The hardest part of the week was grieving for Neva. My cat died after 16 long years on January 2nd. We were able to cut our trip short and come home to say goodbye. She was a good cat, friendly and affectionate with basically every human she met (though she hated most animals she met!) Alanna and I found her in 2010 at the Toronto Humane Society Shelter, and she immediately meowed at us and told us to take her home. She travelled with us to England and back, helped us raise this new human called Dominic, and came with us to Oneonta where she also became very chummy with Hazel, our other new human. Her time with us included sitting with me while I wrote my dissertation and book, sitting with Alanna while she taught on-line during COVID, and a billion other milestones, highs, and lows.
I spent a lot of time this week looking at pictures of Neva (I’m blessed with many!) This is the one I keep coming back to: My office in England, with Neva reminding me that there is nothing any book more important than sunshine.
At the Museum, I’m getting back in the saddle. I did a little cleaning up and organizing, but my main project this week was working on the upcoming Poe exhibit. I also spent some time on planning some smaller programs for January and February, and planning our Spring arts camp.
Alanna and I finished watching season 1 of “The Lowdown” which is simultaneously a shaggy Jim-Thompson-esque mystery, a thoughtful inquiry into how colonialism remains alive and well in the present, and a love letter to the city of Tulsa. It’d be hard for Sterlin Harjo to recreate the magic of Reservation Dogs in any case, and it has nowhere near the richness of that brilliant piece of artwork, but it was fun and well-done.
Good Things:
I keep coming back to the Geese Album “Getting Killed”, which is as funky, loud, and emotionally rich as everyonehasbeen saying.
Dominic and I finished reading “The People of Sparks” by Jeanne DuPrau, the second book in the City of Ember series. I really liked this book, which is a thoughtful book about refugees and sanctuary, wrapped in a post-apocalyptic YA adventure.
I heard Professor Dinan speak on the always informative “Know Your Enemy” podcast. He talked about how he’s tried to use the increased shoving of AI/LLMs/ChatGPT/etc… into every aspect of our lives as an opportunity to push for an emancipatory, enlivening classroom experience for his students. The conversation drew a lot from this essay, which I read and thought a lot about, and will probably share with colleagues and friends.
This was not a good year, but there were good things in it.
Work
A lot of my professional year was focused on repatriation. In January, I flew out to Colorado to return human remains and a cultural object to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. This flight, and the work to make it happen, were paid for by a federal repatriation grant, which I’m still surprised and happy we got (and didn’t get taken away from us by DOGE). I also did some complicated work with the Mohawk to help find a safe and culturally appropriate resting place for two ancestors in the Museum’s collection. I continued or initiated consultation with multiple other tribes, and tried to work to make the Museum live up to its legal and ethical obligations as best as I could.
We had lots of great programs in the Museum, of which I’m very proud. In spite of the DEI crackdown at the beginning of the year, we had two wonderful Black History Month events, which we co-hosted with Hartwick’s Belonging Center. We also repeated our work with our friends at Hanford Mills Museum and hosted “World of Water”. We screen a number of movies including “Lake of Betrayal”, “Indian Summer”, and the “Fall of Cannonsville”, with the filmmakers present for discussion. We had our usual array of 4th grade visits, crafternoons and half-day fun, a couple receptions, and as always, the Horror in the Museum. Perhaps our biggest event of the year was our co-sponsored Mohawk Social Dance, held at the Foothills performing arts center. I’m greatful to Kanerahti:io DJ White and his troupe for working with us, and making such an informative, lively event happen.
It was a busy year for collections. We picked up and re-installed our newly-conserved Previtali, and acquired new works by William Hogarth, Axel Haig, John O’Leary, Phil Young, Lamine Barro, and more. I also returned three large furniture pieces to the Milford Historical Society, which had been stored here for 20 years. Progress!
We had a robust exhibit schedule, installing the student-curated “Discovering our Place”, “The Study of One Thing”, and “Memorializing the Underground Railroad”, which I designed, and co-curated with Harry Matthews.
