California Trip: Work and Tourism

We spent the latter half of our trip to California in Pasadena so I could conduct several days of research in the Mary Austin archive at the Huntington Library.  I had applied in advance for "reader's privileges" and was even awarded a travel stipend by my department to help defray the costs of the visit.  I was a little disappointed that my research didn't garner any big discoveries, but it was still productive. I got to look at plenty of information that relates to my dissertation chapter and even got to read a draft version of the novel that will serve as the focal point in the chapter.  Once I start focusing my work on that chapter, I'm sure I will get a better idea of how the things I read in the archive will be useful.

Billy decided to stay in California with Nora rather than traveling back home early, and I am so glad he did! It was great for me to have them with me for breakfast and dinner each day, and it allowed us to do several "touristy" type things that really made the trip memorable.  One of my favorite Mary Austin stories, The Walking Woman, tells the story of a woman who finds contentment through a combination of love, work, and motherhood.  Obviously, this story has always resonated with me, and it felt just exactly right to be doing my archive research on her with Billy and Nora in tow.

This also meant Billy and Nora got to enjoy plenty of daddy/daughter time while I spent long days at the library doing research.  Fortunately the weather was great for our entire visit, so they went to several different parks and a children's museum in Pasadena.

We also got to see my good friends Krista and Jordan and their girls, Clara (5) and Evie (4).  They live in Oakland now, and thanks to a last minute Disneyland trip, we were able to meet them for dinner on Monday as they drove back up north.  Even for a super short time, it was great to see them and get to see the girls interact for a little while.

One of the unexpected perks of doing research at the Huntington is free access to the grounds, which includes 120 acres of botanical gardens.  I finished my research early enough on my last day to spend several hours wandering around the gardens with Billy and Nora, and we barely saw even a fraction of the property.  I can't believe I never went there as a kid!  We visited the Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, and Children's Garden, but I would have loved to spend another day visiting the others.

We were fortunate to wrap up a great trip with a full day at Disneyland.  Initially we weren't sure how much Nora might enjoy the theme park at this age, but we decided to go anyway because I grew up going there regularly with my parents and siblings and wanted to be able to share the experience with my own little family.  We're so glad we went, because Nora loved it.  She is a big fan of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse," a tv show for preschoolers, and she was so giddy about meeting the characters that she surprised me when she said the rides were her favorite part.  She handled lines up to 40 minutes long without a single complaint, and stayed cheerful and excited way past her bedtime despite not having a nap.  I was glad she was in good enough spirits to stay for the parade because she was jumping, dancing, and waving to the characters the whole time.  I don't know how much of it she will remember as she grows older, but she loved everything about it and for me and Billy, it was a perfect day.  I wish everyone in her family could have seen how thrilled she was with the whole day... but I guess we'll just have to go back!

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was my dad's favorite and thus, our first stop.  It was pretty emotional for me to be there with Nora and Billy without any hope of ever going with Dad, but I know he would have been thrilled that Nora enjoyed it even though it "was kind of a little bit scary."

More Light Moving Forward

My dad used to say the winter solstice was his favorite day of the year.  He hated the days of waning daylight that are especially noticeable in Portland, where I remember it being dark at, like, 4pm.  The solstice was his favorite day because it meant from here on out, every day was going to get a little bit brighter than the last.  I spent my solstice grading final exams.  Billy graciously took Nora up to his parents' so I could make my way through them at home.  I finished them before bedtime, thus bringing to an official close the semester that has felt so heavy.  Oscar's ill health and death have cast a long shadow.  I was due to sit for a translation exam on Dec 13 to satisfy our program's foreign language department, so the need to prepare for that loomed ahead of me all term.  Although these things are minor compared to the other heavy sorrows I've shouldered throughout my graduate career, they had an impact on me, and they have made it hard to see how much progress I've made. In the spirit of optimism about the future that the solstice represents, I wanted to write a post documenting all of the things that I managed to accomplish in this term.  Otherwise, I'll be inclined to forget, and that feeling of "I didn't get anything done!" that often plagues me will start to set in.

So, in no particular order, here goes!

