We just finished up watching all 9 seasons of The Office last night. In the finale, Andy says something about wishing there was a way to know when you're in the good old days while you're still in them. In the shower this morning I realized that I have realized it, a number of different times in my life. I remember the sort of 'advance nostalgia' that gripped me the summer after high school, and then at the end of each college semester. I felt it in Rome many times, especially toward the end of my second year. I feel fortunate for that, the early reminder to enjoy the great time you're having in the knowledge that it may not be that way again.
And even if not everything is the good old days, they can still be great days. This holiday season has been a little less joyous than it would have been, because Sean spent a week--including Christmas--in bed with the flu, but I also had the chance to see Carla (not once but twice!) and sit in the Flanagan living room catching up with Heather, Gary, and Mama Flan while Donut humped my leg repeatedly.
Tonight we're capping off the season by heading to Jordy and Pinto's for an new kind of adult NYE party: sweatpants and a screening of "The Room."
2017 may have sucked politically, but it's been pretty great personally. I have my PhD at last, I have a job that I love, and I have friends and family (especially little Charlie!). I've been incredibly lucky. Here's to 2018!
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Sunday, August 20, 2017
To the Lighthouse
I like the lighthouse: I like that it's faceted and not round; I like seeing it silhouetted against a bright blue sky, as I've been lucky to see it most Sunday mornings; and I like sitting on one of the benches at its base and watching the people fishing and families moving into the park to claim the best spots for their picnics and family reunions. This morning I saw two men in a distant part of the shore who were using a net to fish in the shallows...for what, I couldn't tell, but they were tipping something into a bucket. It's peaceful and beautiful, and even the profile of New Haven across the harbor has some elegance to it from such a distance.
Once my heart rate is back to normal, I walk out of the park and then run from the entrance back home. My cardio stamina is fine for running these days; my feet and knees object before my heart and lungs ever do. I'll never train to run marathons like Carla, that much is clear. I'd much rather stick with 9Round in the hopes that one day I can actually transition to a real boxing gym. And, on Sundays when the gym is closed: to the lighthouse!
Monday, August 07, 2017
Le Petit Cafe At Last: A Religious Experience
Tucked away behind an unassuming storefront in the center of Branford is a French restaurant that often winds up on a list of best restaurants in the US. It's been there for 20 years, and its best-known quirk is the European-style dining on Fridays and Saturdays: 2 seatings at 5:30 and 8:30 for a three-course prix-fixe meal. Sean and I have been planning to go to Le Petit Cafe for years, quite literally! After we went to France in 2014 and experienced the wonders of their cuisine, we decided to try and recapture the gourmand glory in our own background--but then we wound up cancelling our reservation, for reasons I can't even remember. Skip over the two years abroad, and this past January we decided to try again for our anniversary. This time it was Mother Nature that intervened; there was such a huge storm that the restaurant closed in advance. This past Saturday, however, we finally made it, as a belated celebration of Sean's birthday. And oh, did it ever live up to the years of heightened expectations! The entire experience was perfection, start to finish. We both agreed that it was without a doubt one of the best meals we've ever eaten in the States and a strong contender for best meal anywhere.
To begin: the restaurant isn't pretentious in the slightest. Rather, it's small, cosy, and yellow-painted inside. The table was already prepared with pickled yellow beets, olives, and black truffle butter, and the waiter immediately rocked up with a small, warm loaf of crusty French bread that they make themselves. Of course they make it themselves, it was fucking delicious! Not something you're going to find in a bakery here. And the truffle butter was just out of this world. We were in seventh heaven before we'd even ordered anything. Our waiter was a young kid from the Ukraine, who was adorable in a Anton Yelchin (RIP) type way, but also had kind of a thick accent that we had trouble deciphering--he'd ask me for my plate and I'd hand him my fork. You know what? That only made it feel more like we were really eating in a French restaurant (aside from his general politeness, of course).
Then, the menu! I copied the descriptions off their website so that I can conjure up these flavors in the future. Appetizer: I had "Sautéed French escargot (Burgundy) served with blue cheese (premium French “St. Agur”) and cognac sauce on herb accented puff pastry." Now, I was being pretty bold here; I've only had escargot once before in Paris, and did indeed send one flying across the table as I dug it out of its little shell. However, I was pleasantly surprised that these were already de-shelled and in that incredibly rich sauce (combined with the lower lighting, you could easily be eating a bit of calamari or clam or anything else a bit chewy; I'm not sure if there's a particular flavor to escargot themselves) and laying in the nest of the puff pastry. Sean chose as his appetizer "Chef Roy’s country style pork pate layered with armagnac infused cherries & house-cured foie gras, and served with cornichons, spiced shallot chutney, and dijon mustard." I'm not a fan of pate or foie gras, but Sean loves both and was very pleased.
After the salad course--very simply dressed, the tomatoes bursting with flavor--it was time for the main event. Sean chose "Pan-roasted five spice duck breast served with organic black rice, port wine infused cranberries, toasted organic pine nuts, and orange sauce." His dish was, in his opinion, very good. I didn't try it, even though I like duck well enough. Why? Because the first bite of my dish,
"Roasted center-cut pork rib chop (Berkshire, all natural) wrapped with jambon de Bayonne, and served with sautéed organic spinach, roasted Russian banana fingerling potatoes, crispy pancetta, fresh grapes, and port wine sauce" was, indeed, a religious experience. Muffled moans of pleasure were to be heard from my side of the table. The sauce was exquisite--there's no other way to describe it, warm and rich and electric with flavor. I understood once more the saying about the secret ingredient of French cooking being time, because that dish had clearly taken plenty. Dear God. Sean agreed, and acknowledged that this was a rare case in which I had chosen the better entree sight unseen!
