The View From Kalamazoo

Life has been rather more distracting than usual the last several months – many, many appointments…we’ve run the gauntlet of neuropsych and genetic testing for Miss Emma. Results from the genetic testing are still outstanding – yet before us is the ever-so-enjoyable Large Battle With School for appropriate services and IEP. Heck, getting them to switch her from SPD to OHI looks to be akin to the invasion at Normandy. Things aren’t looking good, in any case – we’ve been hearing results we’d strongly suspected, certainly, but even so it’s not news any parent wants to hear.

For the discussion of Things Which Keep Me Sane we find ourselves at the studio. Last night was the unloading (of the salt kiln) – and it was a grand ugh moment. Not ugh as in it was really effing cold, although it was can’t-feel-my-fingers cold, but ugh as in ‘why the hell do most of the pieces look like total shite?’

I must say that the weather has been thirteen shades of foul for weeks, so Sunday (in the rain, wading through ice water up past our ankles as we clutched, hunched-over, freshly-wadded pieces to our chests (in an attempt to keep them dry) through the back area to reach the kiln. For hours. Fuck.) we finally, finally loaded for the first time this term – I mention this because although we weren’t arse-deep in blizzard it was colder than a witch’s tit in a brass brassiere Monday when the kiln was lit (with difficulty, mind) and salted. So it was run to cone 9 – but because we’re having burner issues and then the cold..well, it’s clear that the top and area in front of the bricked-in opening reached 9, the rear and center certainly did not because a lot came out looking like under-cooked crap. *siiigh*

I have two pieces that just need to go again, but are otherwise fine, and two bowls that were lined in a glaze that was somehow Tremendously Not Right, and so I need to re-glaze and run them again. I threw some tenmoku in one (the other I have to dremel first, as there is schmutz in the bottom – it appears that there was some exploding wadding, probably the pancakes between the shelves and the support bricks, not under pieces) and popped it back on the cart (given the number of pieces that require re-fire I imagine we’ll be able to re-load very soon…probably not this weekend, but hope ever springeth eternal.) I had used that same glaze a plate, as well, and before I left last night I sprayed the offending surface with some malcolm davis shino – we’ll see what happens.

I have some other pieces to glaze that I just pulled off the bisque shelves, and I glazed (high-fire, not wanting to wait on the salt kiln) a bowl last night for the Empty Bowls project – I have been much better about being on top of things this year, in past years I had issues with getting pieces through the process in time to make the donation (and if I can get a second glazed in the next couple of days I may have two to donate – we’ll see, in theory I should be able to get in this weekend, at least for a little while, as I need to throw a stoneware cassarole for my sister and fuss with trimming pieces I threw last week). Small bowls move really fast – so what I have sitting are bowls too large and non-bowls. One of these days I need to photograph the lot and get my etsy back up and humming – after some bizarre server hiccough made all of my listings go bye-bye I simply haven’t had time to re-list what I have already photographed, much less goof around with the things I’ve been schlepping home from last term.

Other life-bits go on as usual: resident elderly is the same as ever, office follies continue apace (I should note that the Program has been online for a while, and printed Programs are due from the printer any moment so will leave Kalamazoo in batches forthwith. So for godssake don’t call me about not having received yours, yet!), and the superhero in our midst is making fantastic progress with reading, writing, and all other things kindergarten.

It’s UP!

Yes, we’ve moved to WordPress.  All comments from the other site are nada, and clearly there is housecleaning (categories, blogroll) and decorating yet undone – but things are moving along (at the pace of continental drift, granted…)

I’m still blogging in bare fits and starts – the distractions I’ve mentioned before still apply. Neuro/psych and genetic testing for Miss Emma continues –  med re-evals and IEPs and  girding myself for battle with the school system is still ahead. I have fantasies about feeling free enough with my time, again, to behave like a real blogger – til then, however…  le sigh.

It’s heading to the printer.
It’s heading to the web.

It’s off my effing desk, and that’s what effing matters!!!

You know, I had really thought I saw it all – that is, that I’d seen every possible way someone could cruelly abuse the spelling of medieval. When I was teaching, of course, I had some fantastic misspellings cross my desk (my absolute favorite was Charlemange. very contagious, leads to an unsightly desire for external conquest and internal reform. And no, schmartass, it wasn’t a mere typo – it was spelled the same way throughout a 5-page essay in which they actually managed to reference The Two Lives of Charlemagne and spell it correctly. hoo boy). Certainly there is no end to the amusement when teaching undergraduates, but the really amazing sadistic twisting of the poor word comes via the post office.

