My yearnotes for 2019

via GIPHY

My year, professionally:

• I taught classes at Hartwick College in Collections Management, and (with Dr. Doug Kendall) taught Collectors and Collecting, a First Year Seminar. Both were fun and interesting in their own ways, and both keep me on my toes as a Museum professional and an educator.
• I curated my first art show at the Museum: “Art/Politics: Power, Persuasion, and Propaganda” which features political art from the Yager Museum’s collection. It was a daunting but rewarding experience, and I’m looking forward to doing more curation and exhibition at the Museum in the future.
• I assisted in the installation of “Earth/Water/Sky”, “Silent Lakes and Flashing Rivers”, and “From Viking to Insight."
• I concluded a funded Native American speaker’s series at the Museum, with visits and talks from members of the Tuscorora and Mohawk communities of New York State.
• I co-organized a First Nations Film Series, featuring movies about Indigenous impacts on popular Music, cultural reclamation and renewal, and the American Indian Movement, respectively. We hope to continue this type of event, moving forward at the Museum.
• I attended the Museum Association of New York conference in Cooperstown, and saw the wonderful and inspiring work of my colleagues across the State.
• I also attended the New York Archives conference, where I presented a co-authored paper about archaeology and archives at Hartwick College.
• Though the work has been ongoing for several years now, this year finally saw the publication of a special issue of the journal Historical Archaeology, co-edited by myself and two colleages (who I’m lucky enough to also call friends), and featuring work by scholars studying the archaeology of the Connecticut River Valley. I’m proud of this publication, and honored and delighted to have such intelligent and generous colleagues.

My media consumption was a bit more sparse than in previous years, but I still found some interesting things to read and see and listen to this year.

• I didn’t buy a lot of music this year.  Digitally, I acquired albums by Ibeyi, Trans Am, and Purple Mountains. I also picked up vinyl copies of Fairport Convention’s “Liege and Lief”, Husker Du’s “Zen Arcade”, Ian Hunter’s “You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic”, Led Zeppelin IV, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark’s “Dazzle Ships”, and the Halloween party record “Monster Rally." I also bought a few things at Oneonta’s Grand and Glorious Garage Sale.
• By the end of 2019, I will have read 36 books and a little more than 9000 pages. A lot of what I read was pretty good, but the works that stood out to me included:
  • Viroconium by M. John Harrison. This collection’s masterful prose and oblique but stark deconstruction of the high fantasy genre has continued to sit with me as I read other things (and try to write myself). Also, Harrison’s blog is is full of bite-sized but nutriciously enlightening posts about writing, politics, and aesthetics.
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I actually read two books by Butler this year, but this one has stuck with me, as its depiction of life after the end of the world (in a manner not disimilar to the one we seem to be facing down) feels daunting but hopeful.
  • Barraccoon by Zora Neale Hurston. I wrote some notes about this book, but the truth is that it was a really monumental achievement, and I’ve found myself recommending it to everyone this year.
  • Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan Walsh. I spent four amazing years living in Boston, and have visited many times since (including in late October. At a basic level, I’ve always been drawn to its patchwork of old and new things, spaces, and ideas, and what Walsh’s book on the music of Boston in the late 1960s shows us is that “old” and “new” are a circle that continue to loop around us as we step uncertainly into the future.
• I didn’t go out to the Movies much this year, and what I did see was mostly movies that appealed to my six-year old. Thus, my theater experiences consisted of seeing How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World, Aladdin, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and Us (he didn’t go to this one).
• On the home front, I also saw Apostle, A Serious Man, Await Further Instructions, The Banshee Chapter, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Bone Tomahawk, Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, John Wick, The King, Lincoln, Midsommar, The Perfection, The 13th, and Under the Skin.
• For podcasts, my regulars remain WTF w/ Marc Maron, Drunks and Dragons/Greetings Adventurers, The Best Show, Pseudopod, and the Memory Palace. This year I’ve played around with listening to Why is this Happening?, the Writer’s Almanac, Deconstructed, Our Opinions are Correct, Odyssey Bookshop podcast, Podside Picnic, Intercepted, and This Land.

Other things:

• Our street hosted a block-long garage sale, which combined three of my favorite things–community building, material culture, and sitting outside.

• I wrote about 25,000 words of fiction this yea. I had planned on trying to finish a novel this year, but that wasn’t really in the cards. I struggled with a YA novel for the first part of the year before abandoning it after about 12,000 words. Since then I’ve been trying to find the time to finish editing a long-ish short story (close to 8K words before it’s done) that I’m going to finish before the year rolls out.

• I took care of my family, and they took care of me.

  • Sometimes this took the form of getting our house into the home we want it to be. We painted two rooms, put up a lot of artwork, re-worked our living room, and whipped our garden into better shape. I used a stump grinder for the first time, which was an exhiliarating experience.
  • Sometimes it took the form of visiting new places. Various combinations of us went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, NY, Robot City Games in Binghamton, NY, Longwood Gardens in Chester County, PA, and riding the Cooperstown and Charlotte Valley Railroad. Additionally we visited King of Prussia, PA and Salem, MA, and both times in the company of the Minister of Intrigue and his family. He and I have been friends for a long, long time and we are finally living in (basically) the same part of the world. It was delightful to see him and his family and I’m looking forward to getting together more regularly from now on.
  • Sometimes it took the form of celebrating. I turned 40! I had a legitimately great birthday, thanks to my lovely wife who went to Leslie Nope-levels of planning and forethought to make it special
  • My son continues to delight, confuse, and inspire me with his boundless curiousity, energy and creativity. This was a year where I felt like I could start sharing some of my favorite things with him, in music, literature, and film.
  • My wife is an unparalled and devoted partner in everything I do, and I love her so much for her humor, her moral clarity, and her perseverence in adversity.
  • Finally, my year was overshadowed and forged and propelled by the birth of my daughter in late December of last year. Basically everything I did (or didn’t do) was a product of her presence, and her growth into the delightful and curious person she’s becoming, and which I’m honored and bewildered to watch and shepherd. So this was her year, even as it was also mine.