Thanksgiving

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. Myself and my family are in good health. I won this fellowship to conduct my diss research and got to live in London for 10 weeks. I've met all kinds of wonderful people out here, and look forward to returning to my loved ones at home. L and I moved off campus into a nice, cozy bungalow and added a long-awaited for fuzzy family member. I like Thanksgiving because, like the best holidays out there, it's an opportunity to share good food, good wine, and good time with people you love. It's also an opportunity to highlight 3 of my favorite food groups: carbs, sugar, and butter (chocolate is the 4th, but doesn't have much of a role on Thanksgiving). I present to you my first attempt at stuffed pumpkins. I got together with a few friends here and we did a vegetarian Thanksgiving with chicken on the side for the meat eaters. Stuffing pumpkins is super easy - clean, stuff like a turkey, bake at 350 for about 2 hours (depending on squash) and scoop out to serve. All the stuffing, good pumpkiny tastiness, none of the salmonella - but moister than "dressing" baked in a pan. I used the Betty Crocker Cookbook Stuffing with 3 breads: whole wheat, rye, and sourdough, and 2 crown prince pumpkins from a local farmer's market. They were far superior to the little 90p pumpkin we picked up at the grocery store. You can easily make these vegan and can stuff with a variety of stuffings.

Carved and waiting - such beautiful colors

All 3 after 2 hours of roasting

EXTREME STUFFING CLOSE UP!!!

Hey There Little Red Riding Hood

You sure are lookin' good

You're everything

That a Big Bad Wolf could want

Yeooooooowl!

I finished another sweater! And it fits! And it didn't even take a whole month! For all you knitters out there, all like 1 of you, I highly recommend this pattern. Very easy, well written, knits up fast and easy to customize. I love the arm construction, the arm scythes fit much better than top-down raglans.

Pattern: Corona, by Canaryknits

Size: S

Yarn: Cascade 220, 4 skeins

Needles: 7

Mods:

Made the bottom longer and knit and extra inch of the vneck after the neck split but before the arm pits. That's it! This is a great sweater for the busty.

And Happy Thanksgiving! I will post pics of my stuffed pumpkin carb feast on Sunday when we cook.

One of those days

Well, it was bound to happen... I was bound to have a day when I should have just stayed in bed. Nothing horrible, just feel like I left my brain in bed. Took me forever to get going (had laundry all over the apt), I'm supposed to call a friend for lunch and my cell runs out of battery power, I have no internet (currently at a cafe) and can't get ahold of her that way. Now I'm at a camera shop internet cafe and realized I left my lunch on my kitchen counter at home. Of course, this is the only cafe that only has internet, but also only has coffee and tea. Argh.

Aside from all of that, getting to do research at the British Museum is really an amazing experience. The prints and drawings room is a beautiful part of the 18th century library. Everything is carefully preserved - gloves to handle any material, minimal lifting, no flipping over, etc. It feels very... historical. History in action, and all that

What I'm realizing, now that I'm in my 9th week is how wonderful the research phase is and how essential it is for historians to be able to not just get to an archive, but really explore an archive. The material I've identified to look at is of course helpful, but it's really the material that is physically around what I thought I wanted to examine that has been the most fruitful. You really don't know what you are going to find until you get there, and having the time to really work though an archive's catalog has made a huge difference for my project. I'm also so thankful for the IHR research seminars. I've seen several good talks and two really outstanding presentations. The networking I've been abel to do has pointed me to sources I wouldn't have thought about (like the contemporary prints and engravings), and I've made some really good connections here with both grads and faculty.

Ok, I'm still trying to do London fashions w/ pics, but the weather has been a little too wet for pis of people.

Oh yeah, and Happy early Turkey Day to the Americans out there. I will be at a seminar and pub on Thursday but have plans to do a vegetarian Thanksgiving with my friend from Brown (who is Israeli) and her Israeli roommate. We're going to make stuffed pumpkins, yams in rum-butter-suger, sweet potato biscuits, and dessert of some kind. I also plan to drink several glasses of wine. I'm the only drinker of the group and will have to get my ass home, but wine will be had. I'll try to get some good images of the food and the minimalist flat they are sharing.

