Muddy Water

do blogs need photos?

2010-12-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

taken by me in Nags Head, NC, summer 2010

Because my earlier post lacked a photo ... and this is one I like.

on blogging an answer to "why write a novel? Why write a novel now?"

2010-12-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging here much, but yesterday I was a guest blogger on the Cabell First Novelist blog.

I'm writing a novel, as part of a year-long writing workshop at VCU. Most of the other writers in the group are in the MFA fiction grad program, so I'm in great company.

Hard not to get discouraged, since they are concentrating on fiction as a full-time grad degree and their writing submissions frequently blow me away. I have to remember that my path is different. I'm getting a PhD in Media, Art, and Text - an interdisciplinary degree with a focus on media and technology. I'm working on a novel and a dissertation at the same time, as well as an oral history project that is both part of my dissertation and a separate entity. Three huge projects at one time - hence the title of my guest submission "I might be crazy."

Cabell First Novelist Blog guest entry

My guest entry is more personal than I usually get in a blog. That's one reason I've taken a break here - how personal a blogger do I want to be? But I felt, as a guest blogger for the Cabell First Novelist blog, that the call was to answer the question - why write a novel at all and why write one now?

My answer ... I'm in training as a "distance" writer, learning the pace of a longer form. I'm also getting the social support of the workshop.

The truth is, I can go the distance - write a full-length, unified work - I already have a great deal of discipline and stamina. I wrote a successful collection of lyric essays for my master's thesis. I'm plugging through this PhD. If I have to write 1500 words a day, I can.

It's my inner life that's unruly. How I feel about my work. How I deal with the demon self-doubt. It helps to talk with other writers, who say they also feel an emotional backlash when a submission goes out or a workshop rotation comes due. The validation helps - it's as if I'm building immunity to a disease.

watching fish swim ... or are they watching us walk?

2010-11-24T16:52:00.002-05:00

I recently traveled to California for a cousin's wedding. I went out early with N to have some extra days in sunny Southern California. We enjoyed the days, no sunshine the whole time we were there. But the wedding was lovely, the company was lovely - extended family and cousins to hang with - and N got to go to the San Diego Zoo and to get her feet wet in the Pacific Ocean.

Actually, she slipped in the surf at La Jolla Cove and got soaked. Not exactly swimming, but a full-body dunk in a second ocean. Had to buy some clothes at the top of the cliff because she was freezing. We also visited the dirtiest public restroom I've ever seen, there at the top of the cliff in one of the wealthiest communities in North America.

We also went fish watching at the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla. Or is the fish watching me?

Scripps had an exhibit on sea horses ... talk about mesmerizing and strange. Sea horses are also hard to photograph. I thought this photo was my best. Might be time to upgrade the digital camera soon, especially since I'm drawn to documentary work.

mapping the internet

2010-10-12T17:08:00.001-04:00

Stumbled across this on the Digital Gravitas blog ... the comic artist Randall Munroe drew this map of the social media universe - based on users in 2010. What's really cool is comparing it to the map he drew in 2007. Had to share it.

Eastern Shore News on the web

2010-04-13T14:59:00.000-04:00

well - here's the front page article from the Eastern Shore News re: the farm life oral history project - promoting the talk I gave last Saturday.

Farming Spoken Here

on memory and oral history research

2010-04-13T10:13:00.000-04:00

I'm reading some oral history theory these days ... glad that I started interviewing and recording oral histories before I started reading about it. Mostly my observations are being articulated and confirmed. The three best resources I've found so far are Studs Terkel - especially the "biography" that oral historian Tony Parker published in 1996 - and writing by Alessandro Portelli and Michael Frisch.

So - I was reading this morning about how the real subject of oral history may be the study of memory, not history - and then I heard this interesting story on NPR re: emotions and memory.
NPR: Emotions Outlast The Memories That Drive Them

It occurs to me that neuroscience research on memory might be helpful when it comes time to pull this dissertation research project together. I think what I'm doing is truly trans-disciplinary in nature - which will make it harder, but ultimately more rewarding for me.

on adrenaline and the preparation of presentations

2010-04-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

I'm writing the third of three presentations I've had to give in about two weeks. This one's on the Eastern Shore Stories oral history project. I feel more pressure with this one, simply because so many people I know and people whom I've interviewed will be there.

But I also have a lot to say, and the writing of this presentation is going quickly. I've decided to write down and time out everything I'm going to say and share ... and to limit my tech needs to using my laptop to play edited sound clips through portable speakers. Keep it simple and less can go wrong.

The best presentations I've given, I've read aloud at academic conferences. I don't want to read aloud here, but I'm not going to speak from notecards or bullet points. I want to know exactly what I want to say and practice so much that I've got it memorized. Then I can relax and concentrate on connecting with the audience during the talk.

Adrenaline aids public speaking, right? I'll be glad when the season of presentations and occasional adrenaline rushes are ended.

on blogs, farming, heart and voice

2010-03-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

Just posted a new story on my Eastern Shore Stories blog. I titled it on turkeys, eggs, and afternoon naps - the question that Ruth asks by the time she finishes her musing is about what children are missing today. The more I work on this oral history, the more I want to move back to the Eastern Shore ... and work on the small farm where my parents and brother and his family currently live ... spend my days in a rhythm that's more connected to animals and land and weather than the life I currently lead.

My parents don't farm, but we could. It's a small farm - less than 50 acres - I'm sure we'd do an orchard, some strawberries and vegetables, and have some pasture for goats.

I haven't been posting here because I'm rethinking this blog. I like the interactivity of Facebook ... and certainly have a different "persona" there - one that's more intimate and connected with my family life than I allow myself on this blog. I think of this as my "professional face"so I try and keep this MATX- focused. The closer I get to finishing coursework, however, and the more I work on my dissertation-connected research - the more integrated I want all the pieces to be. So, I'm playing with another blog idea - one that would be a hybrid between the voice I tend to use on Facebook and this "professional" blog ... one that would integrate all my musings in one place.

art moment: Audrey Riley

2010-03-11T12:18:00.002-05:00

I just discovered this artist ... she frequently works on reclaimed press sheets or yard sticks.
Audrey Riley website

on conference choices and career building

2010-03-10T07:54:00.002-05:00

Over the weekend I picked up a book on building a platform for a writing career. Turns out I've started to do exactly what they recommend, mostly propelled through my graduate school work. But it's time to get more focused.

For example, I'm delivering a paper at the Virginia Humanities Conference on March 26. Giving academic presentations is one of the ways a person builds an academic career.

At the same time, I am jazzed by my writing seminar this semester. The career I have in mind is not a traditional academic career, but a creative one blending scholarship with creative projects.

Which means the conference I probably should be attending is the Writers at the Beach Seaglass Conference in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware. It takes place at exactly the same time as the VHC in Staunton, Virginia. I can't be in two places at the same time - and I've already paid the registration for the VHC, booked a hotel room, and had planned to attend the entire conference and network with people teaching at Virginia colleges and universities.

Now I'm wondering if attending workshops and networking at the Writers at the Beach conference might be more productive than attending paper presentations and networking at the VHC. So I'm thinking about giving my presentation at the VHC on Friday morning and then booking it across two states to Delaware to attend the writing conference. Seems a bit crazy. And expensive. And perhaps unfair to the folks at the VHC.

the future of publishing

2010-02-26T19:11:00.005-05:00

Jason Epstein, in the March 11 edition of The New York Review of Books, predicts how the digital revolution is going to change the publishing industry in "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future."

It sounds like the challenge will become, not getting work published, but getting it noticed. The good news is this may end the stranglehold on the market of huge conglomerate publishing houses, more interested in the next blockbuster celebrity book than a well-written tale from a "nobody."

"I'm nobody ... are you nobody too?" to paraphrase Emily Dickinson.

Rice University Press has implemented an innovative print-on-demand publishing business for their academic press. It makes a lot of sense. A VCU professor, Nicholas Frankel, is one of the two editors for their Literature by Design series.

Literature by Design: British and American Books 1880-1930 consists of literary works ... that foreground the vehicle of the book and the visible nature of language itself. Literature by Design titles incorporate facsimile reproductions of the original editions—all of which are noteworthy for the role design and typography played in shaping readers’ responses—along with new critical material by leading contemporary scholars.

This one was printed on wallpaper originally. That swirl was in the wallpaper design. A book like this would only have been seen in a rare book collection, until now.

after reading "just don't go"

2010-02-23T14:15:00.005-05:00

Just finished reading two depressing articles about the lack of jobs for Humanities PhDs. I already knew this, but Thomas Benton certainly states it bluntly in his Chronicle of Education articles. It's true that most English PhDs end up working as adjunct professors for less than a living wage. That's not where I want to be even five years from now. But then I stumbled on this paragraph in his follow-up article:

There is, however, another category of student that I would like to see going to graduate school ... Perhaps members of a generation that enters graduate school with no expectations of an academic position — who never even consider, for one moment, that they will become tenure-track professors — will bring about positive change in the way things are taught. Such students will be less beholden to advisers, and empowered to demand that courses have some relationship to existing opportunities. With an eye to careers outside academe, they will challenge the tyranny of the monograph; they might seek technical skills; they will want to speak to a wider public; and they will be more open to movement between academe and the "outside world" than previous generations, who were taught to regard anything but the professorial life as failure from which one could never return.

I didn't enter this PhD program in order to find a tenure track job in the Humanities. That would be a wonderful thing, but my expectations are low. As Benton says, it'd be like "winning the lottery." Do I even want a tenure-track job? I entered an unconventional PhD program to learn technical skills and to broaden my choices in crafting a hybrid kind of career ... one that combines teaching with writing, and perhaps nonprofit work propelled primarily by grants.

That's why my focus this semester, beyond completing the hoops for the doctorate, is my writing - perhaps completing a book of short stories to shop around by July. That's the other part of this binary star of a career I'm trying to jumpstart.

Thomas Benton's "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go"
Thomas Benton's "Just Don't Go, Part 2"

working in thin winter light

2010-02-18T10:43:00.000-05:00

This time of year I find it hard to be motivated, productive, or light-hearted. I don't know if it's the chill or the long nights ... but I want to hibernate ... to sleep and to dream. Instead, I work on my projects and make lists and push myself to check stuff off the lists and keep our household running as if the weather and the thin winter light didn't exist.

I blog less when I'm in this state.

One reason so many people become giddy with snow that closes everything down is that most of us are pushing too hard. It's not good for our bodies. It's not good for our spirits. But there's the mortgage to pay and achievement to show at the end of the day.

