A String

The last week, before my violin lesson, I was getting sort of frustrated by how bad I sound on the violin.  It was like, every time I hit the A string, I wouldn't set it vibrating right off, so there'd be this scratchy nastiness.  And then it would "catch" and start vibrating, and sound less nasty.

Still, the scratchy nastiness was frustrating.

So when I started my lesson, I told my teacher about my frustration with the A string.  And I tried to play a note on the A string, but it came out sounding pretty well.  Argh!

Strings had me play my piece, and I did okay, but again with the scratchy nastiness.  Except Strings being Strings, knew what was happening, and could explain and help me solve it.

The scratchiness tended to happen when I crossed to the A string, especially from the E string (which is a fifth higher).  As Strings explained, you have to bow each of the strings slightly differently.  The higher strings, you bow more lightly, and a bit quicker.  The lower strings, your arm feels heavier, and you can move the bow a bit less quickly.  So, there's a point where on any string, the bow "grabs" the string just so and vibrates it.  Voila!

But when I was crossing (that means switching strings), I had played the E string appropriately lightly, but that lightness doesn't work on the A string.  And I was unconsciously adjusting, but only after I'd played a note (or two, or three) on the A string.  And then when I crossed down, I had the same problem on the D string (but I was spending way less time on the D string with this piece).  And up again, I'd be too heavy on the A string, and make a slightly different scratchy nastiness.

So, for example, if you look at the Gavotte I've been working on, the starting B is on the A string, and then the jump from the D to G puts me on the E string, and then back down to the A string.  That's where I'd have the first scratchy nastiness.  As you can see (at least if you read music in a basic way), there are a lot of string crossings in this piece from the A to E and E to A.  (At my level of violin playing, I can play up to the E at the top of the music staff on the A string (by using my pinky.  From the E up, is on the E string.  Deciding when to use the pinky E vs the open E string E seems to be about what makes sense in fingering.).  I was having a lot of opportunities for scratchy nastiness, and pretty much making a lot of scratchy nastiness out of each one.

Strings gave me two exercises to work on for crossing down to the A string.  One is to sort of hold my bow in a fist, which makes the arm feel heavier, and makes it easier to get the weight right when I cross down.  (But clumsier in other ways.)  The other is to hesitate just before crossing, and think about the heaviness of the arm, and then cross to the A string.  That moment of hesitation is enough to get the weight right for me (mostly).

Do you know about TwoSetViolin?  They've got a youtube bit about how it feels when your teacher solves your problem.  It was like that. 

It's fascinating, because real string players are constantly making these fine adjustments, but as a beginner, I really have to slow down and think my way through things.  I mean, I was sort of aware of the different arm weight feel, and was doing it okay with scales and such, but when I was focused on my piece, I wasn't doing it.

After my lesson, the next day, I worked through book 1 and part of book 2, paying close attention to the arm weight on crossings, and it was so fun to hear how much better I sound.  (I also did my scales, technique exercises, and worked on my new piece a bit.)

The next day, I finished working through book 2, still focusing on the bow feel, and it's so much better.

I think about April of last year, I found some sheet music on the web.  One was the "Ashokan Farewell," which you probably have heard if you've seen the Civil War documentary.  (It's a recently written piece, though, and not from the period.  But it's absolutely beautiful.)  The other was "Turkey in the Straw."  "Turkey in the Straw" was my Father's go to piece when he pulled out his violin if there were songs to be sung, kids to be entertained.  He and my great Aunt (a professional organist) would play by ear for Christmas carols and such, but "Turkey in the Straw" was always in the mix.  So the piece is special in my memory.

Anyway, I found those, and I could sort of muddle through "Ashokan Farewell" a bit, but "Turkey in the Straw" was totally beyond me.

And then yesterday, for some reason, having practiced my stuff, I pulled them back out, and boy, I could really hear a difference.  I could play them both, slowly, yes (which makes total sense for "Ashokan Farewell"), but play them.  I'm going to add them to my practice a bit.

Teaching Sonnets

When I teach sonnets in a poetry course or in Shakespeare, it's pretty easy to spend a fair bit of time, and that means I can tease out how English Sonnets and Italian Sonnets work, slightly differently.  (I don't usually teach Spenserian sonnets.)

But in my intro to lit course, I'm not teaching a lot of sonnets, and the one I really love to teach for this course is Countee Cullen's "Yet Do I Marvel."

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!


The thing is, if you work out the rhyme and big punctuation, here's what you get:

ababcdcd.eeff.g:g

(I put the big punctuation, periods, colons, semi-colons in, because they help you get a really quick sense of how the sentences work.)

Punctuation-wise, it first looks like a variation on an Italian sonnet.

And the change in rhyme scheme sort of supports that.

But the rhyme scheme also feels more like an English sonnet, and the volta to me comes more with the couplet.

If I were taking several days to look at sonnets, then I'd play with some obvious Italian and English sonnets, and then use Cullen (though even Shakespeare does the mix thing in terms of playing with the volta placement), and my students would get a better sense of how darned amazing Cullen is.

The question of the day is: how do you get all that across with just Cullen?

Doing Assignments

Back when I was doing basic pedagogical training (you know, when we baked our syllabus onto a clay tablet), one of the strongest suggestions was that every time we give an assignment, before we give an assignment, we take the assignment and write it ourselves (this was in the context of an English department, so the assignments didn't involve other production than writing).

At various times, I've done this pretty regularly.  At other times, not so much.

But I've found for certain kinds of assignments, it really helps if I do them, and then give my work to the whole class as a model.

This semester, for one of my classes, I've adopted a discussion leading assignment from a really smart colleague.  However, I was a bit late getting students to sign up, and even though I offered to move the first one from tomorrow to a week from tomorrow, everyone asked not to do it.  So I moved it back to tomorrow and did it myself.

First, I have to say, it was good in a good way; you really have to put in some real effort to do a good job, and have to read carefully, and that's good.

It took me about 5 hours to do, and that's after having thought about stuff this semester and such.  So I started with an advantage there.

On the other hand, the students get to work in small groups to help each other, and I didn't get to work in a group to get help, so that's perhaps a small disadvantage.

What's really good is that I was able to tell the students (in an email) how long it took me to do, and to encourage them to give themselves plenty of time as they work on the project (it counts for a fair chunk of their grade, so I don't feel bad if they put in a like number of hours).

All Occasions do Inform...

Of course, they don't. 

But, it's barely the second week of the semester, and I feel so bummed.

I didn't teach yesterday, but was on campus for a meeting (which I chaired) and to do a bunch of related paperwork afterwards.  Then I needed to set up the grade books and enter the first grades.  I'd almost finished that when a student appeared in my doorway, in that way some students have, expectant, like of course I'm just there waiting for them.

It was an advisee I've seen once before, whom I had to prompt to remind me of her name.  (Hint: if I've met you once or twice over a month or two ago, introduce yourself again.  If I remember, I'll graciously say so, and if I don't, I'll be very grateful for your courtesy.  If you appear at my door, I assume you know who I am.)

And because I try not to be a jerk, I talked with her.

She wanted to talk about her schedule for next semester, so we did.  At which point I noticed that she isn't taking the courses this semester that I recommended, but instead, has switched from an upper level course (suggested) to a lower level course.  The problem is, a student can only take 2 lower level courses in the selected electives area, and she's already taken those, so this course won't count towards her major requirements.

You know that will be my fault, somehow.  When she doesn't graduate in a timely manner, the advising folks are going to look at that course and blame me for bad advising.  So, yep, I made a note in the file.  (I hate that I've learned to think this way about advising, too.)


You know how it is when you put two and two together, and it comes up four?  Well, yes.  One of my friends over in [Mathematical Forestry] mentioned giving a talk in [another place] recently (in an email), so I asked what the talk was about.  And heard nothing.  Okay, so usually this friend is pretty excited about their work, and happy to talk about it. 

And then I realized, this place/time doesn't seem likely for a conference.

