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stormdogI'd take a picture of a wonderful new piece of furniture that's making me happy, but it's difficult to photograph a mirror. Especially at eleven o' clock at night as I'm trying to get to bed.
I've been looking for a cheval mirror at thrift stores for years now, and I found one with Posi on Sunday for $30. It's set up in the corner of my room for me to finally try again to learn to braid my hair. But beyond that, having it is a little self-indulgence that makes me feel good. Wouldn't you know it, today as I went to the local Goodwill with my dad looking for an ironing board for one of his shows, there was another cheval mirror for $10 less! It was a little bit smaller and a little bit scuffed so I'm happy with mine, but it was exactly the same style of frame. The universe does funny things sometimes.
My love Danae is presenting a poster at a workshop at the Association for Computational Linguistics conference in Baltimore in two weeks. She's been trying to decide between driving and flying, but it seems like driving has won out. Which means, assuming she makes the final decision, I'm going to go with to help drive, and will have a chance to spend a week exploring a new city! I've only been to the eastern seaboard once, and that was Manhattan which is sort of it's own special case, so I'm excited at the newness. Mostly. I had to think self-analytically about why I'm less excited to travel than I normally am, and I think it's really that I'm still a bit burned out from the Chiapas experience. But this will be in a city, with showers and toilets, and I don't have to eat any tamales if I don't want to. I can manage that. (I just posted some more photos from the Chiapas trip; these are from the "hammock hotel" we stayed at near Palenque. Once I have all the pictures posted, I'll write up a trip report, but you can kind of get a sneak peek if you want.)
Anyway, I don't think I know anyone in the Baltimore area, but if you're out there and want to meet up, let me know?
So I'm trying to evaluate some human geography programs in the area, or on the way, that I might be able to stop and visit at. It's short notice, but as Danae said, there's always a chance that if I email a professor and say I'm unexpectedly travelling and would like to meet him, that it will work out. The urban-spaces-focused faculty at Penn State sound particularly interesting, especially Dr. Deryck Holdsworth, whose work seems to be very close indeed to the things I want to do. I'll send him an email tomorrow.
I need to learn to explain to people, in plain language, what I'm interested in doing. I think this will be part of the process of writing a research statement as well; clarifying to myself what I want to do and how to do it. I realized at Tea in the Park (a gathering sporadically organized by Posicat where a group of us get together in a forest preserve near his place and have tea and snacks) when I was talking to Brownkitty about my academic career goals, that I either get jargony, or have trouble expressing solid concepts, or both. For some time, I've thought that maybe what I need to do is read more theory. The problem with that is that there's a hell of a big body of literature out there to read, and it's intimidating enough that I don't quite know where to start. I talked to my advisor about it when I last saw her though, and she said that what I need to do is just start writing. I think she's right. Writing is really an analytical process, or at least part of a recursive and iterative one, and I think it's what I need to do next. I also think that my excitement with the Pike Creek project I'm working on is a good place to start in explaining what gets me excited.
---
Speaking of the Pike Creek project, I just digitized a 1931 plat book of Kenosha that we missed at the archives in the last round. It was pushed back behind another atlas on the shelves. It has beautiful, large scale maps of Kenosha with subdivision names and individual lot numbers. Not only is it a wonderful tax record lookup aid, but it's also an excellent map of the course of the creek. Yay! I'll may post a couple crops from it here if anyone is interested. It's a really interesting book; the pages are not paper; it's printed on linen!
---
I had a nice evening with my dad and my brother T. Dad, as mentioned, needed an ironing board as a stage prop. We didn't find one, but we did have fun looking through the thrift store. Do any of you know about cameras? Really old cameras? There were four of them in a display case, including one Kodak 1-A junior, with a most recent patent date of 1916 and others pending. There was one that I'm pretty sure was even older. No text on it anywhere, but where the leather cover was peeling off, I could see that the body was made of wood with tongue and groove joints. There was also a hole in the middle of one side that might be where the lens would go that was plugged with a piece of cork. Maybe it was a pinhole camera? Anyway, they were all clearly quite old; I'm guessing they were all from the 1910s or 1920s. I was really tempted to buy them, but I don't know enough to know whether they're rare and valuable, or just garage sale junk.
