I didn’t have a blog when I discovered this site three years ago:
squid hat pattern
squid baby hat
November 25, 2008 at 9:40 pm (Uncategorized)
and on a more positive note
November 4, 2008 at 11:35 pm (Uncategorized)
Thank the Lord! I can’t believe this time has finally come. I was emotionally overcome when I voted for Obama today: it’s the fourth time I voted for him! I haven’t been so happy about an election in a long, long time and I am so depressed that I couldn’t contribute with help, etc. I have my hands tied by the Hatch Act and by the Pennsylvania Home Rule Charter: I am forbidden by the City of Philadelphia to campaign or participate in election stuff for any person.
I voted in my building and went down in my pajamas at 6:30 AM. Still had to stand in line outside, though!
Godspeed to Obama and may he have the strength, determination, and help he needs from advisers and other government branches to sort through this disaster left by the Republicans.
yup, I think so
November 4, 2008 at 11:23 pm (politics)
George Packer wrote in the Oct. 13 issue of The New Yorker, “The Hardest Vote,” about Republicans in the Democratic mind.
“Thomas Frank’s 2004 book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” directed its indignation at the baffling phenomenon of millions of Americans voting year after year against their economic self-interest. He concluded that the Republican Party had tricked working people with a relentless propaganda campaign based on religion and morality, while Democrats had abandoned these voters to their economic masters by moving to the soft center of the political spectrum. Frank’s book remains the leading polemic about the white reaction—the title alone has, for many liberals, become shorthand for the conventional wisdom—but it is hobbled by the condescending argument that tens of millions of Americans have become victims of a “carefully cultivated derangement,” or are simply stupid.”
I have to say, I plead guilty to being such a person. I think people who voted for McCain tonight are just, well, stupid. Thank God they didn’t prevail.
Here is the column in its entirety.
buffy season 3, prom
September 29, 2008 at 7:07 am (relationships, TV)
Considering all the stories I have been hearing about my ex’s most recent romantic pursuits, I have to come to the conclusion that he has the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone.
college again
September 26, 2008 at 6:19 pm (books, family, rare_books, Smith, work)
I feel like I’m in college again. It’s so weird.
In no particular order, this is what’s happening in the next two months:
- I go to Northampton, MA on October 1 for a panel discussion on library careers. I’ll be there for about five days. And I’ll get to visit Dave, Sarah, Deiner, and Alex. AND my adviser for undergrad who is super-excited about my new grad school plans.
- On October 19, I leave for NYC for a week for Rare Book School. I have about seven books to read before that happens.
- On November 8, I take the GRE.
- By November 15, I have to have my grad school app. in order and submitted.
- By November 15, I have to give a committee for the fourth edition of A Basic Music Library a draft of choral music recordings and scores.
In the meantime I am in the midst of curating an exhibit to open in March: but getting that exhibit together involves transcribing all the text (almost done with that), figuring out the liturgical context, and finally identifying the script for the text and the script for the notation (nightmare), learning all about medieval music so I can write up the cards, and getting a case made for a giant antiphonal. And of course, I also have to come up with a snappy title (enter Krummel…Lynne? Suggestions?) and choose images for the promotional material and get the damn thing promoted.
In tandem with that exhibit, I hope to submit a poster session proposal about it and about digitizing our collections for the Music Library Association. If it gets accepted, I have to present about a week before the damn exhibit opens. I have also arranged a concert to be performed by local musicians for the first Saturday after the exhibit is opened.
Meanwhile, the church gig is back in regular swing, which takes Thursday nights and Sunday mornings out of my schedule for the next nine months. In addition to that, I am taking on another challenge and singing in a separate choir that meets on Tuesday nights and has lots of concerts. Oh, and I’m working 15 Sunday afternoons at the library and have to work dinners, too, for the Rare Book Dept.
Yikes. And to top it all off, I am supposed to be planning things for the Smith Alumnae Club and also be a supportive sister for my brother and sister-in-law who are expecting their first child on my birthday. That kid better not be born on my birthday. I don’t share well. 🙂 No, I’m sure I’ll figure something out! After all, December 1 is big enough to accommodate Richard Pryor, Bette Midler, Woody Allen, and Mary Martin.
two views on Sarah Palin
September 12, 2008 at 9:44 pm (politics)
industriousness
September 9, 2008 at 4:55 pm (history, medieval stuff, music, musicals, rare_books, work)
Wow, I haven’t posted anything in over a month! Amazing.
I am sitting here petting my Very Needy Cat. She’s a twerp. She has a new pink bed and it’s very exciting: she immediately seemed to know it was hers when I brought it home, and she attacked it. And then she went right to sleep in it.
My mother was here for a week and a half, so I gave her my bed and slept on the couch. The cat decided to sleep on my head when that was happening. So I still have a sore neck.
I am doing remarkably well. I actually noticed yesterday that I hadn’t thought about Paul hardly at all that day, and that is quite an improvement. I’m focused almost entirely on my career and my future in special collections right now and that is taking up quite a bit of time.
