Behind Again: Thornton and Haworth

Last Sunday, a week ago today, I went on a visit to Thornton and Haworth.

The house at Thornton, where the sisters were born, has become a small coffee house.  They make good coffee and bisquits!

Here's the room where, we were told, the sisters were born.  It's filled with happy caffeinators.

 Another room, which looked like maybe a sitting room.

Haworth is way more fun, because there's so very much to see!

 Look, a plaque!  (but not a plague.  Good thing!)

I visited the dead folks in the Church.

 Here's the corner.

 And a different view.

 This is the church from the parsonage, across the cemetery.  There are a WHOLE lot of monuments there saying things like: Here lies Joseph X, son of William X and Sarah X, died at 3 months.  And Mary X, their daughter, died at 2 years.  And Anne X, their daughter, died at 1 year.  And William, died at 72 years.  And Sarah, died at 78 years.  Lots of little infants and children, buried and marked with the same monument (same grave?).  It's very sad to think of all those little kids, and the parents just grieving.

 And this is the parsonage, from the same place I took the church picture.  The Bronte sisters were outlived by their father, who was curate of the church.  I can't begin to imagine how impossibly hard it must be to outlive your spouse and children.

The village itself is pretty nice, very touristy.  It was drizzly, so I went and had tea in a shop, and it was so so good!  The tea was hot, and the scones were perfect, especially with the clotted cream.

A Little Rant

I read the blog of a certain administrative writer who was lamenting yesterday yet again about the evils of tenured faculty.  Basically, the lament goes like this:  if the tenured folks would just do what I tell them without questioning or talking back, my college/the state of education/the whole world would be better, work more efficiently and effectively, and serve students better.  Often, the lament about tenured folks is tied to a lament about unions.  (There's often an undertone of regret that a former employer which was very top down failed, because the blogger can see how very much better a top down approach is.)

The post I just read basically questioned how to innovate when tenured folks are in the way and want input, and that input is seen as negative and inspired by defensiveness about our role.

Maybe I've gotten cynical, but the number of administrators I've now experienced who come into a position and want to make their mark is more than I can count on one hand.  They come in, mandate some massive change, push it through, and then leave, and those of us in the faculty and on the ground work through the problems and try to make it work, and then comes along another administrator and "pivots" and mandates a different change, equally big, totally focused on something else.  And then we do a massive five or ten year strategic plan, but then the administrator leaves, and the next comes in and ignores the plan in favor of their mandate, and then a year or two in, claims that the faculty is horrible because we don't put the strategic plan into effect, and writes a whole new strategic plan line on their CV, and then moves on.

All of these plans end up calling for new administrative positions, and end up putting more students in courses, and then criticizing faculty who lecture to rooms of 100 or more students.  New administrators are hired, who demand more paperwork, and demand that we add the paperwork to the other things we're doing, and then change their mind and demand different paperwork because the first didn't work after all.

I love hearing that administrator X has just come from a special conference at a super fancy hotel in a big city, which was totally paid for by the school, although they didn't give a paper, organize a session, or do anything more than sit around and get lectured at by gurus (probably about how bad lecturing is).  And then I'm trying to put together my funding for a conference to stay in a dorm room.  Ugh.

Okay, enough.

I'm exhausted because I've barely slept all week.  I need to find time to do some work, but my time feels especially fractured here.

9 September: London for "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix"

Last Saturday, I went with a colleague here to a symposium, "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix" at the London Metropolitan Archives.  It was really interesting, fun, and I learned a lot.

One of the most interesting papers for me (because I learned a lot) was Christopher Matusiak's paper on "The Cockpit at War, 1642-1656."  (I may not have the title precisely, because I was taking notes and am reading from them, and not an official document.)

Matusiak argued that despite legislation against theaters/plays, four houses played through to 1649.  According to my notes, these were the Cockpit, Salisbury Court, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.  Even after 1649, three more carried on playing.

[Am I the only one who didn't know that some companies kept playing after 1642???]

According to Matusiak, the companied argued against the validity of the Parliament's ordinances against theaters/playing, since they weren't Acts, since they hadn't been signed by the monarch.  That's interesting, no?

He talked about Christopher Beeston's widow, Elizabeth Beeston, aka Hutchison (also an aka used by Christopher Beeston before he died), who controlled the cockpit for some years, until 1658, when the lease expired.

Another really interesting paper was Stephen Watkins' paper on "Davenant at the Cockpit."  Watkins argued that from 1658-9, Davenant performed three works at the Cockpit, The Siege of Rhodes, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, and The History of Sir Francis Drake.  From what Watkins said, these were sort of opera pieces, with music, and recitatif, rather than what we traditionally think of as plays.  So they may have avoided trouble by not performing plays that were proscribed, but something else.  Watkins pointed out that since the Protectorate was at war with Spain in the 1650s, there might have been a more relaxed attitude towards these performances because of their subject matter.

The Siege of Rhodes had the first legal female actor on the London stage.  And not using cross-dressed boy actors may have made the morality thing less of an issue.  Interesting stuff, for sure!

In my notes about the paper, I wrote "Ballad-vs-Dav[enant]'s play [line break] John Evelyn [line break] 6 May 1659 --> didn't like play."  So either John Evelyn wrote a ballad, or maybe wrote about a ballad and that expressed dislike of the performance.  In either case, it would be evidence that there was a performance.

After the symposium, my colleague and I went to visit the approximate location of the Red Bull, near Haywood's Place now.

