eleventh hour chaos rethought

Just got off the phone with one of my grad students who is one week away from submitting the thesis to grad studies for a summer graduation. We've been through more rounds of substantive and stylistic revisions--not to mention formatting edits--than I can remember. It is a very good product. I'm very proud of the student and the work. So, so happy it's about to take flight. Then what happens? An interviewee, blithely ignorant of the more practical ramifications of doing so at the last minute, calls student today and says she has decided she wants to withdraw her interview. "It was a great experience and all,"...but she's shy about sharing the content with a wider audience, not sure it was her place to participate in the discussion on behalf of her community and so forth. Understood (but kind of unfortunate, too, as she represented a particular group and perspective that would have been valuable for others, including her own peers, to read and hear about), but couldn't she have made this decision a year ago, before the interview was transcribed, the data integrated into the thesis, the transcript labeled as Appendix D, and cited as such (here, there and everywhere) throughout the larger body of the thesis? Sigh. I've never had this happen before, and obviously neither has the student.  Our solution? Leave the cover sheet for said appendix/transcript (stands now as appendix "D"), remove the name of the individual, leave the date and place of the interview, then insert a single page to follow, noting that the interviewee elected to withdraw the transcript just prior to the filing of the thesis. We'll note that any direct references to the individual or the interview content have been removed from the qualitative data discussion, but any discussions of percentages or other quantitative analysis reflects the complete corpus of interviews. Or some such statement. This way, the student won't have to relabel (and change citations for!) all the other transcripts D through P or whatever it is--because locating and changing all those in-text citations would be trickier than a simple search and replace. Also, I don't think it serves any real end to completely obliterate the fact this interview took place.  And given the theoretical and methodological discussion to which this thesis contributes, it sort of instantiates the argument to have a community member withdraw her interview. At least that is what we are telling ourselves now. At this eleventh hour. But, I also think it is true. So I guess I've almost talked myself through this. Now to talk the student off of the precipice.

from an exhibit at MP2's alma mater 

Very clever birds, eh? I could use a cigarette right now...tequila and triple sec will have to do, since I'm not a smoker. But damn...it's been a long day. Of dealing, mostly, with the entirely predictable fall-out from one colleague's affair with the wife of another colleague. So yeah--a withdrawn interview isn't such a big deal in the wider scheme of things..right? 

trying again w/creepiness

Thanks to Anthea's comment on my last post, I now realize that it is kind of difficult to read the ad. Here we go again. I just think it is beyond creepy that this was RIGHT next to an ad related to construction bids for an Indian boarding school. Sick.

creepiness

I downloaded this page for the ad that appears at the very bottom, 3rd column from the right. But, check out the one right next to it (2nd column from the right). I thought this was an ironic coincidence, but having now found a second example of the two ads (dealer and Fed. Indian Svc.) appearing in close proximity, I've decided that the SF Chronicle ad department did this on purpose. Creepy.

SF Chron 1898

cropped for easier reading

framed!

Here is the framed version of my ledger art (details of purchase here). This was my reward/celebration for earning full professor. I had received my dean's letter of recommendation for promotion a week or two before we went to the Marin show, but I wanted to wait for the provost's letter before getting it framed. I just love the way it turned out. For me, the big question about framing styles was whether to highlight the archival quality of the piece (i.e. the ephemera) or to foreground the contemporary art component. Clearly, I went with the latter. The first image is a cropped version of the second one (I had a hard time dealing with the glare from the glass while also getting enough light to show the true colors). What do you think?

I bought my Prius when I was promoted to associate professor, so it's 5 years old now, but still running like a gem.  I think the biggest expense associated with it must be the new (clean!) floor mats I just purchased. I love that car; every time I pull into a gas station I think "wow, it's been a long time since I've had to do this!" 

keepers

I came back from my sabbatical year thinking "Hmm, what aspect of this job am I going to jettison so that I don't kill myself?" Midway through the semester I decided it would not be our graduate program--my seminar was going too well. In the past, every seminar I've taught has had at least one or two stand-outs, along with at least one student who is either just not up to the task, entirely ambivalent, or a complete pain-in-the-ass (why are these types in grad school?). But this past semester, they were all keepers. Each one brought a very different perspective and intellectual energy to the course, including one who asked over the summer for instructor permission (not in our department) and whom I discouraged in every way possible (no previous work in the discipline) over the course of a month, until finally folding the week classes began. On the last evening of the seminar, some of them waited around afterwards with notes of thanks and this book. Wow.  I doubt I'll ever again teach a seminar with even half the esprit de corp of this one, but I guess I'm going to hang in there for a while longer. 