And my friend is in a fairly small field.  So, yeah, I looked at the job listings, and sure enough, there's a job there, and my friend would be superb at it, and geographically, it makes such good sense for them.

It's not like we're super duper close friends, and they've haven't told me they're on the market or anything, but it would totally make sense.  But I can't just say, oh, if you're going to give a job talk there, I know [an administrator] and they're a really great administrator.  (And I do know an administrator, and they're probably the best administrator I've ever worked with.)  (Besides, I don't want my friend thinking I'm stalking them in a creepy way; and of course, if they don't get an offer, then it's best not to talk about it.)

I'm so bummed at the thought of this friend leaving (for me, totally selfishly), but also, I know it would be a much better situation for the friend personally and professionally.  And given this university's devastating budget situation, everyone who can leave should.


Then there's the political situation.  I can't even begin...

It's cold and grey out, and I'm so ready for some warmth and good news.

Just Frustrated

I got an email related to work today that's worrisome and frustrating.  And I just want to say, "really?  You sent me THAT?"

It's not bad in any official way, just worrisome and frustrating, and there's no really good way for me to respond, that I can see.

Ugh.

On to Book Three (Suzuki Violin)

I had my lesson yesterday, and played two of my three pieces significantly better than I had last week, though not as well as when I practiced the day before.  The third piece, the one I'd played really well the week before was just a little less well played.

But, Strings says I can start on Book 3, and started teaching me about the structure of the piece (which is important) and how the dynamics and such worked.

She also gave me a sort of overview of Book 3, which I think is helpful.

The random practice over the past week really helped! 

My new piece (the first in Book 3) is a Gavotte by Padre Giovanni Battista Martini.  Here's what the first page looks like:

Time to get practicing!

Already Grading

I already have stuff to grade.  They're just small, low stakes assignments, but there they are, two small "stacks" of paper.

Why do I do this to myself?

Under Way

I don't teach Wednesdays, but I needed to be on campus for a meeting, and I have a ton of prep for tomorrow morning already (why do I do that to myself?).

But I started cleaning up some of the clutter... and then I could see my desk!  And I cleaned up some more clutter, and then I could see the top of my file cabinet.  So I cleaned some more clutter, and now I can also see the top of my window ledge.

I'm not quite sure why, but having redded up my office makes me feel more ready for the semester.  I dumped a bunch of old committee and advising paperwork (much of it in the shredder thingy).  I got rid of a class file from 8 years ago. (That was the oldest.  I kept stuff from this decade, for now.)

Now I feel like I can really prep.

Here's to a momentarily cleaned up office!

New Semester, More Violin

It's the first day of the semester around here.

I have a reassignment this semester, so I only teach 6 credits (instead of 11).  I've got a Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule, which is unusual for me.  But it's nice, because I mostly won't have to be in the office on Mondays and Fridays (well, every other Friday for sure I'll be in for meetings).

But today, I'm here.  Plugging away.

For my senior seminar, I make one-time use PDFs for readings from journals and such, and put them up on our closed system.  (My understanding is that this is legal under fair use.)

Last week, I put in some copy requests for the department student worker.  One of the requests was a book.  I filled in the card: 1-14, 35-52, and 220-228 (I just made up those numbers).  I penciled the bibliographic information on the first page, at the top (it's a book I own, so okay to write in, and bibliographic info doesn't offend me), because I want students to have access to the information, and I require that they cite texts, so they need it, and I want to model how to keep track of bibliographic information.

I got this one request, PDFed, except it had page 114 (and the rest), and was organized so students looking at a screen would have to move backwards rather than forwards in the usual way.

I took it back to the student, and she said "oops."

Then I got the PDF, and it had completely cut off the bibliographic information, but at least was oriented properly.  So I took it back.

And finally got it PDFed so that it's readable and has the bibliographic information.  WIN!

But boy, having to check every single PDF and go back and forth is irritating.  (The student just stopped by to double check something, because I have made her very careful.  Maybe that's a good thing.)

***

I had a violin lesson last week.  I'd practiced well, and hoped I was ready to move on.  I was very not ready.

I played the first piece quite well, for me.

The second piece, my memory slipped a couple times, and it wasn't good.

By the third piece, I was nervous and botched it badly.

So my teacher (very kindly) reminded me of two practice strategies and taught me how to do harmonics, which is necessary for one of the later pieces.  And she also reminded me (even more kindly) that I'd basically taught myself the last two pieces.  (She'd had time to point out some spots, but not enough to teach me the harmonics thing.)

I was really upset at myself after the lesson because I hadn't played as well as I should have, and I'd gotten nervous, and I'd really wanted to play well but hadn't.  By evening, though, I'd gotten over myself and practiced.  (If I practice the same day as a lesson, then I can incorporate what I've learned way more effectively.  It makes a noticeable difference.)

Here's what I learned: harmonics.  Usually, when you finger on the violin, you press your finger pretty hard to stop the string from vibrating beyond your finger up the fingering board.  That changes the pitch.  For harmonics, though, you barely touch the string at JUST THE RIGHT PLACE up the fingerboard, and both sides of the string on either side of your pinky vibrate, but at a higher pitch.  (The part I'm doing has me basically cutting the string two halves, which makes it vibrate a full octave higher.)  It's so so very cool.

Practice stuffs.  Two things.

The first is what's called "random practice." 

So, usually, you practice by taking your piece and working through the parts that are hard, and then you work through them again, and then again, and so on, and then maybe try the whole piece, or move on to another hard part.  The thing is, you work on a part again and again.  That's called "blocked practice."  It's how you learn stuff.

For random practice, you split out the parts you want to really learn (I've split my two less successful pieces into 8 parts that make sense musically as parts), and then you do something to randomize.  (I roll an 8-sided die, but you can also put numbers on pieces of paper, whatever.)

You roll the die (pick a paper), check the part (because I haven't memorized which is which number), and play it (by memory, in my case, since memorizing is hard right now for these, and a big part of the problem).  You play it ONCE.  And you make notes about where you mess up, or if you don't, whatever.  And then you move on to the next number.  It's sort of fun.  (If you don't need to memorize it, you could be looking at the music.)

What happens, is your brain says, not, "I'll do better next time" but "I have to get this because I don't get another chance."  So there's this pressure that's a bit more like performance.  And you're doing things not in an order, so you really have to know them.  But it takes a while for my brain to switch over.

After you've done this a bit (it doesn't take a long time for me to hit each of my 8 parts a few times), you look at your notes about your playing and find patterns.

Then you do block practice to work on the pattern of problems.  Except before you move on, you make sure you can play the part at least 5 times IN A ROW well.  (For me, "well" is different than it is for a more experienced student, of course.)  So, you play it once well, good.  Twice, good.  Three times, mess up, start over.

It's incredibly frustrating, and boy, by time #4, I'm getting really careful!  But it also works if you're ready for it.  (That is, if you can actually play the bit well enough once, so after you've done your learning blocked practice.)

I have my next lesson Thursday, and my plan for today is to play each of my 8 parts well 5 times, but in random order.

My teacher had taught me both of these strategies before, but I wasn't using them.  And I need to.  I think I wasn't using them because I hadn't really thought through the problems I was having well-enough to recognize them and use the strategies.  For most of the stuff I've learned, blocked practice has worked well enough.  But when I really have to learn it by memory for a "test," it's not enough for me.

It makes me think about the cognitive work we ask students to do in literature courses.  A lot of times, we read something, talk about it, introduce a concept, incorporate it, and move on.  But we don't do tons of repetition.  Of course, using a music model, students would be doing repetition through review and rereading the way I practice the violin, on my own, a little bit every single day.  But the reality is that students don't really do that repetition unless it's quite overtly assigned or there's a test coming up (which, frankly, is also inspiring my practice right now).

So, how do I get students to learn a concept or skill well enough to employ it independently when they read something else?  That's the real key, in a way, isn't it?  I mean, I want them to know the basic plot and stuff of As You Like It or something, but even more, I want them to know how to read verse well, to think about theatrical issues, social stuff, cultural stuff, textual stuff, so that when they read or see 1 Henry IV on their own, they get more out of it.