We also stopped to see what's left of the well at Clerkenwell, which is weirdly behind a big glass window in an office building.

Catching Up: London, The Globe, National Portrait Gallery, Part Two

On Sunday morning, I left my hotel after the breakfast, and took my bag to the Left Luggage at the train station before getting on the Tube and heading to Trafalgar Square.  I had 10 am tickets to "The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt" (that link will probably go dead when the show ends, alas).  But since it was only 9, I started wandering, and saw that St. Martin's-in-the-Fields was open, and people were going in and out.

So I went in and took a seat in one of the rear pews.  When I was in London before, I'd visited, but hadn't been able to go in the main building, just the lower area, the Crypt, where they have a café.  They were getting ready for a service at 10am, and people were about, very friendly, and didn't seem to mind my sitting quietly.  What a glorious building!  It's got to be one of the most beautiful spaces to just sit quietly (like the Banqueting Hall).

There was a family with two toddlers doing a practice run for baptism with a priest; they were all quite adorable.

And then the organ started in, and the choir started practicing, and it was glorious!  I wished I'd had time to stay for the service.

But I left about 15 minutes before, bought and downed a bottle of water, and went to the National Portrait Gallery.  So fun.  The drawing exhibit was marvelous.  And I learned that they can tell from the cross-hatching that Holbein was left handed.  So that's very cool.

As you'd guess, I left there, got a sandwich to go, and went off to the Globe matinee of Much Ado About Nothing.  It was Mexican themed, set in maybe the last part of the 19th century, with a wooden freight car as the backdrop.

That was an interesting idea, but I never quite got the why of it.  Beatrice was superb, Benedick almost as good, and overall, very fun.  They played Dogberry as a US film maker, but with an uneven accent, and some changes that didn't quite work for me.  

Still, all in all, well worth the visit!

This time, I sat in the lower gallery, and it was very good except that when they showed the film bits, I couldn't see because of the pillar.  Oops!

Catching Up: London, The Globe, National Portrait Gallery, Part One

On Saturday morning (3 September), I went into London..  I had time, so dropped my bag at my hotel and then took the tube to Temple.  I got off and had a nice walk to the Millenial Bridge, across, adn then saw King Lear (matinee) at the Globe.

It was a sort of post-modern production, starting when the actors walked on in modern dress, carrying bags and such through the audience.  The move to "hey, let's put on a play" wasn't quite clear to me, but then the play was, and it was really interesting and good.  I thought Gloucester was really effective, and Edmund, but found the Fool and Edgar less, ummm, satisfying?

And I didn't really cry at the end (I cry quite easily at plays and such, so I guess I wasn't super caught up in it).  

When I went to the Globe back in 2011, I was only able to get standing tickets.  This time, a bit more experienced in buying tickets, I bought mine when I found out I'd be coming, so I got to sit.  The first play I sat in the middle gallery, and it was really good.  I had good sight lines and could hear well.

After the play, I went to Southwark Cathedral to visit some dead folks.

I also visited Gower and Lancelot Andrewes again, as one does.

That done, I walked along the Thames and enjoyed the festival atmosphere.  I crossed again at Tower Bridge, and walked a bit around the Tower (outside, sine it was closed by then), took the tube, and got dinner before going to bed at the hotel.

Catching Up: Birding Rutland Water

I had an opportunity to go to Rutland Water Nature Reserve last Friday, 2 September, and got some birding in.  It was a beautiful place, with lots and lots of birds.  New for me are the Great Crested Grebe (lots and lots!)

 Egyptian Geese

 Little Egret

I also saw lots of other birds, including this very cooperative Mute Swan!

Other birds I feel pretty certain of: Black-headed Gull, Coot, Greylag Goose, Little Grebe, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Cormorant, Pied Wagtail, Robin.  Also probably Common Gull, Herring Gull.

All in all, a fabulous day outside, feeling very happy, walking lots.

In the Music Room with Professor Bardiac

I went in search of the music room the other day.  It must be down here:

Let's go down this hallway...

Through the doors.  Look, at the end, on the right, there's a doorway!

Turn the corner, and a hallway, with another doorway.  I hope there aren't any orcs down here!

Ta da!  A very nice room!  Natural light!  And there's a door in the corner... 

A not very secret stairway!  (It's not very secret because everyone in the Abbey knows about it.  I'm told the current music room is probably where the head Butler's office was.  He could get right up to the state rooms, to the main one, and could also see what was happening outside, in case anyone was there.)

One of the things you learn living in the Abbey like this is that there are sort of two houses.  One of the "family" house, with grand halls and grander rooms.  The other is the servant's house, with ways to get into the grand rooms that are somewhat hidden and discrete, so they could be anywhere, but not be seen by the family or guests, because at the time this house was built, that mattered a lot.

The ground floor is pretty much the domain of servants except for the grand entrance, which is a big room with a staircase.  The main staircase goes up to the next floors, and is really fancy.  The next floor up (the second floor in US parlance, and first floor in UK parlance) is grand rooms and halls, with some sort of secret doors, and a semi-hidden area with a big staircase.  It's the ground floor at the back of the house, and there's a gorgeous conservatory.  There's also a wing that's all where offices and kitchens would have been, that's off the main square of the house.

The next floor up (third in US parlance) is mostly family rooms, bedrooms and such, and a governess's room to one side.  The next two floors up are only accessible through the semi-hidden area with the big staircase, and lead up to what would have been servants' quarters.

So the house is sort of split in two.

Socially, things are very different here than when I was here before.