I love to work ... but most work I've been asked to do over my lifetime has not felt like real work to me, but like something I do to promote someone else's agenda and to bring in life-maintenance money. As long as I sort of agree with the agenda, I've been able to pull this off. With every passing birthday, however, I increasingly tire of wasting time that I won't get back - that's why I'm pursuing a PhD. I'd like to spend my life doing the work I love to do ... writing and research and teaching writing and research ... and get paid enough, maybe just enough, to provide food, shelter, clothing, and soul-sustaining cultural experiences for me and my family.

It's a simple goal. I'll see it more clearly as the days get longer and the nights shorter.

latest post from Eastern Shore Stories project

2010-02-11T13:16:00.003-05:00

I haven't written about my oral history project in a while, mostly because I've had to work on other PhD related stuff ... like passing comps and starting a new semester. But I have been posting excerpts from the interviews I've done on the blog Eastern Shore Stories . Here's today's post which I called "I guess you know how to drive, don't you?"

I was driving a Model T truck in the field. They were loading ‘em up, you know, and going along the rows where the barrels were, when I was ten years old. I was ten in May, and in June, July, we were digging those potatoes. I didn’t drive it out on the road then, but I drove it. I was driving before I was old enough, old enough to have a license.

We only had one state trooper in Accomack County, and that was Harry Parker. He lived at Accomac, but his wife and my grandfather were first cousins. That’s right. And he told Papa one day, said “that boy is driving, and I know it. And I know he’s got no license. Now I’m not gonna pull him because I know he’s got no license. But if he gets in trouble, I got to carry the law.”

So, one day, I decided to go down there and get my license. Well, I wasn’t eligible to go down there, see. I went by myself, and I went in the office at the Accomac courthouse. That little book, I knew that. He didn’t even have to ask me, I could give him all the answers. And he went through all that and he said, “well I guess now we’ll have to see how you do driving. Drive around the block and see how you park between the sticks.”

He had never smiled a bit – he made a good officer. He could scare people just with that look, you know. The only time he smiled, when he got ready to get in the car, he was on the passenger side. He said, “I guess you know how to drive, don’t you?” And I said, “Yes sir, I think so.” I couldn’t help [but] laugh – he was laughing too. ‘Cause he knew I’d been driving, you know, a long time. I rode around the block and parked back. I usually parked pretty good in a parking place. And I got my license. And guess how much it cost then? I think that was about ‘36 or ‘35. Fifty cents.

A lot of people were driving that didn’t have them. But that was wrong for me to ride down to Accomac to the courthouse and park right in front of there with no more license than – well my dog’s out here somewhere – than that dog has.

from an interview with Norman Mason, summer 2009

For more excerpts: Eastern Shore Stories

snapshot tuesday: photos of work

2010-02-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

All these photos are from Big Picture.com - another series on work. Enjoy!

snow and the rare book room

2010-02-04T12:04:00.000-05:00

D and N went back to school today for the first time all week. Last weekend's snow storm socked in Richmond and left us with icy, dangerous streets for days. Even the University closed on Monday, which is rare. It looks like another storm is going to hit tomorrow - although the weather guys on Channel 12 say the amount we're going to get could range anywhere from 12 inches to 4. Even four inches snarls things up here, though, and events are already being cancelled for tomorrow and Saturday.

I had blocked off tomorrow to spend at the rare book room on campus. In our Methods class we're learning how to do academic descriptions of material objects - using guidelines established by textual bibliographers. I found the manuscript much easier to do than the printed book and have to go back and spend another few hours with Dr. Samuel Johnson's Journeys. But another storm could mean more school closures which would mean I'd have to postpone my date with the rare book room.

For today - I'll restock the pantry and do some writing. Writing is harder to do when N & D are home interrupting me and probably more important for my long-term professional development ... not to mention my mental health.

a rant and unsilent night

2010-02-01T16:32:00.002-05:00

I'm not going to rant about people who choose to live in wealthy counties, counties that thwart efforts at regional cooperation especially if it means avoiding any economic support for their urban center. People who support leaving concentrated poor neighborhoods to fester with typical urban blight problems while they enjoy their sanitized, gated communities ... these same people then bash the same city they refuse to support when basic services like plowing the streets clear of snow or fixing potholes are a problem for them on their daily commute.

A pox on them ... may their SUV tires pop in a city pothole and their Lexus slide slowly sideways on slushy ice into a tree on Monument Avenue. I'm tired of the grousing. Either accept the consequences of a lack of regional cooperation or do something about it. Everything would be better if we stopped acting like so many separate communities and worked together as one. Streets would get plowed and poor kids might get a decent education.

There - I wasn't going to rant, but I did.

how to raise a civil kid in an uncivil society

2010-01-27T11:47:00.001-05:00

Had one of those conversations with N this morning on the way to school. Where she didn't like my answer to a question, so she kept talking at me in a snarky way. I finally pulled rank and said, "I'm your mother. When I say no, that's it. You can think whatever you like, but sometimes, in life, it's best to keep it to yourself and keep your mouth shut. Now is one of those times - you don't get to have the last word here."

She was furious. Muttered some - which I pointed out was the same thing as talking back - and reminded her that the last word was mine. Then we were at school and she was climbing out of the car, looking miserable because I had "won" and the whole interchange felt yucky and she wanted to stay mad and hate me, but still loves me, and I can relate. The whole interchange felt yucky to me too. But she's nine and I can't let her treat me that way or she'll grow up to be a prima donna jerk who's unemployable.

Being a mom is much, much harder than getting a PhD or teaching or writing.

On the short drive home, I thought about the messages about power she gets in school and the one I had tried to send this morning - that sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself - and I wondered if power messages are one of the things wrong with our schools and our democracy.

Then again, I was trying to teach her about respect - about treating other people with respect and not ventilating emotionally at them whenever one feels like it. Our society could use a bit more of that basic civility - online and in lines and on the air and everywhere.

on comps and kids

2010-01-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

The comps questions arrived yesterday around 11 am. Writing has been a relief. I feel a little bit like I'm snowed in - I brought in supplies from the grocery store and have no plans to go anywhere or do anything except feed myself and write all weekend. I've got a rough draft of one essay done and I'm within 600 words of finishing a draft of the second essay. Then, of course, I'll revise until the clock strikes "deadline" on Monday morning.

Isn't deadline a great word - invoking death & all?

It occurs to me that I could do this again - not comps, but a weekend of writing something creative without the external pressure. I could tell my family (and the world) that I'm on a writing retreat (they don't have to know it's in my house). I could start at noon on Friday and stop at noon on Monday.

The plan this weekend was for D and N to camp out at my parent's apartment - enjoy their cable television and have daddy/daughter adventures, leaving me alone to write at home with the dog. I had been asleep about an hour last night when I heard them come in the house - N had vomited all over the sheets at the apartment and D didn't know where my mom's washing machine was and it was just better to bring the sick kid home. She's been ill all day, even running a high fever. Needless to say their weekend plans (and mine) changed some. I couldn't go back to sleep right away so I ended up writing most of the night.

D's been great - when I stop writing and put on my mom-taking-care-of-sick-kid hat, he reminds me to take it off. It's a dad-taking-care-of-sick-kid weekend. He's enjoying it. As much as anyone enjoys taking care of a sick kid.

Well - back to writing.

on disneyworld and comps

2010-01-20T12:06:00.002-05:00

Walking around Walt Disney World is like walking through a movie set. This boat sits, like a workboat in use, near the Expedition Everest roller coaster in the Animal Kingdom park.

I don't know how I'd feel if I were from Tibet or Nepal or Thailand - I might be offended - but there is something cool about walking around a place and feeling like you're someplace far, far away from the familiar. A little too clean, I suspect, to be authentic. Authentic is not what's wanted at a Disney theme park. Safe, fun ... more real than real. A Baudrillard third order simulation moment, I guess.

I didn't expect to like DisneyWorld so much. But I made myself go in with an open mind and my visit has left me wanting to learn more about imagineering and their concepts of immersive theatre. Because that's what they're doing ... with their rides and their parks and their productions, including the parades and firework displays ... they create experiences and tell stories.

Of course a lot of it is about marketing and sales - about branding and celebrity. Still, they do it very, very well.

Why am I thinking about Disney now?

Okay - it's a distraction from preparing for comps - I'll admit that I'm tired of preparing and just want to do the writing, hand the two essays in, and have preliminary comps recede behind me.

This morning I checked on my website and looked at my work there for the first time since I handed in my eportfolio in November. And I thought about the hundreds of photos I took in Walt Disney World and how another photo gallery would be cool to add. Of course, like everything else, it'll have to wait now until comps are behind me.

One of the reasons I revisited my website is that I'm disheartened again by the MATX program. I don't know why going to class last night made me doubt what I'm doing in this program. I know that work is the only cure for doubt. But I know that my "mastery" of the material is thinner than I'd like it to be.

Wonder if I can write about my observations of Disney World and immersive theatre as part of my comps - that's what I'm most interested in right now and I always write better if I'm really interested in what I'm writing about. My blogging comics paper last semester was way better than my celebrity outlaw paper on Jesse James. I could tell by the way I slogged through the outlaw paper and enjoyed writing the blogging comics paper.

The writing I'm doing in preparation for the comps feels very sloggy. A bad sign. I think I'll write about Disney and multimedia this afternoon - see where that gets me.

memories and the risk that comes with writing

2010-01-18T13:21:00.001-05:00

In 1992, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and writer William Gibson published Agrippa (a book of the dead). The pages in the book "were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light." The poem, stored on a floppy disk, was programmed to erase itself after a single reading. The point seems to be that memories (and our lives) are ephemeral.

It's cool that the material object disintegrates, self-destructs in our hands. But we're left with reading about it ... or looking at archived copies available digitally on the web. Which changes the whole experience entirely, doesn't it?

Certainly raises questions about the tension between owning a thing, of penning it down to keep it forever, and the ephemerality of memory and experience. Isn't this the tension informing what writing and books have done for Western Civilization? The technology of writing and the book (and later photography) have allowed us the illusion that ideas and memories can be made solid, palpable, material and stored / archived over centuries. It's the grand hope of the digital revolution that ideas and human products can now be stored, without deterioration, in tiny drives with terabytes of storage capability, for centuries. The tension eloquently embodied in Agrippa makes the point, however, that our desire to own and keep may be just an illusion.

As Annie Dillard writes in her essay, "To Fashion a Text" : "After I've written about any experience, my memories - those elusive, fragmentary patches of color and feeling - are gone; they've been replaced by the work." Writing, she says, are a sure way to lose your memories as memories. It's been my experience that she's right.