Link updated

Sorry the link wasn't working, thanks to everyone for the heads up and thanks to Luke for fixing it. I have no internet at the British Museum and didn't get the notice until this morning

Here it is again, scroll down to "Kathy K----"

One more reason the UK rocks

It's Movember the time of year when men are encouraged to grow mustaches in the month of November to raise awareness about prostate cancer and Men's health.

Proud Daughter

My mom is an artist. She's not a professional, although I think she could have been had her life gone differently, and she may be in the future. She's been going through some rough times in the recent past and hasn't been able to produce a piece in 2 years. This fall, she decided to set the goal of making a piece and submitting for a competition just to see if she could. Not only was she able to submit, but she won first place in the adult category! If you scroll down to the adult category hers is the paining of the desert hare and cactus. I know I'm her daughter and I'm totally biased, but I'm very proud of her and absolutely love her work.

I'm actually getting this thing worked on

My research is going well. I am absolutely going to be able to look at everything I determined that I need to see (except for one book that is on display and they won't take down for me no matter how nice I ask). I'm kind of... surprised. This whole setting a goal and actually accomplishing it in a timely fashion is not common for grad school. And by timely I mean early! I have time to go to the prints and drawings room of the British Museum and the equivalent at the Tate! Of course now I have to go back and start putting all of this into a coherent narrative, but it feels possible. I have changes to make, but that's ok. Check in again with me in March I may have run away to Los Cabos, but from where I'm sitting right now it looks do-able. This is a good place to be.

I'm off to a seminar tonight and then the British Museum tomorrow. Once I get photos stay tuned for a London fashion post.

My Grad Training Taught Me Something!

I was in Oxford this past weekend as a symposium on the broadside in Europe. The presentations covered material from 15th century Germany to 19th century Italy - ballads, proclamations and study guides for French monks. It was wonderful to talk with scholars who work with the same material and speak the same "language". This is fairly common in academia and why we have conferences and symposia in the first place. I managed to make good connections with the English Broadside Ballad Archive at UCSB. This is a group that combines my interests in ballads and digital humanities, and we're set to touch base in January regarding specific projects I can become involved with. I also met and exchanged cards with several other scholars, most of whom have said they will be happy to meet with me while here in London.

But, perhaps most importantly, I was able to make an excellent impression in the final round table discussion of the day. The moderator asked the question: from religious proclamations to songs to study guides - are we really all dealing with the same material? Most of the speakers tended to point the uniqueness of what they do and emphasize the role of difference in their projects, but mentioned that they still struggled to get a grasp on exactly what were broadsides anyway? When I got the floor I got to make a really good plea for the inderdisciplinarity of broadside research, that we are a field in which we must consider how these objects were seen, heard, read, produced, and consumed. That this requires working across the standard disciplines of history, literature, music, art history, and performance, and that that struggle is in deed difficult, but also what makes this field so dynamic. I got to look out to head nodding, murmurs of approval, and had the final remarks of the day. It was awesome. So funny that the interdisciplinary, trans-national, world historical, cross-whatever approaches that are common currency at SC to the point of seeming trite were really new and novel. I had several people come up to me to tell me how much they liked what I had to say and the way I described our joint venture with material that often ended up as loo paper.*

I'm back in the British Library with only 3 weeks left here. I absolutely love it here and am going to be sad to leave. On the other hand, I'm ready to be back stateside and closer to family and friends. I have to get my tush to the British Museum Prints and Drawings, the Tate, and sort through 2 more collections. The scary thing: I think I'm going to be able to get it all done by the time I head home.

*I'm working with original ballads now and let me tell you, they are soft and could give Charmin' a run for their money.

Grumble, Grumble,

In case anyone didn't know what the UC's problem is, here is one major piece of the puzzle: The LA times reports that although the population of CA is quite happy with the UC, CSU and community colleges, they don't support raising taxes or student fees to pay for those institutions. Now, I don't want my taxes to be any higher either. Especially b/c I have the suspicion that they probably go into some administrative black hole of doom and only a fraction would actually get to the unis. But can't people see the logical gap between 1) wanting a first class-university system and the prestige and bragging rights that come with that, and 2) not wanting to pay for a first-class university system but being pissed when they don't magically get it anyway?

"To see that level of concern spoke to the degree people value these institutions they see as very important for the state's future," he said, adding that legislators should pay attention.