Letters, postcards, boxes full of books or supplies or whatnot – great or small, very important or nonsense tossed directly into the recycle bin, the address labels give us much in the way of mirth.

Ah but today, today. Today we chortled in our joy – hilarity, I tell you, as we discovered (like Schliemann finding Troy! Ok, maybe not…*snicker*) an amazing new rendition of our favorite ill-treated word!

midevile

This we add to our hallowed list of misspellings, to wit:

mid-evil (my favorite of the bunch! we’re not a little evil, we’re not very evil, we’re only middlin‘ evil!)
mideaval
midiful (I must admit, I can abide nothing full of midi!)
medevial
mideville (distant cousin of Cruella, I’m sure)
medeval
middevil (it’s just so Faust)
midevul
med-evil (as opposed to small or large, I suspect)
midival

Now, now I can die a happy Lisa. Fulfilled…

Alas, it appears from the soundtrack listing for Sweeney Todd that Johanna (Mea Culpa) (see it at the end, after Pirelli) has been cut out of the movie.

I think it’s one of the most powerful pieces in the musical, but seems often to be left out by productions…a shame, because the parallel of Turpin’s full-on decent into dementia to Todd’s with his Epiphany is masterful Sondheim. Dark, disturbing, demented…delightful. Judex ergo cum sedebit, quidquid latet apparebit: nil inultum remanebit.

(And I have to admit that I’ve rather wondered how Burton would handle the judge scourging himself to orgasm, since he wouldn’t have to stick to the staging as shown in the above clip and in the Barcelona performance, as well. O curiosity!)

Yay Yay Yay! I’ve been waiting for the unveiling of this book since forever (forever is years ago when Ray and I sat in on a Newberry Library seminar on medieval magic and chatted about it- I admit I unabashedly pimp the work of people I know and respect), so I am ecstatic for them!

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Summer 2008 Research Seminar on Extreme Materialist Medieval Manuscript Studies at the University of Iowa, June 2-13, 2008. Director: Jonathan Wilcox.

UP TO 10 FELLOWSHIPS to participate in The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies 2008 Research Seminar in “Medieval Manuscript Studies and Contemporary Book Arts: Extreme Materialist Readings of Medieval Books,” June 2-13, 2008.

This seminar will bring together contemporary book artists specializing in medieval-inspired techniques of papermaking, bookbinding, and calligraphy, among others, with medievalists whose scholarship depends upon a knowledge of the intimate physical details of medieval manuscript production. Participants will bring to the seminar the draft of an unpublished essay that models extreme materialist readings of a medieval book as a case study that will be discussed by all of the seminar participants, each bringing his or her own expertise. Seminar participants will have access to papermaking, bookbinding, and scribal facilities for modeling some of the underlying issues. The seminar will result in an essay collection that will exemplify what can be achieved in the field of medieval manuscript studies through such extreme attentiveness to the material.

Deadline for application: Wednesday, January 30, 2008. Those participants selected to join the seminar will be offered a stipend of $1,500 along with expenses. For more information and application details, please see the attached flyer or visit the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies website at http://www.uiowa.edu/obermann/medievalbooks. Direct any questions to Obermann Center Administrator, Neda Barrett ([email protected], 319-335-4034) or to Jonathan Wilcox ([email protected]).

The briefest of updates, as I have been poked soundly via email regarding the aforementioned dearth. It’s lovely to have friends and colleagues that think so highly of my prattle that they nag incessantly gently remind me of my responsibilities. *snort*

• In addition to presider duties for the smashing session on blogging Shana Worthen and I have put together, it appears I’ll be presiding over another blogging session, a general, as well. Whee! I get to leave Registration! (please do not think I exaggerate my excitement, there is a reason I am so dreadfully punchy by Saturday…)

