The View From Kalamazoo

A mural which has come to light in Tuscany has been identified by a British university lecturer as the earliest surviving representation of witchcraft in Christian Europe.

How very Scrooge: Instead of holiday greetings in the mail on Christmas Eve, hundreds of Detroit teachers received layoff notices.

eventually I’ll find time to post something more interesting..

A blessed Solstice to all!

Well, I’m afraid I’m behind compiling information on that new Google library project – Bri’s Aunt passed after a long (too long), drawn-out battle with Huntington’s Disease…it’s been a busy week.

SO, in case you’re one of the three people who haven’t yet heard:

Harvard Libraries and Google Announce Pilot Digitization Project with Potential Benefits to Scholars Worldwide

Search and Research: Google Takes Libraries Online

Google brings libraries into cyber-age

Still waiting on a surgery date.

Must finish rolling and baking cookies, and decorating with Em tonight. (last night: decorating the dough ornaments we did the night before [along with 2 pans of bourbon fudge, and both butter and sugar cookies doughs to sit in the fridge and chill] and wrapping little gifties for her 2 teachers, teacher consultant, and another Em often eats lunch with [so her food intake can be closely monitored and encouraged]. whew!)

Must make another pan of bourbon fudge – although hubby hates it, so perhaps I should be nice and make a pan of something sans orange extract. As long as it involves no %&#@!! marshmallow fluff I’m fiiiine.

Must finish all shopping adventures pretty darn fast, there is no good reason to put it off longer, as I don’t get paid again til after the holiday so I’d just better get to it with what little jingle is left in my pocket.

Must call to see what the heck to get Em’s cousins. One out-of-state package sent, two to go. AIEE!

Another must: Boy and I blew out 4 eggs (used in the cookie dough, of course) – he and I will work on a little-person decoupage and glitter ornament project with tissue paper, ribbon, and luck. What a hoot.

I think I’m nuts.

At least 90% of my available wrapping is done. Tuesday is Yule – we open our gifties. Then Friday we stop-by-stop make our way halfway across the state for some Santa action at my Grandmother’s house and stocking fun. THEN the next day, Em’s birthday, we give her gifts in birthday wrap, thankyouverymuch, she picks a lunch locale (usually involving a playland), and then we go out to the movie of her choice to celebrate (and then call Bumpa to wish them a happy anniversary! yegods!).

Nope – I’m certain I’m nuts. Someone peel me off the floor at the end of the month – I’ll have collapsed, I’m positive.

I have the digital camera in hand, so photos of ceramics forthcoming.

I also received word that I was awarded a full scholarship to take another class at the KIA next term – woo hoo! [What a relief.]

Have requested 2/11 or the following week as targets for surgery scheduling – even should the U. screw around even longer than even we can imagine (and we have darn good imaginations), that should give time for scheduling woes, the preparation of the material and layout of the Program (proofing, etc..) – I just want to know it’s all going to the presses before I’m incapacitated…not that people here aren’t capable, but it’s a Thing, you know? It’s such a crazy behemouth of a project that tests my, our Graphic Designer, the Asst. Dir., and students’ mettle against impossible deadlines and other forms of craziness that once I know that it’s really gone I can relax. And gee, how could I miss another opportunity to get a stiff headache pouring over blues?

I will SO miss my boss when he retires. He returned from 2.5 weeks overseas – UK, Poland to receive an award from the President, and then a coming-going-coming few days when he had to do an all-day meeting in D.C. He brought me something back (and no, this isn’t the norm, usually when he returns, he returns..there are none of that sort of expectation here): Sophie Page’s newest Magic in Medieval Manuscripts! It’s goes nicely with my copy of her Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts, of course, and I’m just tickled pick. And touched – I was remembered. I lurve that man…he’s not only a good person to work for, he’s a really kind, wonderful man and a load of laughs.. Easily the best person I’ve ever worked for, honestly, and probably ever will work for. I admit it, beyond mere admiration for his greatness as a scholar and an administrator and his super-human ability to get more done while watching a baseball game than I can all day…I think of him in an academic-fatherly way..I’m totally incomprehensible to my family, but here I’m just another medievalist, and even thought I’m not an Anglo-Saxonist he’s done as much as he can to give me good advice, talk about Important Things, and mentor in general. If my Dad were an academic, I’d have wanted him to be like Poobah, I guess. Ah, now I’m getting too personal…better quit before I get weepy. (discussion of my considerable weight and diet was not too personal for me but discussion about my employer is. you figure it out…)