I taught “Exhibit Prep and Design” for the first time as a formal class this year, and the outcome was three new wonderful displays by Hartwick students (with one by me!). I also taught “North American Material Culture to 1600” again, but re-focused around contemporary issues in Native studies. In addition to discussions of the peopling of North America, Cahokia, colonial trade and more, I also had Native guest speakers from the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Taos Pueblo, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and the St. Regis Mohawk. I wanted students to hear Native voices, not just see and think about Native-made things.
The other big thing that I worked on was setting up the Phil Young Indigenous Artists Residency. This has been a labor of love from me, both as a way to honor Phil’s long and rich career showcasing Native art at Hartwick, and also to help the Yager Museum become a more vibrant and lively space of contemproary Native art. Phil passed away this Fall, and it will forever sadden me that he didn’t live to see this come to fruition.
Wild Pink’s Yolk in the Fur is the kind of album I fall in love with easily; thoughtful, heart-on-sleeve rock with chiming guitars and tuneful hooks. I haven’t stopped listening to one or more songs on it since I bought it.
I mourned the passing of Ozzy Osborne, Tom Lehrer, Brian Wilson, who made some of the first music I ever listened to, John Roberts, who, with Tony Barrand, deepened my appreciation of folk music, and D’Angelo, whose genre-blending (or defying) genius continues to fascinate and delight me, and manyothers.
Podcasts that continue their prominent role in my life include Double Threat, Why is this Happening with Chris Hayes, Weird Studies, 5-4, Explorers Wanted, Know Your Enemy, Pseudopod, the Memory Palace, and Unclear and Present Danger. Rest in peace to Our Opinions are Correct and WTF w/ Marc Maron.
Screens
This year, I watched Normal People, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Sonic 3, Confess Fletch, Severance, Slow Horses, Paddington in Peru, Ted Lasso, Ludwig, Judas and the Black Messiah, Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Northman, Ratatouille, the Ballad of Wallis Island, Sinners, the Changeling, the Heat, Force Majeure, Fleabag, Weekend at Bernie’s, Monolith, Suitable Flesh, Zootopia 2, and the Bletchley Circle.
Sinners is a unique and brilliant film, with its interweaving of global music, southern gothic vampirism, and black culture to explore the long and sharp fingers of colonialism. I don’t think I saw a better movie this year.
There’s almost no way that Severance will cash the checks it has written, but I’m loving seeing it try.
Books
I read 43 books this year.
I didn’t have any books that really wowed me this year, but I read lots of very good ones. Premee Mohamed’s “The Butcher of the Forest” is a short, weird fairy-tale about the reverbertations of conquest and violence. Christian Wiman’s “Joy: 100 Poems” brought me a lot of joy as I was reading it. Nan Shepherd’s “The Living Mountain” was a delightful inquiry into how landscape presses itself upon us, and I lingered over her descriptions of the Cairngorn mountains as we were driving through them. Audra Simpson’s “Mohawk Interruptus” sharpened my thinking about the impacts of colonialism in Eastern North America, and reminded me that there are a lot of ways to be indigenous, not all of them obvious or apparent. Finally, Gene Luen Yang’s “Superman Smashes the Klan” is exactly what it says on the tin, but with an added thoughtfulness about Superman’s history as an immigrant and a refugee.
Self
I found so much of this year completely exhausting and paralyzingly scary. I could wave my hand at any number of things from the world: the cruel and lawlesspolitics of my country, the growth of rapacious and deluded technological entities, the continuing slow (and sometimes wild) burn of the climate crisis, global nationalist violence both large and small. We tried to help where we could, with resources and with our bodies.
Personally (maybe selfishly?), I’ve continued to rely on the activities that keep me the most grounded, including going the gym, therapy, and playing music. I’ve felt the keen absence of phone calls and talks with friends, the liveliness of get-togethers, and the sense of interdependence and stability those things bring. One of the things I was not as good at this year was making community, and I want to change that about myself in 2026.