Then, there was one married couple with two kids, both parents faculty members teaching.  One married couple with only the male faculty member teaching.  And four female faculty folks more or less on their own (though at least two of them had long term partners who visited for a short time), and one male faculty person on his own.  And only the one couple with a "trailing spouse" was sort of older.  That meant that a lot of time three of us "single" folks did a lot of traveling and such together, and we also did stuff with the family.  Two of the "single" folks pretty much did their own thing, and the married couple did their own thing.  So it felt pretty social.  And gender balanced.

This time, there are mostly male faculty members with trailing spouses.  At least it feels that way.  There's one "older" couple, nearly retired, who seem a bit imperious.  There's a couple with four kids, and another couple with two kids, and two nearing retirement couples whose kids seem grown (and not here).  Then there are two male faculty members without family here (though one is married, but his spouse and child didn't come).  Mostly folks are nice, but the couples are doing couple things, and the families are doing family things.  (It's weird, but the couples nearing retirement seem older than I feel, but I don't think they're actually much older.)

At the one faculty meeting we had, it felt very, very old fashioned.  

The new principal seems good, but very traditionally male, too.

I'm glad I've been here before so I'm pretty comfortable traveling on my own and know my way around places.

Beginning Classes

We started real classes yesterday, though the faculty has been here since Tuesday, and the students since Thursday.  The administration and student affairs folks have been keeping everyone busy, especially with student activities to which we've all been strongly encouraged to go.  It's left less time for prep than I'd like, and no time (since last Wednesday) to go to town for some basics.  (I want some cough lozenges to suck on, since my throat's itchy, for example.)

I have classes from midmorning today until afternoon, but with an hour between.  It's great for prep, but not enough to go to town and get the lozenges.  I THINK I may be able to go Thursday morning, but only if I'm caught up on everything and ready for classes.

It's really the Victorian course that's worrying me.  I'm still reading background, worried about reading the novel, and so on.  I'll be reading something contextual, and then wonder about some aspect and get sucked into Wikipedia re all the crazy European wars and parliamentary maneuverings, and an hour or two later, I'll look up, and I'll have a vague idea about the wars and parliamentary stuff, but not much more about the original context.  Still, it's a fascinating period!

I feel far less ready, and far more discombobulated than usual at the beginning of the semester.  I think I really, really need to organize my room so that I can keep class materials easily to hand.

Okay, I need to finish reading some Victorian context, then finish my Shakespeare prep for that course, print and make copies, and then go teach!

At the Abbey

I'm here and settling in!

I had a fantastic time birding in the Highlands.  I stayed in a small town called Nethybridge, right near Cairngorms National Park.  We birded around there, seeing House Martin, Swallow (Barn Swallow in the US), Goldfinch, Wood Pigeon, Carrion Crow, Jackdaw, Swift, Buzzard, Pheasant, Lapwings, Mistle Thrush, Meadow Pipit, Red Grouse, Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Spotted Flycatcher, Gold Crest, Robin, Great Tits, Crested Tit, Common and Herring Gulls, Kestrel, Greylag Goose, Dipper, Gray Wagtail, Mallards (of course), Great Spotted Woodpecker, Pied Wagtail, Osprey, Grey Heron, Hen Harrier, Curlew, Redpoll, Hooded Crow, Greater Black-backed Gull, Cormorant, Canada Goose, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Oystercatcher, and Black-headed Gull.  (I just listed straight off my notes from various places, not repeating though of course we saw repeats.)

Alas, we tried but didn't see Capercaillie.

then we took our little van to Maillag, where we got on a ferry to Lochboisdale, on South Uist (in the Hebrides).  Along the way we saw seabirds galore, including Gannet, Manx Shearwater, Guillemot (aka Common Guillemot in the US), Black-legged Kittywake, and Fulmar.

We drove up to Benbecula, where we stayed two nights.  During the day, we drove around Benbecula and North Uist birding.  I saw Snipe, Red Shanks, Eider Duck, Cormorant Starling, Raven, Sanderling, Oystercatcher, Common Gull, Turnstone, Ringed Plover, GLAUCOUS GULL (very exciting), Dunlin, Greater Black-backed Gull, ICELAND GULL (also exciting!), Common Gulls, Mute Swan, Whooper Swan, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Tufted Duck, Lapwing, Greylag, Twite, Corn Bunting, Merlin, Black Headed Gull, NORTHERN WHEATEAR (another exciting one!), Pied Wagtail, Tufted Duck, Gannet, Rock Pipit, Stone Chat, Kestrel, Hen Harrier, Short-eared Owl, Coot, Gadwall, Diver (aka Red-Throated Loon).

After birding the second day, we drove up to Lochmaddy, and got on a Ferry to take us to Uig Bay on the Isle of Skye.  On the Ferry we saw Great Skua, Gannet, Black-legged Kittywake, and Manx Shearwater.  We drove across Skye pretty much straight because we needed to reach the hotel in Nethybridge, and it was pouring rain, but we did see Rook and Jackdaw.

The last two days we spent going up Cairngorm (in hopes of seeing Ptarmigan, but didn't), but we did see Goldeneye, White-Tailed Eagle, Red Kite, Red Grouse, Black-throated Diver (aka Arctic Loon), Goosander (aka Common Merlin), Wigeon, Shell Duck, Peregrine, Black-tailed Godwit, a weird hybrid Canada/Greylag goose (it looked like a pale Canada Goose with pink legs), Shag, Arctic Skua, Common Tern, Green Shanks, Barnacle Goose, Slovonian Grebe, Moorhen, Blue Tit, and Green Finch.

