The View From Kalamazoo

This looks fabulous – I haven’t the moolah to make the trip, so no abstract from me. Damn – I have the material, too.

Call for Papers: Charms, Charmers and Charming

A two-day international conference 23rd-24th September, 2005, at the Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London organised by the Folklore Society

Papers are sought on any topic relating to verbal charms (Segen, incantations, loitsut, zagovory, trylleformler, scongiuri, etc.) and especially the following:
charmers¹ books and charmers¹ repertoires, the transmission and memorisation of charms, international charm parallels, variation in charm texts and its motivation, the performance details of charming, charms as an expression of vernacular Christianity, the Œlife history¹ of particular charm-types, and (re)assessments of the classics of charms scholarship.

The conference follows on from a joint Warburg/Folklore Society event in January 2003, the proceedings of which were published by Palgrave as ‘Charms and Charming in Europe’ (2004). As with that event, it is intended that a selection of the papers will be published in book form.

Presentations should be 20-25 minutes in length. And while the working language of the conference language will be English, there are no geographical
limitations on the subject matter of the papers.

There is no conference fee for speakers, but potential speakers are advised that they are responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Please send proposals consisting of a title and a paragraph-length abstract to
Jonathan Roper
by e-mail: [email protected]
or by post: Jonathan Roper, Natcect, 9 Shearwood Road, University of Sheffield, SHEFFIELD, S10 2TN, England.

The closing date for proposals is April 30th, 2005.

Library Is to Launch Digital Gallery Today [yesterday, that is] The NYPL has opened its new Digital Gallery of some 275,000 images (the collection will grow to 500,000 images over the next several months) “digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more” – here is the complete list of collections. Its western MSS collection “approximately 2,340 manuscript pages, and associated illuminations, based upon NYPL’s contribution of 259 manuscripts to ‘The Digital Scriptorium,’ a multi-institutional image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts.”

Knocked two more tree tiles off this week. And an espresso cup. And I’m working on a three-piece sectional piece, but I don’t know how well that will work, but we’ll see. I’m goofing around with trying things and learning this and that moreso than focusing on production, production, production. I had glazed several bowls before my surgery, and they haven’t made their appearance yet, so I’m hoping the kiln that was tick, tick ticking away as it was cooling down (Wed. when I was in) is holding the lot of ’em.

(And in case all of the recent angst-less postings weren’t enough to wind your clock:)
I feel like the last 14 or so years of my life have been an exercise in Los Hermanos Penitentes.

So why can’t I move on, as some advice suggests? Why am I still enjoying a weekly tear session out of frustration?

Yet I also can’t continue the flagellation move forward – at least not for a time, if at all (knowing the chances grow slimmer with each passing minute year), because my logistics are just more and more bollocksed.