To begin: the restaurant isn't pretentious in the slightest. Rather, it's small, cosy, and yellow-painted inside. The table was already prepared with pickled yellow beets, olives, and black truffle butter, and the waiter immediately rocked up with a small, warm loaf of crusty French bread that they make themselves. Of course they make it themselves, it was fucking delicious! Not something you're going to find in a bakery here. And the truffle butter was just out of this world. We were in seventh heaven before we'd even ordered anything. Our waiter was a young kid from the Ukraine, who was adorable in a Anton Yelchin (RIP) type way, but also had kind of a thick accent that we had trouble deciphering--he'd ask me for my plate and I'd hand him my fork. You know what? That only made it feel more like we were really eating in a French restaurant (aside from his general politeness, of course).
Then, the menu! I copied the descriptions off their website so that I can conjure up these flavors in the future. Appetizer: I had "Sautéed French escargot (Burgundy) served with blue cheese (premium French “St. Agur”) and cognac sauce on herb accented puff pastry." Now, I was being pretty bold here; I've only had escargot once before in Paris, and did indeed send one flying across the table as I dug it out of its little shell. However, I was pleasantly surprised that these were already de-shelled and in that incredibly rich sauce (combined with the lower lighting, you could easily be eating a bit of calamari or clam or anything else a bit chewy; I'm not sure if there's a particular flavor to escargot themselves) and laying in the nest of the puff pastry. Sean chose as his appetizer "Chef Roy’s country style pork pate layered with armagnac infused cherries & house-cured foie gras, and served with cornichons, spiced shallot chutney, and dijon mustard." I'm not a fan of pate or foie gras, but Sean loves both and was very pleased.
After the salad course--very simply dressed, the tomatoes bursting with flavor--it was time for the main event. Sean chose "Pan-roasted five spice duck breast served with organic black rice, port wine infused cranberries, toasted organic pine nuts, and orange sauce." His dish was, in his opinion, very good. I didn't try it, even though I like duck well enough. Why? Because the first bite of my dish,
"Roasted center-cut pork rib chop (Berkshire, all natural) wrapped with jambon de Bayonne, and served with sautéed organic spinach, roasted Russian banana fingerling potatoes, crispy pancetta, fresh grapes, and port wine sauce" was, indeed, a religious experience. Muffled moans of pleasure were to be heard from my side of the table. The sauce was exquisite--there's no other way to describe it, warm and rich and electric with flavor. I understood once more the saying about the secret ingredient of French cooking being time, because that dish had clearly taken plenty. Dear God. Sean agreed, and acknowledged that this was a rare case in which I had chosen the better entree sight unseen!
After we polished off our plates, the remaining bit of French bread, and our bottle of wine (Cote du Rhone, not my favorite, but then I could never really warm up to French wines), and it time for our final selection of the evening: dessert. I'm not really a dessert fan, particularly not in restaurants; I'll have a brownie or ice cream or something, but I don't go in for pie, pastries, etc. And yet, I ate every bit of this dessert. Sean called it a 'deconstructed' apple tart; a thin rectagular raft of pastry on which the sliced apple was lying, drizzled with a caramel sauce, and accompanied by fresh-made Chantilly cream and blueberries. I ate the cream. I didn't even want to eat Chantilly cream while we were in Chantilly a couple of years ago, but at Le Petit, I ate it, and it was delicious, as the blueberries--perfectly firm and ripe!--burst in your mouth alongside each bit of cream.
Not only was the food wonderful, it was the perfect opportunity to reminisce about our trip to France, still one of our favorite trips, especially the Avignon-Bordeaux part. We brought up the Tripadvisor page for the B&B we stayed at in Naujan-et-Postillac and were thrilled to see that the English couple is still running it (and that it has an exceptionally high rating, with only a dozen out of over 500 reviews ranking it merely "Very Good" as opposed to all the "Excellents"). We talked about our night at La Poudette, the little house-restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that is another contender for Best Meal Ever, where the geese who ran across the drive as you walked up from the road were the same ones destined for the foie gras later. Sts-Maries-sur-la-mer, where the sky stayed streaked with light until almost 10 o'clock at night as we drove back to Avignon. Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a hilltop ruin buffeted by some of the strongest winds I've ever felt. The plane trees in Arles. The peaceful abbey of Senanque. The distant view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, even though we couldn't get up there. The friendly British couple we met in a restaurant in Avignon. So much beauty, so lush and verdant. I want to go again! Le sigh.
Thursday, August 03, 2017
To the Tune of Lana Del Rey and White Wine
An inveterate radio-channel-flipper I've never been able to say that I have terribly well-defined musical preferences. Other people's recommendations have led me to so much music I wouldn't necessarily have encountered elsewhere. I miss the age of being able to borrow a CD from a friend and then either buy or burn my own copy if I liked it enough! Kay Cosgrove lent me her Elliott Smith CD freshmen year of college, I used to steal Carla's Regina Spektor CD in senior year, Lakshmi gave me Lykke Li at the Academy. Since the dawning of the mp3 age, though, I've become really fickle with regards to music. I rarely buy an actual album outright, but rather settle for one or two songs I've heard. Of course I know that this means I'm missing out on great songs that are elsewhere on Lorde's albums or on Muse's. It's my own fault, but not one I've ever been in any rush to rectify, despite the availability of Spotify and other streaming services. I don't even own some of my favorite albums anymore. Tool's Aenima wore out before I got around to burning it, so when I feel the need to rock out, I just bring it up on Youtube.
There are a few exceptions. Ligabue, for one; I've got most of his recent albums, including the one I bought in a record store in Florence in 2006 and the one I burned off of Sylvie during my time at Middlebury in 2011. Lana del Rey is another; not only do I have all her albums as Lana del Rey, plus assorted soundtrack songs, I have her much less impressive previous work as Lana del Ray and Lizzie Grant. And I just bought Lust for Life, which is playing right now as I write. Sean likes to call this "slit your writs music," but I would call it perfect "look out the bus/train window and daydream" music. This most recent record is my least favorite so far, but it might grow on me. I have such warm nostalgic associations with the previous albums; I associate Ultraviolence, for example, with our month in Venice, August 2015 (and even more specifically, for reasons I can't quite explain, with walking from our apartment near S. Maria Formosa over a few bridges toward the grocery store early in the morning while there were few people out), while Honeymoon I associate with our second year at the Academy.
