manny_script

11:15 am: What part of "library"...
We just received a phone call from Taiwan from a man who could not be persuaded that we would not be interested in purchasing reusable catheters from him. The mind boggles.

08:48 pm: A weekend in the woods with a bunch of beautiful men
What a nice weekend it was. So great to see so many wonderful people there

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen - which I rarely get to do anymore (since the kids are all growed up and one of my housemates has taken over my kitchen)and I was happy as a clam. On the way back to Syracuse, I rode with a man who was flying out of the Syracuse airport so the weekend was extended in a most pleasant way and I didn't have to drive home alone.

03:22 pm: Baby signing

My granddaughter is in town for the weekend (along with her parents of course).  She is 15 months old and her moms have been teaching her to sign since she was a wee tiny thing.  At first, I viewed this as an interesting, somewhat faddish, not at all harmful and potentially useful project.  The theory is that kids develop language ability long before they develop the coordination of throat tongue and lips required to produce understandable words and since they do develop finger and hand coordination sooner, teaching them manual words gives them an ability to communicate. 

I have to say that I am overwhelmed at how well it is working! She now has a vocab of about 75 words - some spoken, some signed, some both spoken and signed. Instead of the usual early-toddler repertoire of whines, she can say very specifically what she wants to say.  Here is one example - They don't really get much snow where she lives and so she was fascinated by the remaining piles of snow here.  Bending down to touch it and explore it, she picked up a handful and was surprised at its temperature. So when she took a chunk and brought it to me, she made eye contact and pretty emphatically signed "cold" to me. It was clearly a warning.  I love this at so many levels!

06:33 am: RATS

Well, George Bush got the Supreme Court he always wanted and the RATS (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia) continue to vote together. The latest, Gonzales v Carhart http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-380.pdf  has opened the door to overturn Roe. 

02:21 pm: thoughts while listening to the news

Yikes!  Almost two years since my last LJ entry.

I am feeling motivated to say a few things about the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Some things that I am thinking about:
1) The story of Dr Librescu (the 76 year old professor who saved his students' lives by putting himself between them and the shooter) - a survivor of the Holocaust and of the Ceausescu years who, apparently without a second thought, sacrificed himself so his students could get away (and the irony of the event happening on Yom Hashoah).     
2) I work with an English Language Conversation Group and most of the members are from South Korea. Yesterday's conversation was very difficult. They all expressed a combination of shame and fear. They were ashamed because the shooter was South Korean (even though he had been a US permanent resident since he was 8). They were afraid because they believe American racism will blame them. A good friend of mine works with Koreans learning English in Canada and they expressed that they were glad they don't live in the U.S. for the same reason. They may be right or they may be wrong, but what upsets me is that racist behavio(u)r on the part of Americans is expected.    
3) The memory of the 35 Syracuse University students who died in the Pan Am 103 bombing almost 19 years ago and what it felt like to be here then - and how much worse it must feel that what happened at V.T. was done by a student and happened on campus.
 

07:13 pm: a week in Northern Paradise

 Perfect weather, cold clear water and stunning vistas, a week with the man I love.  What could be better?  The Bruce Peninsula - which imposes itself between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay is my new favourite place on Earth.

See what I mean.

02:24 pm: Deep Impact - the movie

I always get annoyed when I see some sci fi thing that includes a loud noise when something explodes in space. Even so, when I see this

I can't stop myself from thinking "boom"

 

 

 

09:29 am: Question of the day
From the U S Census Bureau:
Of the $5.2 million value of U.S. imports of American flags in 2004; the vast
majority of this amount ($4.8 million) was for U.S. flags made in China.


Question:
Under the proposed amendment to the US Constitution, will it be considered "desecration" if you remove the "made in China" label from your flag?

07:28 pm: oh the horror
So Crown Prince Abdullah has been visiting the ranch in Texas and the media and especially the comedians are going nuts. The C.P. invited American businessmen to invest in Saudi Arabia, especially in its gas and mining sectors. “Economic reforms in the Kingdom have created a new investment-friendly environment that welcomes investors,” sez he. Yes! Let's send even more of our money to the richest of the rich fat cats in the world so they can train more terrorists, but I digress. What is it that seems to have every red-blooded American heterosexual in a twist or tittering nervously? G.B. and the C.P. held hands!!! *gasp* Never mind that we are already in bed with the whole fucking royal family, they held hands !! People were being interviewed about it on the news tonight and they were saying things like "we don't do that in New York"

My Siberian housemate says Bezhnev used to kiss everybody and that people laughed about it, but that it served him well because it helped divert attention from what was really going on.

hmmm

03:07 pm: ancestor stories

From time to time I dig up a few more of my ancestors.  I feel like I have dirt on my hands whenever I do because of who holds the records where the information is(e.g. the DAR) and the fact that so much of genealogy is about snootiness and pedigree or about finding names of people to "baptize" into a religion that they have no voive to object to (ugh!).  For me, it's about erecting the scaffolding to climb into history.  It's stories that I am after.  Well, today I found one.   My 9G Grandfather (Daniel Clark) was one of the Magistrates at the Witch Trials in Hartford, CT in 1662.  It is a scary and all too relevant story.

 

 

12:02 pm: Pope names

Note: I tried to get this list behind a cut and it doesn't seem to work. Please pardon my incompetence.

So the Cardinals will be convening to pick the next Pope and any bapized male Roman Catholic is eligible. In case any of you are b.m.r.c. I thought you might like to have the list of available Pope names.
( Read more... )
Of course you could pick a whole new name that hasn't been used before - or if you're really pretentious you be JesusII. Personally, if I were eligible I'd either be SixtusIV or Hilarius II.
- always trying to be helpful

10:18 am: New pic
The new picture is me in the Caribbean at Smuggler's Cove in St Lucia.