I love to write so, like Annie Dillard, I'm willing to risk "cannibalizing my life for its parts." But I do recognize the loss as well as the gain.

the internet can "deep six" a writing day

2010-01-11T15:26:00.005-05:00

I've read that Neil Gaiman has a spot on the edge of his garden where he can't get a wireless signal and sometimes he goes there to get writing done. For the past week +, I've been reading and taking notes to prepare for my comps exam, which is barreling toward me on the calendar like a tsunami I know going to take me under. My plan today was to craft some sentences and paragraphs articulating my understanding of multimedia, medium specificity, and shifting ideas of authorship. Instead I've been researching possible trips to New York City and Staunton and listening to TED talks.

David Carson is described as a surfer-sociologist-turned-graphic-designer. This is a talk D's design students would enjoy. Plus - lots of pictures. I searched for Marshall McLuhan and David Carson on design + discovery is what turned up - because he created a book of McLuhan quotes.

My favorite talk today was this one about the importance of taking time off. The posted comments afterward range from "how offensive to hear someone white and privileged talk about taking a year off" and "if more of us did this / regardless of money / we'd all be better off." It is hard to reconcile this with the economic hardship that's hit so many people.

This guy's design work is stunning, though, definitely worth a look. And I love his idea of taking sabbaticals every seven years. He does it to regenerate creatively and claims it has paid off financially as well.
Enjoy! I'm going to try and get some work done before my family gets home.

time travel on studio 360

2010-01-03T14:27:00.006-05:00

I love to listen to to radio shows, especially creatively produced talk shows. Two favorites, both from NPR, are Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and On the Media. Studio 360, with the slogan "get inside the creative mind" is another favorite.

I don't usually catch Studio 360 through WRIR's weekly broadcast, but pull it up online and listen to the segments streaming on my laptop. An advantage of the website is that they embed videos and have slide shows to go along with the sound content. A cool model for something I might try for my dissertation work. Later, though - this month I have to prepare for preliminary comps.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

2009-12-16T10:45:00.007-05:00

This snow fell two weekends ago in Montpelier - 30 minutes north of Richmond. Gorgeous, huh.

I promised myself that today I would put my computer away and spend the day cleaning, reading, doing Christmas stuff. For example, World of Mirth in Richmond is having a "stocking sale" ... 20 percent off anything I can get into a stocking. Doesn't that sound fun?

This past semester, I earned the first B of my grad career, don't know why exactly. Feels slightly arbitrary and punitive. Leaves a bad taste, like the slight headache from a hangover.

I didn't used to care about grades. I've always done well in school, but even as a kid I perceived that grades were a lousy measure of learning. Somehow this streak of A's in my grad career has made this B feel like a failure.

I'll probably be grateful for the B once the sting subsides. The good news is that I'm almost finished taking classes for this PhD ... won't be long before having teachers assign grades as a measure for my work will vanish behind me like the wake behind a boat.

shopping online for zines

2009-12-10T15:59:00.002-05:00

In the course of writing about comics, materiality and the Internet, I went looking for a zine shop and found one online. And the guy who started it to promote "all things print" still works with a friend at an independent press in Richmond, Virginia ... sounds like it's located a few blocks from my house. So cool that there's a Richmond connection.

RVA article on Parcell Press

Parcell Press website

Spent some of my final oral history grant money on zines - with the vague idea that I'll expand my comics / materiality / web research to be more about women and zines. There's a call for conference papers due Jan. 15 for the Virginia Humanities Conference on Women and Humanities. I had planned to rework my paper on Emily Dickinson and the implications of the fascicles she made to contain her poetry, but I think I'd rather rework my stuff on mini-comics/zines v. web distribution.

from jesse james to blogging comics

2009-12-07T11:12:00.002-05:00

I got back from DisneyWorld just in time to write two research papers for finals.

The first paper is on Jesse James as America's archetypal Robin Hood ... and the media technologies and strategies that put him there and keep him there.

The PBS show American Experiences did a one-hour show on Jesse James ... a historical myth-buster, of course, but their website helped me understand how his experience as a teenage bushwhacker probably propelled him into his career as an outlaw. Missouri bushwhackers were pro-Confederate guerrillas who operated behind the Union lines ... American insurgents, I guess. Hard to go back to pushing a plow after that sort of adrenaline rush - not to mention PTSD, long before it had initials.

I especially like the shooting gallery - done in Flash, with sound effects.

Now that the first paper is done - I'm back to comics & blogging. I have about a day and a half to turn my ideas and research into a coherent 12-page research paper. I hope I can do it without my head exploding.

unplugging to get lost in disney magic

2009-11-20T14:07:00.000-05:00

I'm flying to Walt's paradise in Florida tomorrow - a gift from my parents to themselves and to us. They wanted to celebrate their wedding anniversary by spending time in Walt Disney World with their children and grandchildren - and I'm going to unplug myself while I'm there. Get lost in Disney magic.

I'm curious about Disney's imagineering and what my impressions of the place will be - especially having spent 15 months in the MATX program. I plan to take my camera and old-fashioned journal with me - record my observations and maybe even sketch some.

Yes - I know I'm going someplace with great wireless & cell phone access - I could twitter and blog away the whole time I'm gone. But I want to be unplugged and totally present in the physical moment with my family. I think it will help me relax and recharge my internal batteries. I'm also curious to find out just how plugged in I've become. I know I'm going to have email withdrawal.

FYI: I just posted a fourth entry on my Eastern Shore Stories blog. Have to create a fan page or something for this project ... some way to easily let people know when I post new material. The RSS feed is a start - but may not be enough.

matx eportfolio done, maybe

2009-11-16T13:08:00.002-05:00

I've finished the MATX e-portfolio - I think. It's one of those projects that a person could keep working on for the rest of their natural life. I'm starting to futz with the little stuff ... a word here, a link there, background color on a linked page ... I can tell it's time to send in the URL and check it off the list. I'd love to edit a few more sound pieces or produce a completely new flash piece or add photos to the oral history gallery ... all of which I can continue to do long after this eportfolio has been handed in ... but basically, I'm done, done, done. HUZZAH, HUZZAH!

To see it, go through my website. Click on Media, Art & Text program - that'll take you to a new page with a spider on it ... it's the first link.

What's next in my fascinating queue of stuff to do? Today the MATX Annex gallery opens with its first show. Since I have a studio in the Annex, I'm supposed to show up early ... which I'd planned to do anyway ... but it's time to eat lunch and get myself over there.

friday art: landscape photos

2009-11-13T06:26:00.006-05:00

Would you believe these are landscapes from Mars? Taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) with a High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera.

They'd make great source images for large abstract paintings. There are 35 pictures from Mars posted in this series on the Big Picture website ... other cool photo series, too.

Martian Landscapes on Big Picture website

on web redesign (again) and the need for rest

2009-11-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

I'm redesigning my website - again - this time because the MATX e-portfolio is due next week. And because I was tired of the old design.

I have to say that today, finally, I created a few pages I'm pleased with. I like the graphic look of the pages and with how they function. I've redone the home page , the media projects page , the about me/contact page and created an MATX page to serve as the jumping off point for all things MATX - like the e-portfolio & my academic papers.

The oral history project homepage needs to be redone ... I really, really hate the old design now.

It's satisfying to look over the work I've done since August 2008 and realize how much I've accomplished in 15 months. No wonder I'm tired. My goal now is to get through the next ten days of academic work (final research project deadlines & the eportfolio), plus pull off my kid's birthday party and get packed for a family vacation. Sometimes I envy my cohorts in the MATX program who don't have kids or even spouses - it would be so much easier to get completely lost in the work. But N & D keep me grounded. My envy doesn't last long ... mostly I'm thankful that I'm not going this alone.

gabrielle bell's comics blog

2009-11-08T20:37:00.001-05:00

what a cool comics artist - Gabrielle Bell, a Brooklyn artist who posts her autobiographical comics on-line.

Her comics blog: Lucky

Scroll down for Scraggly - that's my favorite so far, because of its visuals. She spoke at U of R's comics panel the week Robert Crumb came to Richmond.

richmond zine fest at gallery 5

2009-11-07T15:05:00.009-05:00

Last night D, N & I went to the 2009 Richmond Zine Fest at Gallery 5 We walked away with a handful of zines and mini-comics. Just for kicks, we walked a block over to Broad Street to take in the First Friday art scene. D & I vowed to make First Fridays a monthly family event. N was less enthusiastic.

From the Richmond Zine Fest website:
What's a zine?
"From Stolen Sharpie Revolution
(pronounced like magazine without the maga) A zine is an independently created publication containing anything you want it to; personal experiences and stories, political ideologies, music related writing, gardening tips, fiction, travel stories, comics, photography, or anything you like. zines can be put together by one person or a group of people and they are usually photocopied but can also be printed offset, letter press, or mimeographed."

What's a zine fest?
"A zine fest is an event where zinesters (individual sellers as well as zine distro owners) meet up to sell and trade zines, as well as meet other zinesters. ... A zine fest is not traditionally a craft fair, comic book convention, or a book fair. We do not mind if these things are sold by tablers, but we do ask that they devote at least 10% of their stock to zines and other affordable printed matter."

book of hours photos

2009-10-31T10:45:00.003-04:00

I finally made some scans of my Book of Hours creation.

The original Books of Hours were personal devotional books created in Medieval Europe and modeled after monastery devotions. They usually start with a calendar of religious holidays, and then follow with meditations on the Life of Mary, sometimes followed with meditations on the four Apostles (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) ... sometimes with stories of saints. As far as I know, they're always filled with gorgeous imagery. Of course, most were created before mass printing & the invention of moveable type, so they were hand-lettered as well as hand-illustrated.

My Book of Hours is bound with leather and ties closed with yarn. Inside is a small text of devotions - meaningful to me and connected with the life of Mary. I also created an icon, which can be seen when the cloth covering protecting it is lifted. I may later add gold leaf or more "jewels" to the icon - but for now there's just the inked and colored drawing of the Annunciation.

blogging on blogging and social media

2009-10-30T10:52:00.004-04:00

I've been experimenting with Facebook, with Twitter, with blogging on this site and on my Eastern Shore Stories site. I'm forming opinions about how to use them effectively and how they differ as publishing platforms. Because that's what they are - using written communication with photos/scans/videos salted in - personal publishing platforms for anyone who has a computer and access to the internet. Publishing has never been easier.

I didn't expect to enjoy Facebook, but I really do and I've decided to keep my Facebook page a personal blog / family & friend focused communication vehicle. That means my goal is not to have thousands of friends nor to use it as a marketing vehicle, but to enjoy the freedom of connecting and reconnecting with people who are friends and family. I love the interaction, the photo albums, the randomness.

Twitter still seems like an odd bird to me ... and I thought that the Cool Librarian's blog about what teenagers in her library are saying about Facebook, Twitter, blogging made sense.

