by Quentin Lewis

Weeknotes: 08/11/24-08/17/24

weeknotes books movies teaching museum indigenous

This Week:

  • My wife and I watched “Bullet Train”. Alanna had seen it and thought that I would like it, and as usual, she was absolutely right. This is a stylish, funny and violent action movie that was just smart enough to be compelling. Great stuff!
  • I finished reading (well, actually listening to) Sylvain Neuvell’s wonderful alt-history/science fiction novel “A History of What Comes Next”. It’s centered around a line of possibly alien women who have been manipulating society for the last 3000 years, with the goal of helping humanity achieve space flight, in advance of some unstated apocalpytic catastrophe. The story is mostly set during the early space race, and involves real historical figures such as Van Braun and Korolev. The prose is written in a tight, first person style that worked well as an audio-book, but might grate when read on the page.
  • Lots of prep this week. We settled on a title for an upcoming photography/history exhibit about Catskill reservoirs. “‘With that Shadow Over Them’: Constructuring Catskill Reservoirs, Remembering Home” will be installed in mid October and will be available to view at the Museum for the following year.
  • I put together a draft of the class I’m co-teaching with Doug. ‘Collectors and Collecting’ is a Flightpath course, which combines introductory college-level work with campus orientation, skills assessments, and other stuff. We start in one week!
  • I continued work on our work-study schedule for the Fall semester.
  • I did some preliminary work planning how we will use the NAGPRA grant we were awarded.