pros and cons

Over the course of the last week, I've been working hard to clean up and organize the debris of the 2011-2012 academic school year.  In the past, I've managed to get this chore done during or immediately after finals week, but this last year has been especially busy and crazy. And I started the school year behind, in the sense that I had never managed to recover from the mental, emotional and physical chaos caused by the ongoing saga that is my mother's crazy life (notice I am trying not to call her crazy).  I've only just now managed to refile boxes of documents and mss. that I brought home from my aborted sabbatical. I'm working on letting go of my resentment about the timing of her latest crisis, but I'm not there yet. 

While I've not found much time to blog this year, I did keep a computer file of images that were intended to be blog fodder. Since I'm now working on cleaning up my computer desktop and Endnote files, I'm going to go ahead and post them. Some are really out-of-date. Others, while old, still retain some currency. This one is an instance of the latter.  I smile every time I see it. It is a white board in MP1's Dallas apartment. She's still acclimating to her work place and city (which has lots to recommend it--great museums, for instance).  And she hasn't been there a full year (i.e. serious summer heat and humidity still to come).  We always encourage her to write out her thoughts, so I was happy to see this (and she gave me permission to post it).  I guess the only thing that has really changed since she made this initial list is that she's been thinking of going to SMU for an MBA--they have a version that incorporates an Arts Mgmt. Certificate. The two of us visited the campus in March (a trip I'll never forget). But that's a different post and set of pictures. Right now, I'm off to church w/MGC (jk); we are headed to "second Sunday"--antique/junk market under the freeway. 

the art of the frame

I'm SO excited. Next week, I get to pick this up from the framer's and I cannot wait to see how my choices of mat and frame are going to look. What mat colors and frame style would you have chosen?

I bought this in late February, at the 28th Annual Mar*n Art of the Amer*ca's Show, which is just an amazing gathering of ethnographic art dealers and contemporary American Indian artists: photographers, jewelers, potters, painters, weavers. When HL, CD (Graphics Girl) and I were making our plans to go, I was committed to buying a piece of ledger art by Michael H*orse. I've admired his work for more than a decade and have been smacking myself that I was too poor or cheap (poor the first time, cheap the second) to buy one of his paintings on old boarding school newspapers like The Red M*n (Carlisle Indian Industrial School). The first time I saw one of these was in the gift shop of the Heard Museum, when they were hosting a boarding school exhibit and we just happened to catch it on our way back from a conference in Flagstaff. I think the painting was $700, which now seems like a pittance. Last year, at the Mar*in Show, they were considerably more, but I just couldn't rationalize spending the $.  But this year, I was committed to the purchase. Of course, he had exactly zero (!) paintings on boarding school newspapers with him. Gah!  And I wasn't taken by any of the other options he'd brought to the show.   BUT, around the corner was Terrance Gu*ardipee's booth.  I had admired the vivid colors in his work last year (but again, saw it as way too pricey for my pocketbook--in part because his renderings are on a much larger scale than the tabloid-sized works of Horse). Gu*ardipee is Blackfeet and uses maps of Montana (ancestral territory), along with related archival ephemera, as the background for his work. The three of us combed through his offerings, while he explained the imagery and meanings (I tried not to take FOREVER, since I had insisted we visit the contemporary art side of the event prior to the ethnographic--which they were really there to see).  In the end, I chose this piece because it I loved the colors and the fact that it was a woman warrior (which sort of relates to the rationale for my purchase--more on that next week).  Her name is "Running Eagle." Stay tuned for the final framed version. I'll try to take a better photo for that (in part because I told Guar*dipee I'd email him an image of the finished product).  Did I say that MGC is super jealous? Yes, he is. Yeah for me, because he has THE best collection of contemporary American Indian art of any of my friends. 

title

One of my grad students sent me an electronic copy of her thesis draft last week.  Document title?

"WORKING DRAFT GOOOOOOOOD.doc." 

Now, my first inclination was to read that last word as an exaggerated, drawn out "good." But then I realized it was probably more like a long drawn out god. Pretty funny. 

office decor

A hundred  years ago, before my life became all about my mom's life and crises--I promised to post pictures of my office re-do. Seriously this was a long, long time ago, as in pre-sabbatical days.  I just found the pics on my computer and remembered my blog password.  Since everyone remarks upon and/or covets the lucite chair, I'll just say now that it was an IKEA purchase. And it is super comfortable.