How?


(edited to change the title, since I used that title more than once before.)

One of Many

We had a couple hundred people marching in our small city.  It was good. 

But it wasn't much.

I would have been impressed if our headmaster had been there, or chairs, or deans.  (I saw one or two department chairs from around campus, but not many.)

I marched with some friends, and that made me happy.

Milton Lost and Milton Regained

For some reason, over break, I had the desire to reread Lycidas.  It's been a long, long time since I've read it, since, probably, I was preparing for my GREs.  At that time, I was reading in a study group, four of us at a city-located state university that (rumor had it) hadn't been able to buy new books for the library for some years.  We were all in the MA program, and all wanted to go on for a PhD.  So we got together and studied the Norton's, English, American, and World.  We met a couple times a week for most of a summer (all while working, too), and at the end of the summer, we took the GREs.

We worked really well together, each of us pretty much caring about an area, and having taken courses in that area more than the others.  So I helped a lot with the medieval and earlier early modern, and Eve did modern British, and Joy did modern American.  And there was a man whose name I don't remember right now, but he loved Romantics, and so he helped with the Romantics.  He made "Tintern Abbey" work for me, and it wouldn't have without him.

But none of us knew much about what we then called the "long 18th century" and so, well, that was my weakest area. 

And yes, Lycidas was there; I know we read it, and I know I didn't appreciate it.  And over this break, I was thinking, maybe I would get it now?

So when I got back from visiting family, I looked in my school office, and couldn't find my copy of Merritt Hughes.  I think pretty much everyone who studied earlier lit in my era had a Merritt Hughes, right alongside our Riverside Chaucer and our Witherspoon and Warnke.

Anyway, I looked in my school office, where I found an edition of Paradise Lost I used last time I taught it.  And I looked at my home office, where I came up empty.  And when I was at school, I looked again.  And at home, I looked again.  I'm pretty organized about my books.  At school, I have three big shelving units.  Top left shelves are Shakespeare editions.  Middle Left and bottom left is for books I'm using, reference books, oversize books, and some storage.

Middle is criticism, alphabetically by author.  All the way.

Upper right is modern plays.  Then medieval and early modern texts excluding Shakespeare.  Then a few novels and modern poetry and such.

And then reference series (MLA Approaches to Teaching, Cambridge Companions, the sorts of books that I'm likely not to remember the author, but to remember the series.). 

Then there are school stuff: advising manuals, catalogs and such.

At home, in the office, two big shelves: Left is criticism, alphabetically by author.  Right is Shakespeare, then early modern lit by author, then some reference stuff (dictionaries, etc).

Novels are in another room, as are birding books and such.

So, I should have been able to put my hands on Milton right away; he should be there, right after Middleton and before Rowley.  But no.

And this evening, for some reason, I looked again in my home office, and I noticed a thick book in the criticism section with a brown paper bag cover, the sort of cover I put on books that are worn but worth taking care of.  And yes, it was my Merritt Hughes Milton.  What it was doing there, I don't know.

But now I get to reread Lycidas, and I'm hoping I get more out of it than I did the first time.

What if?

I really need to start working on my syllabus and class planning for my classes.

When I think about it, I suddenly wonder: what if I don't remember how to plan a class?  How to make a syllabus?  How to set up assignments?

Of course, once I get started I'll be fine.  It's the getting started that's so hard.

Do you folks ever have that feeling, that even though you've done this a lot, tens of times, maybe you won't be able to pull it off this time?

We need a longer January!

The Changed Light

I was outside digging away at my driveway (which I didn't finish, but the neighbor will with our snowblower, I hope).  It was dismal, windy, cold (but not super cold).

And then suddenly, the light changed.  It was like when you switch out a regular yellow-cast light bulb for the ones that are supposed to be more like outside light.

Except I was already outside.  But suddenly, the light was suffused with blue and pink.  It might have been that the sun hit just at that height off the horizon to make the colors come out.  Or it may have been that some of the clouds moved out of the way. 

But it was beautiful, and shocking.  I sort of stood there, mouth agape, trying to figure it out.

And then, of course, I went back to digging.

Reading a Colleague's Work in Progress

One of my colleagues is working on a book, and was talking about it to me, since it's something I'm at least tangentially interested in, and I said I'd be interested to read it, so they emailed me the first chapter draft, and I'm reading it.

I don't know quite how to respond.

Here's the thing.  You know how students sometimes spend a long time winding up, setting up stuff, quoting "as X says" and such, just bits?  It does that in a major way.  It doesn't engage with the Xs it quotes, just takes quotes and does the "as X says" thing. 

And I'm 11 pages in to a 30 plus page chapter, and I have no idea why I'm reading (except that I said I would).  What I want from an introduction or introductory chapter is to know the basic argument, and how that argument differs from, disagrees with, or adds to what's come before.  This chapter, so far, gives me none of that.

So if I say that, what I'm basically saying is, you really need to totally rework the first chapter, and I'm pretty sure this colleague has worked very hard on this and doesn't want to hear that the chapter isn't working.

And if I don't say that, I'm not responding helpfully or ethically.

The Unexpected Benefit of Blogging

Today in a facebook thread, I wanted to know when something I asserted happened.  So I came to the blog and did one of the little searches from the upper left corner for a keyword, and voila, I was able to read my reaction to hearing about the event.  I hadn't been terribly specific, but I'd used the keyword, and it was specific enough.

I have to admit, I can pinpoint a lot of things to dates/times because I've put them in the blog.  It's sort of cool, actually.


So, on that note: I need to go work on my pieces for the violin book 2 "test"!  I'm having difficulty memorizing the pieces.  And playing with a full bow.  And playing dynamics.

Yeah, time to go play!

In the Blink of an Eye, a Week Goes By

It's been a week, very quick.  I feel as if I've gotten nothing done, but of course, I did.

I worked through the parts of two history books I wanted to read to understand early modern slavery practices in Western Europe and the Americas.  Horrifying, as you'd expect.

I got frustrated enough with the ice forming inside at the edges of some windows to take action.  I started out using painters' tape and bubble wrap.  But then I went to the home improvement type store and bought kits and insulating tape, took off the bubble wrap and painters' tape, and taped up areas, and put plastic sheets over some windows.  There's a noticeable difference in the house, especially in my bedroom (the window in my bathroom was bad, and the sliding glass door, just as bad.  Now it's pretty darned good.  And the red room, which is the TV room.  It's a problematic room anyway, because it was built as a conversion from a second story deck; underneath is enclosed, but not heated.  It's got a tile floor, and six big windows, basically the three exterior walls are mostly windows, and they're sliding windows, which tend not to be really airtight, anyway.  (In summer, it's a delightful space, and it's got great light in winter, and is lovely for watching birds on the deck.)  It's still not exactly toasty, but at least there's not a breeze now!

I should have done this years ago.  The good thing is, I'll have a good idea where to put more caulk, and will put plastic sheeting up much earlier in the future.

Here's a housing question: from the way all the plastic sheets bow in slightly, like sails with a bit of wind, it looks like the air pressure inside the house is less than the air pressure outside.  Why is that?  (Wouldn't it even out very quickly from doors opening and closing?  Wouldn't the warmer air inside tend to make it higher pressure inside?)


I'm progressing on the violin pretty well.  I posted this in August, when I had a "test" to pass from Book 1 to Book 2.  Now I'm working on the three pieces for my "test" to pass from Book 2 to Book 3.  (Or, as I like to think, leveling up.  Ding!)

I should post more about practicing violin because it's really fun and interesting.  I've learned a lot.

First, I really trust the process.  I know that even if a piece is really super hard for me, there are three year olds out there who've learned it, and generations of Suzuki kids have learned it at my stage, so I can learn it.  That really helps.  Strings, my teacher, does a great job of breaking things down for me so I can focus on the one hard part first, or learn this fingering, or practice X to help with Y.  She's so good at teaching!


