First, we survived Eli’s fourth birthday and this is not trivial. How by the way did my baby get to be four. The festivities began when we realized on Thursday that we had no present for him and zipped out on a date to the bike store for a push-bike. This has the double effect of thrilling thing 3 and we hope of getting him to ride a bike, which will then shame thing 1 and 2 into learning themselves. I know very little about where we are going in china but I know they all ride bikes. It is currently his favorite means of getting around the house and he wears the helmet 24/7. You can’t be too careful. My favorite arrival of the day was the fabulous Thing 1-3 t-shirts from Uncle Michael and Aunt Lynn, which the things all promptly put on. This is the favorite uncle who lets me drive his various cars and promises to visit us in China. I also loved it when Brian, a former babysitter/close family friend called me at 9 in the morning to ask how I felt about foam swords. Note that the kid turns everything into a weapon and that the 30 year old kid on the phone has been taking him out for battle practice since he was two. Too little too late? The birthday was also relatively painless thanks to global warming which allows a thanksgiving week party to be outside. The boys, Sid, Charlie, Sam and Eli did a lot of running around. (his other friend is Solomon and yes it does sound like a bunch of old men in Florida) The key item in the household for that age group is currently the drum set with the percussion player in my band has parked in my basement. He claims that as long as the kids don’t get peanut butter on it things are fine. The older siblings mostly tried to boss the little ones around and Rebecca organized a “pin the nose on the snow man” which she made herself.
The birthday boy had to sit out Harry Potter which he was very pissed off about. “I need to see the movie. I wed the book twee times. I am a big big boy” The big kids have been counting the days until this major motion picture event and can spout harry potter trivia the way their father and his buds can still quote Lord of the Rings. Rebecca has been obsessively reading the book because she wanted to finish before she saw the movie—this involved hiding in the bathtub after bedtime reading under the table at dinner etc… She was so not scared that she wanted to sit with her friend Reid not me. I was slightly nervous, as Jonathan has never made it through a motion picture. Up was to scary for him and The Frog Princess landed him in my lap for most of it. He every so often has to run out of the room in curious George but when the man in the yellow hat approaches. Remarkably he watched almost all of it though much it was facing the back of his seat with hand clutched over ears. (think Kierkegaard and Don Giovanni) and for about five minutes we had to run out of the theater. He kept a fairly constant dialogue about what was “wrong” about the movie. The girls claimed not to be scared at all. I wonder if the overall extremely dark mood with traumatic fantasies mob evil and soul searching is simply lost on them.
I haven’t decided what I think about the New York Times Counter -Tenor article from this morning. I’m used to no one outside of our tiny little world of early modern musicologists caring about what I do. So my original thought was “I’ve been scooped by the times. Dam it.” I’m working on a more intelligent and thought out response. This will come tomorrow when I’ve transitioned out of the make a birthday cake, make 24 ice cream cone cupcakes, have a total of 12 kids in and out of house all weekend, state. For this pivot chord modulation I’m turning Sunday night into editing other people’s work night. I assume I’m not the only one out there who finds it much easier to fix someone else’s prose than to generate their own….
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Biblical Morality and the Hungry Child
You know It’s going to be a long day when you hear your children talking about coveting and then accusing each other of breaking the ten commandments. While Rebecca and Jonathan were cleaning their room Eli was doing his usual routine of messing it up, taking their toys and generally getting in the way. This devolved into “Eli do you covet?” Eli rightly looked at them like they were nuts and they proceeded to say “yes you do covet you do not follow the Ten Commandments we’re talking about the cove one. And by the way you are not so good on the honor thy father and mother either.” I’m all for honoring the parents and I’d like to see more of it but I’m not especially comfortable with throwing biblical morality around before breakfast. The day got even more delightful when Manuel informed me that the hot water heater was out again. Once again I pranced across the street in my bathrobe to my neighbor’s house to take a hot shower all the way feeling like a cross between a wife on madmen and a UVa undergrad living on the lawn. (for non UVa folks that’s a big honor here which involves living in a Jeffersonian room without indoor plumbing. Not my kind of honor). The trailer shares that lack of plumbing and I always love getting soaked by the water falling off the metal roof on the way to the bathroom.