---
I have other things to say, but I've been promising myself to try to start getting to bed at 11:00, and I'm half an hour late. More tomorrow perhaps.
I've been looking for a cheval mirror at thrift stores for years now, and I found one with Posi on Sunday for $30. It's set up in the corner of my room for me to finally try again to learn to braid my hair. But beyond that, having it is a little self-indulgence that makes me feel good. Wouldn't you know it, today as I went to the local Goodwill with my dad looking for an ironing board for one of his shows, there was another cheval mirror for $10 less! It was a little bit smaller and a little bit scuffed so I'm happy with mine, but it was exactly the same style of frame. The universe does funny things sometimes.
My love Danae is presenting a poster at a workshop at the Association for Computational Linguistics conference in Baltimore in two weeks. She's been trying to decide between driving and flying, but it seems like driving has won out. Which means, assuming she makes the final decision, I'm going to go with to help drive, and will have a chance to spend a week exploring a new city! I've only been to the eastern seaboard once, and that was Manhattan which is sort of it's own special case, so I'm excited at the newness. Mostly. I had to think self-analytically about why I'm less excited to travel than I normally am, and I think it's really that I'm still a bit burned out from the Chiapas experience. But this will be in a city, with showers and toilets, and I don't have to eat any tamales if I don't want to. I can manage that. (I just posted some more photos from the Chiapas trip; these are from the "hammock hotel" we stayed at near Palenque. Once I have all the pictures posted, I'll write up a trip report, but you can kind of get a sneak peek if you want.)
Anyway, I don't think I know anyone in the Baltimore area, but if you're out there and want to meet up, let me know?
So I'm trying to evaluate some human geography programs in the area, or on the way, that I might be able to stop and visit at. It's short notice, but as Danae said, there's always a chance that if I email a professor and say I'm unexpectedly travelling and would like to meet him, that it will work out. The urban-spaces-focused faculty at Penn State sound particularly interesting, especially Dr. Deryck Holdsworth, whose work seems to be very close indeed to the things I want to do. I'll send him an email tomorrow.
I need to learn to explain to people, in plain language, what I'm interested in doing. I think this will be part of the process of writing a research statement as well; clarifying to myself what I want to do and how to do it. I realized at Tea in the Park (a gathering sporadically organized by Posicat where a group of us get together in a forest preserve near his place and have tea and snacks) when I was talking to Brownkitty about my academic career goals, that I either get jargony, or have trouble expressing solid concepts, or both. For some time, I've thought that maybe what I need to do is read more theory. The problem with that is that there's a hell of a big body of literature out there to read, and it's intimidating enough that I don't quite know where to start. I talked to my advisor about it when I last saw her though, and she said that what I need to do is just start writing. I think she's right. Writing is really an analytical process, or at least part of a recursive and iterative one, and I think it's what I need to do next. I also think that my excitement with the Pike Creek project I'm working on is a good place to start in explaining what gets me excited.
---
Speaking of the Pike Creek project, I just digitized a 1931 plat book of Kenosha that we missed at the archives in the last round. It was pushed back behind another atlas on the shelves. It has beautiful, large scale maps of Kenosha with subdivision names and individual lot numbers. Not only is it a wonderful tax record lookup aid, but it's also an excellent map of the course of the creek. Yay! I'll may post a couple crops from it here if anyone is interested. It's a really interesting book; the pages are not paper; it's printed on linen!
---
I had a nice evening with my dad and my brother T. Dad, as mentioned, needed an ironing board as a stage prop. We didn't find one, but we did have fun looking through the thrift store. Do any of you know about cameras? Really old cameras? There were four of them in a display case, including one Kodak 1-A junior, with a most recent patent date of 1916 and others pending. There was one that I'm pretty sure was even older. No text on it anywhere, but where the leather cover was peeling off, I could see that the body was made of wood with tongue and groove joints. There was also a hole in the middle of one side that might be where the lens would go that was plugged with a piece of cork. Maybe it was a pinhole camera? Anyway, they were all clearly quite old; I'm guessing they were all from the 1910s or 1920s. I was really tempted to buy them, but I don't know enough to know whether they're rare and valuable, or just garage sale junk.
---
I have other things to say, but I've been promising myself to try to start getting to bed at 11:00, and I'm half an hour late. More tomorrow perhaps.
