• finish prepping for SCSECS–mostly packing and things like that
• answer emails
• Go to SCSECS
• Survive three nights in my parents’ (nice) attic
• Come home and collapse for a day
• JMHP stuff–editing, layout
• Go to the dentist (AGAIN, but this should be the last long appointment)
• Finish prepping for the Babbitt Colloquium (I made a comic strip of Talma and Foss arguing. Foss is depicted as a rat, and Talma is a cat. Problematic? They were the defaults in the comic creator I used)
• NABMSA program committee stuff
• Go to Babbitt Colloquium
• Clean house
• Get dogs cleaned
• Finish prepping for SAM
• Go to SAM, chair seminar sessions, go to meetings, see friends, party party party, the usual ;)
• Come home & collapse
• Prep for Kzoo, Milwaukee, NABMSA
• Collapse
• Finish R&R of article
• Finish editing SAA paper for book collection

As well as, ongoing:

• Project 1
• Project 2
• Possible projects 3 & 4 (Yep, I’m insane. I’m a book-writing machine. Maybe)
• Continue to look for paying academic and/or publishing-related employment

At this point, I figure I can take a week off in late July, but not until then. I’m powering through–or trying to–on new drugs for the CLD and FM, plus caffeine, swimming, and sleep, of which I could use still more.

I’m pretty sure this was in Toronto–or it might have been Kansas City. Anyway, I was very new and still in grad school–this was my first or second AMS, and I was really intimidated by big-name scholars. I was walking somewhere and not really paying attention to where I was going, and went around a corner and RAN smack into RT–literally, into his chest. He was wearing this amazing,  heart-stopping purple suit, and of course he had the big beard and was like 2 feet taller than me. I just cowered. He looked down at me and bellowed “I’m Richard Taruskin!” I don’t know if this was intended as “I’m God! Get out of my way!” or “I’m RT, get out of my way” or “I’m RT, who are you?”   I was gobsmacked, and kind of whimpered something and he stomped off.

Nowdays I can’t believe I was so intimidated, but it helps me remember what it’s like to be a new person in the field or a student at AMS, and I’m always super-nice to students.

Stu Dent #1:

Hello  [Peeps, please use a standard salutation.  If you don't know my title, guess. You can never go wrong with "Dr."; even if the person you are writing to is not a Dr., it's polite and won't usually offend. Otherwise, "Ms." or "Mr." will do just fine. "Ms. Leonard" is great. I'll even take "Ms. Preston Leonard," b/c I realize the middle name thing (Preston is my middle name, not a pre-marriage name) can be confusing. Finally, if you can't tell a person's gender from his/her bio, etc., "Dr." is perfect and neutral]

Season’s Greetings!

I am a musicology PhD student at Fancy Parisian University, working on [topic redacted].

I have come across your work , though I hope to be reading more and in more details whenevr I get hold of the books and articles. [OK, English isn't your first language. I'm OK with little mistakes. My correspondence in German probably ain't the best either anymore.]

In the meantime, I wish to know if any of your writings and researches are available in electronic formats? [The fact that you have found me online indicates that you have internet access. Have ya gone to the publisher's site?]

Apart from that, without taking too much of your valuable time, I would appreciate any recommendation regarding documents or methodologies which might help my research. [Oh, well, let me see. I'd be happy to look in all of the databases for articles for you, and look at your library catalogue for books you can use, and gosh, you know what, I'll even write your lit review for you. NO.]

Stu was politely directed to the publisher’s site for my relevant book in e-book format, and I suggested a thorough search of the standard databases and such. What I really want to know is why these students don’t know to ask their librarians or advisors. A first-year PhD student should have already had or be taking a research methods course that explains all of this good stuff, and if the school doesn’t offer such a thing, then the librarian should be the first person they talk to. At least this student was relatively polite. Let’s move on…

Stu Dent #2:

Dear Kendra, [No. You don't know me. Use a proper form of address. ]

I’m an English BA student from Big City U. [A BA student? Newbies, don't your professors talk to you about resources and also the polite way to approach other scholars?] I’m taking a seminar regarding [topic] and I was thinking of exploring this matter regarding [film I've written on]. I’m still skeptic whether I can actually write a 10 pages paper (double-space, granted) about the [topic], but hey. [Um, what? Why are you telling about this? Also, 10 pages is short!] In any case, I found very few articles which specifically addressed [film], including your article [actually, it's a chapter, but I understand that English isn't your first language] entitled [redacted] from the collection [redacted]. Trouble is, and this is where you come in this gigantic rant [it's not a rant, but this isn't not professional either], the collection is not available at any library in my country. Would it be possible of you to send me the article? As I’ve mentioned, I don’t know if this is the direction my paper would take eventually, but being able to read it would certainly help seeing which materials are actually available to make my claim. [Have you checked the publisher's website? Talked to your librarian? Asked faculty members in the relevant areas?]