The pinnacle of the day was of course the call in my office from the principle, the school nurse and Jonathan’s teacher. Thing two had somehow forgotten his lunch and we had failed to check. Apparently no food in the school would do. He told me this on the phone as I was sitting in the trailer at UVA with no car and Manuel was teaching also with no car so there was nothing we could do. As I understand it Rebecca, Marietta and Ian all tried to give him food and reason with him including the girls telling him that “sometimes change is hard.” Ms Keiser and Nurse Brown are for the most part fairly unflappable so I’m sure this was a dramatic J food meltdown. This is a kid who had feeding therapy for years and about whose eating habits I lost many nights sleeping. But once he got on the growth charts and started to read I figured he could be as short and skinny as he wanted and it would some day be someone else’s problem. Meanwhile his first grade teacher happened to be in the office and asked if I cared if he ate crackers and cheese. My response was basically you are a saint and I don’t give a hoot what he eats at this point or if he eats at all……” The other irony is that I’m currently coordinating the donation of side dishes and prizes for the school sponsored Thanksgiving dinner in the low income housing neighborhood.
Now it’s time to go back to recommendations. I think we just call November national recommendation month.
The pinnacle of the day was of course the call in my office from the principle, the school nurse and Jonathan’s teacher. Thing two had somehow forgotten his lunch and we had failed to check. Apparently no food in the school would do. He told me this on the phone as I was sitting in the trailer at UVA with no car and Manuel was teaching also with no car so there was nothing we could do. As I understand it Rebecca, Marietta and Ian all tried to give him food and reason with him including the girls telling him that “sometimes change is hard.” Ms Keiser and Nurse Brown are for the most part fairly unflappable so I’m sure this was a dramatic J food meltdown. This is a kid who had feeding therapy for years and about whose eating habits I lost many nights sleeping. But once he got on the growth charts and started to read I figured he could be as short and skinny as he wanted and it would some day be someone else’s problem. Meanwhile his first grade teacher happened to be in the office and asked if I cared if he ate crackers and cheese. My response was basically you are a saint and I don’t give a hoot what he eats at this point or if he eats at all……” The other irony is that I’m currently coordinating the donation of side dishes and prizes for the school sponsored Thanksgiving dinner in the low income housing neighborhood.
Now it’s time to go back to recommendations. I think we just call November national recommendation month.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Bust Weekend
oopes last night i loaded up the unedited unpunctauted version...
I logged on to the preschool blog to find a dialogue featuring my husband and youngest child. The same child was recently featured as part of a rock band comprised of four short little boys with bossy older sisters. Their signature tune seemed to be Bye Bye Miss American Pie with a kind of punk grit. My kid’s active blog life combined with my actually having custody of a functioning computer inspired me to re-enter the blogosphere. This is also a weekend that features the elementary school sock hop, final soccer game, piano recital, and a baby shower dinner party for thirty-eight so there might be stuff to write about.
The sock hope has been conquered although four Lerdau men from the ages of 4-83 were done long before Rebecca was ready to leave, and we had to leave her with another family to bring her home later. Luckily only one of the Lerdau men expressed himself by lying down on the floor of the library and kicking and screaming. Next year our big PTO fundraiser should be selling moonshine on the playground. I would have happily paid $20 for a beer or shot of tequila by about 20 minutes into it. The excitement of the actual dancing is only exceeded by the scholastic book fair, for which each child has already created a wish list. While I was in the library earlier this week helping the kindergarteners I was especially thrilled to find that the most popular literature choices were Barbie, Make me a Beautiful Princess and a biography of Justin Bieber. I’d never heard of him, and he appears to have no relationship to the 17th century Biber whom I familiarized myself with while preparing or my comprehensive exams in graduate school.
Rebecca is playing her own composition on her piano recital, and it comes with many glissandos, dissonances, quirky little minimalist patters, and, most importantly, dramatic gestures. In addition to this precocious little number, she’s also developed some rather poor practice dkills. She is especially proud of having read harry potter while learning Gavotte and couldn’t understand why I didn’t think her piano teacher would find this impressive. She also, unfortunately, figured out how to cram. When I am out of town very little mail is opened and very little practicing is done. When I returned I said she had to play the recital piece ten times a day. The results of one day of this prompted the piano teacher to congratulate her on her effective drilling of the hard parts—oops.
