In Collections Management, we talked about conditions, of objects and of Museum spaces and how to passively conserve objects through care of Museum conditions.
On the first of Hartwick’s Spring Semester “Break Days”, we opened the Museum for students and screened “Rumble”, an amazing documentary about the impact and place of Native American people on 20th century popular music.
I finished reading Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, a book that’s been with me my entire adult life–I first read it when I was 18, and have re-read it several times since. What brought me back to it this time was QAnon, and its impact on my neighbors and my country, not to mention its sources in our collective historical moment. Eco’s book tells the story of the of a fake conspiracy theory about the Knights Templar, invented as a game by some aging intellectuals and former student radicals, and the consequences when it breaks out of their control. It’s such a rich book, both for Eco’s astonishing grasp of European history, and for his insights about what it means to believe in something that can never be verified, and indeed must never be, lest it would collapse. As I write this, there is a widespread belief that Trump will be inaugurated on March 4th, 2021, based on a convoluted reconstruction of US history that links the real and the fictional, in ways that parallel “the Plan” invented by Casubon, Belbo and Diotallevi in FP. But like FP, violence is a likely outcome of taking apart the the world and remaking it through insinuation and analogy.
I celebrated Valentine’s with my gal, and my kids.
I was back at the Museum after a week off, with a giant to-do pile to wade through, including getting ready to teach Collections Management, getting our work-study gallery assistants together, and getting some programs planned for the coming semester.
Between this week and last week, I read a bunch of digital comics that had been sitting in odd corners of hard drives. I read through the first three volumes of Rob Kirkman’s Invincible (great!), volume 1 of Tim Seeley’s Revival (meh!), and Tsutomu Nihei’s Noise (?!???!?!?!).
The Yager Museum screened “Mohawk” a wonderfully role-reversed supernatural action movie, where the protagonists are Haudeonsaunee Iroquois on the run from American invaders during the war of 1812. It’s got an amazing cast of White and Native actors, and was filmed in consultation with the Skä•noñh -Great Law of Peace Center. Leaving all that aside, the movie is a fun, violent romp, beautifully shot and well acted.
I continued work on some complicated material culture research with the collections.
I read the first volume of Rob Kirkman’s Invincible, and enjoyed it quite a bit–one step up from the usual “Superheroes are real people” deconstruction that’s been in vogue for the last three decades.
I finished reading the first Enola Holmes book “the Case of the Missing Marquess” with my kid. I heard about it because of the Netflix movie, and found that (as is so often the case) the book was much better than the original. A fun, feminist detective story that my somewhat precocious 7 year old could follow with only a little extra explanation.
I watched “Midnight Special”, a dark and strange superhero movie with a stellar cast. I had heard about it years ago but only got around to watching it now. The movie centers around a child and his father (played with great understatement by Michael Shannon) who are on the run from a religious cult and the US government, due to the boy’s miraculous, dangerous, and ultimately self-draining abilities. It’s a contemplative, exciting movie about power, freedom, and what those things may cost.
I did some work at the Museum for upcoming programs (Mohawk!) and research on collections objects.
I got my Collections Management syllabus in gear for the upcoming Spring semester.
I finished reading Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” which I had owned for years, but never read…and reading it, I remember why. He’s a brilliant writer, with a real skill for propulsive and exciting prose and action, and his juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated things are brilliant and funny (ancient mythology and computers?) But I find reading him extraordinarily difficult, because he switches perspectives so frequently that I never feel settled into his texts. I get to the end of an exciting chapter, and then jump into the next chapter and lose all the momentum that he built up. Anyway, Snow Crash was great.
The Museum was proud to sponsor a live concert by John O’Connor, entitled “Thank you For Your Service: Songs of Mineworkers.” This event was co-sponsored by the Music Performance Trust Fund and the Franklin Railroad Museum. John’s knowledge of labor history and the music of and about working people is rich and the program was a great success.
I watched “Lake Mungo”, a strange and forlorn Australian movie about ghosts and family secrets.
I came back to work! Lots to do at the Yager Museum. We are planning a number of events in January and February including livestreams of Music, Film Screenings, and (possibly) an on-line gaming event.
I finished reading China Mieville’s “Railsea”, a weird and wonderful genre-hopping adventure, set in a desert world where endless railroads crisscross each other and people ride trains and hunt the monsters that live underneath them. I’ve read a number of Mieville’s books and this may be my favorite.
I finished reading The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson, a young adult mystery novel about segregation, love, and tennis. It deals with dark and complex history in sensitive and clear ways, and my (admittedly precocious) 7 year old liked it, and asked interesting questions along the way.