In an effort to improve my handwriting, I’ve gone back to writing in cursive, and even bought a couple of fountainpens that I’ve grown to Love using.
I’ve always been a person who reads to try and stave off anxiety (which, in the age of endless information, is basically a recipe for more anxiety). I started logging articles or essays that seemed important or rich to me with the tag “truethings”, so as not to let them pass away like so much flotsam. Some good and useful articles I read this year included:
Our big family trip this year took us to Scotland and the North of England. It was a hard and tiring trip, and it was also wonderful and delightful in equal measure. I still feel in awe of the many things we saw and experienced together, and I’m eternally joyful that we could show our kids such wonders.
We also took our annual Fall trip to coastal New England to see the ocean, eat good food, and recharge our batteries. We stayed in Hampton Beach, which was a strange experience in the off-season. While there, we visited Gloucester, but also trekked up to the Rachel Carson Wildlife Sanctuary, and spent a little time in the cities of Portsmouth, NH, Brattleboro, VT.
In June, we were paid a most excellent visit by my friend the Minister of Intrigue and his family.
I’m proud of the new things my kiddos did this year, including rec soccer for Hazel (which I coached!), Middle School soccer for Dominic, and Hazel taking part in the Nutcracker Ballet for the first time (which Alanna and I are both helping out with in ways large and small).
I’m also proud of my parents for winding down Czech Village antiques, their Cedar Rapids-based business of multiple decades. Here’s to new adventures in the future!
I wish I could say I felt good about this year. I can see, from the above lines, that I did a lot; some things vital or important, some things kind and meaningful, some things for which I’m proud, some things for which I’m not. But the explosive growth of American fascism and authoritarianism hangs like a ghost on my brain and my whole year has been weighed down by this blossoming menace, frightening and bewildering and cruel.
May we all practice resurrection together in this year to come, taking the old, the dangerous, the unstable, the unjust, and grow from it a bountiful and beautiful new world.
This is really my last week before two weeks off for the holiday break. We’re going to Iowa and Toronto, which will hopefully be fun and relaxing.
If all goes well, Hazel will have her first time in the Decker School of Ballet’s annual performance of “The Nutcracker”. I helped do the load in of the sets and some of the tech set up last Sunday. Alanna has been running a marathon of hair, costumes, and helping backstage. I am so proud of Hazel’s hard work and her willingness to try a new, big thing for the first time. I’m also grateful to Alanna for taking on so much of the responsibility of making this happen.
I spent the week trying to move a number of projects closer to completion, including our Spring arts camp, some NAGPRA consultation, the Phil Young Residency, and a new exhibit about Edgar Allen Poe.
Good Things:
I encountered the bizarro world of Strudel, a music programming language that generates your notations in real time. There’s a browser interface, along with an excellent tutorial. I had a great time poking around in it, and wish I had more time to sit with it!
It’s final exam week and my exhibit prep students finished installing their displays, and I submitted grades. It’s been interesting and even fun teaching this class in a formal way, and giving me an opportunity to put all I’ve learned about exhibit installation to good use.
This Friday and Saturday, we’re having Community Days at the Museum, with tours, snacks, and activities. It’s a great way to bring the Museum’s Fall season to an end.
I did some work on our Spring arts camp. I also made some phone calls to get donations and advice for the Phil Young Indigenous artists residency.
I finished reading Tim Powers' “The Anubis Gates”, a rollicking adventure story featuring time-travel, egyptian magic, and 19th century historical figures. It was as weird and inventive of a fairly conventional adventure novel as I’ve ever read.
I’ve been trying to get into the Christmas spirit, and music is a big part of how I do that. Here’s a Christmas playlist, at least for what I’m rocking this year:
Steeleye Span - Gaudete
Nowell Sing We Clear - Chariots
Finest Kind - Shepherds Arise
Sufjan Stephens - The Friendly Beasts
Low - Just Like Christmas
The Weepies - All that I want
Mike Doughty - I hear the bells (but the live version, not the studio)
Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol
John Fahey - Medley: Hark, the Herald Angels Sing/ O Come All Ye Faithful
John Denver and the Muppets - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Anonymous 4 - Alleluya! A Nywe Werk is Come on Honde!