Eli and Manuel’s dialogue is below. For the full effect imagine Eli “helping” Manuel push his collectors’ item 1980-something orange mountain bike (a gorgeous orange Stumpjumper Sport with original Shimano friction shifters [ML]). He would have been wearing either saddle shoes or red cowboy boots—the only footwear he wears these days.
dialogue between Dad and Eli...
Eli: Daddy, I'm a pwe-schooler
Dad: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to pwe-school
D: Oh. That makes sense
E: Daddy, I'm a Jew.
D: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to Jew school
I logged on to the preschool blog to find a dialogue featuring my husband and youngest child. The same child was recently featured as part of a rock band comprised of four short little boys with bossy older sisters. Their signature tune seemed to be Bye Bye Miss American Pie with a kind of punk grit. My kid’s active blog life combined with my actually having custody of a functioning computer inspired me to re-enter the blogosphere. This is also a weekend that features the elementary school sock hop, final soccer game, piano recital, and a baby shower dinner party for thirty-eight so there might be stuff to write about.
The sock hope has been conquered although four Lerdau men from the ages of 4-83 were done long before Rebecca was ready to leave, and we had to leave her with another family to bring her home later. Luckily only one of the Lerdau men expressed himself by lying down on the floor of the library and kicking and screaming. Next year our big PTO fundraiser should be selling moonshine on the playground. I would have happily paid $20 for a beer or shot of tequila by about 20 minutes into it. The excitement of the actual dancing is only exceeded by the scholastic book fair, for which each child has already created a wish list. While I was in the library earlier this week helping the kindergarteners I was especially thrilled to find that the most popular literature choices were Barbie, Make me a Beautiful Princess and a biography of Justin Bieber. I’d never heard of him, and he appears to have no relationship to the 17th century Biber whom I familiarized myself with while preparing or my comprehensive exams in graduate school.
Rebecca is playing her own composition on her piano recital, and it comes with many glissandos, dissonances, quirky little minimalist patters, and, most importantly, dramatic gestures. In addition to this precocious little number, she’s also developed some rather poor practice dkills. She is especially proud of having read harry potter while learning Gavotte and couldn’t understand why I didn’t think her piano teacher would find this impressive. She also, unfortunately, figured out how to cram. When I am out of town very little mail is opened and very little practicing is done. When I returned I said she had to play the recital piece ten times a day. The results of one day of this prompted the piano teacher to congratulate her on her effective drilling of the hard parts—oops.
Eli and Manuel’s dialogue is below. For the full effect imagine Eli “helping” Manuel push his collectors’ item 1980-something orange mountain bike (a gorgeous orange Stumpjumper Sport with original Shimano friction shifters [ML]). He would have been wearing either saddle shoes or red cowboy boots—the only footwear he wears these days.
dialogue between Dad and Eli...
Eli: Daddy, I'm a pwe-schooler
Dad: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to pwe-school
D: Oh. That makes sense
E: Daddy, I'm a Jew.
D: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to Jew school
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ireland Musicology Tour
I am I think the only person in the residence at Maynouth college. The room is Harry Potter like and looks out at what I’m told is an abandoned castle. Today was talk number five in five days and I’m afraid these folks got the short end of the stick—a little bit punchy and definitely slurring words. I did have the greatest thrill ever which was to see a student actually reading my book and in paper back too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone other than a family member looking at it though. Melanie and I may have traumatized the nice student by taking her picture. I have given five talks in FIVE days. The talks included Orfeo’s Echo, Castrati and Machines, Kate Bush, Anatomy of the Female Voice and a theoretical discussion about Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Melanie Marshall from Cork University was the brains and logistics behind this operation and I’ve met few people with as much spunk, creativity, organization chops and drive not to mention the ability to wear me out! It was especially sweet of her to work it out so that she Laurie Strass and I could be in the same place at the same time for a really intoxicating collective riff on the parallels between castrati and nuns. I have nothing more up my sleeve.
