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!
''One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.''
Sunday, April 16, 2017
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!