Stu #2 was directed to the publisher’s website for the e-book, her librarians, and her own faculty directory. I didn’t want to spend much time correcting her net-etiquette, so I just signed off as “Prof. Leonard.” Some respect goes a long way, people.

Stu Dent #3 and #4 are music history students I’ve met at conferences.  I don’t know either of them very well. I suspect they have crappy advisors, because they have adopted me as some sort of honorary one. It’s kind of cute, actually, except for the fact that they are well old enough to read the CHE, Ms. Mentor, and every other piece of academic advice ever written before they come to me with the kinds of questions they send me. Stu #3 is nervous: he writes to ask me if I think his article, 21 pages (with bibliography) is acceptable for a journal with a 20-page limit; what should be on his business cards; how much pictures count in a word-count. I’m happy to help, because, like I said, I get the feeling he doesn’t get this from his advisor. But I’d really rather help him see the major problems in his writing or analysis instead of these picky things that he can find the answers to elsewhere. Stu #3 also has a big Facebook problem, in that he seems like an idiot on it. We all post kittens, but when you’re going to go on the market one day and your future colleagues read about how putting Ikea furniture together is so hard that makes you cry, that you’ve lost your only good shoes and are panicking about it, that you don’t know why you should need decent theory skills to analyze a piece of music if you’re going into “music history”, you’re never going to look good.

Stu #4 seems to be a nice kid but radically misguided about higher education. She has some ideas about the way HE works that are totally from Saturn, and, even worse, is very rigid about her POV. Like Stu #3, her writing needs work; she likes to rehash old research by other scholars and call it new, and sometimes she makes arguments without having read the relevant lit, in very obvious and painful ways. She usually emails me because something hasn’t gone her way, and she can’t understand why. I offer her logic and suggestions for improving situations, but she doesn’t really want help, often–she just wants to bitch. Like Stu #3, Stu #4 has a FB problem, which reveals a lack of common sense and a sense of what’s appropriate on a public (or semi-public) forum. Again, future colleagues don’t want to know that you believe in magic, don’t know how to cook an egg, don’t know how to pay bills, can’t read a map, and get lost on your own campus. You can post this stuff when you have tenure–then it’ll be considered eccentric and charming. But right now, it makes you look incompetent.

I feel like we need to start training advisors better. All of these students should be going to their advisors, librarians, and relevant faculty for help rather than contacting total strangers or a person they met once who was friendly. I’m all for being friendly and helpful, but someone closer to these students would be more appropriate as mentors for these students. At the same time, if there’s an obvious problem with poor advising, maybe students need whatever kind of mentors they can get.

Thoughts?

http://pusheen.com/post/16271542893/prize-pack-includes-1-your-choice-of-any

Pusheen is cuddly, likes to party, and has a nose and mouth, which puts her waaay ahead of Hello Kitty in my book.

Anyway, last night the HOA held its annual open meeting. They borrowed a room at City Hall, and according to the secretary, we had 25 homes represented, about 1/5 of the community. Let me note now that I thoroughly confused the check-in people by giving my name and my husband’s name. We don’t have the same last name (*gasp*). They had no idea how to find us in their register. When they finally did, it was under my husband’s name, with my name as “secondary owner.” Also, we were the only people there under 50.

The President of the HOA started off the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge! Really? I don’t do the Pledge. What if I was not American? Karl told me to at least stand up. The Brits behind us stood up. The three of us left our hands at our sides and didn’t say the words.

We then sat through two hours of reports and the awarding of a service plaque to an insufferable woman who was going off the Board of Trustees. It’s a good thing she’s gone. She herself probably contributed 50% of the hot air at the meeting, railing against proposed development nearby and other things. She grabbed Karl and tried to harangue us on the way out at the end, but I very politely told her that we would have to agree to disagree, and that we were going home for dinner.