• I finished revising my dissertation prospectus and filed it with our program!  Despite having completely changed my research topic after my comprehensive exam, I managed to get it in just in time to meet the "9 month" guideline our program has encouraged.  
• I made it through another semester working as a TA for a large lecture class.  There are advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement, but I love teaching and often feel handcuffed by being a helper in someone else's course.  I am fortunate to have worked with a professor who has genuine appreciation and respect for me, so that definitely makes a difference.  But next term I get to teach my own course, with my own curriculum, and I can't wait.
• I did my best to work 10 hours per week on the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence project.  I finished getting all of the 5000+ pages ready for digitization, completed the inventory of them, and did the best I could to correct and complete the metadata records.  My rewards for all this work, so far, are being able to see the letter images together online and being promoted to "content expert" on the project.  This means that moving forward, I'll be doing less metadata work and more work that draws upon my knowledge of KAP.  In other words, I'll get to do the kind of stuff that could make a big positive impact on my dissertation and employment prospects.
• I hosted back to back birthday parties for Nora Jane.  What was I thinking?!  I guess I was thinking I wanted to give her family and friends a chance to celebrate her, and I wanted her to know how special and how well loved she is.  So, mission accomplished.
• I potty trained my not-quite-two year old.  She is now rarely having accidents, even at school.  She still wears a diaper overnight, but I LOVE not having to change diapers. And I love how proud my big girl is of herself every time she goes on the potty.
• I celebrated 10 years together with Billy.  Truly, none of the things on this list would have been possible to accomplish without him.  I hope people read this blog with that fact in the back of their minds at all times.  But sometimes it needs to be stated, explicitly.  My ten years with Billy have been the best years.  They are all helping me become my best self.  Here's a picture of us at Mythbusters Live, celebrating 10 years together while surrounded by a bunch of pre-pubescent boys in sweatpants: 

• I satisfied the foreign language requirement! THANK GOODNESS.  The saga of setbacks I've encountered in trying to get this requirement out of my way is very long, very annoying, and was ultimately very anxiety-inducing.  But it's over now, which means I no longer have to choose between working on my dissertation and studying a language that will not be mentioned in it.  It also means:
• I've advanced to candidacy!  Basically, this means that I have advanced to the status of someone who only has to write the dissertation-- all other degree requirements have been satisfied.  Most people advance to candidacy after passing their comprehensive exam, which I did last year, but the language requirement kept me from reaching this status until now.  
• I completed my first out-of-town research trip to Yale.  This deserves a post of its own, but since I haven't gotten around to that yet, I want to mention it here.  In early November, I drove up to New Haven so I could consult the Josephine Hersbt archive.  It was such a productive trip. I left Monday morning and returned Thursday, which gave me about 26 hours of research time in the Beinecke, which worked out perfectly.  I did a lot of work in advance to figure out what I wanted to see, so in my three days there I found all of the things I was expecting to find AND so much more material pertinent to my dissertation that has never been addressed in Hersbt scholarship.  Meanwhile, Nora and Billy did really well at home together during my 3 night absence.  I can't wait to have a chance over break to start working, in earnest, on the chapter that will incorporate this research!  Here are some pictures of my trip

So while I often felt like I was struggling to keep my head above water this semester, and I have a LOT to do over break if I'm going to have a decent writing sample to submit for my fellowship applications, I am proud of what I managed to accomplish this term.  Maybe next term I'll have a little more time for blogging?

The Silencing of Women's Voices

One of the main focuses of my academic work is the way women's voices from the American Modernist period have been silenced.  There are a lot of ways this happens to female writers: the restraints they're working under prevent them from producing work, they have difficulty finding reputable and/or profitable avenues in which to publish the work they do produce, the work they do publish is evaluated by gender-biased standards and is sometimes given limited printing runs as a result... the list goes on and on.

Perhaps most troubling for me are the examples of women who were widely published and well-respected during their lifetimes but who have largely fallen out of print and out of consideration in the intervening years.  These are the women who somehow managed to overcome all the obstacles I named above, who found ways to speak and to be heard, but who could not prevent their words from being subsequently erased.

I can (and will eventually have to) write a lot of words about this silencing and erasure.  But I thought some of you who read along with me here might be interested in what it looks like, materially, to do this type of work.

Several weeks ago I had to request a copy of Kay Boyle's My Next Bride through interlibrary loan because we do not have it in our own holdings at UMd.  It arrived in a box because the book itself-- a first edition printed in 1934-- was falling apart.  I supported it with a pillow the entire time I read it and still could not keep it from falling apart in my hands.