Among the survey's other findings: 77% of parents of children age 18 or under say they are worried about affording college and 69% say most families do not save enough for college; 89% are concerned about rising fees; and 86% worry about reduced enrollments and course offerings.

Legislators should pay attention? And what, comment on the state of the system but not do a damn thing to fix the problem of a disinvested UC? I hear the problem of not wanting to pay more for less. I hear the double hit of raised taxes to support the UC combined with fee hikes every year is pricing our state's population out of the state college system. And that fee increases will soon put a number UCs in the more expensive areas with poor commuting options * cough * Santa Cruz *cough * into the astronomical range when cost of living and housing is factored into the college equation (assuming, of course, that they aren't already). I hear the consumer crying out in pain b/c of the rising price tag - but I also see what these cuts are doing to our university, our faculty, grads, and students (or will see the students when I get back in the winter). We've been struggling for years and now parts of our university seem to be downright imploding. We've never been a richer campus - and now that I talk to grads at other, granted Ivy League, schools I literally boil in jealousy - but we're being gutted to the point where I have a hard time seeing where the UC Titanic is going to end up when the recession and budget nonsense are finally over.

I don't know what the answer is (this may be a first). I can see where throwing money a the problem isn't the answer, although the state universities are facing very serious and real budget problems and throwing money at us would at least get us back to the relatively easier problems faced, say 4 years ago. Maybe the whole system needs an overhaul in the same way it seems that most of our lurching-along 20th century systems need overhauls (health care, social security, CA's budget and constitution), but these days "overhaul" doesn't mean incorporating radical new thinking that would actually revolutionize the system*, it means "doing more with less" or cutting jobs and services in the name of efficiency. Is one of my profs right in his observations that humans always take the seemingly easier of 2 paths even if that path is self-destructive in the long run? Are we always willing to dancing with the devil we know, even if it'll kill us, because it's less "scary" than the devil we don't know? And if so, then can we get our the national myth that we're a great innovative, risk-taking nation that's wiling to work and fight for what's good, right, just, and true in this world, and just wallow in our terrified, petrified state of clinging to a sinking ship?

Note: I'm a little on edge today, it has to do with my stupid English equivalent of frat boy and g-friend neighbors who were so fucked up last night that they thought porno sex with blasting music at 2:30 am was a brilliant plan. I was jerked awake to groans and shrieks. Knocked on the door several times, no answer, followed by 30 seconds of silence and then the noise was back on. Lasted until 4 am. While there has been tea during my other mornings this was definitely a coffee morning.

*universal health care and access to education? we have several models all over the world we could look at... I know, I know, the spector of socialism is scary but you can't on the one hand scream "free health care! free universal access to education!" and not expect to pay for it from some where. It's going to be out of your pocket (privatized, more out of a few pockets with limited access based on the mighty $, race, class, and (perhaps to a lesser degree) gender) or everyones (socialized, less out of everyone's), unless the money fairy is making regular stops to your place and if she is can you send her my way and tell her to pay me in £s?

While I'm updating on life I figured I'd give an IUD update for interested parties. For all others, you've been warned and can read or move along elsewhere. In fact, I've put this in white font. To read, highlight the text.

I've been off the pill now for a little over 3 months and still like it. The biggest change is that I"m not nearly as dried out as I was. I'm oily in the T-zone for the first time in well over a decade and I now have to deal with zits in a way I didn't have to before. The rest of my skin is also less dry - legs, arms, etc - as are my mucus membranes. My contacts feel better, although that may also be being in a more humid climate. I had my first cycle after 2.5 months and no idea when the next one is going to come. The period was heavier and lasted 5 days, but not that much heavier than it has been on my last BCP (I was not on one of the pills that made your period stop). Definitely sloshier and a little bit crampy on the fist day (maybe level 1-2 on a scale of 1-10) but really not bad and nothing advil didn't fix. And as far as the periods go, using this nifty little thing makes them much less of a a hassle. One of the biggest differences I feel is that my libido is higher and b/c I'm less dried out inside and out, my body responds better and faster. All in all, a world of good.

