store:
Hannafords
Favorite Farm Stores/Stands:
Smiling Hill [Milk and Ice Cream], North Scarborough
Windy Hill [Pumpkins, Meat, etc], Wyndham
Favorite Place to Buy Local Food:
Rosemont Bakery
Research Fellowships Won to work on my new book Maine/Modern:
One month at the Beinecke at Yale
Three Weeks at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson
Best thing about working and teaching at USM:
My unpretentious and very interesting students
How many feet off my PR I currently am in the hammer throw:
At least 25 [only about 6 in the weight throw, though], but it's fun to be throwing again!
Favorite New Class I Taught:
History of Maine
Best Track and Field Purchase of 2008:
My awesome black and silver Nike Zoom Rotational Throwing Shoes [They rock!]
Favorite New Game I Played:
Rummikub [new for me that is]
And Finally, My Favorite Photographs that I took this year:
Happy 2009 to All!
xoxo,
Libby
Addendum Lists [After Reading Megan's]
Things I'm most grateful for this year:
Getting a tenure-track job [that technically happened in 2007, but started in 2008]
No melanoma recurrences
Our lovely new home
My super husband
My family
Kate moving back to the east coast ;)
A continuing friendship with Jonathan and Chris from Santa Fe
Things I'm most proud of this year:
My ever-increasing knowledge about Maine
Getting 2 new fellowships [and maybe more]
Deciding to move on from revising my dissertation and work on my new book instead
Sticking to [most of the time] Steve's budget
28 November 2008
On Hosting Thanksgiving.
It's 7:35am on Black Friday Morning [really, do they need to name the day "Black Friday?" Maybe this year it will be Red Friday b/c no one is financially solvent] and my parents have just departed back to Cape Cod. For some reason, on a day off from school, I'm up this early and so why not do a little post?
My parents sold the house they've lived in in Hopkinton for the past 16 years on November 4th and have not yet closed on their new house on the Cape, so, as the oldest of the six children, and the only one with a house that can hold my family, it fell on me to host Thanksgiving. I had been looking forward to it, certainly. Even though we fought brutally as children, we actually really enjoy each other's company now that we range from 21-31, and, with all of us scattered from Maine to Buffalo and lots of places in between, it's rare that we get to see each other. Plus, my sister Megan's boyfriend was here visiting her from Pakistan (where he's been a correspondent for Time) via London, and, plus #2, we also invited Steve's parents to come up because their children are all scattered too. All told, it was dinner for 12 [which ended up being 11 b/c my brother Mike didn't come b/c he was sick] and I have to say, overall, it went rather well.
What I would do again:
1) Fry a turkey.
My mom gave Steve a turkey fryer for Christmas last year, and, although he's used it on a boy's weekend, I've never had one, and neither had the majority of our dinner guests. Aside from the ghastly $70 it cost for the 6 gallons of peanut oil needed for the operation, the result was AMAZING. Nearly everyone preferred it to the roasted oven turkey [which was also excellent]. I made my own rub of salt, pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and a healthy dose of green chile powder from Hatch, New Mexico. We injected the turkey with small amounts of a marinade made from beer, butter, worcestershire, and tabasco. I recommend this process [as long as you do it outside and have an intrepid significant other willing to drop a 13 lb bird into 5 gallons of 350 degree oil out on your patio]
2) Make pumpkin chiffon pie
We were dinner guests at a colleague's a week or so ago, and she made this amazing light and fluffy pumpkin pie that tasted more like a custard. It was incredible and I immediately asked for the recipe. I'll post it below--point of order--make sure the egg whites are really stiff and allow the pie to chill for 4+ hours. The result is divine, and I think when I finish the post, I'm going to have a piece for breakfast. Yum!
Ingredients
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 cup milk
2 slightly beaten egg yolks
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream, whipped
1 graham cracker crust
Combine the first 7 ingredients in saucepan. Stir in milk, egg yolks, and pumpkin. Cook and stir over medium heat till mixture boils (gently) and gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and chill until partially set.
Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and beat to stiff peaks. Fold into pumpkin mixture with whipped cream. Pile into crust and chill until firm.