Second, I like scales.  I was having trouble thinking of a note when I played it, which was making playing certain things more difficult (like, you see an F, where do you put your finger, especially if you're not coming from an adjacent note).  So I found a chart on-line, and printed it out and filled it in.  It's in two parts, the sharp scales and the flat scales.  I filled in all the notes, and they're in order.  Now the cool thing with these is that each scale starts a fifth from where the last scale started; the sharps start a fifth up, and the flats a fifth down.

So on my chart, I start with a C scale (a weird one on the violin), and then move up a fifth to the G scale, adding one sharp, and so on.  And since the violin strings are a fifth from each other, it's relatively easy once you get the concept to follow on.  I practice either the sharps or flats every day, with broken thirds.


Third, Ševčík!  I have two practice exercise books, one for bowing, and one for fingering.  Holy cow, they're HARD!

The bowing book starts with long notes, full bow.  Then you practice with half bows, and then with two strings and some fingers, and finally, you do a full long note with a full bow, and then a quarter note with a full bow.  It's way harder than it sounds to make the quarter note not sound bad.

The fingering one is even harder.  It starts like this (link here):

And then, once you can do these individual measures (at different speeds), you play them more, and then you get to this (same source, different screen capture technique):

And that's just the first page.  There are more to come.  The thing is, I may be able to play the quarter note version with one bow (since these are slurred), but unless my fingers move pretty fast, I run out of bow before I finish the eight note version.  I'm getting way better, but I'm still on the first page.  (I think I started working on Ševčík in mid-summer.

Again, this is part of trusting the process.  There's no way to teach your fingers to play the violin without doing lots of playing.  If you do structured exercises (Suzuki, the Ševčík, etc), then you're trusting that a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time and found these effective.  You're not going to get some magical moment where you pick up the violin and ta da, you just whip off a concerto.  At least, I'm not.  (If you're good, of course, then you can make it look like ta da, but people aren't seeing the hours of practice, just the result.)


Four, I like the Suzuki music choices.  I already feel like I'm playing real music, little bits, sometimes simplified, but real.  I'm working on a piece by Lully, another by Beethoven, and another by Boccherini (the minuet).  But they're also really hard (for me), and I need to memorize them and play them well.  So, you know, I need to go practice.


Five, practice is actually really good.  Hard, but good, and satisfying.


Strings is away for break, and we talked before she left about my goals for break.  In addition to working on my pieces, I'm focusing on dynamics (playing louder or softer is so hard) and on bowing (using the full bow, which I tend not to do when I'm learning a piece, and then have to rework everything, but it sounds so much better when I use a fuller bow!).

Two Movies

I've been to two movies in the past week; that's pretty close to a record for me, since I don't go to lots of movies. 

I saw Fences first, and what a film.  I don't know how I never read the play before, but holy cow, it's powerful. 

You know how people always ask if there's a great American novel or if America can do tragedy?  I think Fences is a pretty damned great American tragedy.  It reveals a core of racism, which is our tragedy.

Beautiful acting, directing, photography.  I really couldn't ask for more from a film.  I sure as heck hope the Oscars won't be so white this year.

Here's an interesting take on Fences  from Black&Smart.

Then I went to see Rogue One, expecting the fun I expect from Star Wars films.  (And noting that the films I think of are the first three out, because I can't remember the prequels, having seen them each once.  But also, I enjoyed the most recent one before this, The Force Awakens.  And, to be honest, not having read any press about Rogue One, I thought it would be a sequel to that.)

Not impressed.  It didn't help that the back of my chair kept getting kicked by a kid, or that another kid had a meltdown in the chair next to me (a surprisingly quiet meltdown, to be sure), and was shortly taken out by an adult (who had come with a crowd of like 5 little kids).

I may have missed things early on (see: kids in theaters), but it took me a long time to realize that this film was supposed to be set just before the first one.  I kept thinking, but Darth Vader is dead, isn't he?  and when are Poe and Rey going to show up?

There were lots of explosions and such, but the humor was pretty weak, and that's part of what made Star Wars films fun; they sort of chuckle at themselves for being space cowboys.

Shockingly, I'm going to see another film this afternoon with a friend, setting an all time record for me for seeing films in theaters within a week.

Academic Anxiety Dream

I had an anxiety dream last night.  I was looking for my class on campus, trying to find the right building, figure out the room, and no one had a printed bulletin (no one has had a printed bulletin in years, of course), and I kept trying to find it.  And I didn't know what I was going to say if/when I found it since my syllabus wasn't ready.

And I kept thinking, wow, break went by really fast, I'm not usually this unprepared.  What am I going to do?

I haven't had an academic anxiety dream that I remember in a while.

***

I hope your holidays are/were good ones.  I got back home yesterday to a messy house; I'd been intending to clean it up before I left, but with snow incoming, I'd left a day early.  It's rather dreary and depressing to come home to a messy house.

I have much to do: pay taxes, clean up the house, de-ice the drive (since the snow just sat while I was gone, not much, but enough to get nastily icy), and yes, prep courses for spring.

I have a course reassignment for spring, for which I'm eternally grateful.  And my search is over, I hope.  (We did our part, and will only need to do more if for some reason a contract can't be made with an appropriate candidate.)

Searches basically are a black box at this point, for most of us.  We turned in ranked names and filled out paperwork.  The chair takes those names, and requests to hire someone (but may choose someone else that we didn't rank as high), and then paperwork gets done, deans dean, and so on.  A call is made, or more than a few calls, and then at the end, we'll be told (if we're lucky) that candidate X will be joining us in the fall.  And that will be that.  Fingers crossed.

At any rate, with the search over, and the paperwork done (I hope), and only two courses (and not composition!), this semester is looking to be better.

***

I got a bad cold in early October.  It went to my lungs, and stayed there, giving me a gunky cough for a couple of hours a day.  So the week of finals, I went to the clinic, and the PA gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.  Like a good patient, I took the whole 5 day course.

It seemed to be doing the trick, except yesterday I started having lung gunk again.  And today it's back.  I should call the clinic again.  Ugh.

***

I'm making a late start this morning, but now I'm on my way!

Sympathy for my Students

My violin teacher told me that she has her college students tell her something new about the composers of their pieces.  I'm guessing this is to get them to look up the composer and read, say, a Wikipedia entry, which would at least give them a basic intro to period, place, and the composer's history.  At any rate, I've been doing this.  For some it's easier than others.

According to Wikipedia, Bach may not be buried in Bach's grave.  Neat.

And JB Lully, the super famous French Baroque composer wasn't born French?  Nope, according to Wikipedia, he was born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence, and became a French subject in 1661.

This week, though, my new piece is by Beethoven.  What new can I possible learn about Beethoven to tell my teacher?  (Lots would be new to me, but not to her.)

So I decided instead of stopping at Wikipedia, I'd look up some scholarly articles.  Now, I start with a huge advantage over my students there, because I know how to limit the searches and such.  But still, I looked at articles that were way, way beyond anything I could understand (because I don't know the theory stuff, especially). 

And that's what happens to my students all the time, especially when they look at specialized articles in, say, English lit.

So, how do we get students to begin to read and understand those articles? 

***

I was reading a student's Shakespeare paper today, and it cites a bunch of sources that sounded suspect, so I started looking, and the suspect sounding ones were mostly papers by undergrads, put up on the web by their schools (it looked like), with one other looking like it was someone doing research for an SCA type group (not bad for what it was, but not what my student should have been depending on).

Reading Papers

I was going to start by saying it's the grading jail time of the semester.  But really, other than the first week or so, it always feels like the grading jail time of the semester.  (I tend to give small, low stakes writing assignments spread across the semester, so it's my own fault.  But I think these assignments are valuable to students.)

I'm reading poetry papers right now.  I gave them three topics to choose from, and many are writing about the poetry book we read (whose author skyped with our class), and mostly, these are really good.