All in all, I saw some 80 species of birds, almost all of them new for me.  So that was very exciting!  (I can't seem to load images, but will try again later.)  I went with a birding company, Heatherlea, and they were great, and the guide wonderful.  There were six guests on our trip, and one guide, so we got to see lots, and he gave us lots of background information, too.  I'd love to go on another trip with them.

Then I spent a few days in Inverness, walking around, visiting Clava Cairns, the Culloden Battlefield, Loch Ness (on a boat), and Urquhart Castle.  It was all wonderful.

And now I'm at the Abbey, and I need to finish prepping for my courses.  This, too, is a beautiful place, very comfortable, with a staff that really takes care of things well.

Practice Really Does Make a Difference

On July 13th, I did my three test pieces from Suzuki Book 3 for my teacher, Strings, and passed, making me, according to Strings, an "intermediate" Suzuki student.  In old D&D terms, I'm level 4!

Before that, for about a month, I was totally focused on memorizing and working on those 3 pieces, getting them to the point where I could play them as well as possible, from memory.  It was hard.  Most days, I was practicing about an hour and a half to two hours because I really wanted to pass into the next Suzuki book before I left.

Part of the issue is that Strings was leaving for a music camp thing, and won't be back here until after I've gone.  And then I'll be birding in Scotland, and won't be practicing then.  And then I'll have to get a violin at the Abbey (they said they probably have one I can use, and if not will help me find a student rental).  But, in terms of memorizing, it would be hard to be away for two or three weeks and then go back to trying to play those pieces from memory.

But it worked out!  And I've started into Book 4.  I've also started back working on the technique books I have.  There are 4 of them.

1.  Ševčík bowing
2.  Ševčík technique (more fingering than bowing) (first position)
3.  Whistler's Intro to 3rd and 5th positions (hand and finger, mostly)
4.  Trott's Melodious Double Stops

Each of these helps me focus on a specific area where I need to focus (and really, pretty much everyone at my level needs to focus on bowing, fingering, positions, and double stops, I guess).  But for the past couple of months, I haven't practiced these as much because of focusing on the three test pieces.

I posted before about working on the Ševčík books, and how hard they are.  That was back in January, and from what it says, I got the Ševčík books last summer, and started working on them.

I've been better about the bowing book than the fingering book.  Today in my practice session, I couldn't even remember where I'd left off with the fingering book, so I decided to start at the beginning, since they're so hard.

As you can see from that previous post, the first set of exercises starts with slurred quarter notes.  Last summer and into winter, it took ten minutes or so to be able to slur the notes in a single measure more or less okay.  So on a given day, I might make it through one new measure, and one old, and then eventually, a whole line of old, and so on.  (Because I did improve.)  And then I'd start the next set, and basically the same slow process.

Today, I started and played the whole first set pretty much straight through, with a few mistakes, but mostly way, way better than I remembered.  It was pretty amazing to me, because I go along practicing, and often don't realize that I've improved, but then I go back, and something that was really hard is not nearly as hard.  And then it's obvious that I actually have improved.  And that makes me feel good!

So I remember for the future:

1.  Ševčík bowing - exercise 4, #30 (page 9)  (Basically, each exercise is a few lines of music, and then the page and next page are full of bowing variations for those few lines).
2.  Ševčík technique (more fingering than bowing) (first position) - back to the first exercise on the A string
3.  Whistler's Intro to 3rd and 5th positions (hand and finger, mostly) - G major, #62 (page 10)
4.  Trott's Melodious Double Stops - played through #1-3, worked on #4.

A Little Adventure before I Go

I have 8 days before I need to be on a plane to London!  I'm excited, overwhelmed, and more overwhelmed.

I've now finished all the big projects that absolutely have to be finished before I go except the whole class prep project.  There are two other projects I should also get further on.  But at least I've taken steps on one of them.

My friend, K, who's going to house sit has moved in.  So far, this arrangement is working out really well.  I hope he enjoys living in the house!  (He's a really good guy, and easy to get along with.)

I started riding my bike again this past weekend, just on a local trail.  And on Sunday, I was thinking about cutting my ride short to work on something else, so I turned off the trail onto a road in order to be able to turn around more easily, and saw a sign that pointed to a landing and said something about the joys of taking your kid fishing.  But I'd never heard of this landing, and it's only about a mile off the bike trail.  I rode up the road, which I'd thought ended at the gravel mine (visible from the trail crossing) and realized that it turned and went on from there.  What I found was a little park area, with a gravel/packed dirt and pothole parking area, a few picnic tables, and a little paved boat ramp with a sign saying that it was four something miles up river to the landing near campus, and 5 something miles down river to a landing further down.

I had a plan.  It wasn't a particularly cunning plan, but a plan.  I could put the kayak on the car with the bike inside, and drop the kayak at the landing near campus along with my life vest, paddles, and so on.  Then take the car (with the bike) to the new landing, leave the car there, and ride the bike up to the landing near campus, lock it there, get in the kayak, and go down river.  So I could do my own drop off and pick up because it's fairly close.

And that's what I did yesterday.  I was a little anxious about it, especially worried about what if I missed the landing somehow?

The thing is, right across from the landing is a ski jump, and that's visible from pretty far away, and not easy to miss, so the chances of my missing the landing and having to go another five miles were low.