Today, I went to pick up a copy of Mary Hunter Austin's A Woman of Genius.  It was then that I realized we had exactly two-- TWO-- books on the shelves that are written by or specifically about Austin.  In a library that has four bookcases, with six or seven shelves each, shelves devoted to William Faulkner.

I realize that we may have several more books about Austin in the holdings that have been checked out, but as you can see, there was no big gap on the shelf from their absence.  This is one of the most prolific female American writers of the 20th Century, and she has been all but forgotten for everything she published except for The Land of Little Rain.  For me, seeing these two books alone on this shelf felt like getting punched in the gut.

But perhaps I should accept it, instead, as a kick in the ass.  Due to some changes in my advisor's travel schedule, I have 4 days to write the first draft of my prospectus, start to finish.  In other words, I have until Monday to figure out how to articulate what specific research project my dissertation will undertake, how it relates to the current scholarship in my field, and how it will significantly improve upon that scholarship.  Here goes nothing.

New Work Opportunities!

Another reason for the lapse in blog posts lately is that we're in a bit of a transition period around here while Billy and I both adjust to exciting new opportunities at work!

Billy was recently named the Science and Operations Center Test Team Lead for the James Webb Space Telescope.  He has been working as a member of this team since he began working at STScI almost exactly five years ago, and in the past few years he has taken on an increasing number of supervisory roles.  He and his team work on making sure the "ground segment" portion of the telescope will work properly-- or, in other words, they test all the computer systems that will control the telescope and make sense of the data it collects.

I think Billy was a little unsure about how the news of his promotion might be received, since most of his coworkers are older than him and have been working on the project longer.  However, it sounds to me like the transition has gone very smoothly.  But since it's my blog, I will speculate for a minute: I would guess nobody who works with Billy on a daily basis could possibly be surprised when smart people put him in charge of more things.  Putting Billy in charge of things is what smart people should do.  And if you are a person who has to do smart things, and someone has to be in charge of them, you want Billy to be that person.  His work ethic came to mind a few weeks ago when my professor was emphasizing of a passage about a bull fighter from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. He writes, "Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line.  The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger.  Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling.  Romero's bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time."  Billy keeps an absolute purity of line in everything he does.  This is such a part of him, actually, that he sometimes fails to recognize that other people resort to twisting themselves like cork-screws in their attempts to achieve the effects that he achieves naturally.  But the spectators who get to spend a lot of time around him, like me and his coworkers, can easily see the difference.  I'm very fortunate to have a husband who is so smart, and who works so hard, and is employed by people who continue to foster his excellence.  To say I am proud of him is such an understatement.  I admire him and learn by his example so much every day, that most of all I am happy for him in moments when he is rewarded for being who he is.

For my part, I've picked up a new part time job with the Special Collections department of our library system.  As you may know from my earlier posts, the University of Maryland holds the personal archive of Katherine Anne Porter, one of the authors whose writing figures prominently in my work.  The libraries have received funding from her literary trust to digitize a portion of her personal correspondence.  Eventually, the hope is to secure outside funding so that all of it can be digitized and hosted on a sophisticated online database.  They've hired me to work as the graduate assistant on this project, so I'll put in about ten hours a week.  For the next few months, it will be my job to organize and itemize the letters, prepare them to be shipped out for digitization, check the letters and the digital files for quality and accuracy when they return, and help to get the digital images posted to our library's KAP site.  Thereafter, I'll get to help with helping to create web interest for the project and its contents. For this portion of the project, we'll only be starting with the letters Porter wrote to her family members, which is roughly 5,000 pages of correspondence.

Those of you who are interested in my academic work can already imagine how unbelievable this opportunity is for me.  It will provide me with invaluable access to the Porter collection, a chance to learn more about archival research and digitization, and help me get my foot in the door in the field of Digital Humanities studies.  Since I'm approaching the point where I'll have to nail down the topic of my dissertation, the timing is also perfect.  One of the most thrilling things about archival research, for me, is the likelihood that you can discover a tidbit of information at any given time that will radically transform your understanding of the subject.  The opportunity to spend this much time with the materials and the people who can help me learn how best to make use of them is something I couldn't have even dreamed up if I'd tried.  Once again, someone has agreed to pay me for something I would gladly do for free if time permitted.