Here's an excerpt from her April 18 2009 entry:
We were talking about advertising the next teen movie on Facebook - which works well for reaching the high school kids, but is not as effective at reaching the middle school kids - and I asked how I could get more kids to read the Teen page of the (new) library website. The answer: "We don't look at websites. Kids do Facebook, and that's about it. We'll Google if we have to for a school paper, and maybe check out Wikipedia, but, really, don't bother with the teen page."

Now, I'm not sure how surprised I was by that. One look at my stats tells me that no one looks at the teen page that I slaved away on for days - in spite of all the PR I have done - but I guess I was surprised to learn that high school students don't seem interested in surfing the web at all (gaming sites not withstanding). Oooookaaayyy....

Next up:
"So, I was thinking of having a workshop on blogging - would there be any interest in that?"
"Nah, we say everything we need to say on Facebook."
"Ok, what about Twitter?"
"Twitter is for old people. My mom is on Twitter. Which is cool, I guess, because I didn't know she even knew what Twitter is, but really, what's the point of Twitter?"
Well, I can't fault this question, since many people find no use for Twitter, and those that do are usually connected to a network of other like-minded adults. But again, I guess I was just surprised by the total lack of interest.

This conversation nailed it, I think ... websites are for information ... they're static and, unless something like a blog is happening there, why would I return once I've got the information I need. I say most of what I want to say about my private and family life on Facebook, but, as a writer, find I need more space, so I blog. This blog is also where I explore my professional interests in more depth than I ever will on Facebook.

Twitter is good if you want to stay current in a fast-moving field or if you're trying to communicate during a revolution, but how plugged in do most people need or want to be? I went to a Social Media meeting at VCU - they had a huge screen set up behind the panel and published the tweets in real time while people were speaking. It was distracting, slightly bizarre, and cool all at the same time. People in the audience were tweeting about the event while we were in the event and those of us in the event were reading the tweets, usually at the expense of the presentation.

I have to tweet as part of my GTA appointment in communications, but I do wonder about our audience, about what we have to say that's worth anyone's time. This morning I tweeted about today's deadline to withdraw from a class ... an important deadline for undergrads, especially. So that's a public service. It only works if we're being followed, however, which takes something more interesting than bureaucratic deadlines.

Blogging is more interesting to me than tweeting. Maybe it's just that haiku has never been a strength of mine and that 140 characters forces the English language into strange mutations. In a blog I can ramble on ... just like I'm doing now.

My Eastern Shore Stories blog is a very different animal - it's an occasional blog with interview excerpts and historical photos, reflective of the project. I want to be able to blog for months, at least through the lecture that's scheduled in April, posting only one entry per interview even though they're hours long - so I'm only posting a new entry every two weeks. The challenge is to add an rss feed or some way for people to follow it easily - some means beyond a bookmark. I think I'm going to set up a separate Facebook Fan page for the project and publicize it on the blog so that I can post to the Fan page whenever there's a new entry.

With my personal entries on Facebook I know people are listening and I even know who they are, so conversations will and do happen. I haven't seen that happen much on blogs unless it's a celebrity blog or a blog where the blogger is shooting for controversy ... sort of pulling a "Rush" if you will. That's not my style. I'm a quiet blogger. My husband tells me it's hard to leave a comment on this blog, too ... told me months ago that I should "get that fixed." I've done nothing because I don't know how to fix it ... it may be a weakness of this particular blog interface.

Being in a PhD program with a strong digital media focus has certainly forced me to ask questions I wouldn't have asked otherwise ... go places I wouldn't have otherwise gone ... all good. And now it's time to finish my last book for PAPR 591 (a grad seminar in bookmaking). Time to get out the glue and the fabric and the transfer material and make something by hand. Time to unplug.

farm life oral history blog live

2009-10-22T07:02:00.007-04:00

Here it is ... the farm life oral history blog.
Eastern Shore Stories

About ten days ago, I removed the privacy setting on the Eastern Shore Stories blog, but I've been dragging my feet telling people about it. I don't know why I'm going for the opposite of buzz.

It's a simple blog - excerpts from the interviews, as well as relevant photos if I have them, posted occasionally on Thursdays. I decided to post only one excerpt from each interview, although I may change my mind on that later, but that way I can keep posting new material through the lecture that's scheduled at the Eastern Shore of Virginia Historical Society next April.

The one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to make this RSS-feed enabled. And I haven't created a Facebook page or a Twitter account to support it. Since I'm only posting every two weeks or so, I need a way to let people know when new posts are there. I love this development in blogging ... that it doesn't have to be an every day thing, but that - through news feeds - I can give and get notice of longer-form blogging.

My style, as a blogger, is definitely on the quiet side. As for why I'm going for the opposite of buzz with Eastern Shore Stories ... I feel very protective of this place, these people, this material. I hesitate to share it digitally with the world in cyberspace because I don't want it lifted or misinterpreted or misused - so easy to happen. But I don't own the place or this material ... and I know from my uncle's sudden death that the stories can be quickly silenced. They live orally with the people who tell them and the people who hear them. I love the stories that have been shared with me and they'll live with me now until I'm gone too. I feel honored.

art moment: comic book artist Eddie Campbell

2009-10-20T11:52:00.017-04:00

elephant man at night, From Hell

I'm doing a presentation for my Reading Comics class on From Hell - a book written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's a graphic novel retelling of the Jack the Ripper story. My cohort is a fiction writer and wanted to present on Moore's work so my part of the assignment is to research and talk about Eddie Campbell and his work.

I got the good end of this arrangement. Campbell is a very cool comic book artist - originally Scottish, but now lives in Australia - and I like his independent work much better than From Hell ... at least what I can find piecemeal published along with interviews. He's published too many to list here. Three I'd like to track down are Bacchus, The Fate of the Artist, and The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard.

an interview with Campbell
a 30-min video presentation on BookSlut

Even better ... he blogs, regularly ... here's the link:
Eddie Campbell's blog

grab a mop

2009-10-17T21:42:00.004-04:00

Just got home from seeing the new Michael Moore flick "Capitalism: A Love Story" - it's definitely worth seeing, regardless of your politics. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I were a CEO from AIG and sat through this movie. I think I'd feel ashamed of myself, but most of the folks who made out like, yes, like "bandits" ... they're probably not watching Michael Moore movies. And I don't they feel ashamed ... do they just feel lucky? Or unfairly portrayed by Moore? Who knows. I do think someone has made a mess of things public-policy-wise from about Ronald Reagan on. Time to get a mop and help clean up, I suppose. I say it's time to share the wealth and create a more stable and fair America.

Michael Moore's website

finding cool pics for a slide show on bookmaking

2009-10-15T19:02:00.008-04:00

Books as repositories of knowledge and magic - people still travel thousands of miles to Ireland to see the Book of Kells. I suspect there is no way a picture of a page from this book can do its materiality justice. Even here it's incredibly beautiful.

I'm working on a slide show for a bookmaking workshop at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts. Teaching a unit is a requirement for my bookmaking seminar, but I'm also having fun putting it together.

Meanwhile, Google is going to make thousands of books available on any web browser. NY Times article: Google Sparks E Reader Fight with Kindle

Are the days of physical books as numbered as the days of a wet darkroom for photography? I think that's when the artists move in ... art books and art photography made by artists and photographers using non-digital technology, because quickly anything non-digital is becoming arcane.

want to write with me this weekend?

2009-10-14T11:52:00.004-04:00

I'm teaching an all-day writing immersion workshop at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond on Saturday, Oct. 17, from 10 am to 4 pm.

It's open to writers of all levels of writing experience ... costs $75, unless you're a member, then it's less.

In the morning, expect lots of prompts and starter exercises – adaptable for all genres. In the afternoon, each participant will choose one promising writing “start” to develop and spend the rest of the workshop writing or they can work on a project they're already stewing about.

At the end of the day, if folks want - we'll share what we've written.

To sign up, contact the Visual Arts Center .

They have lots of other cool classes, programs, exhibitions too! If you live near Richmond, Virginia, and love the arts - check out the Visual Arts Center.

a radio interview with a musician about his memoir, heard on-line

2009-10-12T22:09:00.006-04:00

How many media is that? a radio podcast of an interview with a musician about his published book. Now that's mixed media.

I enjoyed this interview on Studio 360. Stewart Copeland was drummer with The Police, but has also garnered quite a few awards as a film composer, and he grew up in Beirut, the son of a CIA spy (although he didn't learn that until he was in college).

Studio 360 blog re: Stewart Copeland interview

Also worth listening to this week - a piece on Disney music.

on bookmaking and flash galleries (or why I haven't been blogging)

2009-10-09T11:48:00.009-04:00

I call this book Found & Stitched, made over the summer for a grad level studio course in bookmaking.

What I like about it are the interior details ... the silver stamping on torn white paper. The contrast of silver with black. The Frankenstein-like stitching directly through the cardstock.

Torn paper and found sentences ... silver thread and images of flying or running ... for text, I lifted sentences at random from books around my house ... usually the first sentence of the third paragraph on the 50th or 70th page. Oddly, the randomness coalesces into something that makes sense.

Next - I finish my Book of Hours.

I'm also creating galleries in Flash to showcase work on my website. Once I got the first one to work (the one on Found & Stitched) ... creating the others has gone quickly. Last night I created one from photos I took over the summer (my Life Unplugged) and this morning I've got a cool one partly done with historical photos from the oral history project, complete with captions. Maybe by Monday, I'll have uploaded the new pages to my website ... if so, I'll post here and on Facebook.

snapshot tuesday: stunt dogs

2009-10-06T19:19:00.006-04:00

On Sunday, we went to the Virginia State Fair. These are from the Extreme Canine stunt dog show. All the dogs were rescued from shelters - my pictures and video don't do their show justice.

matx communal website launch

2009-10-02T06:47:00.003-04:00

Some of my MATX cohorts have just launched a communal website called MATXer. There's some pretty cool work on it, as well as links and information.

Interesting that it showed up on my birthday - just when I was going to find a place to host my website outside the university. After VCU outsourced my student email to google, I got mad enough to reserve a domain name and begin the process of having a professional web presence not connected with a university. My cohorts have the right idea.

final project dilemma: to create a comic or not to create a comic

2009-09-28T09:30:00.007-04:00

I have to decide on my final project for my Reading Comics seminar. I met with the professor and, given my swollen to-do list, we decided that the academic research project and paper on Winsor McCay and Little Nemo in Slumberland was the simplest, smartest route. It's easier to control the time suck with an academic research project than with a creative project.

Simpler, smarter, yes, but I'm stubborn ... I still want to do a creative project instead. I want to create my own comic - maybe 8 pages worth. I want to research McCay's work and Herriman's work and others ... and from there, create my own version of Little Nemo ... I want to write, draw, ink and maybe color the entire thing myself.

