The View From Kalamazoo

A lesson learned?

So I had all of these outgrown clothes from Miss Emma. Save for some infant and toddler stuff already given away, and the generic (read: not pink) infant stuff I was able to use for Colin I had 4 seasons, full wardrobes for 0-5t. This means I had a butt-load of clothes saved. I had a boy. Sis had a boy. Clothes had to go, I’m moving. I think a yard sale is a fine idea, since I could use some money toward the move, and I haven’t the time to iron every piece for the consignment shop or dick around with Ebay. (I should have taken it all to Ebay shops in the Detroit area, on hindsight, but I didn’t realize there was one there until it was too late.) It was mostly those brands – Gymboree, Carter’s, Hannah Anderson, Oshkosh, Children’s Place, Healthtex among others..and even some snooty designer stuff that we were gifted here and there. (I’ve always said my kids dress better than I do. I suppose it’s The Mother’s Curse)

I took a day and a half of (precious) annual leave. Spent untold hours pulling all out, washing, sorting by size. Over two hours to set it all up. Up too early, to bed too late. Sunburn. I had taken it all to my parents’ house – the sale for my current neighborhood is after the move, the sale for my neighborhood-to-be was last month – as this weekend was the sale for their whole subdivision – their neighboorhood association was to advertise, lots and lots of sales around – perfect, no?

No. Advertising was crap. There was construction at one entrance so it was un-usable. We got almost no traffic (even just driving by looking for tools or whatever). I sold not one thing. NOT ONE THING. At yard sale prices ($1.00 a piece, basically – I price to sell) I had well over a grand in clothing – had I sold half, even at half of what I had originally priced, I would have made close to $500. So much for some money for the move. So much for gas money for godssake.

Needless to say, Sat. afternoon I got on the phone and called people I know with little girls. I have two enormous boxes (each) for Jennie, for Thea, for Sara. I have many enormous boxes taped up for Purple Heart – they pick up where my folks are, it’s a stack in their garage. I had to be rid of it all – there is no time to try again or consign anything or whatever. *sigh* (note: tear-down took 50% longer than set-up – I worked late into the evening. then had a beer. than another beer.)

I hate wasting my time. I hate being sunburned.

added. check these out:

medievalmanuscripts.net

http://digitalmedievalist.org

Oh god, I laughed. So. Hard.

My month-late Congress commentary:
This is, of course, too brief and mentions too little, but I can call it done.

Met many really lovely people who I have only spoken with electronically as well as those friends I usually only get to see once a year as we are separated by great distance. I’m always surprised but pleased at being remembered – Shana brought me chocolates from a fantabulous Toronto shop, and I had a visit from George Ferzoco re: a link I had posted in Dec. to a project I thought looked marvy. He signed the book on the project for me…a lovely thing, and a very nice visit with a very nice person. See – blogging doesn’t just get you death threats. 😉 When he popped up I was far from 100% and didn’t recognize the project from the cover of the book – the fact that I can’t read Italian compounded my insta-stupidity. I just hope he didn’t fly back to the UK and tell his colleagues the Kalamazoo Coodinator is a scatterbrain…not that I’m not much of the time, but I do try to keep it more under wraps. (chronic and frenetic multi-tasking ain’t for the faint of heart)

(realize that I’m not mentioning all of my visitors, but I need to get back to work, here)

SO yes, I danced many of the ‘you owe me a dance!’ dances, shook it like a polaroid picture. There were witnesses to my gracelessness, and Mike, duuuuude, you need to come next year, because I’m a very poor substitute for Bad Touch. It’s a darn good thing D’s amazing, because she had to carry it in the face of my utter surprise coupled with an inability to move with more smoothness than that of a inebriated water buffalo.

Had many fruitful conversations, including the one that led to the session proposal. It was a very talk-y Congress for me – which was a good thing overall…relaxed, but effecient. Societas Magica‘s proposal line-up looks yummy, and one rather behooves me to toss my hat in the ring again so I suppose I should get off my tuckus and write.

Google Print (the immense project to digitize the holdings at Standofrd and U of M, as well as part of the collections of Oxford’s Bodleian, NYPL, and Harvard and some books in print) is up and running – Consider this search I ran on the last name of a single author:

It includes his own work, of course, and references from a variety of authors to his work – here is the text from first page (1-10 of 2020 pages!):

Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century
by Richard Kieckhefer – History – 1998 – 392 pages
Page 19 – … INTRODUCTION 19 15 On this ‘clerical underworld’ see Richard Kieckhefer, Magic
is the …
[ 13 results from this book ]

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages
by Karen Jolly, Catharina Raudvere, Edward Peters – History – 2002
Page 22 – … Astrologers and diviners in particular became common in the courts of
twelfth-century rulers (Kieckhefer 1990: 97). In the twelfth and thirteenth …
[ 41 results from this book ]

Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley
by Richard Kieckhefer – Architecture – 2003 – 384 pages
… In Theology in Stone , Richard Kieckhefer seeks to help both sides move beyond
… Kieckhefer begins with four chapters on the basic elements of church …
[ 22 results from this book ]

Magic in the Middle Ages
by Richard Kieckhefer – History – 2000 – 236 pages
KIECKHEFER.
[ 10 results from this book ]

Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic
edited by Claire Fanger, Richard Kieckhefer, Nicholas Watson – Body, Mind & Spirit – 1998 – 308 pages
Page xiv – … mysticism which are discussed by Richard Kieckhefer later in this volume, but
also on its own account, because it takes a far more explicit and even …
[ 33 results from this book ]

The Witchcraft Reader
edited by Darren Oldridge – Body, Mind & Spirit – 2001 – 448 pages
Page 22 – … Richard Kieckhefer shows in Chapter 1 that the modern concept of witchcraft
developed gradually in the course of the fifteenth century. … Kieckhefer’s …
[ 15 results from this book ]

Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities
by Lutz F Kaebler, Lutz Kaelber – History – 1998 – 256 pages
Page 107 – … (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in
the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 33—42. …
[ 7 results from this book ]

Nontarget Effects of Biological Control
by Peter A Follett – Technology – 1999
Page 129 – community structure (Elliott and Kieckhefer I … its range and is now widely
distributed in North America (Schaefer et al. 1987, Elliott and Kieckhefer 1 …
[ 12 results from this book ]

Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History
edited by Alan Charles Kors, Edward Peters – History – 2000 – 451 pages
Page 12 – … Richard Kieckhefer, “The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic
in Late Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24 …
[ 16 results from this book ]

Demonology, Religion, and Witchcraft: Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson
Body, Mind & Spirit – 2003 – 350 pages
Page 148 – … : Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York: Pantheon, 1991); Richard
Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned …

Although clearly the focus is commercial, it’s still a useful tool for sifting through references to figure out, say, what book to search out through a used book store or what to attempt to get from ILL. The University Presses are still bitching. You can only look at 5 pages – the page hit, and two before and after that hit – which does not leave it infinitely useful, and it appears impossible to do a highlight and copy to quote passages (at least with what I’m using). Still, it’s handy.

Yup, still haven’t posted anything of substance. I had noticed.

Commercial from The Netherlands? (I laughed)

Work Starts on Giant Medieval Siege Catapult

War over development of site of Harold’s first 1066 defeat

Pages for the ages: U of S prof on quest to reassemble pages of centuries-old manuscripts (visuals here – beautiful stuff)

Offer accepted! We have a house!

Medieval remains found on residential building site

Early medieval coin found at dig

And found at mirabilis.ca:

An undiscovered stretch of HadrianÂ’s Wall has been unearthed by archaeologists

Archaeologists Unearth Britain’s Own Miniature Coliseum

Accelerator Used to Decipher Archimedes

I am so behind.

I have a list of stuff-I-must-blog, including detailed commentary on Congress; something I’ve had sitting, waiting for time, on ADHD overseas; need to take and post pics of last-term’s pottery class. Plus, on academic blogging and bloggers…well, and more.

But no. Congress does not end when the people leave, and I now find myself in A Situation that has taken all of my time thus far.

Good news: it appears I may be getting my house, much sooner rather than later

Bad news: it’s because Mother Soprano (no, I do not exaggerate) is getting let out of the nursing home, and living alone again is pretty much out of the question. so, she’s ours, now – there is no one else, we’re it. I looked at two (vacant, conveniently) houses Wed. morning. (My will-not-budge point requires the house to be in the P-U El. area – I will not switch schools on Emma, I’ve laid too much groundwork here and need to know I can count on someone when it comes to her.) So I’m getting a Grandma-in-law very shortly – and just in time for my wedding anniversary. Whee.

I think one of the two will work – here is the one I think I want, with reservations (well, requirements. like needing to professionally remove the wood burning stove and fix the floors and ceilings affected by someone’s bright idea to vent it straight up, through the house). It’s 4 blocks (residential blocks, not city blocks) from the school. Empty, so no waiting for evacuation.

I should have taken pics while I was in there. Maybe I can ask the realtor if I could do that.

Anyway.

We’ll see. Money issues give me anxiety attacks. Moving is a b*tch and a half. This really cooks my goose when it comes to moving to continue my education, obviously, and our relatively new university president seems dead determined to raze the hell our of graduate education here like she did at her last venue (NMU), so doing anything here, even if it was a good idea (I’ve already done two degrees here, folks) may be nigh impossible.

[She’s already discontinued the Graduate College – and they are ‘seriously considering’ every grad. program over the next however-long. Programs have already gone down – more will, it is clear – but who? I’m alum – and to see what Bailey has done in so short a time that a previous (soon to be sainted?) President, Haenicke, spent 15 years getting to greatness (at least, national recognition) really gives me a pit in my stomach. I could rant endlessly about what’s been happening here, but I’ll control myself..and my language.]

Good thing I’ve waited to plant my annuals, eh?

A link, since my Google alert requires no real time or thought on my part:
This would be lovely to see in person! National Gallery unveils England’s oldest altarpiece

I have a lot of Congress and other blogging to do, I realize – right now, tho, all I have time for is news and this is a collection I’ve been compiling for a week (from cronaca.com, mirabilis.ca, google, various whatsits and whreefores. sorry, not a good time for record-keeping:

Portugal: Medieval Muslim Burial Ground Unearthed

I discovered this last Wed., but wasn’t posting (for obvious reasons) – still cool as all get out, tho:
St Baldred?

Archaeologists find ‘Britain’s oldest shoe’

Two different articles on Mdina, here and here.

Mycenaean port of Athens found?

And a wonderful piece on tapestry maintenance, the Cloisters, and a favorite of mine..the Hunt of the Unicorn