A note to future Nora:  I sometimes worry about what you will think when you discover that the universe planted you in this house with these two nerdiest of parents.  This basically ensures that the things you will be wildly passionate about in your life will be perceived as super lame by a large portion of the population.  But I will promise you this: Here, in this house, you will be encouraged to follow whatever paths those wild passions lead you down.  For however long you want.  With the force of our combined nerdiness and passion behind you.  When you look back up, you will be surrounded by people who understand why those wild passions are super interesting and valuable.  And that, little one, is exactly where you deserve to be.

A view of the Katherine Anne Porter Room inside Hornbake Library; or, Where My Nerdy Passions and My Parents' and Husband's Encouragement of Them Has Led Me.

Finding Nemo

This has been my view since Friday.  I have been diligently at work on my second research paper of the semester, which has been giving me trouble for weeks. 

I have a great support system.  Billy kept me fed and didn't complain that I more or less disappeared for four straight days.My friends leave notes on facebook, assuring me they know I can do it. Mom even sent me those roses to encourage me as I finish up the term. But this time, I was really worried about the paper.  I thought that for the first time in my graduate career, I might have to turn in a paper I wasn't proud of.  For several weeks I couldn't get myself to care about the paper, which means trouble.  Success always comes down to this: can I force myself to do the work?  Can I give myself a reason to put in 12-14 hour days working on the project?  Normally the answer is a resounding yes.  I'm in graduate school because I like the work and I find it fulfilling.  But I don't love this book, it's almost 1000 pages long, and the topic wasn't coming together no matter how much research I did.  Plus, it's hard to push through when you have approximately 100,000 other things on your mind you'd rather devote your attention to... and you're not supposed to drink any coffee.

But about a week ago, it came together.  I kept reading, and reading, and reading... until I figured out the answers to the questions that got me started.  My mentors always have to remind me that when you answer the questions with which you began, that's when you know you've finished.

So all that was left was to compile all the information I'd accumulated in my brain over the past semester and put it into a single word document.  I had four days to do it.

Since I've been here before, though not quite to this extent, I've developed a set of mantras that help get me through.

From Finding Nemo's Dorie: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.....  (If you know the song, you can sub in Dad's lyrics-- "Just keep playing," and sing right along.)

From The Little Engine That Could: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

From the voice on Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come.

I'm happy to report that I completed the paper last night and I feel pretty good about it.  Considering everything I've been through this semester, I feel as good about it as I need to.  It's not the best writing I've ever produced, but that's okay.  I know I can write better under better circumstances.  The important thing is that I learned quite a bit about the book, the literary period, and the topic I took on.  Graduate school has taught me to do my pole pumps after completing the task, not after getting feedback from my evaluators on how they think I did.

I walk into my last graduate class this afternoon to give a ten minute presentation on the paper and turn it in.  After that presentation I might find out that my entire argument is flawed.  Maybe this paper will result in a grade that contaminates my otherwise enviable transcript.  But if it happens, that will be okay.  I did the best I could, under the circumstances... so I will, as my advisor has also told me before, put a bookmark in that one and put it behind me.

Have to.  Still have another paper to write before I can begin my 8 month maternity hiatus!

Brain Block

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I don't have time for a thousand words, so here is what I've been up to lately:

I have to make these prioritized "to do" lists to keep from losing my mind.  Today I finally flipped the paper over to its backside, which leads to a seductive but false sense of accomplishment.  The work of these 6 weeks is not halfway finished, despite all the cross-outs and check marks I've managed to amass.  I still have three research papers to complete.  Two of them are under way, but I'm experiencing severe brain block for the third.  It's due in just over two weeks and I'm still waiting for the Good Idea that I'll write it about to pop into my head.  I thought I had uncovered that Good Idea two weekends ago, when I spent two entire days re-reading and researching before writing my paper proposal... but my professor's feedback indicates that this was, after all, Not Such A Good Idea.  So back to square one.  There's nothing to do but Just Keep Playing, I guess, but the difficulty with this particular class is the following:  What do you do when you just don't care about the content, no matter how hard you try to coaxe yourself into caring?  I work in an office, so I do work I don't care about every day.  I know you do, too.  But it's impossible to write a decent paper on a topic you don't care about.  Or, at least, it is for me.  And that's why the paper proposal was bad.  Part of me wishes I didn't like and respect the professor so much, because then it might be less painful to face the possibility of turning in a halfhearted seminar paper.