It’s been fun, fascinating and even surreal. I continue to find that it makes our situations in the states look good. We complain a lot about the economic crisis and the effects on higher education and our own budget cuts that at times seem crippling. But it could be much much worse. They just had a pay cute, pay 8E per ILL book after a certain number, and had a government mandated hiring freeze in which no faculty were hired in the entire country for two years. The policy on sleeping with undergrads is that as long as you recuse yourself from their committees it's ok. There is exactly ONE female full professor in the country. And recently students tried to start a pro choice group on campus and were told that the U already had a group interested in abortion--that would be the anti choice group. Abortion is still illegal here. I gave my Kate Bush talk yesterday to predominantly undergrads and music faculty and it was super fun. A few undergrads stopped me in town to tell me how much they liked it and that it had changed really effected them. I’m sure they were exaggerating but I’m also sure that feminist theory and gender issues have a different resonance here and that in fact it might make a difference t them. They also told me they knew KB from their mothers but.....
The science gallery talk was totally weird and could have been called "wired women, female musicoloigsts and the male acoustical gaze" I gave my voice/sex talk and Melanie gave a very smart talk about whiteness in early music which managed in one fell swoop to leash critical race theory onto early music and theorize the voice. I've shown erotic pictures in talks for over a decade and it's the first time I actually felt uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm becoming a prude in my old age or if the weirdness of the men in the audience inflected my feelings. The acoustic boys then got up and gave power points about how to quantify emotion and proved in no uncertain terms that music can make you sad or angry. duh. They had graphs but they were ridiculous--no definition of what x and y is etc.... It also featured my favorite genre of new music—the kind that wires up women and gets them to dance in this case in the service of quantifying feeling. They explained that they had nothing in common with us and proceeded to ignore everything we said. It was like the worst of electronic music meets the worst of bad science meets the worst of patriarchal culture. The other problem was that we were in a sound installation. This was extremely cool for the first hour. It was one of those things where they make your pulse into music, you can control sounds by jumping on squares, and you can crawl in a model of the human ear. But five hours in the building made me completely nauseous from sound overload. Oddly enough despite all of this technology they had the loudest projector ever and it was a sort of Bb minus a1/4 note--close enough to a pitch to catch your ear but far enough to be grating. The professor emeritus from Edinburgh who makes brass lips was however quite a trip and we all went to Ireland's only Moroccan restaurant. The hotel was a trip and looked more like a brothel than an academic accommodation. It was on top of a fire station but the rooms and hallways were all plush velvet. The room had mood lighting spotlights, a huge bed, a bathroom with a huge jacuzzi that opened out into the room, and random crimson pillows strewn about.
The most surreal experience was a pub on Tu night. I said I needed a pub experience since mostly what I’d encountered were ethnic restaurants, wine and people that are not Irish. So Juniper and Melanie took to a local pub, which had declivous locally brewed Guinness style beer and lots of old men drinking and asking where we were from. After chatting for a while we were literally hit in the face with a green penis shaped balloon --and no we were not tipsy in the least. One of the old men had shot it with a balloon bow and arrow. We then encountered Aaron the balloon man who proceeded to make us all balloon corsages. Mine was a pink and white penguin with a green egg, which I had to fertilize myself. Aaron turns out to be writing a book about making balloons around the world and had much advice on how we ought to finish ours. Just to make it even weirder and even older guy hobbled over on his walker, which he then sat on and proceeded to hire Aaron to work as his festival--mad pride. Mad pride is apparently a national effort to reduce the stigma around mental illness. He sat on his walker drinking beer with a whiskey chaser and chatted us all up.
Those are just a few highlights of what has been quite musicological tour.
It’s been fun, fascinating and even surreal. I continue to find that it makes our situations in the states look good. We complain a lot about the economic crisis and the effects on higher education and our own budget cuts that at times seem crippling. But it could be much much worse. They just had a pay cute, pay 8E per ILL book after a certain number, and had a government mandated hiring freeze in which no faculty were hired in the entire country for two years. The policy on sleeping with undergrads is that as long as you recuse yourself from their committees it's ok. There is exactly ONE female full professor in the country. And recently students tried to start a pro choice group on campus and were told that the U already had a group interested in abortion--that would be the anti choice group. Abortion is still illegal here. I gave my Kate Bush talk yesterday to predominantly undergrads and music faculty and it was super fun. A few undergrads stopped me in town to tell me how much they liked it and that it had changed really effected them. I’m sure they were exaggerating but I’m also sure that feminist theory and gender issues have a different resonance here and that in fact it might make a difference t them. They also told me they knew KB from their mothers but.....