So - am I going to be smart?

Or am I going to do what I really want to do ... which is create something from scratch and risk total failure and frustration?

And what about that swollen to-do list ... it's not like I don't have anything else interesting to do. Plus I have a family, a husband and daughter who are already tired of my PhD interfering with our family life.

I have a few days to decide. I've been sketching and writing and trying to come up with a good idea to work from. My limited ability in drawing is an impediment. The good news, and maybe the point, is that as I play with the tools of cartooning, I understand comics and their visual, complex richness with a depth I don't think I would have if I merely analyzed them. I've found that to be true with all the arts, literary included. It's only through writing poetry that I truly appreciate the art and craft of poetry. Maybe other people don't have to do this, but I develop a better appreciation and understanding of any art form when I've tried my hand at it.

on illustration and incredible books

2009-09-26T08:41:00.005-04:00

This is one of my favorite prints from Jack Sheppard - an 1839 crime novel by W. Harrison Ainsworth, illustrations by George Cruikshank. VCU Special Collections has the 1839 edition - so I got to see the original prints as I might have seen them in 1839. It's amazing how rich they look - how much detail and texture gets lost through reproduction.

Taking the comics class has me taking a closer look at imagery as it interacts with text. Amazing, really, how it flows together in my imagination. Medieval illustrated manuscripts, comics from the early 20th century, and illustrated serial novels from the 19th century ... mix that together with a class on making books ... and all sorts of ideas start to swirl.

The first I'm working on is a personal Book of Hours.

Meanwhile, a friend has curated this Book Arts exhibit in Richmond, Virginia. I couldn't make the opening (not with my grumpy 8-year-old) but what I want to see is the work - sometimes it's hard to see art at an opening. To paraphrase the Bard, "the art's the thing."

journal and web resource for bookmaking

2009-09-23T10:16:00.006-04:00

While researching where to find supplies to complete my Book of Hours, I came across a reference to The Bonefolder, an ejournal on bookmaking.

Here's what they say about themselves:
"The Bonefolder publishes significant articles by established and emerging authorities on a variety of book arts topics. These include hand bookbinding, teaching, business practice, the history of the book, the book as art, general tips & tricks, exhibitions, how-to technical articles, and reviews.

"The namesake of The Bonefolder is Das Falzbein, a bookbinding journal which existed under various other names from 1927 to 1966 in Germany, providing generations of bookbinders with an important source of learning. While the trade and craft of bookbinding have changed greatly since then, it is hoped that our publication will inform and stimulate all levels of practitioners and lovers of the book as an artform and structure."

Book Arts Web: a good overall resource for the art and craft of bookmaking and home to The Bonefolder.

snapshot tuesday

2009-09-22T11:54:00.004-04:00

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

working retreat and more interviews

2009-09-21T18:24:00.002-04:00

I didn't think I could afford a weekend away from D and N and my to-do list, but it was the best thing I could have done. On Friday I packed up bookmaking supplies and food and the dog and off we went for a working weekend away.

It's been hard to focus on making books with an overburdened to-do list, but I was able to get quiet and sketch and figure out my version of a Book of Hours. I had the time and space to place with the pen and ink supplies I'd bought for cartooning. Even though I have too much going on, I'm going to try and create my own comic strip for a final project in my Reading Comics seminar.

I scheduled oral history interviews for Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Six hours worth of oral history about farm life on the Eastern Shore later and I'm still learning about this part of rural Virginia and southern Maryland.

I spent an incredibly peaceful and productive weekend in a beautiful and quiet place! I love looking up from my work out an open window into either the woods or a field full of soybeans. This morning I got my calendar out to figure out when I can do this again. I'm thinking a long weekend in November - about the time I have to create a full set of comics for my final project.

snapshot tuesday

2009-09-15T18:57:00.003-04:00

What is it about the ocean? This is a film still from In-Between Places - the video poem I re-edited and posted on my website this weekend. For a link, see yesterday's post.

in-between places: a video poem

2009-09-14T11:18:00.004-04:00

I edited, renamed, and put my video poem (originally Film on Water) on my website this weekend. Here's a link to In-Between Places. Enjoy!

friday art: Richard Carlyon

2009-09-11T17:55:00.011-04:00

The Richard Carlyon retrospective exhibition opens tonight. Four venues around Richmond are celebrating an amazing teacher and artist. D (my artist/teacher husband) studied with him. I wish I'd had that privilege.

What amazes me about Carlyon was how steady / stable his artist life was. It's what I aspire to. He taught. He worked in his studio every day ... walked to it from his house. For fifty years he taught artists and he made art. To paraphrase Julia Cameron, he kept the drama on the canvas.

Here are links to the four galleries participating in the retrospective.
The Anderson Gallery at VCU
His recreated studio is part of this exhibit.

The Reynolds Gallery
Early / late work & Eleanor

The Visual Arts Center of Richmond
This site has links to the other galleries, plus a podcast and a link to Style Weekly article about his life.

1708 Gallery
Interval - re: his interest in the "in-between" spaces

cool stuff from my comics seminar

2009-09-09T11:18:00.005-04:00

This week we're reading Alias the Cat by Kim Deitch ... what an interesting, cool graphic book. Deitch is a well-known underground comics artist who definitely writes for adults. He's apparently influenced by 1920s / 1930s pop culture including animated cartoons, so our instructor told us to look for some of these old cartoons on YouTube.

Here's one from the 1930's, described as "another weird and surreal Waffles and Don cartoon ..."

This one is especially interesting after reading Alias the Cat. Here's the YouTube description: "From the 1920s by Paul Terry Farmer Al Falfa AKA Farmer Grey Series, with stock music added in the 1950s."

Enjoy!

snapshot tuesday

2009-09-08T06:08:00.004-04:00

For some reason, this photo says End of Summer to me ... don't know why. Maybe it's just my mood. It's raining in Richmond today - a heavy, steady downpour. And it's the first day of school for N and D. I've been in school a few weeks, but it never feels like a new year has started until Labor Day.

another semester begins and I'm already exhausted

2009-09-04T13:29:00.005-04:00

I'd like at least one full day of solitude and reflection - feels like I haven't had one of those in months. On Monday - one of the days I'm scheduled to work on schoolwork from home - I had to serve a last day of jury duty. A personal injury case, too - better than a murder trial, I guess, but still a drag. Today - another day which should be a day for solitude and reflection and solid work - I'm taking care of my sick child.

I've done some work, in the chinks. Feels like all my work right now happens in the chinks. Two days a week I spend in the dean's office doing communications work for them. A great GTA placement, but still doesn't recharge me the way my own work does.

In fact, it's driving home how much I really really really want to teach, preferably on the university level, and how much I want to write, not in service of any goals but out of my personal interests.

Of course, how many people get to do exactly what they want to do for work in this life? I've always been haunted by that ... who do I think I am to get what I want?

Might be healthier to ask, why not me?

Meanwhile, I've got reading to do and papers to write and presentations to plan and projects to research. And I need to make a few books and schedule the next round of oral history interviews and finish the e-portfolio that's due in November and study for the first round of comps (that's in January) and recruit a dissertation committee. Finally, I've got to maintain my commitments with the dean's office and my family and my home. Oh yeah - and take care of myself.

No wonder I'm tired ... it's only September 4.

on jury duty and stories

2009-08-17T06:48:00.006-04:00

I made the three & a half hour drive last night back to Richmond for the start of school. But first, I have to go to the courthouse for jury duty. I've been called to serve on Monday in August.

Last week I had to serve as a juror on a criminal case. I don't want to serve today - not because I don't want to spend the day at the courthouse. I don't want to listen to the stories again - the crime, the case I have to decide, weighing the evidence and negotiating a decision with a group of strangers.

The stories hang with me ... they feel sticky and don't easily wash away. The oral histories have a similar effect, although I invite those stories into my life and I enjoy hearing them. But they also stick with me long after I've driven home. Something about the act of listening carefully to another person's story - it somehow becomes woven with my own.

I spent yesterday afternoon scanning family photographs. They felt sticky too, with a slightly different web consistency.

That's what I want to explore in my dissertation. Stories and photography and how we use them to weave a life story, to give our lives meaning and connection. Like a performance, stories aren't real until they're shared.

the melancholy of summer's end

2009-08-14T12:46:00.006-04:00

I'm feeling melancholy about the start of the semester - or at least I was until I acknowledged where my funk was coming from. Taking a walk with the dog this morning, I could tell fall is headed toward us. There was a cool breeze and some storm clouds, but mostly I could hear the insects and birds signaling the end of summer.

Next week I'll be meeting with my new boss about the first projects she wants me to work on. I'll be earning my degree, financially speaking, through a graduate teaching assistantship doing communications work for the dean's office. I love teaching, so I have mixed feelings about being out of the classroom, but I think it will be good to concentrate on my studies and creative work for a few years. This assistantship could also be a lot of fun.

Of course, with the oral history project and the bookmaking course, my summer wasn't quite as free, lazy, open-ended as past summers have been when I've had a clear break from work. Still - it's all good. Next week I officially start year two of the MATX program - and I'm still excited about it.

living in exile and going ABD

2009-08-10T06:52:00.008-04:00

With every farm life oral history I do, my desire to move back to the rural Virginia county where I grew up increases. My family roots in this place go back hundreds of years, on both sides of my family. They were farmers and shopkeepers and schoolteachers in several rural counties sandwiched between the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean. Not wealthy, not exactly poor. Living in Richmond has felt like living in exile for twenty years.

I have to put my dissertation ideas on paper in the next few weeks ... a two-page coherent discussion of my plan. I want to explore the importance of narrative and oral history and photography in the creation of identity, especially geo-cultural identity (identity connected to place) and group identity. I think my ultimate project will be a combination of performance and written reflection. This sounds quite erudite, doesn't it.

By next year this time, I could be ABD (all but dissertation). I have many, many tasks to complete before I'm ABD, but it is possible, especially since they've moved comps to January and our bib exam to May. When those two are out of the way, and my courses are completed, I only have to pass a second competency and craft a thirty-page proposal that's acceptable to my committee and I'm ABD.

Someone told me not long ago that 60% of all PhD students never get beyond ABD. I believe it. I've been having a crisis of "what's this for" lately. I love the work, perhaps that's the point, the sign that I'm in the right place doing the right thing. Mostly I want to teach and to write. The writing is all I've ever wanted to do. I hope this isn't another distraction.

been bookmaking, not blogging

2009-08-04T15:56:00.010-04:00

Took a week off blogging and farm life interviews to take an intensive bookmaking course at VCU. And I finally made it to the National Gallery of Art to see the illuminated manuscripts. The pigments, especially the blues and the gold leaf, really need to be seen to appreciate their vivid materiality. Reproductions, in this case, don't capture the beauty, the aura of the object. Sometime in the next few months I'm going to try a hand at my own Book of Hours.