It turns out that people here are encouraged to spy on their neighbors, chide them if they don’t put on their porch lights at night  (we NEVER do, for various reasons, and why can’t the HOA install a few more street lamps?), report dirty cars, as they might be evidence of drivers running over the grassy areas at the entrance, and be busybodies in general. My nosy neighbors looked very smug about all of this. At Open Floor time, we discussed how the HOA was planning to pay $15,000 for street signs we’d already paid the city for in our taxes. We discovered that the power lines that power the front entrance lights trip a GFCI when it rains, but that no one shuts them off at the source, and they don’t want to spend the money to bury the lines at he proper depth to fix the issue. The minutes revealed that the HOA had paid for a new electrical outlet by the community pond so  that clean-up and gardening vols could have hot coffee. Why can’t they use thermoses? I spoke up about deterring drivers from running over grassy areas and the $15K signs. Karl asked about the lights and was pretty appalled by the cavalier attitude and lack of understanding of the guy in charge of them.

The HOA also pays for xmas lights in the entrance trees and an Easter egg hunt in the spring. They didn’t say how much they spent, but I was getting steamed. I’m not happy about the signs or the lights, and I’m definitely not going to pay for the HOA to implicitly or explicitly endorse a religion with my funds. The archives of financial statements on the HOA website isn’t up to date, but it looks like they spend about $200 a year on Easter. If the xmas lights are LEDs, Karl estimates that at $150/month; if incandescent, then $2000. So we’re doing some digging. Karl thinks he’ll run for the board next year. We’ll see what happens.

• 9. Large Digital Libraries: Beyond Google Books
• 14. Early Modern Disabled Bodies and Cultural Discourses
• 23. Shaw in the 1930s: Drama and Dictatorial Politics
• 41. Social Networks, Jewish Identity, and New Media
• 50. Writing Lives, Living Lives in French: Camille Delaville, Nathalie Sarraute, and Marjane Satrapi
• 106. No(Bodies): Ghost Children in Juvenile Literature
• 142. Affect, Distance, Confession: Emotion and Popular Music
• 174. The Opera Libretto (alas, this is sponsored by the Lyrica Society, whose administrators tend to be loons)
• 210. Margaret Atwood’s Apocalyptical Visions
• 295. Yiddish Theater and Film
• 298. Reading across Media
• 338. Media Women of the Belle Epoque
• 342. Asynchronous Empire
• 350. Sacred and Unsacred in Early Modern England
• 353. The Mythic South: Mythology and Materialism of the American South
• 401. The Screenplay in Literary Studies
• 462. Queer Memoir
• 473. Performing Identity in Late Life
• 493. Women’s Utopian and Dystopian Fiction
• 507. Twenty-First-Century Stevens: Modernism and Its Aftermaths
• 595. #alt-ac: The Future of “Alternative Academic” Careers

What would you go to?

And now to Shakespeare. I know I’m behind the times on this one, but Karl and I began watching Julie Taymor’s Tempest last night. We haven’t finished it–we’re about halfway through–but my early thoughts are not very positive. Before I saw the film, I loved the idea of Helen Mirren as “Prospera,” but in watching it I find she really struggles against a badly cast group of people and, apparently, a director who doesn’t know how to make Shakespeare funny without resorting to slapstick and inanity. According to Ben Child in The Guardian, Taymor explained the casting decision, “I didn’t really have a male actor that excited me in mind, and yet there had been a couple of phenomenal females—Helen Mirren being one of them—who [made me think]: ‘My God, does this play change? What happens if you make that role into a female role?’”Alas, she doesn’t answer that. Other than some altered backstory, the film never interrogates the questions raised by the change in gender.

And, in no particular order:

• The whole thing with glittery Ariel swooping around the ship in the storm? Between Ariel’s hair, the glitter, the bad 80′s style effects, and the music, I kept waiting for David Bowie to show up. Karl even started to sing:

You remind me of the duke!

What duke?

The duke with the power!

What power?

The power of voodoo!

Who do?

You do!

Dance, Caliban, dance!