A year ago, we were in Paris, waiting out the month before our brief return to Rome and departure for home. It seems a lifetime and (half) a world ago, not least since at that point, I had no idea how I was going to fill in the missing 2/3 of my dissertation. Now I'm waiting again, this time to begin my job at the end of the month, and, along the way, start revising my dissertation into an actual book manuscript. In preparation for my forthcoming working life, I finally acquired my own car, this lovely 2008 Honda Civic, which is in beautiful condition.
It might not have the leather heated seats of Sean's car, but it has much better gas mileage. In fact, Sean called a short while ago to ask if we could just meet at his dad's, since he had students wanting to talk to him late about tomorrow's final exam for the summer class. What would have been impossible a week ago is now as simple as pie.
There are a few exceptions. Ligabue, for one; I've got most of his recent albums, including the one I bought in a record store in Florence in 2006 and the one I burned off of Sylvie during my time at Middlebury in 2011. Lana del Rey is another; not only do I have all her albums as Lana del Rey, plus assorted soundtrack songs, I have her much less impressive previous work as Lana del Ray and Lizzie Grant. And I just bought Lust for Life, which is playing right now as I write. Sean likes to call this "slit your writs music," but I would call it perfect "look out the bus/train window and daydream" music. This most recent record is my least favorite so far, but it might grow on me. I have such warm nostalgic associations with the previous albums; I associate Ultraviolence, for example, with our month in Venice, August 2015 (and even more specifically, for reasons I can't quite explain, with walking from our apartment near S. Maria Formosa over a few bridges toward the grocery store early in the morning while there were few people out), while Honeymoon I associate with our second year at the Academy.
A year ago, we were in Paris, waiting out the month before our brief return to Rome and departure for home. It seems a lifetime and (half) a world ago, not least since at that point, I had no idea how I was going to fill in the missing 2/3 of my dissertation. Now I'm waiting again, this time to begin my job at the end of the month, and, along the way, start revising my dissertation into an actual book manuscript. In preparation for my forthcoming working life, I finally acquired my own car, this lovely 2008 Honda Civic, which is in beautiful condition.
It might not have the leather heated seats of Sean's car, but it has much better gas mileage. In fact, Sean called a short while ago to ask if we could just meet at his dad's, since he had students wanting to talk to him late about tomorrow's final exam for the summer class. What would have been impossible a week ago is now as simple as pie.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
"What News from Kent?" : A Job, and Jane Austen
First, briefly: I got the job at Fairfield! The peasants rejoice! Ahem.
Second, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, and the Atlantic has a series of posts this week reporting on readers' favorite characters, quotations, and first encounters. My first encounter wasn't a successful one. The year was 1998, and I really liked the movie You've Got Mail, a movie that's held up surprisingly well, considering the number of times you have to listen to the AOL loading noises. In it, Meg Ryan's character talks to her internet pen pal about her love of P & P, and Tom Hanks tries reading it to please her but gives up in disgust, not impressed by the famous scene of Darcy snubbing Elizabeth. I, in turn, decided I wanted to read this classic novel, but instead of taking it out from the library, I used AOL and brought up an HTML version through Project Gutenberg (or some similar site). The poor quality of the online reading experience might help explain why I wasn't really impressed, but I do remember that, like Tom Hanks, I got to the dance scene with the snub and was like "...that's it?" I'm not sure if I even finished the book at all at that time, and neither am I sure when I fell in love with it or any of her other books. I searched my blog for mentions of Jane Austen, and the earliest is from 2004, when I mention planning to re-read P&P, so evidently by that time I had read it--definitely in a physical copy.
Second, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, and the Atlantic has a series of posts this week reporting on readers' favorite characters, quotations, and first encounters. My first encounter wasn't a successful one. The year was 1998, and I really liked the movie You've Got Mail, a movie that's held up surprisingly well, considering the number of times you have to listen to the AOL loading noises. In it, Meg Ryan's character talks to her internet pen pal about her love of P & P, and Tom Hanks tries reading it to please her but gives up in disgust, not impressed by the famous scene of Darcy snubbing Elizabeth. I, in turn, decided I wanted to read this classic novel, but instead of taking it out from the library, I used AOL and brought up an HTML version through Project Gutenberg (or some similar site). The poor quality of the online reading experience might help explain why I wasn't really impressed, but I do remember that, like Tom Hanks, I got to the dance scene with the snub and was like "...that's it?" I'm not sure if I even finished the book at all at that time, and neither am I sure when I fell in love with it or any of her other books. I searched my blog for mentions of Jane Austen, and the earliest is from 2004, when I mention planning to re-read P&P, so evidently by that time I had read it--definitely in a physical copy.
Friday, June 23, 2017
The Sunken Garden and Billy Collins
Sean and I agreed that the presents we came up with for our six-month dating anniversary in the summer of 2005 were a joint high point in our gift-giving history. I bought and framed the war/peace WWII newspapers, while Sean wrote to Billy Collins to ask him for an autograph for his girlfriend. Unfortunately BC didn't write back in time, so Sean gave me a book of his (with autograph) that he'd found in a used bookstore. Then, lo and behold, a month or so later BC wrote back, sending a little pre-printed poem as well as a note, "Hoping you and Michelle are still together..." (that ellipsis really said it all, don't you think? Six months seemed such an accomplishment to us then, but to a divorced guy it was probably pretty funny). Linda matted and framed both pieces of paper, and they're on the wall in my office. It was a great gift, and a wonderful story. I went to see BC read at Sacred Heart in Fairfield in 2007, and brought along a tiny picture of the frame taken on my LG Chocolate phone, to show him, but I decided it wasn't worth waiting in the long line of old ladies to show it to him.
