Postcard From K'zoo
I'm currently down in the basement of the Bernhard Center at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo. As a visiting medievalist, here for the international conglomeration of medievalists who could afford to get here cause they're giving papers so their departments ponied up -- either that or they're independently wealthy -- I'm allowed FREE internet usage. Cool.
I'm missing the plenary session, which is Bad, but I managed to get the semester grades in, which is Good.
It wasn't easy, either. I'd gotten the graduate grades in on the Duquesne Webadvisor, fine, fine, did that yesterday -- and I'd figured out all the undergraduate grades, and I wanted to post them today, cause graduation's tomorrow, and so if anybody's graduating they need to know.
So I hightailed it on over here, and logged on to Webadvisor, and the damn site wouldn't take the grades.
I had to call up the College and give them to somebody over the phone. Who the hell, I wanted to know, thought it would be a good idea for the site to stop taking grades THE DAY BEFORE GRADUATION?
The somebody had no idea, but I'm not the first professor she'd heard from today, and I won't be the last.
Stupid, stupid program.
If I find out who thought it up, maybe I'll charge him or her for the long-distance call.
In other news, the conference is much as usual -- in the cafeteria line is the usual mix of medievalists -- eccentric looking middle aged ladies (I'm one, these days); lots of middle aged guys in suits, on a wide spectrum of neat to messy; some REALLY REALLY old people, male and female, who, one figures, must be REALLY important; various grad students, some of whom have dressed up, others of whom have dressed down (how one looks cool, either way); various members of various religious orders, still using the traditional habits and robes; several different languages going all at once.
The food's pretty good this year; that's nice.
I spent all my dinner time last night sitting with a cohort discussing how we are too damn old to do those manuscript searches I've blogged earlier when I was doing them; travel's too hard, we miss our families, we hate eating in restaurants all the time. Too damn old. Where are the young paleographers, we'd like to know. And we see none on the horizon.
So we bitched about that, and then we ate a lot of dessert, which helped, really.
Chaucer, alas, isn't showing up; he says they turned down his paper, though really he should be the expert, shouldn't he, one would think. (I'd emailed him earlier to ask which of the two Gower sessions I should go to -- like I'm going to a Gower session; I don't think so -- and he never wrote me back. There are 17 sessions devoted to Chaucer; that Gower gets two seems fair. One and a half might be enough, though.)
Anyway, even though he's not coming to K'zoo this year, Chaucer likes to be helpful, so he's posted a bunch of pick-up lines meant specifically for K'zoo -- so they won't be of use to most of you. I don't plan to use them myself, though I like several -- -"Ich loved thy papere, but yt wolde looke much better yscattred across the floore of myn rentede dorme roome at dawne," for instance, is pretty good, as is "Do sheriffs administere thee to those who breke the kinges peace? Bycause thou lookst 'fyne.'"
I'm giving my paper tomorrow; it concerns some stuff happening in 1630 and 1635, which is NOT medieval, no, no, though I have attempted, in said paper, to show why it matters to medievalists. I ran into the respondent yesterday, and she said it is was a very exciting paper, and very important, and absolutely made sense, and did indeed matter to medievalists, so that's ok -- nice to know the respondent isn't planning on trashing it, cause it is SO hard to arrange your face correctly while that happens.
And then right after my paper, I get to go to the session on medievalist bloggers. Of which I am not, officially, 0ne.
That's cause, doncha know, what we have mostly, here at Creating Text(iles), is blithering.
That's our story, and we're sticking to it. All blither, all the time.
And 1630, dressed up like the middle ages. Eccentric.
I'm missing the plenary session, which is Bad, but I managed to get the semester grades in, which is Good.
It wasn't easy, either. I'd gotten the graduate grades in on the Duquesne Webadvisor, fine, fine, did that yesterday -- and I'd figured out all the undergraduate grades, and I wanted to post them today, cause graduation's tomorrow, and so if anybody's graduating they need to know.
So I hightailed it on over here, and logged on to Webadvisor, and the damn site wouldn't take the grades.
I had to call up the College and give them to somebody over the phone. Who the hell, I wanted to know, thought it would be a good idea for the site to stop taking grades THE DAY BEFORE GRADUATION?
The somebody had no idea, but I'm not the first professor she'd heard from today, and I won't be the last.
Stupid, stupid program.
If I find out who thought it up, maybe I'll charge him or her for the long-distance call.
In other news, the conference is much as usual -- in the cafeteria line is the usual mix of medievalists -- eccentric looking middle aged ladies (I'm one, these days); lots of middle aged guys in suits, on a wide spectrum of neat to messy; some REALLY REALLY old people, male and female, who, one figures, must be REALLY important; various grad students, some of whom have dressed up, others of whom have dressed down (how one looks cool, either way); various members of various religious orders, still using the traditional habits and robes; several different languages going all at once.
The food's pretty good this year; that's nice.
I spent all my dinner time last night sitting with a cohort discussing how we are too damn old to do those manuscript searches I've blogged earlier when I was doing them; travel's too hard, we miss our families, we hate eating in restaurants all the time. Too damn old. Where are the young paleographers, we'd like to know. And we see none on the horizon.
So we bitched about that, and then we ate a lot of dessert, which helped, really.
Chaucer, alas, isn't showing up; he says they turned down his paper, though really he should be the expert, shouldn't he, one would think. (I'd emailed him earlier to ask which of the two Gower sessions I should go to -- like I'm going to a Gower session; I don't think so -- and he never wrote me back. There are 17 sessions devoted to Chaucer; that Gower gets two seems fair. One and a half might be enough, though.)
Anyway, even though he's not coming to K'zoo this year, Chaucer likes to be helpful, so he's posted a bunch of pick-up lines meant specifically for K'zoo -- so they won't be of use to most of you. I don't plan to use them myself, though I like several -- -"Ich loved thy papere, but yt wolde looke much better yscattred across the floore of myn rentede dorme roome at dawne," for instance, is pretty good, as is "Do sheriffs administere thee to those who breke the kinges peace? Bycause thou lookst 'fyne.'"
I'm giving my paper tomorrow; it concerns some stuff happening in 1630 and 1635, which is NOT medieval, no, no, though I have attempted, in said paper, to show why it matters to medievalists. I ran into the respondent yesterday, and she said it is was a very exciting paper, and very important, and absolutely made sense, and did indeed matter to medievalists, so that's ok -- nice to know the respondent isn't planning on trashing it, cause it is SO hard to arrange your face correctly while that happens.
And then right after my paper, I get to go to the session on medievalist bloggers. Of which I am not, officially, 0ne.
That's cause, doncha know, what we have mostly, here at Creating Text(iles), is blithering.
That's our story, and we're sticking to it. All blither, all the time.
And 1630, dressed up like the middle ages. Eccentric.
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