3) Make my own Cranberry Sauce
It will never come out of a can in my house again. SO, easy! Just boil some cranberries, water, and sugar [the simple version, I also added grated ginger, orange peel, the juice of one orange, and toasted pecans to one version] and then simmer until it's the consistency you like.
4) Make only a big plate of fancy cheese and crackers for hors d'oeuvres.
No one overdid it on pre-gaming SO by the time the 2:30 meal rolled around, everyone was starving.
5) Use my fiestaware
I contemplated busting out the wedding china, but at the end of the day, not hand washing 12 place-settings is OK with me.
6) Polish my mother-in-law's silver
Steve's mom gave me alot of antique Bischof and Oschwald family silver this summer so I decided to polish it up for the holiday. It was lovely, and made her happy to see it used.
7) Go for a post-Thanksgiving meal stroll in the woods.
We've lived here since May and were unaware of the enormous network of well marked trails in the woods behind our house. We were also unaware of the old, burned out and junked Chevy directly behind our house too. Interesting. My youngest sister, a criminal justice major, was so intrigued by the mystery of the car that she pretty much has a CSI Maine show planned ;).
8) Get up at 6am to go into Portland and Register People for the Turkey Day 4-Miler
My head track coach has been hosting a Thanksgiving Day race for 27 years in Portland. It's a huge fundraiser for our women's team at USM. This year 1200 people ran--it was really fun to check them in and talk to people about it, and to see how many families made running the race a tradition.
I was going to make a comparable list of what I wouldn't do again, but there wouldn't be much on there. We had a really nice day, and I'm thankful for both mine and Steve's families. We have great and generous parents and I look forward to more combined Thanksgivings. It was really nice to not split the day, or alternate it yearly in order to see both sets of parents. Solution--just have everybody over!! ;)
The pre-dinner table:
My parents sold the house they've lived in in Hopkinton for the past 16 years on November 4th and have not yet closed on their new house on the Cape, so, as the oldest of the six children, and the only one with a house that can hold my family, it fell on me to host Thanksgiving. I had been looking forward to it, certainly. Even though we fought brutally as children, we actually really enjoy each other's company now that we range from 21-31, and, with all of us scattered from Maine to Buffalo and lots of places in between, it's rare that we get to see each other. Plus, my sister Megan's boyfriend was here visiting her from Pakistan (where he's been a correspondent for Time) via London, and, plus #2, we also invited Steve's parents to come up because their children are all scattered too. All told, it was dinner for 12 [which ended up being 11 b/c my brother Mike didn't come b/c he was sick] and I have to say, overall, it went rather well.
What I would do again:
1) Fry a turkey.
My mom gave Steve a turkey fryer for Christmas last year, and, although he's used it on a boy's weekend, I've never had one, and neither had the majority of our dinner guests. Aside from the ghastly $70 it cost for the 6 gallons of peanut oil needed for the operation, the result was AMAZING. Nearly everyone preferred it to the roasted oven turkey [which was also excellent]. I made my own rub of salt, pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and a healthy dose of green chile powder from Hatch, New Mexico. We injected the turkey with small amounts of a marinade made from beer, butter, worcestershire, and tabasco. I recommend this process [as long as you do it outside and have an intrepid significant other willing to drop a 13 lb bird into 5 gallons of 350 degree oil out on your patio]
2) Make pumpkin chiffon pie
We were dinner guests at a colleague's a week or so ago, and she made this amazing light and fluffy pumpkin pie that tasted more like a custard. It was incredible and I immediately asked for the recipe. I'll post it below--point of order--make sure the egg whites are really stiff and allow the pie to chill for 4+ hours. The result is divine, and I think when I finish the post, I'm going to have a piece for breakfast. Yum!
Ingredients
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 cup milk
2 slightly beaten egg yolks
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream, whipped
1 graham cracker crust
Combine the first 7 ingredients in saucepan. Stir in milk, egg yolks, and pumpkin. Cook and stir over medium heat till mixture boils (gently) and gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and chill until partially set.
Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and beat to stiff peaks. Fold into pumpkin mixture with whipped cream. Pile into crust and chill until firm.