So come on, Good Idea.  I have a nice, cushy space for you in my brain.  Once you get here, you'll be surrounded by all my other Good Ideas, and you might even bump into a few Very Good Ideas.  I've done all the work; I've done all the reading.  But I don't know how to make you appear except to keep my brain open as I turn page after page.

(Brain Block is some sort of kids book or something.  It also describes my current mental state.  "Writer's Block" is an old friend of mine.  But brain block is new territory, which I am traversing at the worst possible time.)

At the Bay

Yesterday I ran the Down's Park 5 Miler, which I also ran and wrote about last year.  It was actually my first race since August, and I really enjoyed it.  I haven't been feeling too great, and I certainly can't afford to get sick at this point in the semester, so I tried to put my competitive urges on the back burner and run it just for fun.  It was, indeed, quite fun.  It was chilly, but the course runs through the fall foliage at the park and along the Chesapeake Bay, so along with my own heavy breathing I got to hear the sounds of the water lapping on the rocks and the leaves crunching under peoples' feet.  I ran it three minutes slower than last year, but I think I still finished with a good enough time to secure 3rd place in my running club's year long "Championship Series" for my group, so I was pleased with that.  They still haven't posted results online, so I can't be sure, but I'll update with that info and the pictures from the photographer when they're available.  Billy, as always, came to cheer me on, to meet me halfway so I could hand off my gloves.  Somewhere in the midst of all of that he took the photos of the bay above and watched an 11 year old girl beat every other woman in the race.  (Because of the way the course loops around, I could hear the crowd cheering for the winners when I was just past halfway, which was really funny.)

It has been quite a hectic past few weeks, which helped to increase the satisfaction of spending some time outdoors breathing the fresh air and watching the sun come up.  I'm beginning to check things off the endless list of responsibilities, though.  While the end of this semester is not yet in sight, I'm managing to prioritize my work appropriately and feel pretty good about where I am right now.  In the past, the last 6 weeks or so of the semester have always seemed so terribly overwhelming, but I'm trying to adopt a different approach this semester, which is also kind of inspired by the running.  Thinking about having 2 miles left to go is much less daunting when you focus on the fact that three miles are already behind you.  So rather than focusing on all that I have left to do, I've been trying to think retrospectively, as well, at all I've managed to accomplish in the past few weeks.  This helps to give me confidence that I'll be able to tackle the goals ahead, as well.

One of the things I'm glad to have in the rear-view mirror now is my presentation at the Reading Comparatively conference, about which I last wrote.  After spending several weeks condensing, reshaping, and practicing my paper, I felt pretty good about delivering it at the conference, and I was legitimately excited to share my research findings with more people than just my professor.  We had a pretty good turnout for the talk-- I think there were over 20 people in the audience, including quite a few of my own professors.  Vickie also came to see what the conference was like and to provide moral support. It was fun for me to have her get a glimpse into what I do, even if that glimpse just revealed to her in more detail just how nerdy I am.

I was the first to present in my panel, and then there were presentations given by another grad student and two professors.  One of them is a pre-eminent scholar in the field.  One of them is currently on a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, working on her second book.  The other one is currently on his second yearlong dissertation fellowship.  So, to say the least, I was expecting to get zero questions/comments about my own paper unless someone thought my conclusions were absolutely wrong.  However, I got all the questions/comments.  I don't know whether I should consider this a sign that my paper was the least well articulated, or that the audience found it interesting, so I've decided it is probably a combination of the two factors.

First, the professor for whom I wrote the paper (and who organized the conference) suggested he had learned a lot from my paper, which was especially exciting news considering that edited the book I wrote about and he edits the Norton Anthology of American Literature.  He also made a suggestion about connecting my argument to Uncle Tom's Cabin, after which one of my co-panelists suggested another text that I might want to look into.  Then another one of my professors asked a series of questions that basically boiled down to "Okay, interesting discoveries, but why should anyone care?"  I gave what I felt like was an honest answer to that question (which I do think I had addressed in the paper itself, if more briefly than I would have liked to have done).  Then a friend of mine who introduced the panel asked the other grad student to talk about his paper in relationship to mine, and his answer gave me some really interesting things to think about in regards to my own argument.  The professor who organized the conference also suggested that he'd like to hold a longer symposium on the topic of "law and literature," which was the theme of our panel, so I might get a chance to give an expanded version of the talk in the spring.  This would be helpful for me, as well, since he thinks I should continue working with my argument in order to get it published.

