As If By Enchantment: Surgery, Tragedy, and the Cure

I was scheduled for an April surgery, over the telephone by a sweet secretary named Cherry, while visiting San Francisco. Majorly bummed, the sunny day turned dark for me. However, the experience ended up being much richer than I had imagined. Here are the three phases and some tips I learned.

SURGERY
1. Attempting to control anxiety revolving around the unknown. I didn't worry much until close to The Day. I unleashed my powers when I finally had my pre-op visit. During this visit, which lasted four hours, I was asked repeatedly about my will. Did I have one? No. The many details of the day gave me a slight meltdown, which ended up with the good hearted Cherry comforting me in her office.

My doctor's office: collection of protective amulets and his wall of delivered babies. Good signs.

Right before I was admitted to the hospital, a new friend, experienced in surgery, kept me completely distracted. She accompanied me to the library, to collect my recovery reading, talked endlessly with me about art and art history over ice cream, and wandered with me around shops looking at pretty things. At one point I looked at my watch and seven hours had gone by. This distraction was key for keeping anxiety at a healthy low and everyone should do this kind deed if they can. 

2. Create zen like moment by moment strategies for maintaining adult integrity as you enter the hospital, get compression stockings put on you, and prepare to be temporarily put to sleep and be cut open. Since I had never had surgery before I had built a vivid image of what the operating room would look like and I did not want to see, but neither did I particularly want to be put to sleep. Conundrum. I imagined that the OR would look basically like a morgue or autopsy room, 80's horror film style, and I imagined my bright red blood gushing everywhere. Even though they took my glasses off before they wheeled me in, I could tell that the room looked like it had been yarn bombed. I was not expecting the place to be so colorful. This was my last thought and it was a comforting one.

3. Waking up in a room full of other people doing the same. We were all cranky in various stages of coming out of anesthesia. In clear plastic detaining beds, it all felt similar to the nursery ward. According to the nurse tasked with watching over all of us babies, I had been trying to climb out of my restraints even while still sedated. She told me this story after I repeatedly yelled out "where am I?" with my breathing mask thing still on.

It's very surreal to wake up with a bunch of fresh wounds and bruises and not remember how they got there. Trying to recover the hours of my life that I could not account for was only possible by refraining from any painkillers. While the pain was not blinding, it was uncomfortable enough to remind me of reality and what had taken place during those several dark hours. For reasons I can't fully explain, I wanted that time back. Shaking the lingering effects of the anesthesia was the biggest learning experience. It stays in your system and makes you crazy sad, which I didn't know in advance. Tears are shed inexplicably, frequently. Every bit of encouragement, cheese ball or other, really knocks the drug out of you. Loving messages of all kinds work far better than Morphine. In the future whenever someone has to submit to surgery, I'll know just what they need. 

TRAGEDY
I was already home when I heard about the situation in Boston and Cambridge, where I lived for three years, 2009-2012. Although I was still weak and recovering, the unfolding events completely refocused my emotional state as following it was one of the most heartbreaking experiences I've had in years and it still torments me, but not for the most obvious reasons. There are many tragic situations around the world and our own country, but when something happens in a very familiar place, the impact is much stronger. Beyond this, seeing the remnants of an attack in this familiar place reactivated my own quieted memories of another intimate experience from my past, September 11. I remember so many small details from those days, the movie I watched the night before (Alphaville at a cute bar), the call right before I went into the subway entrance (my mother, stopping me with the news), the smoke, the smell, the debris floating across the river, the stunning silence and zombified survivors stumbling around with confusion in Brooklyn. There was no other thought on anyone's mind and no one wanted to say much. Together with a close friend, we escaped to Coney Island where we sought out the tranquility of ocean waves. I can't remember how long it took for a routine to resume, but the memory of my first few days back in Manhattan was revived when I saw the pictures of Boston, completely empty of people or traffic. Those images, maybe more than the marathon images, struck me with force.

I had felt that my surgery was a kind of hostage like invasion, similarly, my response to this was that my city, my home (one of them and my most recent), was under attack, as if the city itself were a person that I loved. Boston is a symbol of many things for me. Number one: graduate school with all of its good, bad, depending on the day, truly exhilarating or devastating moments, was a major milestone filled with bigger milestones. While I explored Boston frequently, I spent most of my time on the other side of that magnificent Charles River in Cambridge and Somerville. These towns are both tiny and run into each other so people affectionately use the term Camberville. That's about exactly where I lived.