3) Make my own Cranberry Sauce
It will never come out of a can in my house again. SO, easy! Just boil some cranberries, water, and sugar [the simple version, I also added grated ginger, orange peel, the juice of one orange, and toasted pecans to one version] and then simmer until it's the consistency you like.
4) Make only a big plate of fancy cheese and crackers for hors d'oeuvres.
No one overdid it on pre-gaming SO by the time the 2:30 meal rolled around, everyone was starving.
5) Use my fiestaware
I contemplated busting out the wedding china, but at the end of the day, not hand washing 12 place-settings is OK with me.
6) Polish my mother-in-law's silver
Steve's mom gave me alot of antique Bischof and Oschwald family silver this summer so I decided to polish it up for the holiday. It was lovely, and made her happy to see it used.
7) Go for a post-Thanksgiving meal stroll in the woods.
We've lived here since May and were unaware of the enormous network of well marked trails in the woods behind our house. We were also unaware of the old, burned out and junked Chevy directly behind our house too. Interesting. My youngest sister, a criminal justice major, was so intrigued by the mystery of the car that she pretty much has a CSI Maine show planned ;).
8) Get up at 6am to go into Portland and Register People for the Turkey Day 4-Miler
My head track coach has been hosting a Thanksgiving Day race for 27 years in Portland. It's a huge fundraiser for our women's team at USM. This year 1200 people ran--it was really fun to check them in and talk to people about it, and to see how many families made running the race a tradition.
I was going to make a comparable list of what I wouldn't do again, but there wouldn't be much on there. We had a really nice day, and I'm thankful for both mine and Steve's families. We have great and generous parents and I look forward to more combined Thanksgivings. It was really nice to not split the day, or alternate it yearly in order to see both sets of parents. Solution--just have everybody over!! ;)
The pre-dinner table:
03 November 2008
Jack-o-lantern graveyard--one of the loveliest sights I've ever seen [no exaggeration]
Bruce, a very nice older gentleman who is in my History of Maine class (and who happens to live down the street from me), thought to let me in on a little local Halloween secret. Every year, at a remote graveyard on North Gorham Road on the way to Windham [about 10 minutes from my house], someone carves and lights over 300 jack-o-lanterns and puts them all over the cemetery--on graves, on tombs and monuments, on the ground, all over. It's technically anonymous, but most people think it's the people across the street. There's no advertising, just tradition and local custom. If you know about it or happen upon it, you go; if not, you miss out. They've apparently been doing it for years.
I went at dusk, just after the pumpkins were lit, and it was one of the loveliest sights I've ever seen. All the faces and designs on the jack-o-lanterns were different. The pumpkins were little and huge and every size and shape in between. I walked around wide-eyed with such a profound sense of wonder. I literally have never seen anything like it, have never imagined anything like it. It was literally magical time, the in-between time [dusk] where you think literally anything could happen. So much thought and reverence went in to this one act that it makes one believe that the world is still a good place, the kind of place you want to raise children in, the kind of place you hope this country can be, the kindness of strangers to strangers--dead and living.
The pumpkins flickered, people wandered around and were just totally entranced by the magic of the scene. They stumbled in from neighboring houses, parked cars on the side of the road, and wandered in wide eyed. Some took pictures, others just gazed from pumpkin to pumpkin, some brought children, others wandered alone. People smiled at one another, acknowledging mutual amazement.
The graveyard is old, most of the graves from the 18th and 19th century, some from the 20th, and honestly, what better way than to honor their spirits on the eve before All Souls Day. I'll include some pictures for you, but they in no way do it justice. They record the sight, but not the spirit.
I rushed home [Steve was awaiting trick-or-treaters in my absence] and told Steve to get in the car and go--that he couldn't miss this sight. He didn't believe me at first, I think, but he came home a believer. There was magic in Gorham that night, and I got to see it. I feel so lucky. I hope you get to see it one day. I cannot remember ever feeling so transported by a scene.
20 October 2008
On Finding Inspiration in Unexpected Places....