We made up for it on Wednesday night, though! BC was the headliner of the 25th anniversary of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, held on the grounds of the Hillstead Museum in Farmington, where my high school friend Meghan's mom was a docent years ago. It turns out that the woman who designed the house for herself, Theodate Pope, did so with the help of McKim, Meade, and White, the architects of the AAR main building. The ground floor of the house was open, so we took a walk through admiring what really is an impressive collection of French Impressionist paintings, but also little gems like the anonymous 16th-century Venetian painter who painted a Saint Lucy, head tipped to the side in a reverse of Titian's Salome, her gaze on her two cartoonish removed eyeballs on a skewer in her hand.
Sara's mom took us to the poetry festival once during high school, but I don't really recall any of it, besides it being hot. We got there relatively early, a little after 4, which meant we could snag a parking spot right on the grounds, and then a spot for our chairs with a good view of the podium. It rained at one point and we got wet (before Sean ran to the car to retrieve the umbrella, which turned out to be a good call since there were repeated cloudbursts/sunshowers for an hour or two), but then it turned brilliantly sunny, and stayed clear as the sun went down on the longest day of the year, as BC read his work. The garden itself is beautiful, the birds were singing, and the sun striking the trees and the house as it slowly set were really lovely.
When I saw BC in 2007, I recall being a bit taken aback by the dryness of his voice and tone; poems that had seemed sincere to me on the page suddenly took on a sardonic edge when he read them. I remember thinking he seemed rather bitter about life, having (recently?) gotten divorced. This time, though, it was perfect. Sean enjoyed himself hugely, and said he hadn't laughed that hard in a very long time. One he particularly enjoyed was among the brief haiku BC read--poems which, he reminded us, can only have 17 syllables (he noted dryly that plenty of poets write three lines about a frog and call it a haiku). This was also the only one to which he had given a title:
New England Haiku
Whose woods these are I
think I know. His house is in
the village though. He
Maybe he read that in 2007, but I don't remember it (a quick search of Google suggests it's one of his standards) but we laughed so hard. BC mentioned that he's engaged, so perhaps that has slightly improved his outlook on life!
After the reading was over BC was available to sign books. Of course, we hadn't brought any books, but Sean suggested we get in line anyway and tell him about the gift. I was reluctant, but that was really a great idea. He was so gracious, and evidently tickled by our story. He shook my hand three times, told us we seemed like a really happy couple, and then joked "but if anything happens, don't blame me!"
We made up for it on Wednesday night, though! BC was the headliner of the 25th anniversary of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, held on the grounds of the Hillstead Museum in Farmington, where my high school friend Meghan's mom was a docent years ago. It turns out that the woman who designed the house for herself, Theodate Pope, did so with the help of McKim, Meade, and White, the architects of the AAR main building. The ground floor of the house was open, so we took a walk through admiring what really is an impressive collection of French Impressionist paintings, but also little gems like the anonymous 16th-century Venetian painter who painted a Saint Lucy, head tipped to the side in a reverse of Titian's Salome, her gaze on her two cartoonish removed eyeballs on a skewer in her hand.
Sara's mom took us to the poetry festival once during high school, but I don't really recall any of it, besides it being hot. We got there relatively early, a little after 4, which meant we could snag a parking spot right on the grounds, and then a spot for our chairs with a good view of the podium. It rained at one point and we got wet (before Sean ran to the car to retrieve the umbrella, which turned out to be a good call since there were repeated cloudbursts/sunshowers for an hour or two), but then it turned brilliantly sunny, and stayed clear as the sun went down on the longest day of the year, as BC read his work. The garden itself is beautiful, the birds were singing, and the sun striking the trees and the house as it slowly set were really lovely.
When I saw BC in 2007, I recall being a bit taken aback by the dryness of his voice and tone; poems that had seemed sincere to me on the page suddenly took on a sardonic edge when he read them. I remember thinking he seemed rather bitter about life, having (recently?) gotten divorced. This time, though, it was perfect. Sean enjoyed himself hugely, and said he hadn't laughed that hard in a very long time. One he particularly enjoyed was among the brief haiku BC read--poems which, he reminded us, can only have 17 syllables (he noted dryly that plenty of poets write three lines about a frog and call it a haiku). This was also the only one to which he had given a title:
New England Haiku
Whose woods these are I
think I know. His house is in
the village though. He
Maybe he read that in 2007, but I don't remember it (a quick search of Google suggests it's one of his standards) but we laughed so hard. BC mentioned that he's engaged, so perhaps that has slightly improved his outlook on life!
After the reading was over BC was available to sign books. Of course, we hadn't brought any books, but Sean suggested we get in line anyway and tell him about the gift. I was reluctant, but that was really a great idea. He was so gracious, and evidently tickled by our story. He shook my hand three times, told us we seemed like a really happy couple, and then joked "but if anything happens, don't blame me!"
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Me, PhD
Updates here have been few and far between. There was, unsurprisingly, a considerable amount of stress leading up to my defense, although I count myself lucky in general (no sleepless nights, no crying fits). My defense went incredibly well. The outside reader, a Titian specialist and David Rosand alum, loved my dissertation, and thinks I should try to publish it as a book immediately, and Coop (who I can now call Tracy!) wants me to have a book proposal ready for CAA in winter 2018. Since the mantra about publishing is "your dissertation is NOT a book," this was a really high compliment. They also gave me virtually no edits for the text, so I was able to get everything formatted quickly and submitted to the Graduate School, where it was officially accepted last week. My graduation "date" is August 2017, but I'm effectively a PhD. Woohoo! Depending on how one calculates, it took either nine years (from when I started at Temple) or seven (from the beginning of my doctoral coursework). Either way, I beat the curve, since the average age for women to get their doctorates is 33...