The science gallery talk was totally weird and could have been called "wired women, female musicoloigsts and the male acoustical gaze" I gave my voice/sex talk and Melanie gave a very smart talk about whiteness in early music which managed in one fell swoop to leash critical race theory onto early music and theorize the voice. I've shown erotic pictures in talks for over a decade and it's the first time I actually felt uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm becoming a prude in my old age or if the weirdness of the men in the audience inflected my feelings. The acoustic boys then got up and gave power points about how to quantify emotion and proved in no uncertain terms that music can make you sad or angry. duh. They had graphs but they were ridiculous--no definition of what x and y is etc.... It also featured my favorite genre of new music—the kind that wires up women and gets them to dance in this case in the service of quantifying feeling. They explained that they had nothing in common with us and proceeded to ignore everything we said. It was like the worst of electronic music meets the worst of bad science meets the worst of patriarchal culture. The other problem was that we were in a sound installation. This was extremely cool for the first hour. It was one of those things where they make your pulse into music, you can control sounds by jumping on squares, and you can crawl in a model of the human ear. But five hours in the building made me completely nauseous from sound overload. Oddly enough despite all of this technology they had the loudest projector ever and it was a sort of Bb minus a1/4 note--close enough to a pitch to catch your ear but far enough to be grating. The professor emeritus from Edinburgh who makes brass lips was however quite a trip and we all went to Ireland's only Moroccan restaurant. The hotel was a trip and looked more like a brothel than an academic accommodation. It was on top of a fire station but the rooms and hallways were all plush velvet. The room had mood lighting spotlights, a huge bed, a bathroom with a huge jacuzzi that opened out into the room, and random crimson pillows strewn about.
The most surreal experience was a pub on Tu night. I said I needed a pub experience since mostly what I’d encountered were ethnic restaurants, wine and people that are not Irish. So Juniper and Melanie took to a local pub, which had declivous locally brewed Guinness style beer and lots of old men drinking and asking where we were from. After chatting for a while we were literally hit in the face with a green penis shaped balloon --and no we were not tipsy in the least. One of the old men had shot it with a balloon bow and arrow. We then encountered Aaron the balloon man who proceeded to make us all balloon corsages. Mine was a pink and white penguin with a green egg, which I had to fertilize myself. Aaron turns out to be writing a book about making balloons around the world and had much advice on how we ought to finish ours. Just to make it even weirder and even older guy hobbled over on his walker, which he then sat on and proceeded to hire Aaron to work as his festival--mad pride. Mad pride is apparently a national effort to reduce the stigma around mental illness. He sat on his walker drinking beer with a whiskey chaser and chatted us all up.
Those are just a few highlights of what has been quite musicological tour.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
8 hours later and still not out of the country
I left the house almost 8 hours ago and have not made it out of the country. Cville's weak link is defiantly escape.
By this morning I felt almost ready and even felt chilled out enough to make cookies with Rebecca to sell at a lemonade stand. She wanted to charge $2 which seemed stiff to me. Thing 1 and 2 were far too busy to even notice my leaving. 1 was distracted by the bake sale, which she assumed would make her rich. And 2 had his first soccer game. Thing 3 on the other hand had a full tantrum complete with locking himself in the bathroom. When I went up stairs to rescue him and say good-bye I found him in the suitcase with big sad brown eyes. I figured out in the car that I forgot my coat—hard to think about cold when it’s ninety degrees out. And I forgot the yummy chocolate I had stored in the fridge for my hostess. Manuel is happy about that.
Other than my usual snafu’s at TSA the Richmond leg of things was fine. (The nice man behind me called it the TSA massage…..) Detroit however did not go as well. I got off the plane and realized the monitors were high and small and impossible to read. After asking three stranger to help and getting nothing but looks that suggested they thought I was a sociopath I gave up and stood on line at the Delta counter. They told me Gate A 38. A38 seemed to be going to Tai Pai but when I questioned yet another condescending Delta person they informed me that Amsterdam was for sure next. So I took myself to the sushi bar across the hall for a snack and glass of wine. Having zipped through the hundred pages of reading for the seminar I’m speaking at I decided I’d organized the wrong talk and spent some time recouping a different one. I am in theory talking about Orfeo and Echo but the readings are all very theoretical and now I’m thinking castrati as Cyborgs and sonic effects as virtual reality might have been more appropriate. Whenever I’m invited to give a talk, especially in another country, I always feel like I pick the wrong one. Someone will have to teach me how to nail a talk. We can add this to the list of things they did not teach us in Grad School.
