Kipper Help!

At the eleventh hour, I need to make new plans for Kipper's care while I am in Ireland. If you can help out, please email me! He's seven, very timid but very affectionate once he gets to know you. He's a cuddler and completely an indoor cream puff. I had hoped to save him the trauma of a long flight since he's been traumatised on the rare occasions he had to be in a car -- and that was with me right there beside him. Argh. He's been an only cat for some time, but he was fine with Maggie when she was alive (she, however, was less thrilled with the big guy who could stand over her!). My pal Barb has offered to take him, but she has a couple of dogs (including Oisín the Irish Wolfhound!) and we're not sure how he'll be with dogs. Any help, let me know. I am grateful.

And Away We Go --

This is how hot it's been: Kipper lying on his back in front of the fan, feet in the air. Undignified. I hope it's not like this in England, but the truth is the last couple of years it has been ungodly hot. I am taking one sweater along just in case (Manchester might be chilly at least at night) but I doubt I'll use it much. Here's the vague schedule:

Land in Manchester, stay for a couple of days where I will lunch with a friend and see THE FALL! Then it's off to Great Dunmow to visit friends, then London where I'll idle for some time seeing museums, plays, concerts and of course, many friends as well as attending the Great Writing Conference. Next I'll be off to Littlehampton and the shore. A first for me (as is actually being *in* Manchester as opposed to passing through), then I'll head up to Derby and the Alt-Fiction conference which ought to be great fun. After that I'm staying with my friend Adele in Leiceister before flying back from Manchester. Whew! It's going to be fun -- and far more relaxing than it sounds because I won't be doing any work but writing.

I'll set up the Twitter feed for a bit until I'm somewhere that I can post actual coverage of the trip. We'll see if--like Robert--I end up with any LaCroix, sweetie darling (doubtful but I just wanted to say that).

Utter Madness

What was I thinking? That I could somehow manage to do all the last minute things I need to do before getting on that airplane tomorrow and go down to Kingston for a reading of my play Lumottu?

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

So, yes, the play reading has been re-scheduled for August 30th. Yes, right before I head off to Ireland, but things will have to be sorted long before that. Um, I hope.

I must be mad; yes, it's the only explanation. I am up early to pack, finish things that need to be done, run errands and then actually teach today, too! My mantra continues to be, "Somehow it will all get done, somehow..."

Not sure exactly how that will happen, but things are bound to get done if you stare at them long enough, right? What? It takes more than staring? I'm doing this all wrong then. Thank goodness I have help: thank you, Catherine, and thank you, Peg! I think there was something else I meant to mention in this post, but for the life of me I can't recall what.

Euro Punks Exhibit

Wednesday already?! Eek! Madness -- this entire week has been, will be, is. Yesterday after the Glass Ceiling talk organized by the Women's Initiative, I jumped in the car and headed down to Kingston for a reading of a new play at the Arts Society of Kingston. The play was on the life of Margaret Fuller and has a lot of potential: the audience offered a lot of good feedback. I hope I'll get a lot of the same on my play.

Two panic moments after the play: first, being horrified to find that my car was missing, afraid it had been towed. No, I had simply walked two blocks past where it was. Can we say distracted? Driving to Bertie's for dinner I had an owl fly right over my hood on the backroads, which initially made me gasp in alarm and then think, "wow, how cool was that?" Great dinner (of course) and then back home again (after midnight).

Finishing the slides for the talk; tomorrow is polishing both. Out with friends Thursday night, on my way to Iowa Friday. Phew! And then next week is PCA. I can relax for a day on the 25th. >_< At last, here's the photos from the Euro Punks Exhibit at the Villa Medici in Rome. A lot of them are awful, but I was snapping away hastily, having fun. At least you get a flavour of the exhibit. If you want to see better pictures, take a look at the catalogue. I know a certain punk rock DJ who might let you take a look at his copy...

April Fools Broad Pod

Okay, well not so much April fools as April fun! The April Broad Pod is up -- that's the podcast from Broad Universe, the organization that supports women in speculative fiction and has a wealth of fabulous people including me! Go on, give it a listen.