• Ferdinand, played by Reeve Carney, is one of the most unattractive men I’ve ever seen. Karl thought he was a woman at first, and that that casting was part of the gender-bending. But no. He just looks like a stereotype of a transwoman. If I was Miranda, I’d find Caliban (Djimon Hounsou) way more attractive.
• Speaking of Hounsou, the only back actor in the entire film is Caliban? Really? As soon as he appeared on screen, Karl said, “They didn’t go there!” I was gawping at the weird whiteface-style paint on him. Karl: “The only back guy in the movie and he’s a half-fish cannibal. Half. Fish. Cannibal. The. Only. Black. Actor.” Yeah.
• Poor David Strathairn, as Alonso, doesn’t get to act at all; Alan Cumming is wasted as Sebastian (but as Ariel or even Caliban, he’d have been…is it wrong to say delicious?); Russell Brand and Alfred Molina are just inane and not at all funny or interesting or much of anything as Trinculo and Stephano; Felicity Jones is a pretty Miranda, but not one with much individuality.
• I’m fine with a naked Ariel (Ben Whishaw), but please, the yoga he has to do to keep the movie at a PG rating is distracting and pointless. He looks like he has cramps.
• And the delivery. Cumming is good; so is Strathairn. Brand is hard to follow and even Mirren is too often rushed or speaking in a kind of whispery monotone to be able to appreciate the language. Taymor misses so many opportunities for humor, and sadness, and the open declamation of the words.
• About the music. In the opening scene, I was optimistic–a kind of Vivaldi moto perpetuum thing, with a little electronica over it? Cool. But then….it’s just bad. It’s fairly incoherent, like the costuming, although while some of the costuming is really lovely and evocative, the music adds nothing, signifies little, and mostly seems an afterthought.

Maybe I’m spoiled by having seen the American Shakespeare Center’s production in October (brief review here). I’ll watch the rest of it, but I can’t imagine ever writing about it professionally–it’s just not worth it.

Theater of Blood is a camp masterpiece. It stars VP as a Shakespearean actor who, having failed to win critical acclaim, kills off the offending critics in Shakespeare-inspired murders, along with the help of DR, his cross-dressing daughter. He’s an insane ham, she pulls off the multiple personalities quite well, and it’s a gore-fest. One critic is killed a la Caesar with 28 slashing knife cuts inflicted by a mob of what the credits called “Meths Drinkers;” inebriated, insane hangers-on of VP. Another is drowned in a vat of wine, like Clarence in Richard III. It was great fun finding all of the more hidden Shakespeare references and connections; I’m convinced that the “New Burbage Theatre” of Slings & Arrows is an homage to Price’s “Burbage Theatre.”

The score was even better. I can’t imagine I’ll ever write about it professionally: who would publish it? But it’s as deliberately demented as the film, full of happy, major-key ditties during the murders, such as when Price, as Shylock, takes his pound of flesh from a critic cast as Antonio in a “revised version” of Merchant. Swooping orchestral clips accompany Price in disguise as he sets up his victims. It’s camp to the max, baby.

The swordplay is even better than the music, let me tell you. Karl and I–remember, we’re both fencing instructors–were dying of laughter. Price and one critic get into a duel with sabres that takes them up and down stairs and all over a gym, including onto a balance beam and trampolines. The fencing is like watching two toddlers with wrapping paper tubes go at it, and the foley that accompanies every blade contact seems to be the sound of an 18-wheeler slamming into a refrigerator. There are tons of technical goofs re: real fencing, but those are beside the point. It’s awesome.

You have to see it. Luckily for you, it’s been serialized on YouTube. And here’s the fencing scene, stating around 7:30 in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g028xqvHyYg&feature=related. Then jump to about 1:30 in this one for the trampolines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0C8MMG2ldg&feature=related. Maybe I’ll have my students fence on a balance beam sometime, you know, to steady their footwork….

Here’s what’s on tap so far for 2012.

Confirmed: three conferences: SAM (March); International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) (May); and Attending to Early Modern Women Conference (Attending) (June). For SAM I’m chairing two seminar sessions on Music & Disability; while I have to write responses to all of the papers, I don’t have to write a full-length paper myself.

To submit to: possibly SESECS (February); possibly NABMSA (July); AMS/SMT (November). I’m going to be at NABMSA and AMS/SMT anyway.

I should have 3 book chapters and one article out within the year and another book chapter in 2013; these are pretty much also confirmed. These are all done, pending any minor revisions.

I have three other articles out under review right now, and an R&R I haven’t decided what to do about yet.

I’m revising one book project now according to press feedback and have another proposal in the works, but the second one may not actually get off my desk until mid-year, depending on my health and other stuff. The framework is set up, and I have partial chapters in the form of papers, and part of an intro, but I have a ton of research still left to do. I don’t want to be coy, but also don’t want to talk details until things are farther along, so bear with me in numbering these Thing One and Thing Two.

I want to write on popular music this year–I have so many ideas!–as well as music at the American Shakespeare Center. So much to do, so little time….

Thing One: 26,607

Thing Two: 7995