Yes, some could use a stronger thesis, and many could do better if they embedded quotations to give them context. 

But their writing really shows that they're reading these poems as poems, and thinking about them well.  And that's very good.

One of the things that strikes me about these papers is that they tend to read grief as "depressing" rather than as "grieving" or "deeply emotional."  For me, "depressing" is more existential, more a matter of despair and hopelessness, while grieving, even deep grieving, is less hopeless and more just dealing with loss.  I think.  I'm not sure how to express this.

Is Lear depressing?  Or deeply emotional?  or something else?

Does grief feel depressing to you folks?

Book Order Hades

I submitted my book orders today for two courses for next semester.  I'm over a month late, and that's on me.  But, the system is a mess.

I managed to log on, and started with one of the courses, intro to lit.  I tried to look at what I used the last time I taught the course, but instead came up with texts I've never taught. 

So I started afresh, and worked on ordering, and I think it worked, with the minor glitch that there's no good way to make sure the rental text counts as a rental text. (We have a rental system so that for any given course, one text can be a rental text.  It's great for big lit anthologies that no student really wants to buy.  Probably also great for intro science texts that no one needs after the course is over.)

Then I started on my next one.  Apparently, it's got texts from last semester, but that's a different iteration of the course.  I was able to choose two texts, including the rental (The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, which I find useful for any early modern course for basic background stuffs).  But stupidly, I clicked "recommended" rather than "required" for the rental.

I looked up an ordered other texts, and then I realized I'd clicked "recommended" rather than "required" and stupidly went back to try to change it, at which point I got caught in a rather endless loop and couldn't get out to submit the books. 

I finally got out by ordering another book, which is fine, and which will work, but what a stupid bleeping system.

What should take ten minutes took over an hour.  Thankfully, I can skip grading stuff and just toss it in the bin instead, right. 

What?

I can't?

Then what do I do to make up the hour of time? 

Oh, yeah, that's MY TIME.

Stupid [expletive deleted]s.

This is Why I do Draft Days

On Monday, my upper level Shakespeare class will work on peer revising rough drafts of their semester projects.  They have to turn in a draft of their project to their peer revision group on Sunday afternoon, and then have to come in Monday with print outs of the other peers' projects, with notes and such written, so that they spend Monday's class period in useful discussion.

Then they get a week to revise before turning in the final project.

There are several options for the project, the most intellectually difficult of which is to write a traditional lit crit paper.

So naturally, at the end of class today, when we'd discussed draft day stuff a bit more, one of the weaker students in the class came to ask if I have open office hours today.  (I don't.  I pretty much have job related stuff to do until 7 or 7:30 pm today.  Happy Friday.)  Then she asked if she could email me a question, and I asked her what the question was.

And she said that she's having difficulty writing her lit crit paper.  So I asked her what her argument is.

And she said, and I did you not, "I want to write about women in Shakespeare."  You might well be proud of me that I didn't burst out in laughter or in tears. 

She doesn't have an argument yet.  So I suggested she start by thinking about a specific play to make an argument about, and reread it, and think about what she might want to say about the play.  For previous assignments, she's read some criticism, so I suggested that she might go back and think about where she disagrees with a critic or thinks a critic's argument misses something important, and that would form a starting point for her paper.

The good thing is, if she starts working intently today, and works hard through Sunday to do something to turn in, and then has a whole week to work hard, the paper will be a while lot better than it would be if she'd waited until next Friday to begin working, right?

I live a rich and full fantasy life.  My students are going to be working hard this weekend to get a draft of this paper done.  Better that than starting next week!

Straw Men

I'm tired of being set up as a straw man.

No, I've been here for 15+ years, and I don't think I've ever known anyone who thought grammar drills and worksheets were great ways to teach writing (here or anywhere else).  In fact, shortly after I got here, the department voted to discontinue a grammar test that we were all supposed to give as part of the final for whatever writing course we were teaching.  When we discussed it, no one could even remember how we'd come to have it as a requirement; it had just been left there so long.  And, of course, no one taught to it, so far as I ever heard.  And most of us made it count minimally for the final grade because we didn't think it mattered. 

No, I've never met a Shakespearean scholar who didn't think about staging issues and recognize that Shakespeare wrote plays to be enacted in a theatrical space.  That's not to say we don't find other aspects of the plays interesting, but I've never seen the denial the theater folks attribute to us lit folks.  (Of course, actors and other theater focused folks have lots to teach all of us about acting and Shakespeare.  It's just that I don't know any Shakespeareans who think that isn't true.)


Maybe it's just the time of the semester, but dang...

So busy, and so many things happening that require attention.  I feel like I'm juggling very fragile glassware, and it's going to start crashing up there and falling as very sharp shards all over my upturned face and my desperately moving arms and hands.

I'm so tired of the crappy rumors people spread when they're really clueless.  But you can't answer the rumors because the actual issue is confidential (and you're hearing them third or fourth hand).

Email Signature Lists?

I got an email from a student the other day in relation to a committee I chair, and I swear, the student's signature thing had nine lines of activities plus a phone number and preferred pronouns.

Do your students provide a full list of activities?

Each activity gets a line:

This major.
That minor.
This club
That other activity,

And so on.

I see this a lot around here, and I'm wondering if it's also something at other schools?

I'm guessing (only guessing) that students are being told that it looks professional to mention their activities?

Teaching a Friend's Poetry

In my Intro to Poetry course, I'm using a book of poetry by a friend; my colleagues and I tend to use one more recent book of poetry when we teach the course in order to help students get a feel for how to read a book of poetry as a collection.

This book is fantastic, and the students seem to be enjoying it.  They have lots to say, and what they say suggests they're reading pretty carefully.

That said, sometimes they're a bit off. 

In one of the poems, for example, the speaker talks about being at a funeral with her child.  At one point well into the poem, she hands the child to her husband so she can throw dirt onto the grave.

But several of my students missed that, and from the way the poem uses direct address, decided that the speaker must be a new widow, burying her husband.  So I've pointed them to the part where she says that she hands the child to her husband.

I'm pretty careful only to use evidence from within the poem.

When I started studying English, I took a course in theory and criticism.  In the course, we focused primarily on a book of poems by George Oppen and sort of on hermeneutics.  Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  Except it was pretty miserable because often, when someone would point to something in a poem and say, "this says X," the professor would say, basically, no, it isn't X, because I know George and that didn't happen.  And it always seemed to me very unfair to ask us to try to read poems if they only make sense if you know the writer. 

(Retrospectively, I realize that we were probably all pretty naïve readers, but the principle holds.)

And then, of course, I try to be careful to separate the speaker of a poem from the writer, even though with a lot of more confessional contemporary poetry, that separation feels difficult.

(The other thing that made the course miserable was the professor's unwillingness to define or explain "hermeneutics" except to say that "hermeneutics isn't [this]," or "hermeneutics isn't [that]."  As I said at the time, my car wasn't either of those things, either, but I was pretty sure it wasn't hermeneutics.  (This was in the days before the internet, or even email, and my dictionary didn't provide much help.  I SHOULD have gone to the library and asked a librarian for help, but I wasn't that sophisticated a student at that point.)

I've never understood why he didn't just take half an hour and give us a nice introduction to hermeneutics and interpretation; I hope he had a good pedagogical reason for spiraling around it instead, but I've never figured it out.


Anyway, my friend is skyping into my class from afar today, and I'm excited for them to get to talk to her!

Page Limits on Assignments?

Like most teachers, I think, I don't like when students ask how long a paper should be, especially when it feels like what they want to do is the minimum.  You probably know the sort of paper I'm thinking of.  The student gets a page minimum (n), writes blather for n-1 pages, and one part of a sentence onto n, and then stops, pretty much mid-whatever, because they've done the page minimum.

It's not most students, but it happens, right?  And that's always my worry.

What I want, in my ideal world, is for students to start working on what they want to say, and to say it well until it's said, and be done.

When the shoe's on the other foot though, when I'm writing a statement for a grant or something, I totally want a page limit.