05:24 pm: Boris Drucker

One of the facts about processing manuscript collections is that most of the collections I work on are the papers of people who are no longer living.  The most recent group of papers, however, are those of a man who is very much alive and on Wednesday, after getting to know him through his work, I finally got to meet him.

Boris Drucker is a cartoonist who has published his work in Saturday Evening Post, Look, Colliers, Playboy, and the New Yorker as well as many other places over the course of the last 55 years.  An astute observer of people, he has a wonderful sense of how to distill his observtions into a good gag, and has the talent and experience to illustrate the gag with  the simplest line.

When the library decided to put together a retrospective of Drucker's career, we set about to select a few of the more than 15,000 drawings in the collection.  It was not an easy task - it was very easy to get distracted - but the show was finally complete, and is on display at the Lubin House Gallery in NY.   

Wednesday night was the opening reception for the show.  Four of us drove down from Syracuse to be part of the festivities and to spend some time with the Duckers before the reception.  We had selected the title "Don't pay any attention to him, he's 90% water"  based on the caption of one of Drucker's earliest published cartoons - appropriate to his sense of humor to title a show "don't pay attention."

My impression, from the collection, was that he would have virtually no ego, would be easily witty, and would be a man who understood himself and his world so well that being anything other than open and real would not even occur to him.  I was surprised to discover just how true my impression was.  What I did not guess, though I should have, is how universally he is adored by those who know him.  Family, former students, old Army buddies, former colleagues, neighbors, and other friends poured in.  Hugs, and smiles were everywhere.  Drucker sat in a chair and greeted people - signing copies of the exhibition catalog and exchanging jokes.  It was quite an event.  All evening I kept thinking "90% water but 100% heart"    

02:46 pm: observance and observation
Though I don't celebrate either one, the juxtaposition of Good Friday and Purim has me thinking - what do Jews for Jesus celebrate today? and then Karenkay comes along and informs that it is also Béla Bartók's birthday. Do Unitarians celebrate Purim? Good Friday? It's just that the two events seem like the polar opposites of celebratory activity.

I need to tell about my trip to New York the day before yesterday. Perhaps I will do that tonight.

08:07 am: chamber music

Last night I went to a wonderful performnce by the New York Chamber Soloists.  The program included works by Handel, Mozart, Teleman, and Saint-Saens, Bach's Brandenburg 2, and the Vivaldi Concerto in C major for piccolo, strings and continuo - which is a rather odd instrumentation, but one of the most delicious pieces ever (especially the Largo).  I need to find a recording of the Vivaldi !  I was a little surprised that they did not have CDs for sale at the concert.  I would certainly have bought one.

Happy Equinox to all.  

08:49 pm:

Here I sit with a sunburned nose and it's snowing outside my window.  What a strange world. Two weeks ago, it didn't seem possible that I could have a whole week alone with the man I have been in love with for 6 years - let alone a week in  a tropical pradise.  And a pradise it was!

We left on Saturday - direct flight from T.O. to St Lucia - five hours to get from -9c to 30c.  Even before we were off the plane I could hear the birds and feel the warm wet air and smell the fragrance of everything blooming.  The two hour bus ride to the hotel gave us a preview - of stunning vistas, and the impossibly blue caribbean, and the small villages bursting with colour and music.  My first impression was that the whole country is a party.  Of course that's not true, but there is a different sense of life in a place that is always warm. 

St Lucia is  Commonwelth country with all the Brit traditions of government and a language derived from French spoken with the music of West Africa. Mathias, our guide through the rainforest, spoke proudly of his mixture of African, Carib, French, English heritage nd made a point of being "the perfect blend."  Who am I to argue. He WAS gorgeous.

A few things that surprised me about St Lucia:

Where there are no seasons, trees can be in all stages of flower and fuit simultaneously

The color of the Caribbean - even though I had been told how blue it is, there is no way to describe it - it must be seen.  "Blue" can never again mean "sad" for me

Ferns that are 30 ft tall and rubber trees with trunks bigger thn I can reach around.  What a miniature world I live in where winter limits growth - oh, and the stump of a tree without rings! 

Fresh fish and fresh fuit at every meal - what pineapple and bananas and mangoes and papaya really taste like, not the pale imitation I am used to.

I will have more to say later about some of this.  For now, as I have said to many people who have asked "how was your vacation?" I can only say "it was the best vacation I have ever had"

 

    

08:25 pm: Vacation!

I have to admit I was skeptical tht this would ever happen, I will be leaving Saturday for a week in St Lucia with the man I love!  It's tough to concentrate

07:05 pm: Tonight I hope the ghost of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker is busy haunting Sam Ward.

11:10 am: Delmore Schwartz's gum

Tomorrow night I am going to see a production of Romulus Linney's Klonsky and Schwartz 

Delmore Schwartz, in his declining years, taught at Syracuse.  Last night I attended a lecture by a current SU English prof (and good friend) who said he had been to see the play and liked it a lot.  He also mentioned that he has Schwartz's old office AND his desk! I asked him if there was any gum stuck underneath it and, without a pause of surprise at the question, answered, "no, I checked"

 

 

11:04 am: adventures in cluelessness
Every once in awhile there is a what-were-they-thinking moment.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was walking out the door of the first floor men's room in the library, two (female) students were walking in. I was startled and they stopped for a moment - looked at each other, then back at me - and one of them said "is this the elevator?"