Strolling back to my gate feeling smug I noted that the crowd was still mostly Asian people—many of who seemed to have the same backpacks as the supposedly clearing out Tai Pai via Tokyo flight. I busted through the line and demanded to know where the Amsterdam gate was. The nice lady told me to “look at the monitor” I explained the can’t see thing which prompted her to look up the gate and say oh you are Gate A TWENTY 8. I said really because three of your agents have now told me THIRTY 8. So I ran, and I do mean really let it rip while feeling lucky that I chose to wear yoga pants and running shoes for this journey, to my actual gate. I got on the plane. However the plane has a punctured fusalage. I have no idea what that means or how to spell it. But
By this morning I felt almost ready and even felt chilled out enough to make cookies with Rebecca to sell at a lemonade stand. She wanted to charge $2 which seemed stiff to me. Thing 1 and 2 were far too busy to even notice my leaving. 1 was distracted by the bake sale, which she assumed would make her rich. And 2 had his first soccer game. Thing 3 on the other hand had a full tantrum complete with locking himself in the bathroom. When I went up stairs to rescue him and say good-bye I found him in the suitcase with big sad brown eyes. I figured out in the car that I forgot my coat—hard to think about cold when it’s ninety degrees out. And I forgot the yummy chocolate I had stored in the fridge for my hostess. Manuel is happy about that.
Other than my usual snafu’s at TSA the Richmond leg of things was fine. (The nice man behind me called it the TSA massage…..) Detroit however did not go as well. I got off the plane and realized the monitors were high and small and impossible to read. After asking three stranger to help and getting nothing but looks that suggested they thought I was a sociopath I gave up and stood on line at the Delta counter. They told me Gate A 38. A38 seemed to be going to Tai Pai but when I questioned yet another condescending Delta person they informed me that Amsterdam was for sure next. So I took myself to the sushi bar across the hall for a snack and glass of wine. Having zipped through the hundred pages of reading for the seminar I’m speaking at I decided I’d organized the wrong talk and spent some time recouping a different one. I am in theory talking about Orfeo and Echo but the readings are all very theoretical and now I’m thinking castrati as Cyborgs and sonic effects as virtual reality might have been more appropriate. Whenever I’m invited to give a talk, especially in another country, I always feel like I pick the wrong one. Someone will have to teach me how to nail a talk. We can add this to the list of things they did not teach us in Grad School.
Strolling back to my gate feeling smug I noted that the crowd was still mostly Asian people—many of who seemed to have the same backpacks as the supposedly clearing out Tai Pai via Tokyo flight. I busted through the line and demanded to know where the Amsterdam gate was. The nice lady told me to “look at the monitor” I explained the can’t see thing which prompted her to look up the gate and say oh you are Gate A TWENTY 8. I said really because three of your agents have now told me THIRTY 8. So I ran, and I do mean really let it rip while feeling lucky that I chose to wear yoga pants and running shoes for this journey, to my actual gate. I got on the plane. However the plane has a punctured fusalage. I have no idea what that means or how to spell it. But
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Leavning on a Jet Plane
It never fails that no matter what happens the few days before I leave the country are totally spazzy. This time I’m going to Ireland to give a series of talks. Since I’m 100% sure that I do not have an Irish following I decided to do a mix of old and new talks with the new stuff coming from the chapter I’m working on. This seemed like it would be easy—and would take less time away from my book. I had until this week an explicit rule against working on talks before my kids went to bed. The coolest part of the gig involves speaking the Dublin Science museum at an exhibit called Body rhythms. It looks completely cool and is otherwise populated by experimental musicians, hip technology, and hipper scholars. After I looked at the web site I had a full panic attack about how I was not at all hip enough. Manuel talked me off the ledge I agreed to give a talk based on material from my first book. It is very nitty gritty anatomical and seemed just up their alley. Sadly the version of the talks that I have is twice as long as it was supposed to be. It’s never easy to cut something in half though I did find that cutting out all references to contributions to musicology and obsessive use of long quotations to drive a point into the ground helped matters. The legth was not my biggest problem. I wrote it two computers ago, one job ago, and a pre-technology as in no power point, no itunes music exampes, no bells and whistles. Oops. I enjoyed returning to some excellent illustrations and was reminded of some of my very favorite quotations from my research ever like when a woman has intercourse her voice changes because “her upper neck responds in sympathy to her lower neck” And in theory that I wrote a book once before suggests I can do it again. The video of the vocal cords in action is also always stunning.