This year…What is there to even say. So many people have suffered, some much more than others. I’m as okay as anyone can hope to be these days, and mostly, I just feel like everyone else I know: tired, anxious, alternative angry and scared. I tried to take stock of my year, and found some things that anchored me, or kept me going, or of which I felt proud. AND, I know that for many people, this was the worst year of their lives, or the last. Stay safe everyone, and take care of each other.
Professionally, I did some things that were pretty fulfilling:
At the Yager Museum, we found ourselves with galleries, exhibits, and programs, and no way for people to safely see them. So much of the year was a substantial exercise in improvisation and frustration, but we did get some interesting work done:
We hosted John O’Connor for an evening of political folk music from the history of American radicalism.
With an enterprising student (thanks Audrey!), we put together a video series called “The Yager Through Your Eyes” showcasing pieces of the collection that members of the Hartwick community found particularly appealing.
I taught Collections Management (partially in person and partially virtually) and co-taught Collectors and Collecting (hybrid). Teaching on-line sucks, and trying to balance on-line and in-person teaching sucks even more.
I coordinated the acquisition (and eventual accession) of material excavated from Hartwick Seminary, with the hope of making it usable for exhibits and research.
We did take the opportunity to share some movies we loved as kids with our son, on those Sunday afternoons where all of us were too tired to do much else. We watched Back to the Future, Clash of the Titans, Princess Bride, Home Alone, Ghostbusters (1 and 2), and certainly more that I can’t remember.
We Who are About to…” by Joanna Russ. This is a feminist critique of space exploration science fiction, wrapped up in a meditative, thoughtful novel about choice and freedom.
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff and The Broken Hours by Jacqueline Baker. Grouped together because they both tackle and revise HP Lovecraft in interesting and critical ways. For Ruff, Lovecraft’s racism and broad reach offer an opportunity for inversion–20th century genre fiction seen through an African-American lense. For Baker, the Lovecraft family’s experiences with mental illness present a vantage point for seeing early 20th century Providence as a space of haunted minds and listless, impoverished bodies, and people telling stories to stave off a reckoning of their failures.
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, who continues to run away with the title of “best horror novelist” by managing to write creepy, unexpected, and deeply human works. “Cabin…” is no exception, utilizing a home invasion narrative as a way to ponder what architecture we build in our minds to make sense of suffering and chaos, and how 24-hour media both supports and warps that process. A prescient book in the age of science-denial, QANON, and conspiratorial racist violence.
However, this year, I was delighted to also get hooked on
Explorers Wanted, a Numenera actual-play podcast run by my old friend The Minister of Intrigue and a delightful player-cast;
Double-Threat, a comedy-podcast with Tom Scharpling and Julie Klausner, which probably gave me more laugh-out-loud moments than anything else I encountered;
This was a year of wild politics, alternatively hopeful and demoralizing. We tried to show up and support righteous people when we could, and gave money when we couldn’t. We took our kids to the Rallies for Black Lives in Binghamton and Delhi, which felt like a small but consequential thing. I also made some phone calls and wrote some postcards trying to help put decent people into positions of power.
I tried very hard to hard to write fiction, but found that I had little time and little energy for creative endeavors. I finished one short story and am currently revising another, for a total of around 12,000 words. So much for my goal of writing ten stories (!)
This was a year spent mostly at home, and as such, we tried to make our home comfortable and pleasant with some improvements to the interior, in furniture and fencing and growing our garden and backyard.
I lost some weight; around 20 pounds. Of course, much of it was weight I gained towards the end of last year, but loss is loss.
Like many of us, I spent the year with my family. I got to watch, be with, and be inspired by my children up-close, in ways I wouldn’t have if daycares and schools were up and running. My wife and I did our best to take care of each other, and it’s moments like this, when the times are dark, that I’m eminently grateful and lucky to have married someone so clear-eyed, funny, and loving.
Here’s to a new year as a new day dawning, for us all.
I also finished reading Knights Vs. Dinosaurs by Matthew Phelan, with my son. It really is what it says on the package, but was welll writen, and has good lessons in it about teamwork, gender, and subtle heroism.
Our students in MUST250: Collectors and Collecting took their final exam, and we’re currently grading a few outstanding assignments. The class was much more scattered this year, due to the complications of distance learning, especially for a class about materiality, but we made it work and I hope the students enjoyed it and got something out of it.
I worked on program planning for Hartwick’s J-term, which the Campus Activities Board is really trying to both ramp up, and align with Hartwick’s new Flightpath course structure. We’ve got some good stuff coming at the Museum!
