You know you're in grad school when...

• You discover that typing words like "eighteenth century" and "constitution" require too many keyboard gymnastics. Thanks, auto-correct. 
• You accumulate so many library books you run out of shelf space and have to turn them into living room decor. 
• The National Tire and Battery guy assures you their mechanics are so good, they can judge fuel levels by sight and touch - and you think "great connoisseurship skills!"
• Your grad student beau complains that the palace guards in that new Rapunzel movie are wearing nineteenth century Prussian cavalry uniforms, and you justify it as a pastiche of monarchies throughout history. 
• Next semester's syllabi are the hot item to have this season.
• Touring three D.C. museums in one day is perfectly normal, and you have to get up before 6 am tomorrow to drive over 100 miles to do so. It'll be worth it, though!

Happy New Year!

or, Happy First Sunday of Advent.

Inspired by The Crescat's month of rosaries feature, I've decided to look at different styles of Advent wreaths during the season. Let's consider it a survey of religious material culture, and thus a totally legit distraction from thesis work. So please email or comment about what kind of Advent wreath you've used!

When I was a kid, we had a brown ceramic one my parents bought when they were newlyweds living in Arizona. Here's the dorm-and-apartment sized, votive-candle-powered wreath I have now.


This photo marks a renewed attempt at Photoshop Elements. I used ideas from this tutorial by The Pioneer Woman.

Yuletide Tunes: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a fun several days of not thinking about homework, but it had its own stress. Turns out having 20 people over for dinner is indeed loud and hectic - I feel like I barely got to chat with anyone! I'm sorry if anyone feels like I ignored them.

Also, I'm continuing to ponder the bittersweet reality that I no longer live in my parents' house. Most of my stuff is gone, and I was barely there this summer. Sometimes it's tricky to figure out how my adult life should mesh with my family's continuing evolution, especially since I have no idea where I will be working next year.

Still, I'm grateful for the chance to re-connect with family and friends. Here's a song that pretty much sums it all up. This is hands-down one of my favorite hymns, and it's been in my head all weekend since hearing it at Mass on Thanksgiving day. The tune comes from composer Gustav Holt's Op. 32, "The Planets," and the lyrics are lovely.

and whether our tomorrows
be filled with good or ill,
we'll triumph through our sorrows
and rise to bless you still

Get your pilgrim on

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The Beau and I are off in Virginia celebrating with my family; my aunt and two cousins; and my dear friend K along with her husband, mom, sisters, and three little ones.

Like any loyal Virginian, I know that the first formal Thanksgiving celebration was actually in 1619 at Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. That's right, before the Mayflower even landed. Take that, underwhelming Plymouth Rock in a cage.

Still, I really enjoyed my class' visit to Plymouth, Mass. this summer, so I thought I'd share a few photos of the museums there. The re-constructed village was almost as fun as I imaged it would be as a child.

At the Pilgrim Hall museum, we learned that the 1620 settlers probably dressed like this - no black hats with buckles.


For all my regional rivalry, I do respect all the hardships that the Pilgrims, and all settlers, faced to come to America. Here's a sobering image from Pilgrim Hall of the first year's death toll.

I'm thankful that we no longer live in a world where you could lose your loved ones to disease or famine at any moment. I'm also grateful that I'm close enough to VA to spend the holidays with family and friends - Brother #2 is in grad school in Illinois, so he'll be an ambassador to the Chicago relatives this year. On a more mundane level, I am grateful all the books I needed this week were available on library shelves.

What are you thankful for this year?

Bad holiday songs make me want to bust a cap...

Okay, God must be trying to teach me patience or something because the horrid holiday music keeps finding me. Looking back, I should have expected it in a store named "Christmas Tree Shops." They have lots of cheap homegoods ok? I even got some decoration ideas for my apartment.

BUT they were playing the most horrendous version of Baby It's Cold Outside known to man. If done well, this song is a charming duet and listeners ignore the date-rapey sound of some lines. ("Say, what's in this drink?") In this version, Tom Jones and some dame escalated into off-key shrieking that honestly made me nauseous.

Phew. To cleanse your palate, here are some clever Thanksgiving raps from this weekend's SNL. One of my classmates was in New York and found his way into the episode after party. He got to meet Anne Hathaway, and is now my hero.