Today I'm participating in a talk on "The Glass Ceiling" on campus, put together by the young go-getters of the Women's Initiative. Then I'm running down to Kingston for another play reading at the Arts Society of Kingston. It will give me a chance to chat more with the folks there about my own reading of Lumottu, which will be on May 31st (save the date!).

It's Tuesday, so don't forget to check out this week's Overlooked A/V over at Todd's blog.

Rush, rush, rush! The theme of the week. Here's my first word cloud for the talk: still tweaking to do.

Carnival of the Animals

Image via Sokoblovsky Farms, petitelapgiraffe.com

The CSR Camerata concert went very well (not just saying that; read the review :-). I had a lot of fun reading Nash's poems and listening to my fabulous colleagues play. We all went out to The Point afterward, which is always lovely, too. I am consequently brainstorming more ways to combine the written word and music. Who wouldn't want to add beautiful music to an academic presentation? Wonderful.

A hectic week ahead which culminates in leaving Friday for Iowa to give the keynote speech at the Craft/Critique/Culture Conference. Let's hope by the time I get on that plane I am happy with the talk and the Powerpoint presentation, so I can relax and read something fun rather than continue tinkering with it all.

Not there yet. Argh -- at least not Sunday afternoon as I type this, though perhaps Monday morning when it posts was supposed to post [d'oh!]. Because I've got events all day Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, so there's precious little time left.

Gulp.

BitchBuzz: The Value of Telling Your Own Story

Oh my! A week from today I will be in ROME with the lovely Alessandra! I can hardly believe it and so must redouble my efforts to make sure everything that needs to be done is done. Deep breath. I can do it! Yes, yes. But I'm so excited :-) and yes, doubtless I will have one of my many travel journals with me to record everything. Well, not everything -- that's never possible. However, I agree with Socrates about that unexamined life thing. I tend to write in my journal in the morning when I first wake up, sometimes capturing a dream before it fades. I find it an extraordinary gift to be able to see parts of my past in such vivid detail in my old journals. It's never too late to start up!

The Value of Telling Your Own Story

By K.A. Laity

Even if no one else every reads them, there's value in recording our own histories.

In one of those zeitgeist ripples, BBC Radio 4 was completing the second series of its programme My Teenage Diary when the Morgan Library and Museum opened its exhibition, The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Life. While we tend to focus on the journal writing of famous people—hoping they unveil juicy secrets or heretofore unknown connections between the public and private spheres—the fact is diary writing remains a great resource for anyone. Inappropriate thoughts, fears, fantasies, hopes, goals can all fill the pages of the diary without repercussion. It's like a best friend but without the dubious advice and possibility of gossip.

As the curator for the Morgan writes,

For centuries, people have turned to private journals to document their days, sort out creative problems, help them through crises, comfort them in solitude or pain, or preserve their stories for the future. As more and more diarists turn away from the traditional notebook and seek a broader audience through web journals, blogs, and social media, this exhibition explores how and why we document our everyday lives.

The advantage of being able to manage the divide between public and private in our revelations has only increased the use of online blogs and journals. The tension between the privacy locks you can put on your LiveJournal and the brash confidence of letting your thinking evolve aloud in the public forum of a blog has changed many of the ways we divide public and private space...

Read the rest: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/the-value-of-telling-your-own-story.html#ixzz1EtHm3gtk

Insanely Busy

So, here's some music to entertain you: BB column coming soon!

Revisiting the Past

I'm not generally someone who looks back, but sometimes it's unavoidable. At present the impetus to revisit the past comes from the need to make revisions to Pelzmantel that my editor has suggested. I must admit I winced a bit at the thought of having to look at something I wrote so long ago; would it be too painful?

Fortunately, it's not. My editor has pointed to a number of useful improvements which will definitely strengthen the story, but it remains something of which I can be proud. I know it will be a frustrating process because I am impatient with things that I consider "done" but it's also true that this will be a much better and more engaging story. Not that it was bad before -- I am still proud of this tale penned while I was writing my dissertation (and got done first, too!). However, I am a much better writer now that I was then.

