by Quentin Lewis

Quentin's Weeknotes 10/18/20 - 10/24/20

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This week (and last week, as I was off work, but still, you know, did some stuff):

  • I wished my brother a happy birthday. He continues to be a source of interesting stuff in my life, from video games to lefty politics. Happy Birthday, Conner!
  • I watched Aterrados (Terrified), an Argentinian horror movie that made some waves when it came out in 2017. It was very good, though its quick pacing was a striking contrast from It Comes at Night, the last horror movie I watched, which was so slow as to be almost soporific.
  • I finished reading Michael McDowell’s “The Elementals”, a fantastic southern Gothic ghost story novel.
  • I finished reading “The Broken Hours” by Jacqueline Baker. The basic plot is that it’s about a man in the 1930s who goes to work for an ailing HP Lovecraft in a decaying house in Providence, RI. But really it’s about class, mental illness, and the ways we try and fail to break out of the roles into which we are thrust.
  • I hosted the Yager Museum’s conversation with Luke Swinson, whose artwork is currently featured in the exhibit “dadibaajimo: Two Mississauga Artists Share Stories.” We had a great chat, which you can still watch on the Museum’s facebook page.
  • Along with a Museum studies student, I launched a new video series for the Museum called “The Yager Through your Eyes” featuring Hartwick college faculty, staff, and students talking about their favorite objects. The first installment, featuring Hartwick student Gabriel Valenzuela (‘23) can be viewed on Youtube and facebook.
  • In MUST250 “Collectors and Collecting” we learned about the history of Oneonta from historian Mark Simonson, the students took their mid-term exam, and we worked more on the wikipedia project.
  • I was shocked and saddened to learn of the sudden death of Professor Mary Beaudry. An eminent and prolific scholar in Historical Archaeology (what a CV!), Beaudry was a major figure in the study of the material culture of the modern world, and conducted rich and important research projects in New England, Scotland, and the Caribbean. She wrote about gender, class, race, and the role material objects play in those social forces in really sophisticated and interesting ways. She was a firm advocate for women in a field mostly dominated by men or seen as a masculine pursuit, and she both wrote and spoke eloquently about sexism in the profession. She was also my undergraduate advisor, an important mentor who let me know that my eclectic and often scattered interests could find a home in archaeology.  She inspired, pushed, and helped me to go on to graduate school and that decision has shaped every aspect of my life since, and she remained a supportive and generous colleague years later. My sense, in seeing the responses from others, is that her considerate and deep support for her students was widely shared. Rest in Peace and in Power.