Introducing Yuletide Tunes (that don't make me want to scream)

True confession time: I hate December's non-stop barrage of Christmas music. To me, the heart-tugging crescendos of O, Holy Night and Silent Night are the hymnodic equivalent of a movie heroine realizing that she does love that guy and must now chase him through an airport. Aww, it's sweet to see and hear once in a while. It's also a tired cliche and totally unrepresentative of what love means to most people's daily lives. My relationship with God is not a constant emotional high, so I'd rather not live through a month of monotonous sentimentality. I don't want to be sick of Christmas by the time December 25 rolls around.

I realized this was a problem on Friday, when I had some business at Bank of America. There were some scarecrow decorations in the teller's window - A+ for seasonal appropriateness. Then I noticed the boom box radio under a lobby table. It was blaring - you guessed it - O Holy Night. The Celine Dion version.

I had to wait in line for 10 minutes, so I heard the whole song, plus some Johnny Mathis. I was really mad the onslaught had started so early this year.Was anyone really listening to this stuff anyway? If there are any non-Christian employees how do they tolerate this for the next month? I thought to myself "If this were a Coen brothers movie I'd up and turn the music off. Better yet, I'd drop-kick that boom box across the room and somehow connect the Advent season to my buddies who died in 'Nam." (The Big Lebowski is currently streaming on Netflix. Clearly I am too impressionable to watch movies.)

So, to help me keep my sanity this December and enjoy the season, I'm going to post Advent and Christmas songs that I actually like. There will be no emotionally manipulative lyrics about believing in magic or kids buying shoes for their dying mothers. There will be hymns, chants, and even some classic 1990s pop. There will be an Advent focus at the beginning.

To start, here's a fanfare for today's feast of Christ the King, which is the end of the Church year. I learned today that Pope Pius XI established the day in 1925, so it was more a reaction against totalitarianism than a celebration of medieval politics. This feast was a big deal at my high school, and I always loved when the choir sang this song. Many thanks to my friend Steve for leading me to the title and MP3 download.

Choral Fanfare for Christ the King by H. Hamilton Smith

Pressure Cooker

"Don't make fun of the grad students, Bart. They just made a terrible life choice."- Marge Simpson

Last week was really icky. Grad school can sure mess with your head. Suddenly I found myself doubting and questioning pretty much everything in which I thought I believed. It was like there was a demon whispering in my ear that my life was pathetic and boring, and that there was nothing on this earth that could make me happy. Thank the Lord there were lots of good things on the horizon to cheer me up and give me a reality check. Here's the top ten in chronological order.

1. My grad prgram had a career panel consisting entirely of alumnae who are married with kids but also employed in museums. They all emphasized work/life balance and not neglecting your family for a stressful, high power job.

2. On my way out of town on Saturday, I ran to confession at a nearby church. The priest was a wonderful grandfatherly man who told me not to be too hard on myself. "You're just in a pressure cooker right now, gearing up for the next thing." Kind advice plus sacramental forgiveness = why I am glad to be Catholic.

3. When I arrived in New Jersey, I discovered The Beau had bought me flowers the color of autumn leaves :-)

4. After talking about it for ages, we finally cooked gumbo combining gluten-free roux (1/2 sourghum, 1/2 brown rice flour) with vegtables and stock

and chicken, andouille and rice. It was delicious.

5. On Sunday I tagged along to a choir concert/evening prayer at the Diocese of Metuchen cathedral. Why yes, I photographed the architecture.

6. On Monday I took another thesis field trip to New Tork, this time to Trinity Wall Street (the church at the end of National Treasure. Nicholas Cage did not actually find a fortune there.) The Trinity archivists were super nice and I even found some records of vestment purchases. A friendly security guard offered to take my picture while I was exploring the church.

7. I met my friend Laura for lunch uptown, emerging from the subway at yet another Anglo-Catholic church, St. Bart's.

8. After lunch, I went looking for a restroom. Laura suggested I try the Waldorf Astoria lobby. Good call!

9. The Trinity rector diaries were fun but not useful, so I cut out early and visited the Statue of Liberty instead. Hey lady, I'm tired and poor over here!

10.When I got off my train back to Jersey, I could look out from the platform and see where The Beau was doing homework and waiting for me. And when I got back to Delaware, my aunt was in town on business and we went out to dinner! It's nice to come home to people you love. Maybe I'll make it out of this pressure cooker after all.