My overall assessment: I'm only one period in to this, but so far I still love it and am very happy I switched off the BCP. I love not having to remember to take something every day and the reduced stress and worry about forgetting a pill. I'm still trying to figure out my skin, but I will happily put up with extra oiliness in the T-zone and a few zits for replenished moisture elsewhere. I didn't even realize this was a problem until I got off the pill. The strings haven't given me any problems - keep them long and tuck them out of the way. The pill was great for me when I went on it at 17, but I wished I had switched to the IUD earlier (mid to late 20s). Even if I only keep it in for 1-2 years, it was absolutely worth the investment and I will continue to use and IUD until L and are are past the child bearing period and more permanent measures are an option (you can have the copper IUD inserted when breast feeding).

Update land

I promised and update, and here it is:
I’m finally making headway in the archives. I’m not finding any new ballads, but I am finding the same ones printed over and over with a noticeable level of loyalty to the visual landscape of the original edition. I’ve also noticed that most ballads function as montage of images from which meaning is fairly easily extracted rather than in narrative, comic book from (as is standard with German ballads from the same period). I’ve found visual evidence of ballads posted on a wall and ballad singers in contemporary prints, a description of a person being able to identify a ballad by the way it looked, and a publishers catalog aimed at itinerant chapmen. I can’t tell if it’s a catalog that lists the publishers “in house” stock, or if it’s a “made ot order” list of copyrights held, but either way it will allow me to recreate what one print sellers options were. If you are a grad in my program and you are reading this, I will approach you to play the “guess what this one is about” ballad game. Don’t worry, you will be compensated for your time with beer and the knowledge that you may be helping me with my diss… but mainly with beer. So, I think I’m actually getting to something that will resemble a dissertation. I have almost 70 pages of notes and write ups of ballads since I got here, and that doesn’t count all the entries I have from the summer. All in all I can confidently say I love my job, I love what I do, and I actually have the confidence I’ll finish and finish well. Then again give me a week and I’ll be back on the brink of despair, but so goes the dissertation roller coaster.
Oh yeah, and I reworked my WH thru food syllabus and wrote a Tudor/Stuart syllabus to submit for summer school. I’m working with ReallyTiny on the WH Food stuff and if it gets accepted we are going to have a blast. We’re trying to work in eating and/or drinking to every week.

But after that fabulous week, I fizzled out today. I wasted time downloading the new blogger template you see here and when I got to the BL I realized I was more interested in reading reviews on skin and hair products than actually working. So after 2 hours of minimal productivity, I decided to hike my butt down to the national portrait gallery ( I did have a portrait I needed to look at) and have spent the last 3+ hours wandering around Covent Garden. Now, as you can see from this pic, I enjoyed a fall bitter and typing on my laptop in a pub.I realized I don’t have that much time left here and I have a lot I want to do. On the schedule for tonight: my weekly Sat night bread and tasty cheeses for dinner with my £3.33 red wine (nice, smooth with a good french character- much better than Chuck).

I’ve also tried a new cookie recipe from King Arthur flour. I’m still on a brownie kick but realized that I would totally eat a pan of brownies in, say, 24 hours, but if I make brownie cookies (and can not gobble down the dough) I’d be able to bake 1-2 an evening and freeze the rest of the dough. For the bakers out there it’s more like a fondant – very chocolate, sugar, egg. For the non bakers: it’s the cookie version of a lava cake. Good, but I over baked the first 2 and they turned out dry. I’d make it again but it doesn’t quite meet the dense brownie texture that I’m looking for*. Today I’ve decided to head to the Tate and maybe I’ll stop my a local bakery and p/u one of their outstanding brownies.

*Now that I have 2 friends at the BL (and one is a New Zealander who totally sounds like Bret from FOTC), I'm going to make most of the rest of the batch and take them into work.

New Look

I'm trying the template thingy again, esp considering I've been seeing "exceeded bandwidth" with blogger's classic templates. Bullshit if you ask me. So I'm trying to host my images in my picasa account. Hopefully it'll work. I'm still playing around with this -and again and am uber late getting my butt into the BL on this fine morning- so things may be a bit clunky until tomorrow am when I can actually take the time to fix them.