This is a Jenny Saville piece from a fantastic special exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle ... Paint Made Flesh. It's worth a special trip to DC. It'll be up through September 13.

when farms were small

2009-07-24T10:11:00.006-04:00

I've recorded three interviews this week ... and had more conversations re: Eastern Shore life, especially farming in the days before herbicides and huge industrial-scaled equipment. Looked at lots of photographs. My head is swimming with stories.

Today I plan to spend the morning with my grandmother. She was raised on a farm and then farmed with my grandfather near Jenkins Bridge, Virginia, until they "retired" in the early 1970's. My mother says she and her siblings were my grandfather's "herbicide." Farmers used to grow vegetables on farms around here on smaller farms - 50 acres was a good-size farm for a family to work. They kept the crops free of weeds using hoes and maybe a small cultivator pulled by a horse or a mule, later by a small tractor. Everyone grew corn to feed their livestock.

Now the farmers here work thousands of acres and grow mostly grains. It'll be interesting to speak with a few younger farmers - people who've made the shift to the current farm economies in differing ways. I guess that's not a part of the "oral history" but now I'm interested. I want to hear their stories too.

snapshot tuesday

2009-07-21T12:55:00.002-04:00

I think this is called a "writing spider" because of the weaving pattern below it. This is what Charlotte in Charlotte's Web must have looked like.

friday art: puppets on stage in London

2009-07-17T10:45:00.008-04:00

"The two nonhuman stars of War Horse"

Aren't these incredible - wish I could see this in person.

Making Horses Gallop and Audiences Cry is Patrick Healy's 7/13/09 New York Times piece about the play and the incredible puppetry that makes the horses gallop and breathe on stage.

oral history project

2009-07-16T11:35:00.003-04:00

I've done five interviews for the 20th Century Farm Life oral history project, and have another scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. It's interesting material ... mostly about living on farms on the Eastern Shore of Virginia during the Depression and World War II ... although I am hearing stories from the turn of the century too. Maybe because all branches of my family are from here - as far back as we've traced - these stories particularly resonate with me. Most of my ancestors were either farmers or shopkeepers, with a few schoolmarms and watermen thrown in.

I'm grateful to be working through the Eastern Shore of Virginia Historical Society. The project is sponsored by a partnership between the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the PNC Foundation.

snapshot tuesday

2009-07-14T05:38:00.002-04:00

flower fireworks

what would success look like?

2009-07-13T08:47:00.007-04:00

To read last night, I picked up Julia Cameron's book The Sound of Paper. A collection of essays about writing, she includes exercises after each essay. This morning I read the second essay and did an exercise about success. Or attempted to.

The exercise involved listing "twenty-five things that represent to you sophistication and success."

What I found was that items don't speak to me about success. I couldn't think of 25 things to write down. I asked myself "what would success look like?" and wrote about feeling relaxed, about traveling and having two well-ordered homes (both small, one city and one in the country) and having an agent to sell what I write and having time to write.

Maybe the question is really "what would success feel like"? And maybe I'm already there, but don't know it. I think the true measure of "success" is internal and personal. I've equated success with external markers like money or recognition. Those could come without any internal feeling of "success". Some of the dictionary synonyms for success are "triumph" and "winner" - also "prosperity" as a trapping of success. Antonyms: "poverty" and "failure" As if "success" is a contest and money is the goal. But "failure" and "success" aren't polar opposites. Failure, in fact, is frequently a necessary part of any journey worth taking. The ultimate goal, I believe, is spiritual.

Ahhh - but I still want that agent. Money buys time to write.

snapshot tuesday

2009-07-07T17:14:00.000-04:00

Eastern Shore morning

mostly unplugged

2009-07-05T13:58:00.006-04:00

I've managed to do a few oral history interviews since I last blogged. I'm taping people who lived and worked on farms in Accomac County (rural eastern Virginia) before 1960. I find being without wireless or easy phone access frustrating ... but that's nothing compared to a time about 75 years ago when people around here walked ten miles on Saturday evening to get to a town to walk up and down the street ... to see or be seen by neighbors who'd also walked a distance or driven in from farms on sandy roads that could wash out in a good storm. They'd spend a dime for the movies or an ice cream cone.

snapshot tuesday

2009-06-30T20:10:00.003-04:00

New Church fireman's carnival

living the life I want

2009-06-29T18:24:00.003-04:00

Taught a writing immersion workshop at the Visual Arts Center this past weekend. Mostly, we sat at different places around a large conference room table and wrote for the better part of six hours. Whenever someone needed a new start - I pulled out another prompt or fiction-writing prompt. In between we talked - mostly about the writing life. I wouldn't mind offering this class every month or every other month. It's the sort of structure that would help anyone working on a sustained project who needs or wants the support.

My afterlife play is revised and off to the Firehouse Theatre Playwriting Contest. Tomorrow I do another interview for the oral history project. I plan to launch an Eastern Shore Stories blog next Thursday, with excerpts and photographs from the project.

Everyone thinks I'm off for the summer. Doesn't feel like it to me - but it's all work I enjoy. Can't ask for more than that.

friday art moment

2009-06-26T18:10:00.006-04:00

Jeanie Finlay is a UK artist who uses documentary work in an interesting way. Enjoy!

Home-Maker

What she says about Home-Maker: "Home-Maker explores what it is like to be housebound, to live your life alone within four walls, focusing on the artefacts that the interviewees collected over a life time and how these objects represent memories and stories from their history. Often the stories are about the person who used to share their life who is no longer with them. The films also document in the intimate nature of the interviews, the close relationship that developed between the artist and the subjects."

more about Home-Maker

snapshot tuesday

2009-06-23T18:38:00.004-04:00

Eastern Shore storm clouds

living a life unplugged

2009-06-22T11:24:00.005-04:00

I'm where I want to be - away from paint fumes and plaster dust - in a farmhouse where we lack television and internet, where our cell phones don't get reception. The only reason I'm blogging is that my brother now has wireless at his house ... which is down the lane from my unplugged farmhouse ... so I'm living a few "wired" moments at their dining room table.

Of course - we watch DVDs on our laptops - so we're not intentionally fasting from media. Both my brother and my parents have satellite television - thousands of channels for my kid and her cousins to watch. And now - wireless at my brother's dining room table. It's hard to live a life unplugged anywhere.

photography antidote

2009-06-18T12:38:00.010-04:00

I'm grateful that my biggest problem today is how to expand my afterlife play into a full-length piece of theatre, that my daughter's biggest problem is learning to ignore a few older kids who will probably tease her later at her Nana's house, that my husband's biggest problem is matching the paint we're using in the living room when he goes to get another gallon, that my mother's biggest problem is to rest and allow her body to respond to the antibiotics that are killing her infection. We really are fortunate.

Here are some links to pictures of world events from The Big Picture on Boston.com - the site that prompted my thoughts about gratitude and perspective this morning.

Israeli Settlements in the West Bank

Iran's Disputed Election

Children in Pakistan

snapshot tuesday

2009-06-16T10:03:00.005-04:00

work as a cure for doubt

2009-06-15T09:12:00.005-04:00

Questions at the end of the Playing with Words workshop ... so familiar, but I'm thinking now of what I didn't say ... that work is the cure for doubt. I write because writing is what I do. And the outcome - publishing or getting it out into the world in some way - is impossible to control. Collecting rejections seems to be part of the process.

I do believe that it's important for me to send the work out into the world, if only to clear space on my desk and psychic space in my head. So I find deadlines for submissions and treat them like assignments. I'd like to be more businesslike about it - have a set amount of work floating out there all the time - but with school that's been hard.

The best cure I've found for the paralyzing doubt and snipe-y inner critic that emerge viciously when I've just slipped work into a mail slot to go out ... the best antidote is to have other work to turn to. So I send out a set of three to five poems and then turn to the next deadline and work on that.

I teach another writing workshop in two weeks at the Visual Arts Center - an all-day writing immersion workshop. I need to remember to address the danger of sharing unfinished work ... the risk of sharing work early. It is possible to talk away a writing idea. Or to abort it with feedback received too early. Best to let work gestate in darkness and silence, like a seed. Share work when it's ripe, but not before. That'll be a very important concept to float around at the all-day writing immersion workshop.

sunday art moment

2009-06-14T16:58:00.004-04:00

Thomas Van Auken

Working in Oil - the Style Weekly story on Van Auken.

The Eric Shindler Gallery is hosting a show of Van Auken's recent work in their gallery through July 31.

brewing a business

2009-06-11T11:58:00.007-04:00

Who knew that getting a business license to operate PirateMom Tutoring would involve a zoning permit? I spent about an hour this morning down at Richmond's City Hall building, learning what papers / numbers I need to have in order to apply for a business license. Getting the IRS number & the checking account was the simple part.

The woman who waited on me in the zoning office was fantastic - it took about 40 minutes, but now I have a permit I can post in my living room if I want. Mostly it says I plan to use my phone and email, at home, to arrange tutoring sessions with clients - which is exactly what I do.

What's wild is that my vision for this business is so small ... the most I want to tutor is six hours a week ... and I'll definitely be tutoring less than that in the summer and around holidays. If I earn less than $5,000 a year, my business license costs me $0. That's right - nothing. But I still need to have one. I guess.

I keep thinking that pirates don't need to have their papers in order. So what am I doing waiting in line at the zoning office to get this nonsensical permit?

Maybe I'm there because I'm gathering material for a writing project that's brewing as I go through my day, taking care of the mundane details of starting a business and other life minutiae. My creative antennae are out - I can feel them vibrating - so even trips to the post office and to city hall are feeding the idea.

on living the "unblogged life"

2009-06-08T11:52:00.007-04:00

To steal a phrase from Neil Gaiman's blog, I've been living the "unblogged life".

It's not that I don't have stuff to blog about. I actually left our house renovation project for about 24 hours and took myself to the Eastern Shore to work on the oral history project. I'd been trying to get there for weeks - between my husband's surgery, my mother's surgery, the end-of-the-year-stress in a household of students & teachers, and now the house itself in the turmoil of plastering and scraping and caulking and painting and the displacing of furniture - phew, it's been hard to pull away.

Isn't this photo great? This is my grandmother's brother Tom as a teenager - looking proud, and young, behind the wheel of what is probably a Model T Ford. Our guess is that he's about 18 years old here - so this would be about 1919 - but it could be earlier. I'm working on another blog for the oral history project. Sometime in July I'll start posting an excerpt a week from the interviews, hopefully full of pictures like this one. This guy didn't want to be a farmer - can you tell? He wanted to "go places, to live in town." His father told him he'd be hungry ... his son says that sometimes they were, especially during the Depression.