Book review: Two Anne Rinaldi stories about slavery

Now that I have a public library card, I figure I should start writing about the "fun" books I am reading. So, although I have been reading some thought-provoking books for class about slavery and race in American history, I'm going to post about young adult fiction instead.

Somehow I missed out on Anne Rinaldi when I was a historical-fiction loving tween. How did this happen? No matter, I am making up for lost time now. Recently I read two of her novels that deal with slave uprisings and the uneasy relationship white Americans had with their slaves. She did a good job of capturing the paternalism, friendship, rationalization, and fear that went through slave owners' minds. Her slave characters also inhabit a complex social network with conflicting ideas about loyalty, obedience, and freedom. These books offer young readers a more nuanced view of early American society than I have seen in a long time.

That being said, their plots could be better. The spunky young heroines have life-altering adventures in convoluted ways. Oh, and the use of very modern phrases startled me. (Maybe I am just a grad student snob ;-)
Here's a brief summary of each.

In The Letter Writer, young orphan Harriet Whitehead is growing up on her relatives' Virginia plantation. She spends her days writing dictated letters for her aunt and being BFFs with her maidservant. Nat Turner is an enslaved preacher in the area, and her interest in his work leads her to be an unwitting accomplice to his violent plans. The scenes of his uprising's killing spree are truly horrifying. But once the dust settles, we get a completely contrived fairy-tale ending involving some surprise paternity. BFF maidservant gets freedom, but Harriet's opinions on slavery are otherwise unchanged. At the novel's end, her staff assure her she has the makings of a fine plantation mistress. As repulsive as this arrangement might be to us readers, it is more historically probable than Harriet becoming an abolitionist.

The Color of Fire, on the other hand, is written from the view of young slave girl Phoebe. Her story is set during panics about slave rebellion in 1750s New York, events that I had never heard of. Phoebe's wealthy master trusts her, and so she has some mobility to get involved in the drama of mob violence and helping victims of the "witch hunt." The ensuing dilemmas and dangers are gripping, but there is just too much happening too fast. In a few short chapters, readers abruptly encounter secret priests, possible euthanasia, the grotesqueness of burning at the stake, and slaves seeking freedom as indentured servants to the Indians. Rinaldi drops readers into the action, leaving them without a mooring.

Just chillin' with the Rolls again

"The motor car is the property of a man called Hardcastle. Return the bits to him if I kill myself; I'm not very good at driving." Beyond the gate ... stood an open, two-seater Morris-Cowley. Sebastian's Teddy-bear sat at the wheel.
~ BR page 23

Last weekend and the week following were completely insane with preparing presentations and then catching up on other work. Luckily I was rewarding for my hard work with a ride around the museum grounds in the Rolls Royce.


Please don't hate me. I only got to do it because my classmate T. has managed to finagle rides twice already, and we told him to share the fun. Luckily, the car's caretaker, "Mr. Greg" is one of the kindest men you will ever meet, and is always thrilled to show off "The Empress." We even got to see the model car workshop diorama Mr. Greg built for Collector's Circle weekend. How it used to work is that Rolls would make the chassis, and then contract out the car body to other companies. Our museum's Phantom 1 model was built by the Brewster company.


We discovered that The Empress seats four comfortably, five cozily, and six in a pinch. She has a roof, unlike the car Sebastian borrowed to visit Nanny Hawkins, but it was still a pretty chilly ride.

Modernist Monday - Conference Edition

While I was sanely attending conference panels instead of rallies this weekend, I learned about some awesomely crazy modern architecture. A few years ago Chanel decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the classic 2.55 bag with a mobile art exhibit. The resulting UFO-like building was designed by celebrity architect Zaha Hadid. I had never heard of her before I went to grad school, but now I find her work very entertaining. Just say her name out - even that sounds fun.

So here she is with Karl Lagerfeld in her fashion-inspired building that can be dis-assembled into 56 crates of materials. Apparently it was the hot place to be in Central Park for a while. Note how the lines on the walls look like the seams on the iconic quilted handbag.



Isn't that fabulous? It makes me imagine Karl and Zaha in one of the Fug Girls' imagined dialogues. Karl would say something like "Fashion is architecture for the body. BUILD." or "Your presence decorates the walls of your creation. CONNOISE."