So, let's just say that I've been a little lacking in inspiration lately, and I needed a healthy dose in order to complete a grant application for a few weeks at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson this summer to dive in to the Paul Strand archives for my Maine/Moderns project about modernists in Georgetown, Maine. The problem with my office at school [besides the chilly temperature] is that I am surrounded by coursework--things to read and grade, lectures to write, recommendation letters to do, knocks at the door, department business ad infinitum. The problem with home is that I don't have a good work space set up yet [coming soon to a formal living room=Libby's office] and I'm easily distracted by home improvement projects and my extensive tivo list. So, where to write [or how to find yet more ways to make excuses while not writing]?
On my way home from school tonight, ca. 7:30pm, I was hungry and decided to stop at the Gorham House of Pizza for a sub. I brought in my bag, took out my laptop while I was waiting for dinner, and, while the TV was blaring ESPN's "Sportscenter" and the radio was playing any variety of John Mayer, Kelly Clarkson, etc. I started typing. 90 minutes, 2 diet cokes, and an eggplant parmesan sub later, the CCP application was complete--footnotes and all. I wasn't expecting to work there, but in a laminate booth, free from MY distractions, and free from wireless internet, I got inspired, and then just went with it. I'll proofread and send it off tomorrow--a healthy 10 days before the deadline.
So, maybe this is why I always see people on laptops in coffee houses. Maybe I should have learned some more lessons from the Kertesz exhibit "On Reading" [see earlier post]. I need to be caught writing. Not grading, not reading, but writing. I'm going to work on being caught more often. And I'm going to seek out some new laminate booths. It doesn't have to be a quiet place, but it has to be free from my constant distractions and/or reminders thereof. And that, my friends, is a lesson I've been needing to figure out for quite some time now. Free from excuses, it's time to start writing again. We'll see what else becomes clear after tomorrow's yoga class.
On my way home from school tonight, ca. 7:30pm, I was hungry and decided to stop at the Gorham House of Pizza for a sub. I brought in my bag, took out my laptop while I was waiting for dinner, and, while the TV was blaring ESPN's "Sportscenter" and the radio was playing any variety of John Mayer, Kelly Clarkson, etc. I started typing. 90 minutes, 2 diet cokes, and an eggplant parmesan sub later, the CCP application was complete--footnotes and all. I wasn't expecting to work there, but in a laminate booth, free from MY distractions, and free from wireless internet, I got inspired, and then just went with it. I'll proofread and send it off tomorrow--a healthy 10 days before the deadline.
So, maybe this is why I always see people on laptops in coffee houses. Maybe I should have learned some more lessons from the Kertesz exhibit "On Reading" [see earlier post]. I need to be caught writing. Not grading, not reading, but writing. I'm going to work on being caught more often. And I'm going to seek out some new laminate booths. It doesn't have to be a quiet place, but it has to be free from my constant distractions and/or reminders thereof. And that, my friends, is a lesson I've been needing to figure out for quite some time now. Free from excuses, it's time to start writing again. We'll see what else becomes clear after tomorrow's yoga class.
13 October 2008
Columbus Day Weekend in Five Islands, ME
Reid State Park, Georgetown, ME
F. Holland Day House, Five Islands, ME
View from the back porch of Day House
It almost felt like Indian Summer in Maine this weekend, and you could've sworn it might have been early September--weather in the mid-60s, clear blue skies, and a warm breeze. Steve took Friday off and we headed up to Georgetown, ME, a small town outside of Bath where the F. Holland Day House is located. I've been coming to the Day house ever since I was researching my dissertation on F. Holland Day in 2001 and met the owner. I wrote a lot of my dissertation there, and it still serves as sort of a touchstone for me--it's one of those places that I walk in and just feel like I am home. It's a lovely and inspiring place [as evidenced in the photographs above], used now in the summers as a healing retreat for women with cancer. The environment always gets my creative juices flowing, and I wrote a grant proposal to work on a Maine photographer--Chansonetta Stanley Emmons--while I was up there--and also went treasure hunting in the Little Good Harbor (behind the house). As you can see in the photograph below, I found lots! I have been collecting seaglass ever since I was little, and I found some great pieces at low tide, as well as some beautiful old pottery shards, which are the real prize of any beachcomber. They've already found homes on various windowsills at home.