I’m attending my SECOND Rare Book School course this year in October, when I will go to New York and study illuminated manuscripts with Roger Wieck at the Morgan, right across the street from where I worked for three years, Oxford University Press! Amazingly the neighborhood hasn’t changed that much since I moved out of NYC (quite unusual, actually), so I will probably know most of the restaurants, etc., in the vicinity. I will stay in a hotel and not impose on my poor cousin or friends as long as the library pays for it. The course is going to be extremely useful for my medieval music manuscript exhibit, as I have to read all these books about medieval liturgy and time. I’ve been spending hours transcribing the scripts in all the manuscripts I plan to put on display and trying to ascertain the liturgical background of each. The earliest manuscript I am exhibiting is a 9th-century manuscript with notation (St. Gall, for those of you who are interested, and I have an 11th-century one with Beneventan notation). The latest will be from around 1500.
In the middle of the week at RBS in October, I will go and see South Pacific with Kemper. I am very excited about this, as this production is the first Broadway revival since its debut in the 1940s with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza. I love South Pacific.
At the beginning of October, I have been asked to participate in some kind of panel discussion at my alma mater about library work, so I will get to go visit friends and professors in Northampton. I think maybe I will need to buy a suit before that, too, so Loehmann’s, here I come!
I have been going back and forth with several professors in the music department at Temple about my application. Turns out they all wanted to accept me but the administration wouldn’t allow it. It’s quite a nightmare. So I am now thinking of getting a master’s in medieval history at Villanova, which happens to be my brother’s alma mater. He also happened to major in history there, so once the little beast returns my phone calls, hopefully I’ll know who to talk to over there. It appears that Villanova actually costs the *same* per credit hour as Temple, and all their courses are in the evening. Oh, and they actually have a huge course catalog, unlike Temple, which only offers history courses on the American Civil War and Stalinist Russia. ugh. So I am going to have to take the effing GRRRRREs for the first time in 12 years. I am terrible at standardized tests.
I am also going to try to put together a poster session of my exhibit for the MLA conference in February. I need to do poster sessions and publications, if possible, as much as possible. Overwhelming.
this too shall pass
August 7, 2008 at 6:03 am (devastating drama, early music)
At least, that’s what my mother and my friend Kemper keep saying. Wish I believed it.
In any case, I am regularly eating and sleeping now and although I’m kind of glad to be eating I am also disappointed that I am not going to lose the prescribed ten pounds my therapist said I would lose over this coming month. Grrr.
Now I am not only dealing with a breakup but I am also dealing with lady problems and the fact that not one, not two, but THREE pairs of my shoes died within four days of each other this week. The first pair was a pair of Stonefly slides that I bought when I moved to Chicago in 2002. The second was a pair of Dansko sandals that I had repaired (and not too cheaply) a month and a half ago, and the third pair was a pair of Franco Sartos that I bought in Chicago in 2003 that I had resoled a month and a half ago. Of course, now I have to get quality shoes and it’s the summer and we know how broke I am in the summer. Thank God for total reimbursement for Rare Book School expenses, is all I can say.
I am trying to decide whether I should go to NYC this weekend. Carrington is away for the summer doing summer stock in CT, and he rented out his apartment for the summer, which is inconvenient simply because his apartment is so convenient. I will visit Becky, who just moved there. It would be very good to see her. However, I hate to abandon my cat again so soon, and my apartment is a total mess. But it might be good to get away. I dunno. Maybe I could go next weekend if not. In any case, there is a Victorial and Albert Museum exhibit I want to see as well as a palm-leaf manuscript exhibit I want to see. Yes, yes, I know this is nerdy but I discovered the other day that we have palm-leaf books. Although ours aren’t illuminated. Naturally, the Met probably has things that will make me feel dumb for thinking we have even remotely cool things. But the V/A exhibit will be through next week, so perhaps I can go next weekend and allow myself some time to get over the migraines and things that are inherent every month with my lady problems and not inflict them on poor Becky.
I ALSO need to go to the Cloisters now that I’m getting hardcore into medieval manuscripts. As a medieval studies major I did not much care for medieval art in any form but now feel differently.
I am looking into taking a class at Temple. I explained to the first prof. I emailed that I had been denied admission into the music history program and so wanted to take a class. He told me to email the dept. head and ask him why I was denied admission, who in turn told me to ask another guy. The last prof. got back to me yesterday and it turned out they were all impressed with my application (!) but that I didn’t major in music and so they felt that the university would have a problem because of their infrastructure rules. Which brings me roundly back to square one (square candies that look round?). You see, this time last year, I got in touch with a Temple professor and made plans to meet up with him to discuss with him this very problem. Interestingly enough, when we finally got around to meeting, I had just met Paul a few days before, and it turned out this particular professor and Paul are very good friends. Sigh. In any case, the professor I met last year didn’t think my lack of a music major would be a problem at all and that the committee would really only care whether or not I could write, which a lot of performance music majors cannot do so well. Supposedly.
So I am hoping to take an early music seminar that will be taught by the director of Piffaro, which is very exciting to me, as this is the equivalent for me of someone being in the Decemberists or whatever it is you young folks are into these days. Of course I’m also for all practical purposes a young’in, but I feel like a fogey when it comes to music tastes. This prof. is very nice and told me that I could work on early-music performance as well as academic stuff so for me it’s perfect all around! This does mean that I won’t be able to sing with Choral Arts this fall but that was up in the air for me anyway.
I always knew people on Greyhound were creepy
August 1, 2008 at 7:06 am (current events)
Non Sequiturville 