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Done!
Today is our eighth wedding anniversary! Yesterday I defended my dissertation. I have a PhD now! :-)
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Friend Times
We're on Academy-Dave overload here! We stayed with Dave S., and saw Dave M., in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and then met Dave McK. for dinner in New Haven on Friday night. He lives in Brooklyn and has been teaching at Yale's art school. He was from my first year, and even though we haven't been in contact since that year ended, we had a really good time. We even spoke a little Italian with the owner, who is originally from Assisi, and was delighted to learn we'd all lived together in Rome. After dinner we headed down to Milford to get drinks with Sean's friends, two of whom, Pinto and Quinn, just had offers accepted on houses this week. Naturally, I'm slightly envious of their adult settled-ness, but at the same time, buying a house has come to mean the equivalent of "this is it: we're staying here forever" in my mind, and I'm OK with not quite being at that point yet.
Yesterday was my dad's 17th anniversary! Sean commented how it's interesting how mentions of my dad have dropped off over the years on this blog. It's normal, I suppose, because my life has grown so far beyond what it was when he was a part of it. I told him, I really only thought of my dad yesterday in a light-hearted context; I spent most of the day at my sister's house, playing with Charlie and helping my sister haul all of her bulk trash to the curb for pick-up. I teased her about why she doesn't like to leave the front door open, even though it lets in lots of light, and her answer was that someone might be watching her, and I said that's Dad talking (my sister lives across from a wetland nature preserve; the only thing likely to be watching her is a squirrel). She has a great picture of him in her bedroom, from a holiday at my auntie Donna's when we were kids. He's wearing a gray suit, sitting, with a glass of something in his hand, and smiling--not grinning--at the camera. He looks healthy, not the heavy, bloated, tired man I remember vaguely from the months immediately preceding his death. He was also, interestingly enough, more dark-skinned than I recall (and it can't have been summer, given the suit and that we were there for a holiday...)! Anyway, it's a nice photo. It's my dad the way I'd like to remember him, and more importantly, the way I'd like Jen to be able to remember him, since she has more pain there than I do. Charlie will still probably only hear about his Grandpa Joe from me and Sean, but that's OK.
Luckily for Charlie, in addition to Vinny's parents he also has a stand-in grandma in Linda! We Facetimed her yesterday so she could see him and it really made her day. Not incidentally, Sean finally had a vasectomy last week, so if she hadn't fully accepted that we were never having kids, it's probably pretty clear now. We joked to Daniel that he's now the only hope for the Gleason line, but he demurred, so who knows. Jen, always eager to shake off her in-laws, has already decided that they're spending next Easter with us (ie, at Linda's), and Vinny was even on board, which is good.
One of the few remaining things that annoys me about my sister (and Vinny) is that they are constantly falling all over themselves to thank us for anything, including a) coming to visit, b) going to the store with one of them, c) helping to clean, d) entertaining the baby so they can do something else, or e) all of the above. Like, twenty times in one visit. Partially this is just their own neuroses, I know, but I don't know how else to communicate that I enjoy being there, and I like being useful! Charlie's cool and all, but actually sitting around for a whole afternoon watching him throw blocks on the floor isn't my idea of a party. I'd rather help clean. I've seen how stressful it is for them trying to balance work, the house, and the baby, and it really does make me happy to help her out when I can (though I still haven't yet cleaned a poop diaper, thank god). My mom would be so happy and amused to see us getting along so well, I'm sure.
Buona Pasqua!
Yesterday was my dad's 17th anniversary! Sean commented how it's interesting how mentions of my dad have dropped off over the years on this blog. It's normal, I suppose, because my life has grown so far beyond what it was when he was a part of it. I told him, I really only thought of my dad yesterday in a light-hearted context; I spent most of the day at my sister's house, playing with Charlie and helping my sister haul all of her bulk trash to the curb for pick-up. I teased her about why she doesn't like to leave the front door open, even though it lets in lots of light, and her answer was that someone might be watching her, and I said that's Dad talking (my sister lives across from a wetland nature preserve; the only thing likely to be watching her is a squirrel). She has a great picture of him in her bedroom, from a holiday at my auntie Donna's when we were kids. He's wearing a gray suit, sitting, with a glass of something in his hand, and smiling--not grinning--at the camera. He looks healthy, not the heavy, bloated, tired man I remember vaguely from the months immediately preceding his death. He was also, interestingly enough, more dark-skinned than I recall (and it can't have been summer, given the suit and that we were there for a holiday...)! Anyway, it's a nice photo. It's my dad the way I'd like to remember him, and more importantly, the way I'd like Jen to be able to remember him, since she has more pain there than I do. Charlie will still probably only hear about his Grandpa Joe from me and Sean, but that's OK.
Luckily for Charlie, in addition to Vinny's parents he also has a stand-in grandma in Linda! We Facetimed her yesterday so she could see him and it really made her day. Not incidentally, Sean finally had a vasectomy last week, so if she hadn't fully accepted that we were never having kids, it's probably pretty clear now. We joked to Daniel that he's now the only hope for the Gleason line, but he demurred, so who knows. Jen, always eager to shake off her in-laws, has already decided that they're spending next Easter with us (ie, at Linda's), and Vinny was even on board, which is good.
One of the few remaining things that annoys me about my sister (and Vinny) is that they are constantly falling all over themselves to thank us for anything, including a) coming to visit, b) going to the store with one of them, c) helping to clean, d) entertaining the baby so they can do something else, or e) all of the above. Like, twenty times in one visit. Partially this is just their own neuroses, I know, but I don't know how else to communicate that I enjoy being there, and I like being useful! Charlie's cool and all, but actually sitting around for a whole afternoon watching him throw blocks on the floor isn't my idea of a party. I'd rather help clean. I've seen how stressful it is for them trying to balance work, the house, and the baby, and it really does make me happy to help her out when I can (though I still haven't yet cleaned a poop diaper, thank god). My mom would be so happy and amused to see us getting along so well, I'm sure.