Washington Street in Union Square, first days.

Last days (raising money for our Grand Tour. Spot the sun lamp for sale! Required for surviving winter in the north).

On our first visit to Cambridge I was not impressed at all, partly because I was sad to leave Philadelphia, partly because it was cold and rainy and ugly when we looked at apartment possibilities. But I really wanted to go to Tufts and we did find a cute place on the second visit. The area, with all of its different squares, is full of memories for me, of course I eventually came to love the city. I had many rituals with many people, as we were academics, meeting at cafes was a big one. Almost all of my old friends from New York, Philadelphia, California, and Australia came to visit multiple times so that our home and our neighborhoods became familiar to them as well.

Many meals had here: Sofra, on the border of Cambridge and Watertown.

We built a fantastic network of new friends (difficult, but rewarding). We spent a lot of time seeing films at Kendall Square, near MIT, at Harvard, the Brattle, on our back porch. Wandering around our own neighborhood, Union Square, watching it evolve, weaving our way into its fabric. I could go on since I'm obviously homesick for Cambridge right now.

When the action was re-ignited and crossed over toward my side of the river, waves of emotion washed over me. Interviews in front of the mundane backdrop to our years there elicited powerful feelings of surreal helplessness...I am far away, still deeply connected to that community, but unable to help support my city in physical solidarity. I wanted to flee my recovery unit and get back to Cambridge, going into the tornado this time.

The street where the brothers lived in Cambridge, only three blocks from my old apartment, served as a short cut to many meetings at Darwin's Cafe and the meet-up spot for my husband and I. He taught across the street at CRLS, where these guys went to school. Just outside of Cambridge, in Watertown, my little Armenia, where I've had many cultural adventures, the manhunt ensued. I found myself sympathizing for the living suspect, the antagonist, not evil because I don't believe that evil exists, but human, deeply flawed as he is. Of course I realize that he willingly hurt and killed people, but I imagine him as one of Alex's students, like the ones interviewed to describe their schoolmate. Even though his future is destroyed, doubly tragic, I'm hoping that he's treated with humanity. I suppose in a way that my reaction is also a reaction to the many bloodthirsty people who would love to see an eye for an eye and public torture for the offense. I don't believe in the death penalty and I demand equal rights for everyone. For now I am relieved that the situation is under control and the people of Boston, who united instantly, can repair.

While I was fixated on this event, maintaining contact with our beloved Boston brethren, and worrying about others instead of myself, I managed to recover fallow strength. Finally feeling bold enough to resume life outside the sick room was a great thing. After all, the small act of going outdoors seemed like a rebellious luxury after talking to friends that were unable or afraid to do so during the week.

To celebrate, we checked out Record Store Day. Even though I'm not any kind of collector, I like the atmosphere and I want to keep record stores open. There was a long line at Cactus Music, which I wasn't expecting, and a really fun DJ. As a treat I picked up this red vinyl re-issue from 1987, number 1254 of 3500. One of my favorite Cure songs is on here, Just Like Heaven. Dreamy.

Cure - Just Like Heaven by jpdc11

Pre-Cinematic Bruegel.

Hunters in the Snow, Bruegel, 1565.

I'm consistently drawn to the expression of proto-cinematic movement in art that predates the motion picture. I'm always on the lookout for it and have seen examples in everything from prehistoric cave paintings to ancient Greek vessels to, as I argue, the Romanesque portal sculpture at Ripoll.

I pulled this from the Tufts Art History site:

Professor Martin Schulz, Academy of Arts, Karlsruhe, Germany, describes his lecture: "Animated and Animating Landscapes: Space Voyages and Time Travel in the Art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder."

"The lecture will explore the famous painting "Hunters in the Snow" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. I will focus on the spatial effect of the landscape as an animation of the gaze and a translation of images through and across different media: from illumination via drawing to panel painting and finally, in a long leap ahead, to the immersive possibilities of film, video, and many digital based images.

I am going to argue Bruegel's landscape appears to have a pre-cinematic quality. The immersion of the gaze lends itself to a travel through time and space from the depictions of the months in the medieval books of hours up to the cinematic adaptation and transformation of the painting, as it was accomplished by Andrei Tarkovsky in his film "Solaris" from 1972. This leads to a crystalline compression of space and time, in which past and present, actual and virtual space, material and mental images, painting and film and, not least, technology and gaze permeate and determine each other."