It's nice to come away from anything feeling like the work you put into it had paid off, so getting to experience that with my race this weekend and my presentation on Friday made for a good couple of days.  I feel ready to take on the rest of the term, which is exactly what I wrote about after the Down's Park 5 Miler last year.  And that semester turned out pretty well for me, didn't it?

("At the Bay" is Katherine Mansfield short story, from her The Garden Party collection.  I wish she was American so I could call her my own.)

Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities

Remember when I wrote last spring about the paper I was researching?  The one about Harriet Beecher Stowe and Margaret Garner?

I'm presenting a version of that paper at our department's upcoming conference, which is titled "Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities."  If you want to read more about the conference, you can visit its website.  You can even find me on the program if you look hard enough!

I've been working all day on turning that seminar paper into one I can present at the conference.  Why does it take so long to write a paper that will only take 15 minutes to deliver??  Sometimes academia is crazy-making.  Luckily for me, I'm sitting on the same panel as one of our department's biggest names, so I might have an audience much larger than I've earned by myself (which would include my friend/classmate Katie, a few of my new classmates who were trying to be nice, one or two of my students who pretend to be interested in my research but are really just sucking up, and possibly the professor who already gave me feedback on the original draft).

Ulysses

As you may know, James Joyce's Ulysses documents a single day in the life of his protagonist.  It's reputation is that it's fascinating but difficult to read (and exceptionally long).  I don't anticipate that this post will be of a length to rival Ulysses, but I thought some of you might wonder what my regular day to day life is like as an overcommitted grad student this semester.  And since I am nearing the end of this crazy, harebrained day, I imagine my prose will make about as much sense as Joyce's but will be must less intentionally obfuscating.

I woke up at 5:45am with Billy because I had to get work done this morning.  Most mornings I try to "sleep in" until 7am, but having to get up early is not an unusual occurrence.

I tried to start the day by reading the essay I meant to read yesterday, but which I didn't have time to get to.  I read the first three paragraphs before deciding it was really important, and I needed to take it seriously, and thus had to push it off until Friday.

I read an article for my Thursday afternoon class because though I'd read the novel assigned, I hadn't read any secondary texts yet.  I had meant to get to them, but I hadn't had time.  I chose the one that was about modernism, and wrote the required post on the discussion board online, which was another thing I had thought I wouldn't get to.  I felt like I had a productive morning.

I drove to work in the pouring rain.  I got to my office, loaded up my bag, and went to teach my freshmen.  Fifteen minutes into class I realized that I'd forgotten all of their handouts, so I had to trek back across campus in the pouring rain to get them.  I had to teach the rest of my class in a clammy, wet state.  It didn't go well.

I went back to my office again.  I ran into a friend I haven't seen in months and couldn't talk to her for more than a few minutes.

I went to the library to read a letter recommended to me by the curator of the Katherine Anne Porter collection.   It was really fascinating and will be useful to my research, but I didn't have time to really think about it.  I made conscious effort to stop and remind myself that this is why I want to be in grad school, even if I don't have time for it this particular semester.

I picked up lunch on my way back to my office and ate it while I met with a student who had asked for help with his writing.  He is writing about net neutrality, so he seems to be speaking a different language, but I am optimistic that he'll be able to help me understand it and I'll end up learning quite a bit from his research.

I went to my own class from 3:30-6.  My professor started class by suggesting that she hadn't gotten a chance to read any of our discussion posts.  Later in the class she said that the essay I read (the only essay I read) is a terrible essay, and is an example of how not to write a critical essay.  I tried to comfort myself by reminding myself that I'd pointed out something I thought was missing from her argument.

I went back to my office to begin this blog entry, but only got about four sentences in.  Katie stopped by and she took a few photos of me for the SSG blog. 

Then we went to our 20th Century Reading Group meeting.  I wanted to go to be with "my people" and to hear my professor talk about his new book.  Plus, there was pizza.  I knew two students were presenting papers, but I assumed my professor would go first and I could leave.  (No offense, ladies, but I'm exhausted!)  I was wrong.  I didn't get out of there until after 8:30 and didn't get home until around 9:30.

I got home and Oscar sat on my lap while I watched The Big Bang with Billy and Vickie. 