And that is a Frank LaP*ena mixed media work on the column. It was more than the chair, but still more affordable than one of his oil paintings (though I still aim to buy one of those as well). I hate that I've neglected my blog so much, but it is mostly a function of the chaos of the last year and a half.  If you know who I am, feel free to find me on FB, but meanwhile I'm going to try to remember to carve out enough time to at least post a photo or two.

end of grading hell

This was the most exhausting semester of grading ever, but my grades are finally posted. I'll miss these two guys from my big class of 140. They were fun, bright lights. It is so nice to have smiling, interested and engaged students in those big lecture classes.

grading

A little exercise (in grading), in case you've run out of your own.

The doodles get an A. The diagram is missing
too many lines of descent for an A.

what next???

I am beyond busy. BEYOND it, truly. Today was the day I was going to make some real progress on some projects that have fallen to the wayside while I opened two exhibits (one co-curated with the mother of the cutie below). Instead, I've spent the day worrying about my mom, who fell in her bathroom early this morning, lay there for an hour until the assisted living staff found her, and was then whisked off to the ER (again--just there for potassium deficiency) where they diagnosed a broken wrist (right hand--of course(!!), surgery tomorrow for that, cut over the eye, and a bruised hip. They are also doing an MRI over some other concern they've discovered. Thank god my sister-in-law was already on her way down there to take her to a neurology appointment (they think she may have Parkinson's).  That's canceled. A neurologist is going to see her in the hospital. So, so glad her hip isn't broken. I talked to her for a while. She's surprisingly okay with all this. I guess our standards for "okay' are changing. And now--I'm going to get back to the work I had planned for today.  One day I will write a bunch of catch-up posts.  Hang in there RL, yay that you're writing P-O, and everyone please note: I've got a new blog on my blogroll. Cultural Herstory. You should all check it out. 

work

Just have to say somewhere: I am way underpaid for the work I do.

But here's an iPhone image to remind me of the people I care about.  

ugh

I just got a call from a MGC who is attending a conference in SoCal.  He reports that another colleague (whom I met through him a couple years ago, and who had moved a few years prior from a job in Cali to a job in another state) wasn't renewed for her 5th year.  GAH, serious downer. I can't help but wonder how much the poor economy is shaping the interpretation of annual reviews.

churchianity

Every now and then I read something (in what is otherwise an often seriously depressing corpus of colonialist history and policy) that gives me a really good laugh. This snippet, which dates to 1901, did that. I just had to post it. The quotation about missionaries doing good secular work is critical to the topic about which I'm writing, but the churchianity line is just a crack-up.

jealous congrats

Dear M,

On your last day of work, can I just say congratulations on getting a better job than any of the rest of us. Happy trails...but don't forget the thesis (and I do know you're hard at work on it).

Boo hoo,

AE

if walls could talk

Spent most of today in the city archives with one my grad students (H.), who is writing a thesis about a major donor to our collection. The family papers with which we were working aren't completely processed, but they were full of great photos, manuscripts, and ephemera.  We recorded a couple of the addresses at which he lived in the early part of the 20th C, and of course we had to drive by them. Both houses are still standing (iPhone pics below). I'd be happy with either one of them.

logical conclusions

I've been wanting to write about Wisconsin (and  FL, CA, etc.), but I am (shockingly enough) making lots of progress on my own work, on this rainy, Saturday morning. So, I'll just direct you to Dr. Crazy's excellent post on this subject.

decisions, decisions

Last month TH gave me a Kindle for my birthday (and I really like it, too!). I've read the instructions, registered it, and now--I'm ready to download!  What shall my first book be? Work-related? Lust in the Dust? (How truly unfortunate that my discipline--and here, I should clarify that my theoretical orientation--does not really offer some combination of the above). Any suggestions?  

exhuasted

And sorta fed up. People, I've spent the last 4 days churning out my part (yes, pretty much straight through the weekend--and that was my choice, I knew the deadline was coming and this was my way to meet it). But you know what I think would be really nice? If you did your part. I'm not, by far, the hardest worker in this bunch; but I tell you what, I already do more than I should have to.  And I don't want to spend all my time begging you to wake up and do your part, even if that is somehow part of my job. Because I have better things to do. For instance, contemplate how you got this far in life. I want to work only with people whose maturity and sense of responsibility rises to a level that equals at least one-half of their chronological age. Gah.  Okay, all better now.