Kind of give you hope, right? It's good to know that improvement happens.

Hectic times: not only is the semester drawing to a close (not quite counting the hours, but definitely the days) but there are a number of administrative things I have to attend to while juggling all the writing, grading and revisions needed before the end of the month. Somehow it will all get done, my ever present mantra. Let us repeat it together.

Whew!

Lovely Ganesh, remover of obstacles (and wearer of leis and Mardi Gras beads).

Sorry! Busy busy busy -- last night was the Women's History Month concert put together by my fabulous colleague Yvonne Hansbrough and featuring colleagues Young Kim and David Bebe as well as Jamecyn Morey, who all played music by women composers, including Éizabeth Claude-Jacquet de la Guerre, Hilary Tann, Clara Schumann, Rebecca Clarke and Cécile Chaminade. It was magical! Thanks to everyone who turned out, especially Jenise and Cate and my students.

It's hectic this month (when is it not, I know I know) and I have a conference at the end of it. Somehow it will all come together, right?

Advisement Day

It's advisement day, so I am short on time, but as my of my friends and acquaintances are knee deep in NaNoWriMo, let me offer a little cheap writing advice (mostly) from my favourite site for writing quotes:

When fate's got it in for you, there's no limit to what you may have to put up with.
- Georgette Heyer

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
- T. S. Eliot

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
- Brenda Ueland

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain

The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself.
- Gore Vidal

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
- Barbara Kingsolver

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
- Eugene Ionesco

Jaws of Suspiria

I already wrote a bit about Jaws and my long connection to it, but I don't think I've yet got around to the student reactions. It's hard to keep track of things in the midst of the mad swirl of the summer intensive. I've made things even tighter by planning to run down to Connecticut this weekend to see folks before I go off to the UK June 1. The quick Connecticut dash is meant to include a quick hello to Marko at the Punk Rock Jukebox, girlie night with Miss Wendy and the Queen of Everything, Saturday lunch or something with Miss Wendy and Elena, then Sunday brunch with the Boojums.

It will be more relaxing than it sounds.

Okay, Jaws: the students were not accustomed to thinking of this as a horror film, since most of them saw it as kids. The music has become so iconic, it's hard to imagine hearing it the first time or the impact it had (all kinds of impacts). The two halves of the movie complement each other so well, yet are completely different: we go from the crowded beaches of Amity to the endless ocean, from a whole town of people to just the three men and yet you don't feel that transition as a jarring change. It's a well-constructed film. Good thing they had so much trouble with Bruce the shark and had to keep him out sight for longer than they planned. It works.

Suspiria, on the other hand, is a spectacle but a far less coherent narrative on the whole. I expected to have a bit of trouble getting the students to appreciate it, so I was pleasantly surprised to have spontaneous expressions of appreciation for it. It's a Technicolor feast, it's an expressionist blood bath, where the glory of the gory explodes all over the screen -- often at the cost of logic or reason (not to mention the often utilitarian dialogue) and of course, the true crime of dubbing Udo's voice with some bland American's. Nonetheless, the students appreciated it. I think they're getting to be real connoisseurs, which is very cool.

Today it's body/queer horror with Clive Barker and a little bit o' Cronenberg.

Branding: Popular Culture and New Media

I'll blog later about today's class (featuring Texas Chainsaw Massacre and feminist film critique), but for the moment (and that's about all I have) I want to get back to the difficult task of "branding" as we have come to call it. While I'm still resisting the labeling, I am trying to be more conscious of where I might have readers who don't know me yet but might like to do so.

One of my other areas of interest is popular culture; I've been a member of the Popular Culture Association since 1995 and national area chair for Medieval Popular Culture for about five years now. In particular I have an interest in "medievalism" or how popular culture adapts, adopts and re-imagines the medieval, which includes everything from film and television to video games, websites and of course, re-enactments and medieval/renaissance faires.

But I'm also increasingly preoccupied with New Media, particularly its impact on my teaching life. I worry about the lack of engagement with New Media in our curriculum, and with my colleagues Kim Middleton, Catherine Cavanaugh and Fred Antico, helped derive a new minor in Film and New Media Studies. It's a start, but there's so much more to be done. While Twitter, Facebook and so on occupy an important part of the popular media, the impact on our working lives hasn't yet been well articulated -- and I think it needs to be.