So today I’m at two days and counting. Eli delightfully had the day off from school for the 15th Jewish holiday this month all of which fall on Manuel’s teaching days. In the morning he performed perfect child and played quietly, did an art project and sang songs while Emily and I worked on music examples and power points. He has a new gritty rock voice that he uses for everything. He became a devil child around lunch time and ended up in time out where Matt, the second grad student who came to my house for a meeting was treated to throwing things, wining, yanking my shirt off etc..
While he was being good child and amusing himself he was extremely busy. First he called 911—yes really. And explained that “my gawilla is sick and I can’t help him”
He packed a suitcase to come to Ireland with me and put in clothes, toys, books, a hole puncher, an empty soda can, a few carrots, some pretzels, and a small plastic pink knife. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich “all by myself.” He listened to my ipod obsessively which was on PJ Harvey because makes an appearance in the gllery talk. He learned the following words “lick my legs I’m on fire” And finally he gathered ingredients for baking cookies, which involved an egg. The egg promptly broke on the floor.
I don’t have a good track record for these sorts of trips. When I did a similar adventure in France two years ago it began with Eli having a baby tantrum and flailing so hard that he wacked me in the face and bruised my eye. I believe he was trying to steel apples from a farmers market and I rudely picked him up. I noticed at my parents’ house the night before my flight (two hours from home) that I had Rebecca’s passport not mine. Something bad happened to my flight and I ended up stranded in Zurich for five hours watching other planes fly to Paris. When I explained in Paris that I could not see the signs to find my bagge I was given a wheel chair. And then for the kicker I lost my friends apartment number and only located her by sweet-talking some French construction workers into letting me use their cell phones.
So today I’m at two days and counting. Eli delightfully had the day off from school for the 15th Jewish holiday this month all of which fall on Manuel’s teaching days. In the morning he performed perfect child and played quietly, did an art project and sang songs while Emily and I worked on music examples and power points. He has a new gritty rock voice that he uses for everything. He became a devil child around lunch time and ended up in time out where Matt, the second grad student who came to my house for a meeting was treated to throwing things, wining, yanking my shirt off etc..
While he was being good child and amusing himself he was extremely busy. First he called 911—yes really. And explained that “my gawilla is sick and I can’t help him”
He packed a suitcase to come to Ireland with me and put in clothes, toys, books, a hole puncher, an empty soda can, a few carrots, some pretzels, and a small plastic pink knife. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich “all by myself.” He listened to my ipod obsessively which was on PJ Harvey because makes an appearance in the gllery talk. He learned the following words “lick my legs I’m on fire” And finally he gathered ingredients for baking cookies, which involved an egg. The egg promptly broke on the floor.
I don’t have a good track record for these sorts of trips. When I did a similar adventure in France two years ago it began with Eli having a baby tantrum and flailing so hard that he wacked me in the face and bruised my eye. I believe he was trying to steel apples from a farmers market and I rudely picked him up. I noticed at my parents’ house the night before my flight (two hours from home) that I had Rebecca’s passport not mine. Something bad happened to my flight and I ended up stranded in Zurich for five hours watching other planes fly to Paris. When I explained in Paris that I could not see the signs to find my bagge I was given a wheel chair. And then for the kicker I lost my friends apartment number and only located her by sweet-talking some French construction workers into letting me use their cell phones.
