gnawing on the bones of dinosaurs
Feb. 27th, 2006 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupI have many, many things to update about... I'll confine myself to a small account of small ups since so much of what I usually write here somewhat accentuates the negative.
Yesterday, after over a year and a half of contemplation, I finally made my way into WidenerFortress Library, managed to obtain the right microfilm, and within an hour found the last niggling detail that has been holding up my completing a publication version of the paper I gave in Charleston in October 2004. The paper was about a Unitarian minister's lifelong writings on Reform Judaism, which he based on hearing a rabbi's address in New Orleans in summer 1888. I couldn't finish the paper until I found out when the rabbi spoke and what he actually said. This in turn depended on finding a New Orleans newspaper, which the fucking URI Interlibrary Loan refused to try to obtain, leaving me with the options of Harvard, NYPL, and Library of Congress... and Harvard makes it very difficult to get in, plus there's the hour and a half drive each way and trying to park in "Permit Parking Only-bridge." This means that the glacier's pace of pretending to be a real academic can resume its inchward motion, as I prepare to send the paper to the Journal of Southern Jewish History or whatever it's called.
I played hooky from home by going to the Israel Book Shop and looking for zmirot CDs. This is hard because although there are many intriguing CDs there, there's no way to know whether they are any good. Finally I found a book of Sephardic songs sung by Abraham Lopes Cardozo with full notation and a CD with over 60 tracks. Many of them had great new melodies for zmirot that I hadn't heard before, and they have beautiful flute accompaniment. And the musical notation means I can try to re-recruit the people in our shul who are music-readers. It was expensive, but I'm psyched.
Then, a local orthodox shul invited me to give a talk on interfaith dialogue 100 years ago as part of a speaker's series (scroll to the bottom) commemorating their centennial. The thing was originally supposed to be two weeks ago over a pancake breakfast, but we had a blizzard then. Neither the original event nor the rescheduled time were well publicized, so I wasn't surprised that only seven people showed up! Still, it was a good excuse for me to write up another dimension of my research, and the audience, such as it was, had a lot of PhD folks there, so the discussion was good, and they gave me a beautiful book of Psalms that I totally hadn't expected. So, it was nice.
These are very small things but I need them to feel like a human being sometimes. The weather at work is darkening... and although the Blessed Event, now less than a month away, will be wonderful, I know it will be a good year or so until I accomplish much of anything new. More about all that in friends-only at some point...
Yesterday, after over a year and a half of contemplation, I finally made my way into Widener
I played hooky from home by going to the Israel Book Shop and looking for zmirot CDs. This is hard because although there are many intriguing CDs there, there's no way to know whether they are any good. Finally I found a book of Sephardic songs sung by Abraham Lopes Cardozo with full notation and a CD with over 60 tracks. Many of them had great new melodies for zmirot that I hadn't heard before, and they have beautiful flute accompaniment. And the musical notation means I can try to re-recruit the people in our shul who are music-readers. It was expensive, but I'm psyched.
Then, a local orthodox shul invited me to give a talk on interfaith dialogue 100 years ago as part of a speaker's series (scroll to the bottom) commemorating their centennial. The thing was originally supposed to be two weeks ago over a pancake breakfast, but we had a blizzard then. Neither the original event nor the rescheduled time were well publicized, so I wasn't surprised that only seven people showed up! Still, it was a good excuse for me to write up another dimension of my research, and the audience, such as it was, had a lot of PhD folks there, so the discussion was good, and they gave me a beautiful book of Psalms that I totally hadn't expected. So, it was nice.
These are very small things but I need them to feel like a human being sometimes. The weather at work is darkening... and although the Blessed Event, now less than a month away, will be wonderful, I know it will be a good year or so until I accomplish much of anything new. More about all that in friends-only at some point...