Buona Pasqua!
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Post-Conference Highs
A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Toward the end of March, I went down to Philly to represent Temple at the Barnes Foundation Symposium, an annual colloquy of graduate students from Philadelphia-area schools that used to be held at the PMA. In fact, when I went to visit Temple for the first time, Dr. Hall invited me to come to the symposium and then took me to lunch in the fancy museum restaurant. The Barnes, which moved to its new building on the parkway in 2012, just as I was moving out of the city, is a beautiful museum, and clearly a great deal of money went into it. Everyone agreed, for example, that the chairs in the auditorium were the most comfortable of their kind; enough so that you could spend an entire day sitting without your butt hurting!
My paper there went really well. Dr. Bolman and Dr. West stood in for Hall and Cooper, both of whom were traveling. It was really nice, in particular, to spend a little time with Dr. Bolman, who is both fiercely encouraging and wonderfully blunt--she had classic Bolman critiques to offer after my talk, including "no using "they" as pluralization" and "make sure to enunciate further, in case you have ESL listeners" (the latter of which honestly had never occurred to me, but as a Byzantinist she attends more international conferences). Dr. West also gave me a really warm introduction; apparently younger students still consider me some kind of a role model in the department? Who knew!
It was also great to spend some time with Phyllis, even though her house was pretty cold. I'm still vaguely used to it, but poor Sean was suffering! Her new housemate has an adorable tiny dog, a Papillon named Petey, who kept Sean company. One night we dined at Bacio, where Phyllis is totally in with the owner--who she once engaged in a spirited debate on the proper way to make Italian meatballs, (ie, his was not the right way) during which I was edging toward the door in embarrassment! Now, though, they're bros, and we got to enjoy a plate of incredible off-menu appetizers as a result. They're such a chill restaurant; there's a fat little tan dog who begs at all the tables, and like most restaurants in the city it's BYO, so you can sit there and drink your own wine for hours. There's no restaurant quite like that here; Home is our favorite in this area, but it's not quite as neighborhood-casual as Bacio.
We also went out to Media for lunch with Stuart and his wife Maureen; they had attended the symposium, along with another guy named Roland, who apparently was one of the Spotlight regular attendees. He seemed surprised I didn't recognize him, and I'm thinking, dude, that was four years ago! I was assured that my Spotlights are still considered the best, haha. Media is just a few miles away from Swarthmore, so that was our next stop; our friend Jeremy teaches there, and managed to wrangle one of the on-campus houses, partially out of luck and partially out of coincidence, as it happened to need a year's renovation while he was going to be in Rome last year. It's literally a five-minute walk from his office, and ten minutes' from Ruthie's school, while Bluma goes to Quaker kindergarten also on campus. Jeremy legitimately has the most enviable set-up of any academic I know (complete with annual research funding for a center they're opening in Trent, in the Dolomites!). We had a great evening with them, which naturally included some karaoke (for everyone but me, of course), including Sean's great staple, "Mack the Knife."
When I got back to New Haven, we had just 72 hours before we left for Chicago for RSA. Dr. Hall decided she couldn't wait for Dr. Cooper to actually send her comments on my dissertation and that she needed to have it by March 30, which meant applying all of the 200-odd corrections I'd been saving in a separate Excel sheet to the "master." Good thing we were flying out of Tweed, ie right behind our house, because I sent the revised draft to her at 1:30, packed in a hurry, and was on a 5:30 flight (ironically, back to Philadelphia, before going on to to Chicago).
In Chicago we stayed with other friends from Rome, Dave and Jinn. They're both painters, and Dave teaches at U of Chicago. Their apartment was lovely--so many incredible books! We stayed an entire week, though the conference itself was just three days. A whole bunch of AAR folks from my second year were in town: Will, one of the writers, lives in Chicago; Bryony was in town to give a lecture, and John was presenting at the conference; Lauren was doing the same, so Rick came with her. We had dinner one night at an amazing (if expensive) Mexican place in Dave and Jinn's neighborhood, which is Andersonville, about 45 min ride on the train north of downtown where the conference was being held. Lauren, Bryony, and John were all staying down there in the conference hotel, and headed back there after dinner, but Will and Rick came back to Dave and Jinn's place, and we ended up sitting around talking until 3am. By that point, Lauren had told Rick that it'd be best if he just stayed out, since she had to be up so early for her panel the next day, so he decided to stay over, and Will followed suit. Of course, the only spare blankets and pillows were already in use in the "guest room" (ie, Dave's office, air mattress, white curtain strung up in the doorway), so one of them took the couch, one the floor, and slept bundled in their coats. It was weird and wonderful. Sean pointed out that one of the signs that we're actually a group of friends, and not just Rome-friends, is that we barely discussed the Academy itself; we had other things to discuss and debate. It was so much fun, even if by the end of a week I was eager to get back to my own space and my own bed.
The next morning we all rallied, had breakfast, and then Sean, Rick and I went downtown to go to the Art Institute, where he and I spent a long time looking at the Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, one of Sean's favorite paintings. It was such a treat to stand there talking about it, a painting we both find interesting, as opposed to many times when Sean has patiently stood there as I inspected various early modern words (or more often, begun cracking jokes about them). Afterwards we met Dave Morris (AAR Year 1!) for a drink nearby, which was a pleasure, as he is still his loveable, chortling self.