I came upstairs to look at the photos Katie took for the SSG blog and they're all blurry.  I answered an email from a student who did not turn in a major assignment today even though I have a policy of not answering emails after 8:30pm.  I realized that I left the powercord to my macbook in my office, so I'll be without a laptop until Tuesday unless I want to waste nearly 2 hours driving there and back to get it.

I sat down to finish this blog post.  And now I am going to bed without even reading through it again.  Every day is not like this.  Sometimes I don't even leave the house, and I get to sit around reading all day.  Saturday I will get to take some time off to go to the Navy game.  But if you happen to catch me on the phone, online, or in person, and I tell you that I have so many things going on that I feel like I'm not doing any of them well, this is why.

Tomorrow's a new day, though.  I'll get up early, brew some coffee, and hopefully the essay I pushed off until tomorrow will remind me why I love grad school despite days like today.

America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress

On Wednesday, I took my first trip to the Library of Congress.  Evidently the Jefferson Building is an architectural marvel.

(image via F. Barry Wheeler)

Unfortunately for me, I did not go to the Jefferson Building.  I went to the Madison building, which has enough identical-looking fluorescently lit gray hallways for even someone with an unnaturally keen sense of direction to begin to feel lost.  (I almost always know which direction to walk to get where I want to go.  I maintain that I can feel which direction I want to go unless my surroundings are sufficiently disorienting.)

Anyhow, nobody is interested in my pity party about the beautiful structure I missed, especially since I could be back there in an hour if I really wanted.  So on to the real story.  I went to the Madison building because a) that's where you get your "reader's card" and b) that's where the "Newspaper and Current Periodicals Room" is located.  My current research project involves Margaret Garner, the slave woman who fled across the Ohio river into Cincinnati in 1856, and when faced with being recaptured, tried to kill all four of her children (and succeeded in killing one by slitting her throat).  You might know her as the woman whose story inspired Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize winning novel, Beloved.  For me, though, Margaret Garner is the woman whose story gives a historical context to Cora Gordon, a character nobody writes about from Harriet Beecher Stowe's second antislavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp, which hardly anybody writes about.

After Margaret Garner was captured, the Cincinnati papers ran daily feature articles in the "city news" sections that recounted the day's events in court.  I made my way to the Library of Congress to read through these articles in order to understand the historical context of Cora's character and to see if there was anything in the articles that might help me understand Stowe's representation of Cora's experience.

I admit to having been really geeked up about my visit to the LoC.  When I go to the Maryland Room on campus, where I do my research on Katherine Anne Porter and where I was able to read Mencken's review of One of Ours, they do everything they can to enhance the aura of the experience.  They make you leave all of your belongings in a locker outside the room.  All you can take inside are your laptop, papers and books, and a pencil (no pens allowed!).  You have to request your items ahead of time, and you're watched closely while you peruse the materials.  Sometimes they even make you put on white gloves before you can touch the materials!  (I know this is nerdy.  By now, I think you all know the particular variety of nerd that I am.)  The Library of Congress was, by comparison, a total letdown.  I was allowed to take essentially whatever I wanted into the room with the exception of my giant purse.  The newspapers from 1856 were bound together in a giant book, which they propped up on a angled platform for me, and nobody really cared what I was doing.  I was there for six hours, and at one point, I even found myself resting my head on the newspaper.  I was way more upset that I'd allowed myself to do this than anyone else there was.  In the Maryland Room, you have to secure special permission to photograph the materials; in the LoC, I snapped away at everything and nobody cared.

I will say, though, that the experience was pretty intriguing.  As I flipped through the issues of the newspaper in my bound edition, I began to understand what it would have been like to experience news in that way.  There was a period in our younger, much less busy days when Krista and I were daily viewers of the Court TV channel;  we tuned in every morning to watch the latest developments in several different cases.  Reading the daily feature articles in this bound volume was like watching Court TV, 1856 style.  Part of the reason Garner's case was so interesting was because her lawyers were trying to prove that she was "freed" simply by traveling into Ohio with her owner as a young child, which would allow them to keep her in Ohio as a freed slave even though that would mean she'd have to stand trial for the murder of her child.  Conversely, her owner's attorneys were trying to argue that she was a recaptured fugitive slave, and according to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, she must be returned to Kentucky and handed over to her owner.  (Ultimately, the Judge ruled that though she could have "freed" herself when she traveled to Ohio as a child, she "waived her right to freedom" by returning to Kentucky thereafter.  As if she had a choice- she was 8!).  Thus, Garner's case became a conflict between the state laws of Ohio, which gave slaves their freedom, and the federal Fugitive Slave Law, which took it away, and everyone (even then) knew that the case would have large implications in the slave debate.  The fact that she admitted to killing her child, and that she evidently preferred to stand trial for murder instead of returning to slavery, also made it a huge national news story.