In other news, I have an abdominal trocar herniation (and have for some time – first noticed during my pregnancy but I have been in ‘I’m just fat! It’s just wierd fatness!’ denial). I had my gall bladder (destroyed by my gestating and hatching kid #1) out lap, and to do that they cut openings in the abdominal wall for the instruments and the control that pumps gas into the abdomen to all is clear and visible during the surgery. The pressure on my abdominal muscles and forcing of organs into new and interesting places during gestation and hatching of kid #2 done did it, combined with kid #1 lifting, etc. At least it’s not a huge emergency – I get to pick, roughly, when it’s a good time to schedule so I can talk to previously described Grandest of Poobahs and come up with a non-crisis time for me to be out for 2-3 weeks. (yes, everyone who has ever made the pilgrimage to Kalamazoo is exclaiming ‘rut ro, raggy! rongress!’ it’s all ok, folks, all ok…) I hate general anesthesia. It’s all necessary suckage.

The good news is that my ceramics class shouldn’t be a huge problem. The gym, of course, is another story..so I’d better get my too-lazy and too-busy butt back in there and do what I can while I can – for a long while I’ll be hanging out with the treadmills. Ho hum.

This has made national news, so I’m sure you’ve all run into it from one media source or another. Much to my everlasting delight, Kalamazoo Channel 3 has contacted me requesting an on-camera interview to dispel the Paganism claims/connection. Oh. Good. Lord. I’ve done an on-camera spot before (Grand Rapids channel 8, a more conservative point of the ‘Dutch Triangle’ than Kalamazoo, even!)…probably close to 9 years ago now.. I look freaking huge, and the editing was a tad bizarre..I worry that however clear and reasoned I am during the interview it can be edited to have me reciting passages from Lovecraft. And the camera adds weight – even give my much cuter haircut now I’ll likely still look like Mama Cass.

Vanity aside, I applaud the reporter’s interest in dispelling the notion rather than just repeating the Paganism thing over and over when as they cover different parts of the trial, and certainly, of many of the locals I know (who I certainly wouldn’t want representing me, god love ’em there are WooWoo fluffies as well as people whose relationship with the spiritual is chemically based) who might be willing to do it should I say no, finally, have a good chance of doing more harm than good, if they haven’t thought-out their response and have no experience with media soundbites/brief quotes (I do). And c’mon – a matronly looking mother commenting on the victimization of children carries a little more weight than the intellectual commentary of an 18-year-old who bought a book a year ago and is as about as far removed from the situation, experientially, as you can get.

On the other hand, in the vein of bad publicity is still publicity, will a spot airs, a face on camera, and a whole lot of time invested in this, the point aside, just add fuel to the ultra-conservative-side-of-the-state-thinks-we’re-all-satanists-anyway fire? Crap. Crap. Crap. She’ll call back next week, she asked me to think about it…there’s some court function or another scheduled then, and they’ll likely run a spot at that time. Uuggh. The all-about-me question is: do I want my face all over West Michigan in connection to this sort of thing?

(And then there’s the Medieval Institute, WMU employee thing… Like we need more people thinking medievalists are nutbags.)

Bri says if I don’t do it he’ll call me a “LAME-O!” for the rest of my life.

Shortage of sleep is linked to obesity: well, no wonder! Can I go back home, now, and go back to bed?

Experts studying mysterious burial tradition at Bam Citadel [thanks to mirabilis.ca for the link]

more, from all over:
Graves of Saxon warriors found A HOARD of Viking jewellery has been found by a metal detector enthusiast in the Cheshire countryside.

Caxton’s first page to go on display as part of a (IMO, hilariously) titles exhibition, “Movers and Shakers: Geoffrey Chaucer to Elton John.”

Researchers create tool to automatically search handwritten historical documents: Historians and researchers searching through handwritten documents, such as the 140,000 pages that make up George Washington’s personal papers in the Library of Congress, now have a new powerful tool to aid their work – a first-of-its kind manuscript retrieval system developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The search tool has been developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval in the computer science department at UMass Amherst.

I may be a serious geek, but this looks funny as hell. I was pretty geeked out when I first heard of the show, but the cast…a good time will be had by all, I am sure.