• I’ve been too busy to photograph anything I have finished and put it up in the shop, too busy to glaze this fall (so I have crazy amounts of bisque ware to cope with in January), too busy to spend as much weekend time in the studio as I’d like, and I’m sick of busy. Officially. Next big decision – do I want to keep playing with salt or shift to wood-firing (anagama) for grins and giggles. Oh yes, the survival of nations depends on that massive decision. *eyeroll* (yep, I’m as ‘interesting’ as ever, folks – sometimes no news is good news!) I have commission inquiries looming…production pottery, can I really manage it without losing my blinkin’ mind? Honestly, sets (especially large sets) really bring out the obsessive in me (did I just hear a collective groan from my closest friends? oh yes, they know, they do…like a bloodhound on crack, I am, complete with utterly random panic of the type-A variety). *fret. fret. fret*

• Too. Much. To. Do. At. Work. Seriously, it’s talk me off the ledge time. When I’m not hyperventilating I’m head*desking. That sound Charlie Brown makes when Lucy Van Pelt snatches the football away as he’s about to kick? Auuuugh! Yeah – that sounds like me on a disturbingly regular basis – scary, twitchy, insane secretary.

Add that to the bits I mentioned at the beginning of my last post, put it into your pipe, smoke away. So there. /petulant sneer

Long time no post, not even news links. S’sorry. Server up and downs (and downs, and downs), office madness, needing to care for my Mother pre-and-post surgery…things have been rather full lately and will remain so – much Emma things afoot, including psych/neuro testing, genetic testing, and the ever-lovin’ fun of the IEP looming. Yegods.

I am, however, looking forward to the holidays – but not because of the shopping (I despise going to ‘the maul’ on a good day, to be frank – thank goodness for Amazon.com and deep impulses to give children books, even the brand-new niece!), nor the tinny piped-in caterwauling that vaguely resembles The Twelve Days of Christmas that accompanies me even through grocery-getting (iPod + swing = sanity. Squirrel Nut Zippers FTW!), and it certainly isn’t the stress and the press.

Besides the university closure, which in no small part fuels my giddiness I admit, this year I selfishly cling to something that isn’t about making the kids or my grandmothers happy, just me. Me, me, me.

Sweeney Todd. *squeeee!*

Seriously. I am thirteen shades of ecstatic and have been watching this unfold with glee. I have desperately loved this show for over 25 years (I saw it during the 1980 [Angela Lansbury and George Hearn] national tour), and from the first announcement have gleaned each dark little nugget of information about this film production with enthusiasm. Add to it the little detail of my thoroughgoing esteem of Alan Rickman’s work for nearly 20 years and the result is, well, obviously one of One Seriously Crazy Lisa. Just short of frightening, I expect. It’s a good thing my friends love and understand me, or they might have banded together to have me committed before now.

So, that being said, I have, of course, been watching each new trailer, clip, and interview that appears on the web…and, being a generous soul, sharing with others who have nervously admitted sharing my madness. I won’t post all of everything here, but… Musicaltalk did an interview with Sondheim. (listen to the box to the right, clicky) Also includes Bonham-Carter, Rickman, Depp, Burton.

Your mission, should you dare to accept it: go to the Sweeney Todd movie site. Click ‘enter the site’, you can hear snippets of the songs (if you click on ‘audio’ at the upper right corner you can arrow through them, pause, etc..).

Pretty Women … is wonderful. It was one of my favorite songs from the production when I saw it lo those many (many, many – have I mentioned I’m old?) years ago, and hearing it again makes me smile. You know, I wondered how Rickman’s voice would hold up, as someone with..er, rather high Turpin expectations..and he really has a delightfully resonant singing voice and I readily admit ecstatic and relieved surprise! Sweeney…well, Depp does a fine job, honestly, but Hearn is, I must admit, my heart’s One True Sweeney. Still, the duet is marvelous.

And, since I can’t seem to do without over-doing by my very nature, for your viewing/listening pleasure, more Pretty Women – And for those unfamiliar with the musical, this way you can hear the whole piece, see the whole scene in the first clip, and see different Turpins in action; Sweeney in concert in 2001; And this is an interesting version – Hearn as Turpin, this time. Love George Hearn, what a fantastic voice!

So this this clip of behind-the-scenes footage bits of this very scene, combined with another clip newly out of Turpin, sent me into paroxysms because Rickman really nails Turpin as a deeply foul, nasty piece of work, and displays a wonderfully arrogant, seriously sinister, and powerful presence; and ETA 12/12: another, new, Turpin clip out!

Oh, and Musicaltalk did an interview with Sondheim. (listen to the box to the right, clicky) Also includes Bonham-Carter, Rickman, Depp, Burton.