I was kind of amused that when I signed into the room, I had to choose between circling "House," "Senate," or "Guest."  Everyone that day had circled Guest.  I also thought I'd be surrounded by researchers like me, but that was not the case.  Mostly, the people that visited while I was there seemed a little crazy.  One guy was expecting the workers to help him research some old member of the Army, whom he claims founded the National Weather Service, but is never given adequate credit for it.  Normally I would have tuned these conversations out, but since it was weather related, I couldn't help but eavesdrop.  This guy claimed to have spent $2,500 of his own money on this research project, because NWS and NOAA and the "National Weather Bureau" (whatever that is) are unwilling to help him because they want to cover up this army guy's participation.  Worst of all (from my perspective), he hadn't done any research about whether the LoC might have any materials that would help his project, he just seemed to have shown up in DC expecting someone to figure it out for him.  After he left the room I wanted to ask the people at the desk what percentage of the people they interact with on a daily basis are trying to get to the bottom of "conspiracy theories."  Note to self: if you find yourself investing $2,500 of your own money in a project, it's because nobody else is interested in that project.  So don't continue to be shocked when people aren't jumping for joy at the prospect of helping you with it.

At one point, some man came up to me and asked if I realized I'd been staring at the bound volume for four hours.  I said I guessed not.  He asked me "how" I could do it, so I explained that it was either finish my research today or have to come back into the city again.  Then he asked me what I was researching, and he asked me why, and when I said I was in graduate school, he said "Oh, so you've already trained yourself in how to make yourself miserable.  That could have been your answer to my first question."  I thought this exchange was funny.  When I told Anne-Marie about it, she thought it was creepy.  Point taken.

Everyone working there was really nice to me and very helpful.  Before I went, I couldn't figure out why the people I spoke to on the phone were bending over backwards to help me locate my materials.  After I'd arrived, I realized it was because they must be used to other people expecting the employees to do all the researching for them.  Sometimes I believe my impatience can actually be a virtue.  It has made me into a "get shit done now" type of person.  I can't even begin to imagine showing up at the LoC, asking someone to find something for me, and sitting around waiting while they see if they can go dig it up.  I believe that my get-shit-done-now-ness was enhanced by my experience as a high school classroom teacher.  I could write a whole nother blog post on this topic, so I'll leave it at that for now.

My final amusing exchange of the day was at the coat check, where I had to stop in to pick up my purse.  I noticed that there was a lot of stuff that looked really old and beaten up sitting on the floor instead of placed inside the numbered compartments.  I asked the coat check guy if that was where they put the stuff that nobody claimed at the end of the day.  His response?  "No.  That's where we put the stuff that smells."  This brought to mind that while I was traversing the confusing hallways, I had passed a few gentlemen that looked like they hadn't showered in quite some time.  I was intrigued by the idea that if you were a homeless person in DC you might devote your time to researching in the archives.  It was a beautiful day, so they must have been there for some purpose besides escaping the outside air.  I couldn't help but wonder what they might have in common with the escaped slaves in Dred who flee the restraints of the mainstream society that enslaves them and choose instead to live "off the grid" in the Dismal Swamp.  And then I thought: Okay, Liz, that's enough thinking for one day.

I am happy to report that I finally sat down to write this blog entry this morning because after devoting the past several days to thinking about Dred and Margaret Garner, I finally have an idea of what I will write for my paper.  But that paper's not written yet, so I need to get back to work.  And, coincidentally, I'm also reading Beloved today for my other class.  It's not an accident that I find a way to bring all of these things together.

So when you visit DC, remember: head to the Jefferson Building for the aura and beauty of the Library of Congress, or the Madison Building for your reader's card and a handful of weirdos.

(America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress is a nonfiction book that apparently explores the reasons the LoC was founded and the ways it has been used over the past two decades.  I haven't read it, but I imagine its "story" of the LoC is quite different from the "story" I just told.)