What do I want this blog to be? That's the question - it started out as a professional blog, but I don't know if that's what it will remain. I'd like to write more about my life as PirateMom - the writer, the mother and wife, the teacher, the country-girl-turned-city-dweller - the one who careens around Richmond, Virginia, in her aging Saturn station wagon with an 80-pound lab/hound mix riding shotgun and a precocious 8-year-old emoting in the back seat. Doesn't that sound like fun?

playing with words - I'm looking for company

2009-06-02T13:41:00.004-04:00

I'm teaching two creative writing workshops at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond in June - both designed to help writers generate ideas and to give them time to work. I designed them to be stand-alone workshops or a two-part series, depending on what a writer wants to do. Beginners welcome. Here's the information:

PLAYING WITH WORDS
In this one-day workshop we explore writing all literary genres, mixing and matching fiction, poetry, and non-fiction as we see fit (or unfit!) Expect lots of prompts, free-writing and playful exercises designed to encourage the free flow of language and ideas. This supportive workshop is designed for writers and artists of any experience level.

Saturday
June 13
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

ALL-DAY WRITING IMMERSION
Want to write, but have a hard time finding the time? This one-day immersion workshop is for you. In the morning, expect lots of prompts and starter exercises - adaptable for all genres. In the afternoon, each participant will choose one promising writing "start" to develop and spend the rest of the workshop writing. There will be the opportunity to share with the group at the end of the day. Writers of every experience level welcome.

Saturday
June 27 (this is a change)
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

home renovation

2009-05-30T17:34:00.003-04:00

I wrote too soon of the beautiful dining room with its green walls and creme woodwork ... the baseboards still need painting and the furniture is still under plastic in the middle of the floor.

The newly plastered kitchen ceiling is a joy even without primer, but this afternoon my husband and father-in-law decided to have a go at the pee-green linoleum tiles that are probably original to the house - the ones that never look clean - the ones we've needed to get rid of for years. Guess what - getting them up isn't as tough as everyone anticipated ... which means they're taking them all up ... right now ... which means no kitchen again.

Wonder what we'll eat for dinner tonight? And where?

Wonder when I'll turn my attention back to the play revision and the oral history project?

on appraisers and old houses

2009-05-28T10:14:00.005-04:00

I thought I would spend the month of May working on my oral history project - but have instead spent the month taking care of household business. Our dining room is now a beautiful shade of green - with creme woodwork. We hired an acquaintance who is skilled with plaster work to repair some walls and ceilings in our vintage 1930's house. The kitchen is now a joy.

The appraiser who came to determine the house's market value repeated a couple of times "this house is in its original state - and that's a matter of personal taste. I have friends who would come in here and gut it" ... I translate that to mean that people with money who move into old houses want those houses to feel new?

Well - we're not moving and we may decide against the refinance, so his opinion is largely irrelevant. He also has no idea of the house's "original state." I know because I hired someone to strip ugly wallpaper off the walls when I bought the house and had to undo some ugly 1970's renovation projects to return this house to its "original state." These pretty plaster walls are a testament to how beautiful the house can be.

My anger continues to simmer, however, at banks and markets and especially executives and loan officers and appraisers who make more in an hour than a teacher makes in a week. Foxes in the henhouse - that's what Jim Hightower calls the finance executives who keep finding their way into "public service" to create the policies we're living with. Hightower stokes my populist furor - gives it voice. Anger, unfortunately, makes me inarticulate.

Here's a good Hightower piece called Death by Pie about the unsafety of food from corporate conglomerates. I don't think I'll be buying Banquet pot pies anytime soon.

cool idea

2009-05-24T09:58:00.006-04:00

Teaching writing one-on-one in a non-school setting is something I'd like to do. It's great to have this model - they have so much fun with it, too. Wonder if this would work in a rural community - seems like the cool programs happen in cities.

Once Upon A School website

on limits and happiness

2009-05-22T09:29:00.013-04:00

Daniel Gilbert, Harvard professor, studies happiness.

What he's found is that our frontal lobes give us the ability to "manufacture happiness" ... so - what makes someone unhappy is how they think about their circumstances, NOT the circumstances they finds themselves in. Hmmm - so that saying, attitude is everything, from that hokey motivational poster on the high school classroom wall is on to something. I'm still not convinced ... but his talk on TED Talks is persuasive.

Here's the New York Times piece I found first:
"What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous".

next year finally in focus

2009-05-21T10:46:00.012-04:00

I've accepted a graduate teaching assistantship in the dean's office for next year, one that takes me out of the classroom. Since I won't be teaching, I'll have time to concentrate on the development of my dissertation proposal and bibliography, to prepare for comps, and to finish my coursework for the PhD. By next year this time, I'll have the dissertation to do - with an oral defense of a substantial proposal and two additional comp exams to pass - but I'll be closing in on ABD status. Not bad for someone who in May 2008 was just saying "yes" to this PhD journey.

The income from a GTA is less than half of what I make as a full-time teacher ... not nearly enough. Now that I know I'm not teaching next year, I'm more serious about marketing and building my tutoring business, PirateMom Tutoring.

Here's an excerpt from my PirateMom Manifesto: I careen around town in my aging Saturn station wagon and teach reading, writing, academic survival skills, and standardized-test-taking strategies for a fee. I hope, through working one-on-one with students, to earn some booty and to re-ignite my students’ inborn love of learning. I’d like to set them free to love reading and writing and thinking for its own sake and not for where it will take them. I’d like them to figure out who they were born to be and how reading and writing can help them get there.

Okay - probably not appropriate or relevant marketing material - but true to my values. I love reading and writing and that's what I share with students. Doesn't matter whether I'm in a classroom or working one-on-one with someone. I don't really care if their SAT's go up ... but I do care if they can pursue their dreams. If getting a good score is necessary to get there, then that's why it matters. It's about having choices and pursuing dreams.

more film stills

2009-05-17T17:52:00.003-04:00

film still from Film on Water
another film still from Film on Water

film on water

2009-05-16T13:51:00.016-04:00

I finished a video called Film on Water Thursday, just in time to priority mail it to Vermont for a submissions call at Great River Arts.

film still from Film on Water

I haven't worked much with shooting and editing video since my days as video producer at Cox Cable Tidewater and Virginia Power in the late '80's. I used to study television and films then - a friend used to say, "you watch television the way most men watch football." I even spent a year in VCU's film / photography MFA program making super-8 films that have since been lost in the great basement flood of Tropical Storm Gaston.

As I edited, I noticed that I was picking up smaller details as I went. For example - how the patterns on the back of the girl's sweater dissolved into the grasses in the marsh in the following shot. I started the project with linear ideas - the stuff of essay or documentary - but as I went along I became more fascinated with imagery and sound. The ideas about baptism and amphibious theories of human evolution are still floating around in the piece, but not in an overt way.

I decided to make the only sound in Film on Water wild sound I picked up while shooting. It includes a child's unplanned humming and singing - some slight dialogue, but mostly there's the sound of water and waves.

I will eventually post the video on my website and put a link on this blog, but I don't want to hurt my chances for gallery exhibition by showing it here first. As soon as I know I can post it - I will. Stay tuned!

does "let them eat cake" ring a bell?

2009-05-14T09:34:00.009-04:00

Coming up for air from the semester tidal pool has meant looking at our household financial reality ... and beyond our depressing microcosm economy to what's going on in the US. I think corporate greed and the loss of a sense of civic responsibility are two big reasons why so many people in the US are in trouble.

Some actions and attitudes are just wrong. From a Buddhist perspective: they are karmically wrong - and, from a Christian perspective: sinful. Our grandparents knew better - they knew it was good for everyone to take care of one's neighbors. They used to say "a rising tide lifts all boats" ... did the Reagan and Bush disciples repeat that one while they laughed all the way to the bank? Let's redistribute wealth to our wealthiest friends and who cares about the losers we leave behind?

Dante would say there's a circle in hell for the folks who think it's okay to make $30 million a year while 18 percent of US children grow up in poverty (according to the National Poverty Center at U Michigan). The numbers are actually worse than that. Children make up 25 percent of US population, but 35 percent of those kids are growing up poor. If you're a Black or Latino child - the numbers get worse. With poverty comes hunger and lack of basic education or job training skills and possibly despair.

Here's what Jim Hightower had to say today about corporate compensation packages: "Finding Ways to Perk Up CEO Pay"

This is funnier - but even darker - a mock reality TV show from The Onion: "Autoworkers Compete to Keep Jobs"

I can understand why CEOs feel they need bodyguards now ... the gates in gated communities may not be high enough. History has lessons for this ... does "let them eat cake" ring a bell?

incredible photos always cheer me up

2009-05-11T12:09:00.006-04:00

aerial photo by Jason Hawkes

I love these aerial photos by London-based photographer Jason Hawkes.

Here are some links to his work:
Jason Hawkes aerial photos from The Big Picture series
Jason Hawkes website
London at night (another Hawkes series on The Big Picture)

from London at night series

Big Picture home

post-semester malaise

2009-05-11T11:45:00.008-04:00

I have a hard time doing anything constructive once school deadlines are met and a semester is "officially" over. Elation gives way to malaise of a sort ... feels a lot like a post-sugar crash ... which I may be feeling today since we celebrated Mother's Day with a cookout at my mother-in-law's, complete with grilled hot dogs, cheeseburgers, chips, soft drinks, and very rich peanut butter pie.

Next year this time, I'll be taking comps. That semester will end with a weekend long written test - two huge papers on questions that are revealed at the beginning of the weekend with papers due on Monday. Glad that's not on my plate today.

My big tasks today are - get the video from the Sony onto my hard drive (harder than it sounds since I have a Mac and this Sony wants to interface with a PC) - work on the video - also find my 2007 taxes and other missing paperwork for our refinance - and ... laundry? clean the house? nap? market PirateMom tutoring?

It's an overcast, gloomy day - even the dog is feeling the malaise. She's been sleeping all morning - perhaps I should join her - life always looks better after a nap.

tada!

2009-05-07T16:15:00.008-04:00

Les éléphants d’Oscar et de Margarete Fisher. Cirkus Schumann. Copenhague, 1955 from Instants de Cirque by Paul de Cordon (Éditions du Chêne, 1977)

Went to my last class meeting for the semester and my last work is handed in ... my first year in the MATX PhD program is officially over.

I didn't expect to feel much relief - I have a video to finish by next Friday and some interviews to set up later this month - but I really do have that end-of-semester woohoo feeling.