The weather was good, and I told a couple friends what I was up to, and texted them before I got on the water with my eta (and then when I got out again).  But still, doing things all alone makes me a bit apprehensive.  It doesn't usually stop me doing them, but it makes me worry a bit along the way.

Here are some pictures from the adventure:

My kayak at the first landing.  (There's an ice rink right near, owned by the city and university jointly, and the city rec people were kind enough to let me leave my life vest and paddles and such there.  I used my bike lock to lock the kayak to the sign, probably illegally.  But it was out of the way at least.)

At the second landing, ready to get on the bike!

Bike parked at the ice rink, and locked up!

Kayak loaded and ready to go!

Gorgeous day on the river, mostly very quiet and calm.

Ski jump in the distance!  (Why was I worried I'd miss that?  I blame my recent reading of The Mill on the Floss, where Maggie becomes a "fallen woman" because Stephen purposefully "misses" landing at the town where they were supposed to land, and ends up going so far that they have to be sort of rescued by a ship and spend the night on it.)

A much closer view of the ski jump.  I really don't know how anyone has the courage to slide down that and fly through the air.  But they have big competitions here during winter.

The landing (with my car parked up the hill).

Pulled out!

Packed and ready to go back and pick up my bike!

All in all, it was a really lovely adventure, and I'm glad I went.  I'd like to try the next leg, too, maybe next summer!

Learning Language?

As is my wont, I'm listening to a book on CD in my car.  I usually favor history and lectures and such, because the continuity isn't as important as with, say, fiction.  Today I was running errands, listening to a lecture on language.  The lecturer is going over some of the evidence for/against the idea that grammar is innate/inborn in humans, and as part of his discussion, he's talking about how very easy it is for little kids to learn language compared to adults.  Yes, he basically says that little kids don't even have to work at learning language.

But here's the thing.  If you've spent time with little kids, you realize that they're working really hard for hours every day learning language, learning to manipulate the world, and so on.   I think we're disrespecting little kids somewhat if we don't recognize that they're working really hard at all the learning they're doing.  It looks like it's not work, and hopefully there's plenty of fun and play involved, but even that is brain work.

If I spent 8+ hours a day constantly having people talking to me within a context, giving me feedback on my attempts to talk, I'd learn a language more quickly than otherwise.  In fact, I learned Spanish in an immersion program as a young adult, and within a couple months could hold a pretty decent conversation.  I didn't sound great or perfect, but I could hold a basic conversation with someone who was willing to be patient, and many people were willing.   It was exhausting, too, way more than you might think.

One of my colleagues went to Nicaragua last year to work on her Spanish, doing an intensive immersion program, living with a family, and so on.  She told me about one day when she just broke down and started crying (worrying her host "mother" greatly in the process).  She told me it made her think about when toddler's get so upset about something that seems unimportant because she was just learning a lot of stuff, working hard, being very tired, and very frustrated by not being able to express herself.  And like a toddler (according to her), she just got really upset and started crying over something that wasn't that important.

All this has nothing to do with whether it's harder to learn a language as an adult.  It may well be.  But we rarely learn languages as adults the way we did as children.  (And, for most of us, as an adult, we're learning a second language, so we know to think about things like grammar and such.  It may be much harder to learn grammar and such for a first time if you've never learned language, I suppose.)

The lecturer also talked about accents, but I think that's a bit of misdirection, since we all have accents within our native language, and learning a specific accent in a second or third language may be harder because we've learned to make certain sounds very young.  (Or so a colleague tells me: an infant begins to sort out and imitate specific sounds from that language/s they're exposed to really young.)

Summer Projects

It's been a busy summer, full of projects of varying sorts.

I did some professional stuffs, and still have more to do.  But on the housing front, I got my floors done, powerwashed the deck and part of the house, and am in the midst of painting the exposed structural wood on the underside of my deck.

The floors look great (and involved moving stuff out of half of the house, and back again, with lots of trips to various places to donate clothes and such.

The deck looks WAY better than it did!  And I've fallen in love with the power washer.  (Good tools are amazing!)  (You can get a sense of how dirty it was in the top picture.)

I'm about one third done with the final coat (well, I hope I don't need a second coat of paint), and all primed (two coats) on the exposed (and very weathered wood) structural framing for the deck.  I think the color is a little different than what's on the rest of the lower part of the house, but it should be okay.

I have two more projects (both professional) that will probably take about a week each, maybe less, and then more reading prep for teaching at the Abbey.  But so far, things are beginning to feel more ready.  I'll feel a lot better about leaving with the house in good shape for the winter.

Review: Will

I watched the first couple of episodes of Will last night, thanks to my Sister-in-Law who told me it was on and where to find it.  (Because I'm slow on pop culture stuffs.)

Things I liked:
It felt like the producers/directors were trying more to catch the sense of shockingness, wildness, and "on the make-ness" of early modern London (especially from the point of view of a newcomer from a smaller community, Shakespeare), rather than being "accurate" in terms of music, costuming, and so forth.  It was like watching a really good modern production of Shakespeare that's trying to do the same sort of thing.  (It's sort of like making some things feel familiar rather than emphasizing the estrangement of the past.)
Cast diversity.  (First, England in the early modern period was more diverse than popularly thought, and second, give those actors a job!)
Music.  (I laughed at "London Calling"; I liked that it wasn't all Purcell and lutes.)
Staging the Theatre.  (That dance scene early on with Will Kemp: chaos.  Fun.  You definitely get a sense that the audience had a lot of power and was active in the theatre.  I found putting women in the background/offstage at the Theatre interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it.)
Edward III.  (They gave it to Shakespeare, which was interesting.)