What about the conference itself? That went great too! I was the lone grad student presenting alongside major scholars, which was a thrill. Unfortunately, the organizers of the conference put our two sessions in one of the smaller rooms, and it was literally standing room only. One of the speakers in the second session, Stephen Campbell, had to stand in the hallway for the first session! I got good feedback from my fellow panelists and from attendees (Deborah Howard! Paul Hills!). Melissa Conn from Save Venice was there, and offered to put me in touch with the collector who owns one of the recently-attributed works I touched on in my paper. Apparently, a Bolognese doctor discovered what is now considered by some to be a self-portrait of Titian in a frame in an antique shop...in Connecticut. It seems unbelievable, but apparently the drawing is still being held here on the East Coast, so I might be able to go see it in person! Another good result, that I'm trying not to get too excited about, is that a woman from another session on coins and medals approached me about publishing my paper in a volume they're going to propose for publication...with Philip Attwood, a curator at the British Museum. That would be awesome if it happens, but we'll see.
One of the benefits about giving my paper in the first session on the first day was that the stress was over, and I could enjoy the rest of it! I saw a bunch of friends from Temple, including Erin Downey and Tammy, fought my way through lines at the reception for my free drinks, and hopped in a cab, buzzed, to zip uptown for one last dinner with the Academy gang. It was really, really great.
On our way back to New Haven, Dr. Hall responded with her comments, which happily were nothing structural (though she caught so, so many typos!). Naturally Dr. Cooper now wants a new edited version before she'll bother commenting, which is both frustrating--she was supposed to be the primary reader--and also nothing I can change, except by getting her the revised version ASAP. My outside reader will be Jodi Cranston, one of the organizers of my RSA session, and one of David Rosand's students. She said she'd be honored, which...squee!
My paper there went really well. Dr. Bolman and Dr. West stood in for Hall and Cooper, both of whom were traveling. It was really nice, in particular, to spend a little time with Dr. Bolman, who is both fiercely encouraging and wonderfully blunt--she had classic Bolman critiques to offer after my talk, including "no using "they" as pluralization" and "make sure to enunciate further, in case you have ESL listeners" (the latter of which honestly had never occurred to me, but as a Byzantinist she attends more international conferences). Dr. West also gave me a really warm introduction; apparently younger students still consider me some kind of a role model in the department? Who knew!
It was also great to spend some time with Phyllis, even though her house was pretty cold. I'm still vaguely used to it, but poor Sean was suffering! Her new housemate has an adorable tiny dog, a Papillon named Petey, who kept Sean company. One night we dined at Bacio, where Phyllis is totally in with the owner--who she once engaged in a spirited debate on the proper way to make Italian meatballs, (ie, his was not the right way) during which I was edging toward the door in embarrassment! Now, though, they're bros, and we got to enjoy a plate of incredible off-menu appetizers as a result. They're such a chill restaurant; there's a fat little tan dog who begs at all the tables, and like most restaurants in the city it's BYO, so you can sit there and drink your own wine for hours. There's no restaurant quite like that here; Home is our favorite in this area, but it's not quite as neighborhood-casual as Bacio.
We also went out to Media for lunch with Stuart and his wife Maureen; they had attended the symposium, along with another guy named Roland, who apparently was one of the Spotlight regular attendees. He seemed surprised I didn't recognize him, and I'm thinking, dude, that was four years ago! I was assured that my Spotlights are still considered the best, haha. Media is just a few miles away from Swarthmore, so that was our next stop; our friend Jeremy teaches there, and managed to wrangle one of the on-campus houses, partially out of luck and partially out of coincidence, as it happened to need a year's renovation while he was going to be in Rome last year. It's literally a five-minute walk from his office, and ten minutes' from Ruthie's school, while Bluma goes to Quaker kindergarten also on campus. Jeremy legitimately has the most enviable set-up of any academic I know (complete with annual research funding for a center they're opening in Trent, in the Dolomites!). We had a great evening with them, which naturally included some karaoke (for everyone but me, of course), including Sean's great staple, "Mack the Knife."
When I got back to New Haven, we had just 72 hours before we left for Chicago for RSA. Dr. Hall decided she couldn't wait for Dr. Cooper to actually send her comments on my dissertation and that she needed to have it by March 30, which meant applying all of the 200-odd corrections I'd been saving in a separate Excel sheet to the "master." Good thing we were flying out of Tweed, ie right behind our house, because I sent the revised draft to her at 1:30, packed in a hurry, and was on a 5:30 flight (ironically, back to Philadelphia, before going on to to Chicago).
In Chicago we stayed with other friends from Rome, Dave and Jinn. They're both painters, and Dave teaches at U of Chicago. Their apartment was lovely--so many incredible books! We stayed an entire week, though the conference itself was just three days. A whole bunch of AAR folks from my second year were in town: Will, one of the writers, lives in Chicago; Bryony was in town to give a lecture, and John was presenting at the conference; Lauren was doing the same, so Rick came with her. We had dinner one night at an amazing (if expensive) Mexican place in Dave and Jinn's neighborhood, which is Andersonville, about 45 min ride on the train north of downtown where the conference was being held. Lauren, Bryony, and John were all staying down there in the conference hotel, and headed back there after dinner, but Will and Rick came back to Dave and Jinn's place, and we ended up sitting around talking until 3am. By that point, Lauren had told Rick that it'd be best if he just stayed out, since she had to be up so early for her panel the next day, so he decided to stay over, and Will followed suit. Of course, the only spare blankets and pillows were already in use in the "guest room" (ie, Dave's office, air mattress, white curtain strung up in the doorway), so one of them took the couch, one the floor, and slept bundled in their coats. It was weird and wonderful. Sean pointed out that one of the signs that we're actually a group of friends, and not just Rome-friends, is that we barely discussed the Academy itself; we had other things to discuss and debate. It was so much fun, even if by the end of a week I was eager to get back to my own space and my own bed.