If you tell me, write two pages explaining your project for a grant, I'm pretty happy.  If you tell me to write no more than three pages explaining why my colleague should be tenured and promoted, I'm pretty happy.  But if you shrug and say, just write as much as you need to?  I'm unhappy.

If I know that everyone is just writing two pages for that grant, then I know I'm not going to turn in something wildly out of proportion to what others are doing, and mine won't look either overwhelming and too big, or like I didn't care enough to really explain. 

The same with the tenure letter; if I know no one's going to turn in a 12 page letter to get their colleague tenured, then I won't feel like my three pages are unconvincing because I could only write three pages.

(Of course, in either case, I'm going to work like the dickens to say a lot, as clearly and convincingly as possible in the allotted pages.)

How about you?  Page limits for student writing (even as suggestions), or no?

Celebration!

I just got news that my sabbatical application has been approved by my campus.  Now, of course, it has to be approved by the governing folks.  But historically, they've approved sabbaticals if the state university campuses have approved them (because the university campuses, when they approve, say that they can cover them budget-wise).

The only difficulty on my end is budgeting, but I think I've got that handled.  I'll use some savings, but that's what savings are for.  (And it's not like I'm going to start spending money wildly on a Porsche or something.)

This is bright news for me in a difficult semester.  And boy, I can't even say how relieved and happy I am; words, as always, fail me.  Or I fail them, I suppose.

I'm going to start a new label in celebration!

Safety Pins?

The big question in this post is about safety pins.  Are you seeing them around?  I'm sympathetic, but I guess I feel like we're going to forget really quickly.  What do you think?



Other than that, I've been muddling through.  That's how it's been.

I've been ill; just a head cold, but miserable in the head cold way for almost three weeks.  (It's MUCH better now, and has been steadily improving since about Thursday, thanks for asking.)  For most of those past three weeks, I've been coughing a lot, and waking up every couple of hours during the night coughing.  So I've been barely sleeping.

I've been involved with interviews, many of them.  All good, but they take a lot of time.  And then there's the related paperwork, which takes a lot of time, too.

I'm involved in a task force which will come to partial fruition this coming week.  Fingers crossed that it goes well.  I have a couple hours (maybe) of prep to do for my part, then the actual event.

Much of the week was spent doing 20 minute conferences with all my writing students.  It's a lot of time, but very helpful to all of them, I think.  I hope.

I realized on Tuesday afternoon (between conferences) that I'd be teaching "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" on Wednesday, though I hadn't reread them since I last taught the course some 5+ years ago.  Great poems, but what to do?  (It went fine.)  (On Tuesday, I went home about 4, got into bed and semi-slept for 2 hours, got up, prepped for a couple hours, and went back to bed around 8:30 and semi-slept

I've been feeling like I'm juggling, and something's always about to drop and break.  It's not a good feeling.

I've fallen behind on grading.  I need to rethink this sort of assignment because the grading's onerous, even though the assignment is really valuable in getting students to read critically.

The one bright thing is practicing the violin when I haven't been coughing too much.  It totally takes my mind off everything else, just focusing on trying not to sound really bad. 

The Day

This is a big one.  I thought there were big ones before, but this seems way, way more important.

I voted a couple of weeks ago, which is legal in my state.  I didn't have problems, but then, I'm a white, middle-aged woman with easy access to legal ID.  And my local city clerk seems to be not crazy.  (I don't know her politics, but what I hear is about making sure everyone has clear information about how to vote and such.)

I drove by my polling place (it's on the best route to work) this morning at about 7:15, and the parking lot was full, and the street parking was close to full.

Vote well, USians; please, please, please vote well.

(I don't own a pantsuit, and none of my clothes are white, but I am wearing a nice blue sweater.)

McMansion Hell

Have you folks seen this site, McMansion Hell?

Basically, the writer is an architectural critic who explains why it is that McMansions are so darned ugly.  They basically do two sorts of posts.  One is the broad explanatory post, taking some issue and explaining how it works in the architecture.  It may be an overview, as here, or it may focus on a specific aspect of houses, and show different ones with explanations, as with this on front entries, or this one on landscaping, or this one on roofs.  The second sort of post takes a specific house, staged by realtors for the market, and critiques it.  Here's one on a house in Virginia.  And here's one from Georgia.

So I have a bit of a love/hate, or maybe more a love/fear relationship with this site.  I love it because it explains so much about that aesthetic and why McMansions seem so unpleasing aesthetically. 

But I hate/fear it because every post makes me more aware that I live in a sort of ugly McMansion, not guilty of the highest level of McMansion excesses, perhaps, but pretty up there.

For example, if you look at the Georgia house, and scroll down to the kitchen, where the writer talks about white appliances?  Yeah, I can see my white kitchen appliances from where I sit.  And I'm not getting new ones any time soon (I hope!).  So white appliances, check.

Open concept.  Yep, check.

At one point the writer talks about someone's TV being old, but it's basically a big screen TV from maybe 10 years ago.  If it works, what's to complain about?  There's nothing wrong with a 25 year old TV that works, is there?  (Asks a woman who owns a 25 or so year old TV, and who just got a new big, flat screen one a few years ago because the old one couldn't talk to the CD player I bought used.  The old one was good, and color, even if it was only 13".)

My house is probably a 7 on the scale of 1-10 horribleness.  Maybe a 6. 

In addition to the ugliness, the architect talks about the cheapness of materials and building techniques used to build McMansions, and here's where my house falls squarely in.  Bad roof shingles, check (now not bad, because I had the whole thing replaced).  Vinyl siding, check (but seriously, I would hate to have to restain or repaint every three or so years).  Minimal insulation (well, at least I had a lot added when I had the roof redone, so hopefully that is solved).  And so on.  It's sort of worrisome.

On the other hand, I don't have the money to decorate a lot, so my house doesn't have the most egregious decorating faux pas, I suppose.  On the other hand, it's pretty much just whatever old furniture I've picked up over the years, and a few pieces I've bought for specific purposes.  (The writer of McMansion Hell says they specifically show pictures of realtor staged houses, and not houses real people live in, because they aren't making fun of real people.)

When I bought my house, it was in a newish neighborhood, on a cul-de-sac where all the houses were built, but also near areas that didn't have streets through and such.  For a while, it stayed like that.  But in the last three years or so, there's been a building boom, streets have been put through, and a lot of new houses are going in, and they're all so McMansion.  My house is already one of the smaller houses on my street of 9 houses, maybe the smallest.  But the new houses going in are way bigger than most of the houses on my street (there's one that's way bigger than the others, and about the size of the new houses).

Maybe this means our housing values will go up?  Which doesn't matter until we decide to sell, of course, except that our taxes will also go up.  And the city may decide to put in sidewalks.  (It's a cul-de-sac; everyone just walks along the side and no cars are driving fast.)

So, there we are, something fun to read; or, if you're like me, something fun and perhaps anxiety-producing!

Surf Scoter!

Surf Scoters are pretty rare up in the North Woods.  They're way more common in the way up North.

But there's been one nearby, so I went out after work on Friday, drove a bit, and got to see it.  (And took a couple of pictures; these are cropped, and not nearly as good as pros take, but enough to remind me.)

Pretty exciting.  It's so very cool that there are email lists and such that people use to share information about bird sitings and such.  (I'm sure there are lots of such things about other stuff, but I'm on the edge of the birder world, so that's what I see.)  It sure makes it lots easier to get to see rarer birds than it would be.  (Though, population decreases work against that, I bet.)

Happy November!

I spent all weekend in grading jail, and now I'm out!  At least until Friday.

I gave midterms last week (in two different courses), and had several students not take them for a variety of health-ish reasons.  And because some of those involve time to get better, they weren't able to schedule makeups until this week, after I'd given back midterms in class and gone over them (I can't see making 20+ people wait to get midterms back because one or two people were ill).  So I had to write two new midterms.  And I'm willing to do that, and did it, and without complaining to the students, but dang, it's frustrating to have to write make up midterms.