Things I didn't like:
Torture.  (I just can't watch torture.  Or won't.  Showing torture in explicit ways seems really popular on TV in the past couple of years, and probably contributes to me watching less TV.)
Shakespeare's Catholic.  (Maybe.  No one really knows.  It gives them lots of tension.  I usually don't get that much sense when I read early modern lit and such that most people were really focused on anti-Catholicism in the 1590s because Mary Stuart was dead and the Armada defeated.)  (I bet they read Stephen Greenblatt, eh?)
Chronology?  (Shakespeare's first plays get performed in the early 1590s, but they've killed off James Burbage via torture, though he didn't die until 1597.  I don't know how he died, but it seems like they missed opportunities to do more with Burbage.)

If this becomes a "thing," then we can expect our students to declare with confidence that Shakespeare was Catholic and so forth.  Worse things have happened.  (At least it doesn't show Oxford or Bacon writing the plays, right?)

I'm probably not going to watch more because I really dislike torture.

Rules of Three

You've heard about these, no?  The idea is you prioritize three things, and that's it.  You make a big list:

3 big goals
3 things for the year
3 things for the month
3 things for the week
3 things for the day

Or whatever.

I have my doubts.  Maybe I'm totally wrong.  No doubt I will never be a great Shakespearean, biker, birder, or violinist.  (See, four things!  And not even the most important.)

Or the people who do this successfully have someone else in there life who handles all the other things?

Let's imagine, here's my lists.

Big goals: being a kind and responsible person, professional success, adventure

3 things for the year: teaching at the Abbey, publish an article, [not public]

3 things for the month: study Victorian lit, prep courses for the Abbey, [not public]

3 things for the week: read Mill on the Floss, study Victorian lit, [not public]

3 things for the day: read Mill on the Floss (pages), power-wash deck (part), practice


But here's the problems.  First, the being kind and responsible seems huge, and important, but not something that you say for a month, well, this is the thing I'll do to be kind and responsible.  Instead, being kind and responsible probably means I need to say "yes" when a friend needs help (moving, for example).

There's a shadow list, too.  Here's the real list, with the shadow list in bold:

3 things for the year: teaching at the Abbey, publish an article, [not public], violin (vibrato, Book 4), time with friends, adventure (birding, etc), prep/teach new senior seminar in spring

3 things for the month: study Victorian lit, prep courses for the Abbey, [not public], pass Book 3 test on violin, [not public], garden, bike, kayak (ie. be outside!), eat meals, do laundry, spend time with friends, help friend move, work on paper

3 things for the week: read Mill on the Floss, study Victorian lit, [not public], practice Book 3 stuff a lot (solidify memorization of 3 pieces), [not public], power-wash deck and north side of house, take down wild grape vines off trees in the back of the yard 

3 things for the day: read Mill on the Floss (pages), power-wash deck (part), practice, eat, do laundry, garden stuff, grocery shopping.


I'm probably forgetting some things.  But you see the difficulty.  One of the [not public] things is something that's important to a friend.  It's important to me because of my friend.  It will take some serious time.  But it doesn't achieve the sorts of things most people who use these three priorities put on their lists, I don't think.  (And it does contribute to the overall being kind and responsible.)

Laundry, for example.  It doesn't take lots of time, but it's necessary to keep from being dirty and really stinky, so for basic social function.  Someone has to do it, no?  And that someone is me.

Grocery shopping takes more time, but again, unless I'm going to call for take out pizza every day (not much else is delivered around here, I don't think), I need to go shopping.


I've spent a ton of time this month practicing the violin, trying to pass my Book 3 test before Strings leaves town for a month, since I'll be gone before she returns.  When I go, I'll be away from the violin for at least 10 days, maybe more.  I'm worried that if I don't pass the Book 3 test (which involves playing three pieces from memory to my teacher's approval given my level), then the time away will mean I have to rememorize the pieces again.  (I should have access to a violin at the Abbey or help finding a student violin to rent.  And then Strings has offered to teach me via skype if we can work out the timing.)

I think I've accepted that I'm too scattered to be really successful in some peoples' terms of success.  I'll never be a famous/great Shakespearean, never be a pro-biker, never be a really good birder.

Do people really use the rule of threes in a happy and serious way?

Booked!

I've been booking a birding trip, theater tickets, train tickets, hotels, and even a symphony ticket.

So far, everything looks good.

I've had a couple of glitches.  My cell phone set up can't call internationally.  But the birding place was kind enough to call me, and then again (after I called my bank to tell them that I did, indeed, want to give money to a Scottish birding company), and voila, I am booked for a week of guided birding (with a group) in Scotland and out to the Hebrides!

I tried to book tickets for the RSC at the Barbican, but got rejected.  And the same for the London Symphony.  So I used the email about the rejections (with my code number), and explained that I couldn't call them.  (I also called my bank to make sure they weren't doing the rejecting.)  And a few minutes ago, someone from the Barbican just called me and we got it sorted out.  (At least, I hope it was someone from the Barbican, because I gave them the credit card information...)

My brother (I'm on his family phone plan) is arranging for my phone to do international stuffs while I'm there!

So far, I'm booked to see two shows at the Shakespeare's Globe (I got seats this time, having stood before), 2 shows at the RSC in London, 1 show at RSC Stratford, and a performance of the London Symphony Orchestra!

I'm spending two days in Inverness between the birding trip and when I need to be at the Abbey.