We spent most of the weekend outside enjoying the weather and the landscape. The leaves were in full color--some stunning oranges, reds and yellows and we took advantage of our proximity to Reid State Park [about 1/2 mile from the Day house] and went and walked the beach on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday, our friends the Delcourts who live in Portland drove up and we all watched their 2-year old daughter Nola fill endless buckets with ice cold seawater only to dump it out and do it all over again. I loved the water like that when I was little--still do. We took the Delcourts down to Five Islands Wharf where lunch was being served for the last time until next summer. The dock was crowded with leaf peepers and tourists hungry for lobster and other seafood, and we sat on a picnic table overlooking the harbor eating our lunch and enjoying the company for ages.
After the Delcourts headed back to Portland, Steve and I decided that we would go and play some disc golf [frisbee golf] at a local course in Brunswick [Enmon Field]. It was a great course, and we spent a few hours hiking through the woods chasing frisbees and hitting targets. It's a great sport if you've never played--same principle as regular golf, only with frisbees. Greens fees tend to be a good deal cheaper ($5 round) and it's something we started playing in Massachusetts a few years ago. We also have a great course about 10 minutes from our house in Gorham. Come up some weekend, and we'll take you out to play ;).
We headed home early Sunday afternoon so Steve could get his weekly football fix, and now it's Monday, and back to work. I'm off to revise a conference paper to submit as a potential article for a book being published in conjunction with the conference--about Transatlantic Women Writers. WIsh me luck! Then it's on to making up Midterms for next week. It's hard to believe it's midterm already, but I'm not complaining ;). Things are about to get alot busier, and I'm just grateful for the October respite that is/was Fall Break. I needed to clear my head, and thanks to our jaunt to Five Islands--mission accomplished!
09 October 2008
October Break, Sigh.
Anne Brigman, Japonesque Tidal Islands on the Coast of Maine
Paul Strand, 2 views of Iris, Georgetown, ME
"I will look at cliffs and clouds
with quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass
and the grass rise."
--"Afternoon on a Hill," Edna St. Vincent Millay
I've never taught anywhere that's had an October Break before. Even though it's only two days, and one of them is Columbus Day, I'm kind of excited. We just finished week 6--the best of intentions from the start of the semester are beginning to fade--absences increase, eyes look a little sleepier in class--this is the perfect time to regroup. And so, I will take Millay's wise advice this weekend. I promise to look with quiet eyes up in Five Islands where we're off to tomorrow. I'm excited to gaze off into the distance, walk by the ocean, and go to the place in this world that makes me happiest--F. Holland Day's House. Time just seems to stop there; my whole body relaxes when I walk through the door. I don't think it's an accident that so many photographers found inspiration there over the years. It's one of the few places I've been [and I've been a lot of places] where the environment can so quickly shape a mood of peace of contentment. So, with two grant applications and an article to finish, I hope to be inspired a bit, and to get some work done that's not a lecture, or paper assignment, or a big pile of essays to grade. I just want to read and write and get lost in it. I'll take some pictures and post them at the end of the weekend so you can see why I love it there so much. Off to bed!
06 October 2008
Obscure Wedding Readings and Mindfulness.
Gentle reader, It was 38 degrees in Gorham this morning when I got in the outback to traipse off to school. Brrrr. It's only October 6th, and, since my school has some--how shall we say this nicely--"fiscal challenges," they've decided not to spring for heat just yet. Good thing I wore a wool poncho (which served mostly as a portable blanket for the better part of the day). It might be time to dust off the space heater. I must admit to sneakily turning on the heat for the first time at home this evening while Steve is away working in Massachusetts--not too high--61 degrees--just enough to ease the chill. It's working; I'm thawing.
I spent the better part of the weekend in Providence, Rhode Island attending the nuptials of Mark, one of my best college buddies, and his lovely bride Stephanie. I was asked to do a reading at the wedding and I must say, although I'm not typically one for bible verses [being a somewhat lapsed Catholic]--it was a particularly lovely reading [no 1 Corinthians here] and so I'll quote from it below.
From the Letter to the Hebrews:
Brothers and sisters:
Let mutual love continue.
Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.
Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment,
and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you are also in the body.
Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled.
Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have,
for thus he has said, I will never forsake or abandon you.
Thus we may say with confidence: the Lord is my helper and I shall not be afraid.
Maybe it's because I practiced it a few times and read it over a lot [slowly] so I could say it with meaning [the priest asked me at the rehearsal if I read for a living--I told him close enough--I stand in front of students all day and lecture], but it struck me as good advice for a marriage/partnership, and advice particularly relevant for our tumultuous financial times. I like the idea of letting mutual love continue. I'm a fan of hospitality. But most of all, I needed the message of being content with what you have. Being content with what we have is, at times, more difficult than it should be--at least for me. Being new homeowners [again] saddled with some debt from school, our first house, and my time as a grad student, we're sticking to a pretty tight budget. My husband is so good about it, but I catch myself resenting it sometimes. Old spending habits die hard, I suppose, but doing this reading on Saturday gave me pause. I have a lot--a great marriage,a wonderful family, good friends, a lovely home in a place I am growing to love more and more each day, a job and some financial security in this terrible market, more books than I could ever read, my health--the list goes on, but I'll spare you the rest of it. I should be content; I'm working on it ;). And I'm working on being more mindful. I'm even listening to some heady new age music while blogging and thinking that I really need to find a good yoga class to attend at least once a week.
This Columbus Day weekend we're heading up to the F. Holland Day House in Georgetown, ME for the weekend [the summer home of the photographer I write about] and I look forward to using my little "October Break" as a time to get re-inspired to write and to just soak in the rocky coastal landscape of Little Good Harbor that served as inspiration and muse to a whole cadre of artists and writers in the early-1900s. I plan on doing some long walks, some serious camera work as well as some writing. The leaves are turning here [too quickly] and my eyes formulate photographs wherever I look these days. I need to savor the fall because it comes and goes so quickly here. Time for bed. Good Night.
I spent the better part of the weekend in Providence, Rhode Island attending the nuptials of Mark, one of my best college buddies, and his lovely bride Stephanie. I was asked to do a reading at the wedding and I must say, although I'm not typically one for bible verses [being a somewhat lapsed Catholic]--it was a particularly lovely reading [no 1 Corinthians here] and so I'll quote from it below.
From the Letter to the Hebrews:
Brothers and sisters:
Let mutual love continue.
Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.
Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment,
and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you are also in the body.
Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled.
Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have,
for thus he has said, I will never forsake or abandon you.
Thus we may say with confidence: the Lord is my helper and I shall not be afraid.
Maybe it's because I practiced it a few times and read it over a lot [slowly] so I could say it with meaning [the priest asked me at the rehearsal if I read for a living--I told him close enough--I stand in front of students all day and lecture], but it struck me as good advice for a marriage/partnership, and advice particularly relevant for our tumultuous financial times. I like the idea of letting mutual love continue. I'm a fan of hospitality. But most of all, I needed the message of being content with what you have. Being content with what we have is, at times, more difficult than it should be--at least for me. Being new homeowners [again] saddled with some debt from school, our first house, and my time as a grad student, we're sticking to a pretty tight budget. My husband is so good about it, but I catch myself resenting it sometimes. Old spending habits die hard, I suppose, but doing this reading on Saturday gave me pause. I have a lot--a great marriage,a wonderful family, good friends, a lovely home in a place I am growing to love more and more each day, a job and some financial security in this terrible market, more books than I could ever read, my health--the list goes on, but I'll spare you the rest of it. I should be content; I'm working on it ;). And I'm working on being more mindful. I'm even listening to some heady new age music while blogging and thinking that I really need to find a good yoga class to attend at least once a week.
This Columbus Day weekend we're heading up to the F. Holland Day House in Georgetown, ME for the weekend [the summer home of the photographer I write about] and I look forward to using my little "October Break" as a time to get re-inspired to write and to just soak in the rocky coastal landscape of Little Good Harbor that served as inspiration and muse to a whole cadre of artists and writers in the early-1900s. I plan on doing some long walks, some serious camera work as well as some writing. The leaves are turning here [too quickly] and my eyes formulate photographs wherever I look these days. I need to savor the fall because it comes and goes so quickly here. Time for bed. Good Night.
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