I was talking to one of my colleagues about it, and he said it feels like we're having more students with mental health issues.  That may be.  Is that your experience?

Of course, we want students with mental health issues to get the help they need, to not feel stigmatized, and to succeed. 

But, for example, that means we have to write extra midterms, so it takes extra time.  And we're all already working more than 40 hours a week.  Where does the extra time come from? 

I guess the questions for me are:   are other folks seeing more students with mental health issues (and having those issues require additional work for instructors and such)?

How do you balance the additional needs of those students with all the other demands on your time?

By the Wayside

Every so often, I'll look at a blogroll, and think how much I miss certain blogging voices.  And maybe I'll click over, just in case. 

Today, I found a link to a State Park place where I may have been before (or not); I have vague memories of a place that looks a lot like the pictures on line.  But maybe a lot of places look like that and I just don't realize it?

And I found a blog I used to read that's been updated, A Gentleman's C.  (I must be the last person alive who doesn't use an RSS feed.)

To the Theater

I went to a play the other day, put on by a local amateur group, Shipwrecked!  An Entertainment.  (The play premiered in the US in 2007.)

It did some interesting things, choices the director made, and the theme of tale-telling.  But there were a couple of parts that were, well, problematic.  Or is it just me?

In short, a 19th century white European male goes off to see for adventure, ends up stranded on an island off Australia, where he eventually meets some Aboriginal people.  He saves the people, and then is basically offered his choice of brides, choosing a woman he met early on.  Later, homesick, he leaves his wife and family and returns to Europe where he writes and sells his story, to both acclaim and doubt.

The problematic, initially, for me, was the representation of the Aboriginal people.  They weren't played in blackface (thank dog) but were played in tattery looking clothes (think caveman pictures from the 50s more than not) and did more grunting than not.  Like those old caveman pictures, they were played stooped, mostly.  The crowd seemed to find the effect comic.

Now, I get that by the end the audience is supposed to question his tale, to wonder if he's ever seen Aboriginal people, or had these adventures.  But while the Aboriginal people are on stage, there was nothing to suggest that the performance was thinking about what it means to present Aboriginal people in this sort of way.

The lesser problematic part was during the choosing a wife scene, where one of the potential brides was played in broad drag.  Again, the audience laughed.

But, I wonder, how would it feel to sit with my African American or Native American students to see this play?  How would it feel to sit with a transgender student to see this play?

I don't think it would feel comfortable.  The fact is, of course, most African American or Native American students have seen far worse, experienced far worse.  But this would be like yet another paper cut in the skin of life.  I wouldn't want to participate in giving that paper cut.

To put it another way, it's not a good sign that I was grateful, ever so grateful that at least they weren't in blackface.

As tends to be the case here, the theater audience was very white.  So as the play was presenting the Aboriginal people, it felt like a bunch of white people secretly (or maybe not secretly, but imagining themselves as the only possible audience) enjoying the racism of the representation.

I haven't read the play, so maybe this performance wasn't at all what the text suggests, or not at all like the play that premiered in New York.

I did read a couple reviews (including in The New York Times), and they didn't seem to notice race issues.  But then, theater often seems like a bastion of white privilege, with white folks just not noticing racism because they imagine they're in an all white space.

Has anyone else seen the play?  Thoughts?

I saw a play last year by a Nigerian-American playwright, set in Africa, with all African characters, but played by white folks (in this Midwestern area), and it didn't feel racist in this way.  It felt like the African characters were represented with respect in a way that just didn't come across in Shipwrecked.  I think that other play was played as a sort of timeless story, a story set in a culture, but a story that they expected to speak to all humanity and represent all humanity, in the way that we imagine Shakespeare speaks to all humanity, if you know what I mean.

Is there a way this play can be performed that doesn't feel racist?

(I was thinking, if they played the European guy in shipwreck-ish clothing, and the Aboriginal characters in, say, modern business attire, could you get at the sense that the main character's storytelling is problematic?)

Agincourt, Again

It's St. Crispin's Day!

That's the day when we remember that we don't remember well, but are easily manipulated by patriotic rhetoric.  Or, at least, it we should remember that we don't remember.

In Shakespeare's Henry V, the play's most memorable (at least to me) passage comes in Henry's speech before the battle of Agincourt. 

I seem to post about St. Crispin's Day every few years.

In 2007.

On Veteran's Day, 11 November 2005.  (Where I posted the speech.)

And last year, the 600th anniversary, 2015.  (Where I posted even more of the speech.)


****

I got an email from a colleague today, a colleague who sometimes gets really petty.  And this is one of those times.  The problem is, when she gets petty, other people have to rein her in, and then she gets really mad.  Unfortunately, right now, I'm the one with the reins.  (But, if the pettiness persists, other folks will help.  Still, she'll be most mad at me.)

Last week, I made the mistake of asking another colleague (who's in a position where they're supposed to answer these sorts of questions) a question in the department office, and then since I didn't understand the shorthand of her answer, a followup question.  And she blew up at me and started ranting at me for being so so rude.  So I apologized, said I hadn't meant to be rude, but had just not understood.  And she blew up at me more.  So, again, I apologized, and said I hadn't meant to be rude, and she blew up at me more, and then she turned and walked into her office. 

That was really unpleasant.  Let's just say, I'm averse to conflict.  If the zombie apocalypse comes, you don't want me on your side.  If you need a latrine dug, then you may want my help.  If you need someone to visit while you're in the hospital, then you may want me to.  But if it comes to a verbal fight, in a hallway or anywhere, then no, I'm crap at that.

If I could have done it financially, I would have turned in my letter of resignation that day.  I still would, if I could do it financially.  (I did discuss it with the chair.  Meh.  Neither good nor bad.  This is one of the favored folks of the chair.  But if she ever verbally attacks me again, I'll file an official complaint, I guess.)

I used to feel like, mostly, the folks in my department treated each other decently, and that somehow made the nastiness of the state government, the nastiness of state and local politics, the nastiness of administrative desperation... survivable. 

And now, I don't feel that.

Shakespeare Writes a New Play!

Or not.

The Guardian has an article this morning that talks about the new edition of The New Oxford Shakespeare (ed. Gary Taylor), which credits Marlowe with collaborating on the Henry VI plays and names Shakespeare as the author of Arden of Faversham.

I'm not much into authorship issues.  I think it's pretty clear to me that theater is wildly collaborative, but I wouldn't have thought Marlowe would write with Shakespeare at that point in their careers, when Marlowe was already popular, and Shakespeare was a beginner. 

As to Arden, which is a blast of a play to teach, I'm reminded of Don Foster's work claiming that "Elegy" as Shakespeare's based on computer analysis, and then deciding later that it wasn't.  Of course, everyone would love to find another work by Shakespeare. 

I don't think it's the first time Shakespeare's been suggested as the author of Arden.  The question is, how does it change things?

For folks who use The New Oxford to teach (and I don't think Shakespeare anthologies sell much outside of teaching requirements), then it will make it easy to include Arden in a Shakespeare course.  I don't know if that will happen much, though.  I think it's easy to choose, say, Titus as one of the tragedies to teach in a survey, especially if you're going to teach Hamlet later, or Othello, because it brings forward revenge tragedy as a genre and race, both of which make for fruitful discussion.  And there's lots to talk about re gender, violence, masculinities, social order, etc.  But I don't think I'd choose Arden to do the same work in a class.  I'm sure some folks will choose it, and make it work well for them.

If Oxford puts out a new edition of Arden as Shakespeare, that's interesting.  (It's already available for a reasonable price in their World's Classics series, along with A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays.  And there's the Methuen edition, which is reasonably priced and useful.)

Other than that, how do these findings change what we write or teach about Shakespeare?  How do they change what we see on stage?

Maybe Arden will get some more stage time, which is good, because I think it would work really well on stage (I've never seen it).