What else should I book now?


In other booking news, I've almost completely reconstituted my house; yesterday, I put books in place.  Mostly.  Still two more boxes of stuff to unpack, and lots more to put away again.

Failure and Resilience

These are the code words these days.  You've probably read the recent article by Jessica Bennet in the New York Times, about an initiative at Smith to help students deal with failure.  It's an interesting article, with discussion of not only Smith's initiative, but several other schools' work in the same area.

The basic idea is that the students at these schools have never really experienced failure, and then when they get into college and don't do as well at something (they're talking B-land grades and such as failure), the students have difficulty dealing with it.  First recognized, according to the article, at Stanford and Harvard as "failure deprived," these students basically haven't fallen down and picked themselves up enough to shrug off the next fall.

The article talks about programs at Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, U of Pennsylvania, U of Texas-Austin, UCLA, and Davidson College, all of which encourage students to try things and be willing to fail at them.

I gather from Meansomething (in a facebook conversation, mostly) that there's so much pressure and competition to get into the right college that High School students are being taught to focus primarily on what they're good at, and not to try as much new stuff that they're not already good at.  That way, they get to show how wonderful they are on transcripts and stuff, and don't have to risk having that poor grade in [subject they aren't already good at] to hold them back.

I guess I have a couple issues with the idea.

First and foremost: The schools listed above pretty much are all way elite.

NWU isn't elite.  But I've had relatively few students in my time at NWU who have emotional difficulty when they fail.  Usually, they mess up on something, get a little upset, and either work harder, figure out how to do better, or get over it and mess up some more.  If the colleges told their admissions offices that they want students who've demonstrated an ability to fail and deal productively with that failure, they'd get a different population of students, probably including some like my own.  Those schools can change their perceived problem if they decide they're willing to risk admitting students who've demonstrated failure and resilience.

In fact, I'm guessing their really exciting students have already experienced lots of failure and recovery.

Which brings me to my second point: if you're doing anything difficult and working to your capacity at it, you're failing a fair bit.  That goes for athletes, musicians, scientists, humanists, everyone.

I bet every single day, Yo-Yo Ma fails at something in his cello practice/playing.  His failure's probably pretty much at the level of not playing quite as he wants a given piece, or missing a fingering slightly, or whatever.  But he's a darned good cellist, and yet working at his level, challenging himself, he probably fails a lot.  And then he practices more, and in performance, most of us wouldn't hear the slight imperfection that he knows is there at some point or other.

The same goes for athletes.  How many incompletions did Joe Montana throw.  A lot.  But he also threw some amazing, beautiful passes.

A high school musician who's really doing their thing is failing a lot, and then practicing some more, and dealing with it.  The same with an athlete.

But if all the science students are doing is cook book science, following recipes in the chem lab and getting an A for following directions well, then they aren't really doing science, and they aren't really working at a high enough level.  Of course, there's a point at which chem students have to learn basic stuff without being in danger of blowing up their schools.  But somehow, they aren't doing in their field what the musician or athlete is doing in theirs; they aren't figuring out what's been done before, a bazillion times, on just some level for themselves.

The musician playing a C major scale isn't doing something new.  And they should have guidance.  And yet, they're doing something cognitively different than following a chem class recipe book, no?

That Girl Scout who plans a camping trip, even with adult guidance, is doing the cognitive work, and may fail on some level, in fact, probably will.  And hopefully, she'll learn from that failure.

I'm guessing the really exciting students at Stanford or wherever, are the ones who've done something like music, athletics, scouting, started a business or community project, failed, and figured out how to go on again.

And I'm guessing the ones who are less resilient, less able to deal with failure, are the ones who've done really good work at cook book chemistry (or whatever).  They've followed directions really well, and worked hard to do things just right.  And they did things just right.

So how do high schools teach students to fail?  Or would it be enough for colleges to look for signs of successful failures when they're admitting students?

I'm not picking on chemistry, but it seems to me, from my own experience, that beyond learning basic lab safety and procedures, I didn't do much chemistry in my chemistry labs, not in two years in high school, not in several years in college.  And I don't know if there's a way that could be done differently, since there's so much pressure to teach large numbers of students in lab classes.  But somehow, in biology, we did little actual experiments, often trying to grow some plant with this or that different condition, and sometimes, they failed.

Can students productively fail assignments/exercises in my courses?  There's certainly lots of room for students to fail at their research projects on some level and still get an A on the project for failing well.  (When they really try to learn something and run into a brick wall, and learn something else, for example.)  But other work?

What about you?  Did you fail and learn from it early?  Or no?

Do you teach students how to fail?

***

Learning violin is taking me to whole new levels of failure these days.  But Strings says that she's never satisfied with her performance at a concert, even though other folks don't even realize she's made a mistake or something.  She just has expectations about the level of playing she wants, and doesn't (she says) ever quite get there fully.

The good news is that I'm improving on violin by failing and working through difficulties.

Progress: Floors and Summer Projects

As of last night, the floors are laid, sanded, and stained.  At this moment, the floor folks are putting on the second coat of finish.  Then it dries for the weekend, and on Monday, they'll come put up baseboards and such.  It looks every bit as good as I hoped!

In other progress, here's what I had to do, with the done parts stricken out.

Now I need to finish a third hurry-up project, and then I can begin the real summer projects!