A recap on this week:
-love pubs
-hate running in the cold (we're around 40-45 degrees F here so this isn't just Kelly's a CA wimp cold, this is actually cold)
-love real research seminars with committed members
-had an awesome week in the archive (finally!), and realizing why this is the best job in the world
-found a 3 for £10 wine deal! The white is bright and fair, I'll report on the red soon

On the table for the weekend:
-research at the BL
-trip to the National Portrait Gallery to examine paintings of prostitutes and actresses
-trip to Tate Britain to scour their 17th and 18th century print collections
-8-10K run (depending on how I feel)
-window shopping on Oxford St and looking at the Holiday light displays

No interesting title

It's 9, I need to leave to get into the BL. I've lately picked up the bad habit of staying up "just another 15 min" just about every night. When I got here, I was in bed between 11 and 12, now it's as late as 2. I'm still up between 7:30-8, but it's a hard wake up. I need to get to bed sooner. In fairness, part of why I'm staying up late this week is that I've attended 2 seminars, one book launch, and 2 post-seminar/book launch pub trips. The Long 18th century people are big, friendly, but also cliquish and a little pretentious. The 16th century group is smaller, friendlier, and I'm glad I finally joined them. I heard and excellent paper on the Dutch invasion of 1688 that argued that William's personal connections to James, peers, and clergy in England were at least as important, and in fact directed, his military strategy. For those who don't care, feel free to skip to the next sentence, for those that do: this means he focused on personal correspondence with friends, family, court, king, not the exiles (as has most of the other literature. The hard and fun part about these seminars is the post-pub experience. It's generally a small group of scholars and grad students. Last night, the scholars were buying all of the rounds of beer, and were in fact insulted when I stopped after a second pint (this is b/c the night before I got unintentionally quite drunk on the drinks people bought me and stayed up until 2 am). It was... fun. We talked research, personal stuff (I helped a husband figure out how to stretch out his wife's jeans that he had accidentally shrunk), and a whole lot of nothing and everything all at once. It was a wonderful evening of professional and personal connecting.

They were also aghast that "nothing like this" happens at our university. We talked about how the drinking age and active discouragement of fraternizing with students has set up a rather frosty standard for relationships in the US, and really what a shame it is. And it really is a shame. It's really nice to get to know scholars as people, and the pub atmosphere is much more relaxed and pretentious than post-lecture receptions in which everyone is still trying to impress. We need better spaces in the US. Spaces that encourage socializing and accept socializing and drinking w/o trying to make it an "experience". I love the cocktails at the red, but too loud, dark and desperately trying to be swanky. The P&P has a casual vibe and is as close to an pub as you can find but it's dark, loud, and often has music blasting in a way that discourages conversation. Plus I hate the benches. Woodstocks is a college bar and a little to restaurant oriented (unless you commandeer the patio), and the other bars (Rush, Blue Lagoon) although great for drinking aren't that great for semi-professional socializing. I think Black Mountain brewing may be an exception and maybe i need to revisit them. But it also comes down to: 1) the isolation of the campus, 2) that you need to get on a moving vehicle of some sort to get to a pub/bar. Once you can't all move en masse, you loose inertia and organization becomes a mess.

Now, despite my complaining, I want to give a shout out to the grads who have done a wonderful job of socializing and having good times with one another over several years now. I love my grad groupings and look forward to them - but there is a wonderful thing that happens when you put young and senior scholars together (did I mention that twice now the grad attendees of the seminars have been thanked for coming, participating, keeping material fresh and faculty on their toes?). And it' can't happen at 4pm with hummus and veggies. As great as the cheese plate is, the afternoon seminar followed by everyone rushing back to work is not the same thing.

-also I'm late and haven't put up pics but will this weekend.

Bigger update coming on Friday

L visited and returned home again, and I'm back at the BL. It was wonderful to have him out to visit. We managed to walk over most of central London, and made the most of our time together. Lots of long walks, photos of the changing leaves, and almost every historical site we could fit in. Well, pre-19th century historical sites. We were both beset by 48 hour stomach flus (not the same 48 hours unfortunately), but that was the only blip in an otherwise fantastic vacation. I'll post some pics in the next couple of days.

Now I'm frantically trying to put my 2 syllabi together for summer session (they only have us an 8 day lead time!), and get to the library. After 8 hours of syllabus work I only mustered about 1.5 hours at the BL - but it was successful b/c I found some evidence I've been hoping to find and I finished another Ballad Collection. One more really big one and then just a bunch of little ones to mop up.

So that's the big update. I'll post more after Thurs - Bonfire Night aka Guy Fawkes Night.