I doubt it changes much for the Henry VI plays; they'll still get taught in Shakespeare courses, and in drama courses, and maybe they'll get added to the occasional Marlowe course.

On-Line Catalog

I got an email from a colleague today, asking about one of the requirements for an interdisciplinary program (for which I chair a committee, so it made sense).  I looked at my print out of the requirements, and then I looked at last year's catalog.

And then I answered with some confidence, both that this year's catalog and last year's catalog agreed about the requirement.

And then I got to thinking: we've gone from printed catalogs to printed and on-line catalogs, and now to only an on-line catalog.  I have a partial shelf of old catalogs, which have been useful at times because here, at least, catalogs work as a sort of contract.  Students enter under a "catalog year" and have to fulfill the requirements outlined in the catalog for their catalog year.  If we changed the requirements, they don't have to do new requirements, even if they changed their major after a new catalog.  (Students always had an option to move to a newer catalog year, which makes more sense lately because we've been reducing requirements in a lot of ways in an effort to raise our four and six year graduation rates.)

So, as an advisor, it was helpful to keep several years of printed catalogs on hand to be able to check requirement changes and such. 

So how are we going to figure out if, say, a student comes in under the 2016-17 catalog, and then we change a major requirement in 2017 at some point.  We won't have back catalogs to check (nor will students), and requirements can now change at any time during the year (rather than just once a year when the catalog went to print).  That gives the university lots of flexibility, but seems like it has potential to cause advising nightmares.

The nightmares will probably be minimized if we keep going on our current trajectory or reducing requirements, of course, since it will always be "advantageous" for a student to move to a new catalog.

Has anyone out there been using only on-line catalogs for a while now?  (It makes a lot of sense in many ways, of course.)  How does your school track changes in programs so they're visible to students, faculty, and anyone else?

Trusting the Process

In my writing class today, students had an optional journal due, and about half the students turned one in.

It was also revision day, a day for taking the responses from peer editors and working on revising papers.  We talked about revision a bit, talked about writing mini-conclusions for paragraphs, using transitions not at the end of paragraphs, but at the beginning of paragraphs, and also about writing conclusions.  The journal was, in one sense, a possible rough draft of a conclusion, though they didn't necessarily realize it until we were talking about writing conclusions and one student asked if they could basically use their journal.  Yes, I said, that's what it's for.  And several of them laughed.

And once again, I told them that the journals for class should help them with assignments in some way or other.  Pretty much all the journal assignments feed in, give them practice, or have some building relationship to the larger writing assignment. 

I think some of them get it.  Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to them about learning to trust the process of education. 

That trust, it's really difficult.  It's difficult as an instructor to earn the trust, and probably more difficult to give it to an instructor.  But if you can build that trust at least somewhat, build a sense that what the instructor is asking the student to do will build skills, is do-able with work, and will contribute to their overall learning, then (I think?  I hope?) students will feel like there's more of a partnership, more mentoring rather than judging.

And I'm back to violin lessons again.  My teacher suggests I try X.  And because I've consciously decided that I trust her teaching, I try X.  And by golly, X is hard.  But when I get a bit of a handle on X, then it helps me do Y, something more obviously musical, perhaps.

X this week is a D-minor scale.  It's a bit hard.  But I trust that it will help me when I start playing the D-minor part of the next Suzuki piece.

That Went Fast

The past week just blew by.

I got and graded a big stack of papers, and some small stacks (journals, rewrites).

I've been to endless meetings (well, it feels like they're endless, even if they're good meetings).  And student conferences; I've met with every student in my writing class at least once since 8am on Thursday.

I spent most of the weekend in grading jail.  Except I went to a concert that my violin teacher was playing in.  Way good!

Today, I don't teach, so I slept in, and am about to practice, and then start to grade a big stack of papers.  Then, around noon, I'll go to campus for a meeting and then conferences with students.

The stack of papers I turned back in my Shakespeare class have led to some worried students wanting conferences.  And my writing students are working on a paper which they'll do peer revision work on tomorrow in class.  This is a hard assignment, and I think most of them are on track (since I've talked to them all in conference, I have a pretty good idea where they were).  But several want more feedback before peer revision.

Violin is especially fun right now.  I'm about to work on "The Two Grenadiers," a song by Schumann in D-minor and D-major.  So I'm working on the D-minor scale, and since you can shift a string and do basically the same thing in a different key, the G-minor scale.  I find scales weirdly satisfying, I think because I can practice them and achieve a basic level of doing them fairly quickly.  (That doesn't happen with most pieces I'm learning.)

I seem to have an especially heavy committee load right now, and can I say, when you work with someone on a committee, you get a different sense of them.  I'm on one committee with an administrator, and while I respected her before, my respect has redoubled.  She's fantastic at facilitating discussion and progress. 

And I'm on a committee with a young faculty colleague, and I'm astounded by how set in stone she thinks things must be.  For example, we came up with issue X, and she said that she's heard that at some schools, issues X is always handled in Y way.  And more experienced committee members said, yes, that's true at some schools, but we don't, because handling issue X in Y way may mislead people and thus be hurtful.  And she insisted that at some schools, issue X is handled in Y way, and she wanted to make sure we knew that.  And once again, other folks said, yes, we know, but we don't because doing that is problematic.  She came back to the Y practice two or three more times, as if she couldn't quite believe that we'd rejected Y practice for reasons we believe are good.

And it was like that for several issues.  Color me unimpressed.

Yesterday, I went to a recital by a university string student my teacher teaches.   (If you want to learn an instrument, one helpful thing is to pay attention to other people who play.  At the least, you get a bit more familiar with some repertoire.)  The student did a really good job.  Really good. 

And once again, I was so impressed by how poised our music students are, at least the ones who give recitals.  (I'm sure there are some music students who aren't so good, etc.)  But the ones at this recital, the pianist, a chamber group, they're so good at looking confident and comfortable on stage.  It's not that they don't make mistakes, but they're poised. 

And watching the chamber group, it's so cool to see how closely they attend to each other, looking, listening.  Way cool!

Last Hurrah

I went camping up at a State Park this past weekend, probably the last hurrah of the season.

So, naturally, I took some pictures.  It was (according to WU) 26F at night, and boy is that cold.  But the morning was totally worth it!

Sickened

I'm reading job applications, and got one from someone who did their degree at a for-profit, on-line outfit.  Everything about the application makes me feel like this person got ripped off and doesn't really realize it.

I feel sort of sickened.  We're searching for a, let's say, Mathematical Forester, and this person is getting a degree in Underwater Basketweaving.  But somehow they think they're a good applicant for our job.

It's not like I can sit down with them and tell them they got ripped off.  And if I could, what good would it do them at this point?  None that I can think of.

Yeah, so I'm feeling a bit sick at this point.

Because I Can't Resist Another Stick Figure Lit

The text of the day is?

Stick Figure Lit - What's the Poem Today?

I taught a poem today, and now I did some art.  The poem seemed fitting for today.

Sunday Evening

I came to my office to take care of a few things, finish some prep, enter grades, the usual.

And, yes, to check what I'm teaching in my intro to poetry class tomorrow.  "My Last Duchess."  What a sweet thing to read on my syllabus!  What a glorious poem to teach!

Color me happy.

Of course, most of the poems I teach in the class make me happy; I'm sure I'm not the only person who teaches a lot of favorites in intro courses, right?

I still have several more hours of grading, reading, and prep for tomorrow (I've spent much of the day grading already). 

4 more in a stack of 20.
One Shakespeare reading (two chapters)
Some reading for the writing course (boring, but I don't know it well enough to not do it)

I have to send in my description of my senior seminar for next semester and order books for it and Shakespeare this coming week.  (Heck, I'm probably already late on the book orders; they've changed systems yet again, so I dread trying to figure it out.)


I get a small stack of grading on Monday, and another on Wednesday (different courses).

I have one biggish meeting to chair.  Another meeting to prep and attend.  Three obligatory (well, two obligatory and one a joy) campus social events.

Busy week ahead.  Back to prepping!