1.  Studying Victorian lit and culture  (I should probably make a whole list for this!)

2.  Repainting some woodwork on the back, outside of the house.  (Last year I did some in the front of the house.)

3.  Finishing a paper and sending it out.

And some other projects, small and large:

1.  Learning the next violin song.  (and working on shifting, vibrato, and double stops)

2.  Planting my garden (yep, it still isn't in.  Maybe tomorrow...)

3.  Updating hard drives.

4.  Getting rid of some old electronics stuff (after checking the hard drive and emptying it...  I hope!)

5.  Doing a book of pictures for my friends' kid's third birthday

6.  Making all my reservations for the UK

I've made MOST of my reservations for the UK. 

Flights

Birding

Hotels for August before birding and December (for the British Library)

Between Birding and Starting << suggestions?  I'll be in Scotland for birding, near Cairngorms National Park.  Should I go to Glasgow?  Inverness?  (I've been to Edinburgh, and while it's wonderful, I'd like to see something new.)

In the violin world, at my last lesson, my teacher agreed that I'm ready to start memorizing and working towards my Book 3 test.

Book 2 test

Book 1 test

After my first lesson

So, lot's to do this weekend, and then in the coming week, I get to move back into the rest of my house!

Arrival!

The wood has arrived!  This is a lot of red oak, and from the great North Woods, I'm told.

(My sliding glass door is super dirty, but it seems silly to clean it before it gets exposed to all the more dust.)  

I submitted my syllabi for the courses at the Abbey today.

I still have some paperwork to submit (emergency info, for example), and have to have a physical so a doctor can fill out a form (because they won't fill out a form if you haven't been in within the year, seems).

Now I need to finish a third hurry-up project, and then I can begin the real summer projects!

1.  Studying Victorian lit and culture  (I should probably make a whole list for this!)

2.  Repainting some woodwork on the back, outside of the house.  (Last year I did some in the front of the house.)

3.  Finishing a paper and sending it out.

And some other projects, small and large:

1.  Learning the next violin song.  (and working on shifting, vibrato, and double stops)

2.  Planting my garden (yep, it still isn't in.  Maybe tomorrow...)

3.  Updating hard drives.

4.  Getting rid of some old electronics stuff (after checking the hard drive and emptying it...  I hope!)

5.  Doing a book of pictures for my friends' kid's third birthday

6.  Making all my reservations for the UK

I think it's time to stop, drop by campus to pick up a book (because parking anywhere near my building during working hours during the week is impossible this next month) so I can work on the third hurry up project.

Then time to practice.

Emptying the BardiacShack

As I've posted before, I'm getting new hardwood floors in part of the BardiacShack.  That means I have to empty out about half of the main floor, and put everything either in the basement or in the areas that are tiled.

This is the empty living room (the last picture was taken at night to avoid some of the window glare from afternoon sun).  I'm thinking next year, I may paint a new color...  (taking suggestions, please!) (The floor folks are going to move the heaviest of the furniture, which includes empty bookshelves.)

Here's a view of my home office.  I'm the only academic I know who actually has plenty of bookshelf space at home.  (There's a case behind the door on the right, and additional cases in the master bedroom, a bedroom downstairs, and the great room.)

This last is my red room, which is where a lot of stuff is piled.  There's also more in the dining area.  And in the basement.  (I put plastic over the windows in the red room during winter, and haven't taken them off yet...)

Editing to add a few more empty house photos:

The Hive Mind is Magic

I've put out several calls for suggestions on facebook recently, and it's amazing how helpful the hivemind is, and how much people know and are willing to share knowledge.

I've found a hotel that looks good for when I want to work at the British Library.

I've found texts.

Things are Getting Real

I've gotten some of the official paperwork to go teach at the Abbey!

So that's feeling more real.  I've started working on syllabus stuff, and book orders, and now have to do more, and fill out official forms and such.

Before there was any hint of going to the UK, I'd arranged to have carpet taken out of half of the main floor of the BardiacShack (tm) and hardwood floors put in.  (The other half is tile.)  We've firmed up a date, and it's coming soon.

I started packing up that half of the house last week.  One day, a friend came and we had a good time packing my office (many books).  It's so much more fun with a friend.  I still have some to do, but it's within easy reach now.  But the house looks increasingly strange, with empty walls (because art needs to come down to avoid dust and such), and empty rooms.

The floor folks are going to move the few big furniture pieces, but smaller ones I've moved or will move ahead with a little help from my friends.

I'm working on a new violin piece.  It's beautiful, a Bach piece, but pretty darned difficult.

On the other hand, I started going back through my early Suzuki books (#1 so far) and it's surprising how easy those pieces are now.  They were really hard when I started working on them, not so very long ago.  So that gives me hope.  (Regular Suzuki kids are expected to practice their older pieces at least once a week, but I don't do that.  On the other hand, I also work through the easier parts of new pieces in practice sessions because I can read music and, well, because I do.  So I don't have everything by memory the way regular Suzuki kids do forever.  But I'm learning in a way that's not frustrating to me.  Early on, I asked my teacher if it was okay to work on the piece just ahead if I felt like the current piece was going well, and she was fine with it, so I did, so now she gets me started on the hard parts, and I work on the easy parts, too, and then she helps me with those in lessons, and I work on making them better.)

One of my musician friends plays violin as a second instrument, so we're talking about working on a duet.  But it's way harder than I can do now, and Strings suggested to hold off starting on it (it's the last piece in the next book) so that I don't teach myself bad habits.  That makes sense.  She thinks it will be a year or two before I'm ready for it.  (And thinking how much I've learned this past year, that gives me some sense of how far beyond me this piece really is right now.)