Maybe I'll treat my husband and kid to ice cream after dinner tonight. But first - gotta move the wet laundry from the washer to the dryer ... the dog needs a walk and then there's my kid's soccer practice.

even closer to "done"

2009-05-06T09:51:00.006-04:00

I decided to put my e-portfolio on a Wordpress blog interface ... that way I can password protect it, but still link through my public webpage. I like the way it looks and the way it works! Maybe I'll make it public next fall when I'm ready to present to the committee for a formal review. Not yet though - still in raw draft form, especially my discussion of the "theory that undergirds my work."

Does my work really boil down to the two word statement: "stories matter" ?

My Eastern Shore Stories blog is also looking great - the plan right now is to go live June 1. I want to take / collect some photos and do a few more interviews before I publicize it ... and want to give myself some time at the end of May to let everyone know it exists.

Done a lot of work in two 24-hour days. Of course, the kid barely got fed last night - and I'm short some sleep - but it feels great to be this close ... this close with work I'm actually pleased to share.

By tomorrow afternoon, I'll be finished with my first year of the MATX PhD program. Just have to clean out my cubbie corner in the "bullpen" office they give us - I assume I keep the keys to the studio over the summer. I think I'll move my photos / lamp / other personal stuff from my office down there.

Not that the work ends. Tomorrow at 2:30 - whenever our last class ends - the video I want to make moves to the head of the queue.

theory, theory, theory ... run!

2009-05-05T11:02:00.004-04:00

We have to create a draft of our e-portfolio to finish out our lab class this semester and this feels premature to me - mostly because we have to write a "theoretical justification" for our creative work. And I don't know what to say.

So when I get an email from the instructor that asks me questions I can't answer - is panic or anger the right word to describe my emotional response?

Here's what I got via email:
"'Narrative' is the term that pops out of your introductory draft that makes me perk up my theoretical ears. Is there someone you are reading in this area? (narrative/narratology/story). Where does orality and aural presentation fit into all this, at either the level of capturing story, or the level of retelling story? Are you onto any exploration of text/image/sound theory and/or their interrelationships that might be worth citing here? "

At this point - after a year of intense academic work filled with theoretical readings not usually pertinent to these questions - I want to scream and run. How am I supposed to generate an intelligent, cogent "theoretical justification" for work I'm still making? How am I supposed to do better than a hack job on this justification when I haven't had time to read and digest the theory that's most interesting to me?

Specifically, my precise answers are "is there someone you're reading" ... not yet. "where does orality and aural presentation fit" ... I have no idea. "Are you onto any exploration of text/image/sound theory" ... sort of.

Okay - he's asking relevant, appropriate questions for my work. But I'm not a theory-head by any stretch. I'm not sure I care that much about why story matters. I think telling stories is something people do to create identity. And, therefore, the stories we tell shape our realities. They matter. Conducting and recording interviews is my way of collecting stories. Asking questions about photographs and memory and postmemory (from the stories we've heard) and yes, third order simulation - that's interesting to me.

I actually have a few bibliographies started as I sort this out. Haven't had any time this semester to read from those yet. I figure that's what I'll be doing as I plan my dissertation. So, it seems premature to have me do a hash job on it now ... before I've had time to read and digest the theory that pertains to my interests.

Whew - I still don't know what I'll be turning in on Thursday. Guess I'd better get to it!

equipment and media work

2009-05-04T10:40:00.004-04:00

I've squirreled away enough money in my "educational / professional development" savings account to purchase some equipment. So yesterday I started pricing and spec checking external hard drives and digital audio recorders / microphones. Time to pick up the phone and place an order. I'm going to do this the old-fashioned way so I can ask a few technical questions before the stuff is bought and shipped.

I'm also working on a new blog - this one specifically for the farm life oral history project. It'll be a repository for the stories I'm collecting - I'll publish one a week for about sixteen weeks. My plan is to go live on June 1, and publish a new story each Monday for sixteen weeks. Maybe some photos too, if I have some that fit and I like.

art as experience

2009-05-01T09:40:00.012-04:00

One of my graduate teaching assignments this semester was working as a writing coach with seniors in the sculpture department, helping them with artist statements. One of the coolest things about this GTA was that I got to see so much great work and hear about their artistic practices. Wish I could do this sort of work full-time!

Art's not just about making a thing (although it can be) ... sometimes it's about documenting an experience - or creating an experience for the audience. Made me think about what we do in the MATX program - about ideas and diversity and cross-pollination.

I'm thinking about this because I stumbled across a radio piece on Studio 360, about the artist Josh Greene whose work is experiential. Art as life as art.

In this particular piece unlicensed therapy he does pretty much what he says - he creates a therapist's "office" and takes "clients." In this project he listens, in real time and real space, to his "clients" (one at a time) for a sustained period of time, just like a licensed therapist does. Gives them his attention and support. What interests me is that despite the multiple communication spaces we use daily - communicating through email and facebook and twitter with multiple people all day long - wonder how many of us are starved for one other person's undivided attention - in real time and physical space?

why twitter?

2009-04-29T15:30:00.009-04:00

Picked up the May issue of Richmond Parents Monthly today because there was this teaser on the cover - "Twitter: Fad, nuisance or tool?"

Here's what Carolyn Jabs, columnist, has to say:
"For people who are working or parenting at home, the ebb and flow of Tweets is like what used to happen in the village square, around the water cooler or over the back fence. Knowing tiny details about the lives of other people can transform strangers into acquaintances and even friends."

Hmmm ... is twitter really like what used to happen in the village square or over the back fence? What exactly did happen - more precisely, what is it that makes a community a community?

Also: "Following someone produces unexpected, random insights - what snacks a celebrity eats, what books a favorite author is reading, or even when a neighbor is making her morning muffins." Okay - only one of these has anything to do with community as I imagine community. Two of these examples fall into that strange intersection between knowing someone and feeling like we know someone who is actually a stranger ... real and unreal at the same time.

It's a strange, virtual middle ground - why do I want to know what snacks a celebrity eats?

For that matter, why do I want to know when my neighbor is making muffins ... unless she's going to bring me some. That would be community!

Twitter strikes me as being like people who text each other while sitting next to each other. Fingers texting rather than having an actual conversation, one that could include other people too. There's a disembodied intimacy in this that seems unreal to me.

Then again, I don't twitter (yet) so I really don't know. Could always check out twittervision.com to see if the fuss makes more sense.

has our technology surpassed our humanity?

2009-04-28T20:44:00.007-04:00

I was struck by the story A Tragedy That Won't Fade Away in this week's issue of Newsweek. It's about a family's legal battle for privacy. Their daughter died in a car accident and photos from the crash site have gone viral on the web. There's not much the family can do through the legal system to stop it, but they're trying.

Why are human beings so fascinated with images of death? It strikes me that our morbid fascination is nothing new ... what's new is the power of digital technology and of the web to disconnect images of people from the communities that know them.

I'm reminded of the Einstein quote I saw on a bumper sticker at the Visual Arts Center ... "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."

Another aspect of this is public humiliation, covered in this related article: The Flip Side of Internet Fame

almost done

2009-04-27T22:29:00.010-04:00

In two weeks, my first year in the MATX PhD program will be over.

I have one final paper to finish and two media projects to complete by next Thursday - and then I'm done.

Of course, I almost immediately begin a summer course in the theatre department and I have the grant-funded oral history project that will take me most of the summer to complete ... so I don't have that satisfying sense of "ending" or "relief" that I would normally have at the end of the semester.

That may be the way of the PhD - it likely won't have clear endings like my other forays in schooling.

Still - the core classes are ending. Tonight MATX 603: History of Multimedia and Interdisciplinarity met for the last time. We spent two hours talking about the E.A.T. collaborative art / engineering projects. We talked mostly about 9 evenings of art , created and performed in 1966. "The first truly collaborative art and engineering project ever" - hyperbole that might be true.

I think we've learned to "seminar" over the past year. (Notice that I've made "seminar" a verb.) The reading was, at most, ten pages. We talked about the reading and the DVD excerpt of 9 evenings we saw in class, plus related issues of multimedia and interdisciplinarity for two hours.

After a year, the group is finally beginning to feel cohesive. Cohesive and interdisciplinary. I don't know that I'll miss the core classes, but I will miss "seminar'ng" with this particular group of people.

earth day perspective

2009-04-23T23:29:00.011-04:00

Sometimes, when I need cheering up, I go to The Big Picture at Boston.com and check out their latest photo feature. I'm rarely disappointed. Tonight I found these Earth Day photos - stunning.

Some of the photos in this series are disturbing and beautiful at the same time. There's one of a large chunk of Antarctica that's broken away. The photo of the Earth from space isn't my favorite in the series, but at the moment I'm hoping for perspective on the MATX program, on the end of the semester crunch, on weaving my professional development as a teacher and writer with my family life. That photo of Earth reminds me that the universe is a big, mysterious place. The photos are full of beauty and sadness woven together, just like every human life on Earth.

on hospital wireless and secret codes that can't be cracked

2009-04-22T10:02:00.007-04:00

The latest issue of Wired magazine has a mystery / magic / puzzles focus. Read it in the hospital while hanging out with a family member. The hospital visits explain my break from blogging, mostly because the hospital's free wireless is sketchy and frustrating. It's nearly impossible to send anything from there.

To pass the time, I bought some old-fashioned paper magazines and read them. The technology of print is portable with no need for an interface of any kind. Just a chair and some light to read by. I hope the web doesn't completely eradicate paper magazines and newspapers.

But about Wired magic. One of my favorite articles in this edition of Wired is Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack about the sculpture at the CIA Headquarters in Washington. Definitely worth a read.

orangatan mother and child

2009-04-18T23:05:00.004-04:00

more pictures from The Big Picture at Boston.com

gotta find a way to drain the tub

2009-04-16T08:00:00.006-04:00

Once upon a time I worked in public relations at a children's psychiatric hospital. A therapist colleague used to talk about stress like water in a bathtub. She said we can all handle a certain amount of stress, but if the water in our bathtub is filling up faster than the drain can drain, we start to feel it. When the water gets even with the top of the tub, it only takes a single, inconsequential drop for the water to overflow.

I've been thinking about this metaphor a lot over the past several days. Family stress and end-of-semester school stress and the unknowns-about-next-year stress are adding to my tub faster than it can drain. Writing helps. Surprisingly, being at school helps. I relaxed yesterday while I was on campus. Mostly, being aware helps. And being willing to ask for and receive help when I need it ... that's the hardest and most important part. Letting a friend, or even a stranger, scoop a bucket full of water from my tub is something I'm learning to accept.

For lunch yesterday, I let the good folks of Su Casa feed me. Sometimes it's that simple.