But now I have to get back to my class prep, so I'll leave you with a question: what's the impact of New Media on your life?

Kazoo Round-up

Just back from my meeting with the VP and the Dean, where I formally accepted the position of Coordinator of Women's Studies. What was that I said about only suckers taking up administrative positions? ;-) Let's consider it the first step in my plan for World Domination or perhaps as a new hat (we all know how I love hats).

Kalamazoo: In lieu of a long digressive recap, let me give you a short surreal one. Fly to Detroit, Amy forgot her license so I drove the Prius (nice!), late the first night, busy the first day, meet ups at the wine hour, dinner with Steve derailed by his flat tire, but conveniently invited along to another dinner, conversations into the night in the quads at Valley III, Friday meetings and panels with Societas Magica, my roundtable (went well!), dinner with Pearl, conversation until 2!, Saturday more panels including the bloggers, mead with Frankie, dinner with Steve at Bilbo's, the DANCE! Sunday driving back to Detroit, counting the dead deer and bloated raccoons along 94, flying back to Albany, sudden realisation that the summer class starts in the morning...

Still feeling like Alice running with the Red Queen: unlikely to change before the end of the month. Then I can catch my breath!

Live Blogging MLA

Because I always need one more thing to do: I'm going to be live blogging MLA, the Modern Language Association conference. Many of you know that this is the biggest conference in the language and literature fields. It's not only the place for papers deemed to be cutting edge, it's also the place where the majority of academic job interviews in the field will be done. In fact, that's why I have to be there this year (well, I'm also member of an executive committee): we're interviewing a bunch of candidates for our department.

The catch is that I will be blogging anonymously because this is for a site that takes a critical (and often somewhat humorous) view of academic life. So I can't tell you where I'm blogging. It will certainly make MLA more entertaining for me, because I'll be looking for material (and there's always so much).

Well, I also get to hang out with Adrean, so there's plenty to balance the weighty responsibility of interviewing people (argh, how did I get put in a position of responsibility?), which after all is shared with my colleague, Kim (so there's someone to share the blame ;-)

Tweet

A moment of idleness finds me -- done teaching and finals aren't until Thursday and Friday. Of course I have a billion things to do that have piled up for various reasons, but I can actually draw breath for a moment and reflect on how to fill my one month break with a massive load of work.

Of course, a lot of it is already filled with holiday celebrations and travel (have to go to MLA to interview candidates for my department), so there might actually be about two weeks "free" -- and yes, today I already need to use to order my spring texts (long overdue), catch up on web updates for a couple of organizations, schedule some interviews for Prose at the Rose, and oh, about a million other things.

Naturally, I'm instead thinking about Twitter and its effect on blogging. Seems like every one is "so over" blogs. Twitter, for those of you who don't recognize the Fail Whale, is microblogging. You have a limit of 140 characters to blip your thoughts. Suits a lot of people who have things to say, but don't ramble on like your average blogger (e.g. moi). There's also Facebook, of course, which allows people to waste as much time as they do on MySpace but without all the hideously ugly clutter and endless ads.

All of which makes me wonder how much time I ought to be investing in blogging -- is it worth doing anymore? Especially with three blogs (since I am a glutton for punishment), I'm beginning to sense a law of diminishing returns. Part of this is the lack of interaction here (i.e. few comments but spam), but I'm also thinking about these issues for the conference next June and the grad class in the spring where we'll be exploring the effects of new media and Web 2.0 interfaces.

I just don't know. Given my obsessive need to write, it's always good to have an outlet, but I'm beginning to think I'm a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. I'm no Stephen Fry after all.

Vote Today!

I don't usually focus on politics, but today all USA-ians have the opportunity to change our country and our influence on the world. It is your duty as a citizen to get out there and vote. Of course, I have definite opinions about who are the best candidates, but my haranguing you here won't affect your vote. I will say that I'm voting to end the horrors of the last eight years, a culture of deceit and cynical war-profiteering by old men who can't remember how many houses or factories they own, who show contempt for their fellow citizens and got us mired in an illegal war based on lies and personal aggression.