It’s the last week of classes at Hartwick. Students in MUST205 class are finishing their display cases, and I finished mine, showcasing a new acquisition of a William Hogarth Print.
I did some work coordinating the Museum’s work study schedule for Finals week and J-Term.
Tuesday was a snow day, so the kids were mostly with me at the Museum.
I attended Phil Young’s memorial service. I saw many friends and colleagues, heard stories about Phil both old and new, and mourned the passing of a truly amazing man.
The rest of the week involved tidying up a few ends at work, and settling in for a long weekend.
Wednesday, we took the kiddos to see “Zootopia 2” which was as funny, charming, and subtly political as the first movie.
Alanna made a great dinner Thursday, and we had some friends over on Friday. Saturday we trekked to Albany to do some shopping and pick up some Trader Joe’s snacks. Sunday, we picked out a Christmas tree and got ourselves ready for the week.
In MUST205, the students worked on the labels for their final display project, and I started installing my display.
We welcomed DJ White and the Rise-Up Studio dancers from the Akwesasne Mohawk. They put on an amazing Social dance at the Foothills Performing arts center in Oneonta. SUNY Oneonta (who co-sponsored the event), also welcomed them with a wonderful reception.
I said goodbye to my friend and colleague Phil Young, who died late last week. Phil was professor emeritus of Art at Hartwick College, and a long and often lonely champion of Indigenous artists, thinkers, and ideas at the College. He and I have been working on putting together an Indigenous Artists Residency at Hartwick, which would bear his name to honor that legacy. My hope is that it can still happen, though I’m sad he didn’t get to live to see it. Rest in Peace and in Power, Phil.
I gave a guest lecture on Ancient Greece and its afterlife in Museums and architecture, and in American colonialism.
I did some good work moving our NAGPRA responsibilities forward.
True Things
Trump’s Big Beautiful Ballroom by Know Your Enemy–My favorite political podcast uses Trump’s plans to build a White House Ballroom as a window into thinking about the politics of architecture, the contradictions of the right’s “populist” classicism, and the ways that our social orders unevenly manifest in the built environment.
Dominic and I finished reading “City of Ember”. It was well-written, and the characters were rich and interesting. The whole thing felt to me like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in YA novel form.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation… It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support… May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
I devoured, almost in one sitting, Premee Mohamed’s “The Butcher of the Forest”. It’s a thrilling rescue fairytale, featuring the kind of unnverving, ancient magical world that never fails to grab me. It’s also a thoughtful meditation about violence and war and their consequences. I couldn’t put it down.
I started de-installing our now discontinued exhibit “Of Time and The River: 12,000 years in the Upper Susquehanna Region”. It was an excellent exhibit, curated by the great Dr. David Anthony, and we’re looking forward to showing off objects from Willard Yager’s collection in new ways in the coming years.
In MUST205, the students formally began their final projects of installing a display in one of our display cases.
I returned some objects that we had borrowed from the Milford Historical Society (26 years ago!) back to them.
We hosted our Halloween storytelling event “The Horror in the Museum”. It’s a fun, lively event that I love putting on at the Museum.
In MUST205, students began working on their final projects, planning displays for our display cases using the skills they’ve learned in the class.
I did some work moving along our NAGPRA consultation, and getting ready for the upcoming Mohawk Social Dance.
Halloween promises to be wet and windy tonight. On the plus side, the Oneonta parade is cancelled, which means more time for trick-or-treating!
I finished reading Paul Tremblay’s “Horror movie”. I love his smart, modern take on horror fiction and several of his novels are some of my favorite recent horror writing. This was…okay; well-written and thoughtful about the relationship of film and reallife. But on the whole it felt kind of shallow to me, which is not a thing I usually expect from him.