The next morning we all rallied, had breakfast, and then Sean, Rick and I went downtown to go to the Art Institute, where he and I spent a long time looking at the Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, one of Sean's favorite paintings. It was such a treat to stand there talking about it, a painting we both find interesting, as opposed to many times when Sean has patiently stood there as I inspected various early modern words (or more often, begun cracking jokes about them). Afterwards we met Dave Morris (AAR Year 1!) for a drink nearby, which was a pleasure, as he is still his loveable, chortling self.
What about the conference itself? That went great too! I was the lone grad student presenting alongside major scholars, which was a thrill. Unfortunately, the organizers of the conference put our two sessions in one of the smaller rooms, and it was literally standing room only. One of the speakers in the second session, Stephen Campbell, had to stand in the hallway for the first session! I got good feedback from my fellow panelists and from attendees (Deborah Howard! Paul Hills!). Melissa Conn from Save Venice was there, and offered to put me in touch with the collector who owns one of the recently-attributed works I touched on in my paper. Apparently, a Bolognese doctor discovered what is now considered by some to be a self-portrait of Titian in a frame in an antique shop...in Connecticut. It seems unbelievable, but apparently the drawing is still being held here on the East Coast, so I might be able to go see it in person! Another good result, that I'm trying not to get too excited about, is that a woman from another session on coins and medals approached me about publishing my paper in a volume they're going to propose for publication...with Philip Attwood, a curator at the British Museum. That would be awesome if it happens, but we'll see.
One of the benefits about giving my paper in the first session on the first day was that the stress was over, and I could enjoy the rest of it! I saw a bunch of friends from Temple, including Erin Downey and Tammy, fought my way through lines at the reception for my free drinks, and hopped in a cab, buzzed, to zip uptown for one last dinner with the Academy gang. It was really, really great.
On our way back to New Haven, Dr. Hall responded with her comments, which happily were nothing structural (though she caught so, so many typos!). Naturally Dr. Cooper now wants a new edited version before she'll bother commenting, which is both frustrating--she was supposed to be the primary reader--and also nothing I can change, except by getting her the revised version ASAP. My outside reader will be Jodi Cranston, one of the organizers of my RSA session, and one of David Rosand's students. She said she'd be honored, which...squee!
Saturday, March 04, 2017
Another
I came to my blog yesterday so that I could re-read my posts about my visits to Spain, so I could give some travel tips to Stuart, the retired scientist who is effectively my dissertation's first "outside reader," having read and commented on all 236 pages of the current draft. Then I saw the main page and realized I hadn't updated since November, yikes.
So, as the preceding paragraph suggested, I submitted a draft of my dissertation to Dr. Cooper! She got it last week and basically warned me she's in no rush. I'm not technically graduating until the summer semester (if I wanted to graduate this semester, I'd have to defend by March 24), so it's fine, but I also really want to hear her feedback, not least since my last chapter is really only partially written and just sort of trails off into a bunch of possible headers. I'm really lucky to have Stuart, since he's provided interim feedback that is mostly very helpful. He's very anti-parentheses (and I over-use them...see?) and fond of weirdly short paragraphs. He's also British by origin, so some of his corrections, like specialty/speciality, I have to respond with "...nah." I met him when I was doing the Spotlight program at the PMA a few years ago, and he's been peppering me with questions (and requests for Jstor articles) ever since. He used to work on the lab side of the UPenn Archaeological Museum and is deeply interested in art of all kinds; he and his wife Maureen also travel a ton (hence the Spain tips). He's getting one of the biggest shout-outs in my acknowledgments section!
I'll be seeing him when I present at the Barnes Foundation conference later this month. That presentation, which is for a non-specialist audience, is all set to go, but I've got precious little for my RSA paper for Chicago the following week. I'm really looking forward to Chicago in general; we're staying with Jinn and David, friends from Rome, and will be having a mini-reunion with other AAR folks who are in town for the conference. But I'm super anxious about the stupid paper, especially since--if I have to look for non-academic jobs after graduation--this could well be my conference swan song. Oh well.
In other news...well, there is no other news. The country is a dumpster fire and my disssertation has been consuming my life, albeit in decently pleasant fashion. Oh, and my nephew is way more adorable than he has any right to be! I mean, we're hoping he doesn't peak in babyhood. Those DiMarzo/Tranquillo genes, man.
So, as the preceding paragraph suggested, I submitted a draft of my dissertation to Dr. Cooper! She got it last week and basically warned me she's in no rush. I'm not technically graduating until the summer semester (if I wanted to graduate this semester, I'd have to defend by March 24), so it's fine, but I also really want to hear her feedback, not least since my last chapter is really only partially written and just sort of trails off into a bunch of possible headers. I'm really lucky to have Stuart, since he's provided interim feedback that is mostly very helpful. He's very anti-parentheses (and I over-use them...see?) and fond of weirdly short paragraphs. He's also British by origin, so some of his corrections, like specialty/speciality, I have to respond with "...nah." I met him when I was doing the Spotlight program at the PMA a few years ago, and he's been peppering me with questions (and requests for Jstor articles) ever since. He used to work on the lab side of the UPenn Archaeological Museum and is deeply interested in art of all kinds; he and his wife Maureen also travel a ton (hence the Spain tips). He's getting one of the biggest shout-outs in my acknowledgments section!
I'll be seeing him when I present at the Barnes Foundation conference later this month. That presentation, which is for a non-specialist audience, is all set to go, but I've got precious little for my RSA paper for Chicago the following week. I'm really looking forward to Chicago in general; we're staying with Jinn and David, friends from Rome, and will be having a mini-reunion with other AAR folks who are in town for the conference. But I'm super anxious about the stupid paper, especially since--if I have to look for non-academic jobs after graduation--this could well be my conference swan song. Oh well.
In other news...well, there is no other news. The country is a dumpster fire and my disssertation has been consuming my life, albeit in decently pleasant fashion. Oh, and my nephew is way more adorable than he has any right to be! I mean, we're hoping he doesn't peak in babyhood. Those DiMarzo/Tranquillo genes, man.