Friday, September 17, 2010
2nd grade theology
Last week one of my friends posted on Facebook that she was often reminded of how different her holiday preparations were from her grandmothers. I think of this more often when making latkes with my food processor, but it’s a good point. Our grandmothers did not for the most part crashing through their work days six hours before a holiday dinner. But they also didn’t have food processors, microwaves, and husbands who do some of the labor and in some cases all. The new year fell inconveniently on a weds this year meaning that Manuel had a meeting until 4:30 and I had various things to do during day which kept me out of the house until I picked up Eli at 3:15 leaving about two hours to get everything ready. The big kids were at play date and Eli and I set about to make a holiday meal which involved for starters him cutting his toy apple over and over again and pretending to be a shofar—a truly grating sound. (I promptly started blasting Velvet Underground to encourage another kind of expression) I turned into some combo of mad chef and hyperactive 7 year old and was running around the house trying to make kooogle, honey cake and other things in record time. The consequence of rushing and tired eyes from an eye doctor appointment was four cuts on my hands and burns in various places and lots of completely inappropriate cursing. At a low point Eli stirred the koogle all by himself and then put a batch to bake in his toy oven, dripping a delightful mix of eggs, sugar and butter all over the floor. Every third word was completely inappropriate for a preschooler and had a jump back from the toy oven move. While I cleaned up that mess he tried to tune the piano--this meant standing on the piano keyboard which he accomplished with a series of stepstool and banging on it with a "fork" and hammer. He heard the tuner explain to Rebecca about pitchforks and the hammers inside. I think he got the words but missed the content. Remarkably we pulled it off and Rebecca got home she set about a project of new placemats for the holiday—gorgeous hot pink felt with more glitter than I knew we had in the house. We tried out annual ritual of getting the kids to think about what they might do better next year. Apparently none need any improvement though they all had big advice for each other—missed the boat….. We did however have an interesting theological discussion which requires dialogue to translate the full effect.
Jonathan: Ok I have something to tell you that I’ve never told you.
Me Ok what
J (With gusto and speed) I don’t believe in God.
Me Ok why
J Because of evolution. God didn’t make the world evolution did. Got that man. (the last statement made while looking at the sky.
Rebecca Well Jonathan I understand what you’re saying but I think something differet. (she must have learned this in school her response to disagreement is usually less articulate)
Me. Hmmmm
Manuel Silent and trying not to choke on food from laughing at seriousness of the kids. And at Eli’s ability to just keep singing at the top of his lungs no matter what is going on.
R I believe in G0d
Me hmmm why
R Because of the stories. You know the burning bush how would it have caught on fire and not burned up.
J Can I have more milk?
And that was that. We can’t figure out why Jonathan thought this was some sort of secret or why a surprise. It turns out he’s been discussin his atheisms quite vehemently at Sunday School for quite a while and we were the last to know. Eli meanwhile repeated the conversation on the long van ride from New Jersey. I would have missed it had my mom not said “honey your kid is saying something to you.” I was deeply engaged in reading an Eloisa James Romance on my kindle and purposefully ignoring all of my kids and my parents. Eli’s version was shorter. “I don’t twust God cause of the evolutionary war.”
The kids hated the koogle and the honey cake causing me to wonder why I ever cook anything. Maybe they are old enough to fast this year.
Jonathan: Ok I have something to tell you that I’ve never told you.
Me Ok what
J (With gusto and speed) I don’t believe in God.
Me Ok why
J Because of evolution. God didn’t make the world evolution did. Got that man. (the last statement made while looking at the sky.
Rebecca Well Jonathan I understand what you’re saying but I think something differet. (she must have learned this in school her response to disagreement is usually less articulate)
Me. Hmmmm
Manuel Silent and trying not to choke on food from laughing at seriousness of the kids. And at Eli’s ability to just keep singing at the top of his lungs no matter what is going on.
R I believe in G0d
Me hmmm why
R Because of the stories. You know the burning bush how would it have caught on fire and not burned up.
J Can I have more milk?
And that was that. We can’t figure out why Jonathan thought this was some sort of secret or why a surprise. It turns out he’s been discussin his atheisms quite vehemently at Sunday School for quite a while and we were the last to know. Eli meanwhile repeated the conversation on the long van ride from New Jersey. I would have missed it had my mom not said “honey your kid is saying something to you.” I was deeply engaged in reading an Eloisa James Romance on my kindle and purposefully ignoring all of my kids and my parents. Eli’s version was shorter. “I don’t twust God cause of the evolutionary war.”
The kids hated the koogle and the honey cake causing me to wonder why I ever cook anything. Maybe they are old enough to fast this year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)