I am tired of fear-mongering fools who use their own mental faculties to disparage intellect and education, to the extent that the education system in this country has reached a crisis of over-management and discouragement to both instructors and students. I despair at a nation that values the arts so little, obsessing instead about their own fifteen minutes of shallow fame.

Vote! Your life, your job and the survival of the world may just depend upon it.

October Country returns...

I will put aside for a moment the anxiety I feel that my Halloween cards are not even conceptualised, let alone ready to send (HA HA HA). Instead I will think of all the lovely fall colors beginning to appear -- more slowly up here, but much further along in Connecticut. I can't get over how beautiful the leaves are there -- more colors than I remember anywhere else. I know Vermont is supposed to be the foliage queen, but Connecticut wins every time. As we drove through the Berkshires back to New York, you could see the palette shift and change, growing darker and more green.

It's the time of year Dark's Carnival returns and you think, maybe this year you'll run away and join up. What could you do? Maybe a juggling act -- or performing as a geek, or maybe once you join you'll find that there's something weird about you that you never acknowledged before. Something that will make people stare, something that will provide a living as the carnival moves from town to town, old hands slipping away into the darkness as new recruits join up. Doesn't matter -- they've always been there, even if they just arrived last night.

The bonfire of dead autumn leaves perfumes the air. It's October again.

Writing & Identity

It's an interesting time for writers, in all senses of that word. On the one hand, print repeatedly gets declared to be dead, only to have innovations re-spark interest in the written word (if not dead tree versions). Even the dead tree market corpse gets fresh blood repeatedly, as Harper Collins announces:

The writer and director of the film Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, is set to tap what has become a rich vein of new vampire fiction, signing up with HarperCollins to write a trilogy of books about a vampiric virus that invades New York.

So what to do? My gut instinct is to continue doing the same thing I've always done in both my fiction writing career and in my academic one: diversify. In academia, it's essential if you want a job. In fiction, it's just my natural restlessness for trying new things. Hence my fondness for Kierkegaard's dictum: "Once you label me, you negate me."

Unfortunately, our capitalist system is all about that labeling, so I'm swimming against the tide (perpetually, right? That's me in a nutshell). It's not so much my refusal to conform, as it is a simple constitutional inability. I may sit down with the idea of writing a simple slice of life story, but somehow prophetic dreams or a ghost show up to complicate things. I might be happy with the results, but publishers like you to stick to the rules.

This approach gets you a lot of rejections. I tend to post only the acceptances here; think of them as that iceberg tip poking above the surface and hiding a whole lot of ballast. Do they play the same role as ballast (it suddenly occurs to me)? Keeping the rest afloat? Nah. They merely perforate your confidence.

I have reconciled myself to the fact that I will always have a small audience (but a much appreciated one, I assure you all); nonetheless, I'll always yearn for more people to read my words. There are few greater pleasures.

Who Wants Pi?

The whirlwind continues: I feverishly try to complete my materials for the start of classes Monday (reminding myself all the while that the first day isn't the whole semester), make copies, then run home to pack for Pi-Con and of course, hit the road to West Springfield. Looking forward to the con, but there's a lot to do before I can leave (hey, at least WECS seems to be working at the moment, whoohoo!).

Yesterday was re-acclimation in abundance: meetings all day, surrounded by crowds of people, argh. But we had a relaxing beer at Mahar's (best bar in the world!) and fortunately, Catherine let us know that Gonzo was playing at the Spectrum (THANK YOU!) and we had time to get there for the last showing before the run ended. I had totally missed the notice that it was playing here.

How was it? EXCELLENT! As your blogger, I advise you to go see this film immediately. It does a wonderful job of bringing a larger than life character down to reality, yet in doing so conveys exactly why he became so mythic. Wonderful interviews, lots of great footage I'd never seen -- and hey, Johnny Depp ;-) Can't wait until it's available on DVD.

All right -- back to work while the Punk Rock Jukebox thrashes through my head.