Sounds like a very interesting paper. Space Travel!

Read, Seen, Heard: Ambiguity of Perception.

Threads from the past few weeks of entertainment consumption. 

I waited for this book to become available at the new Cambridge Public Library (which is absolutely beautiful) even though it's rare now that I am compelled to read fiction. The last novel I finished, The Marriage Plot, wasn't as satisfying as the art history books I'm usually reading night and day. But I had a feeling that 1Q84 would invite me away from reality and deposit me completely into another dimension. 

Haruki Murakami taught at Tufts years ago... maybe he knew my Japanese art history professor. We talked about his style, along with another writer, Banana Yoshimoto, near the end of her seminar. I had already read several of Yoshimoto's books in high school, long before I became acquainted with Murakami. Paul Roquet has categorized the particular style of both as "ambient literature," with Murakami's "healing novel" Hear the Wind Sing marking the onset of this style in 1979. Yoshimoto is also thought of as using mood regulation and iyashi (healing) themes. Perhaps this is why I was enamored of her writing during my turbulent teenage years. These early examples of ambient literature are characterized by an avoidance of psychological interiority and light, transparent diction.

Roquet points out that Brian Eno was at the same time, in England, orchestrating ambient music (in 1978 he released Ambient I: Music for Airports). I've found myself attracted to music that is focused on sound rather than lyrics, music that offers a sensory, completely immersive and exhilarating experience. I don't want to commit to moods created by concrete, literal lyrical compositions. At times shared thoughts, even musical ones, are overwhelmingly intrusive and incessant in this age of (too much) information. No more messy confessionals. Not from me either. I crave an experiential atmosphere that can never be clear and obvious. I want mystery, malleable mystery. This review of Canadian artist Grimes (Claire Boucher) describes her experience as a student of neuroscience, the plasticity of her sound and how the listener may be unable to clearly read or define the tone or mood as the sounds refuse to exist as static formulations. 

Multi-media artist Claire Boucher.

According to the article, Boucher doesn't want you feel something specific, just something. As one adoring fan, I can tell you all about the successful results. My final semester of grad school was survived based on the subjective consistency of this music; it woke me from stagnation without forcing me to feel good or bad, just something. During every morning drive to New Hampshire I listened to nothing else both to calm my new teacher/marathon driver nerves and also to excite my passionate sensibility. These sounds, ambiguous and crystalline, yet human, warm, and spiritual, are like post-modern medicine. 

Think of Mona Lisa and her sfumato-ed elusiveness. We know her and we are inspired by her, but we can never truly know her or keep her obediently confined. We can apply our own interpretations as needed thanks to this smoke covered smudged portrait. Leonardo loved to manipulate the psychological ambiguity of perception. He knew more about vision and optics than anyone else at the time, thanks to his midnight hours spent dissecting cadavers by candlelight. He wanted to paint images as accurately as the human eye transmits them to our brain. What he discovered is that in vision, there are no harsh lines; objects are softened at the edges. Therefore, in order to imitate optical information, paintings must have no discernible transitions. So, sfumato (lost in smoke)! The painted result creates an image that is never at rest; with each new pair of eyes it is reborn. All of these artists are working toward "accommodating different levels of awareness and yet maintaining uncertainty."* 

Leonardo, 1503-1506. Isn't she magnificent!

I met with some friends yesterday at my Old University, just before they took their oldest daughter on a campus tour. I walked around feeling very strange. It hasn't even been a full year since I graduated, yet it seems that my experiences there were another lifetime ago. I felt the presence of ghosts, and memories. 

My first trip to Tufts. I was seduced by the quintessential collegiate atmosphere.

I haven't gotten very far into 1Q84, about 1/10th of its 900 pages. Enough to know a bit about two main characters. Tengo, a writer, is about to secretly rewrite a novel that exhibits poor style but a raw and perfect magic. At the behest of another literary contact he will do this and submit it, for the original author, to a prestigious writer's contest. The moral questions around this part of the plot are reminiscent of a film that Alex and I watched recently, World's Greatest Dad (2009). 

Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, it tricks you with a seemingly unoriginal start. It distracts you with music that is awkwardly timed and characters that are exhaustingly unlikable. But it pays off if you can make it through the first half. It's basically about a failed writer who works by day as a high school teacher (Robin Williams). He finds himself in a situation similar to Tengo's. I won't say more, except that it was excellent, offering the kind of post-film discussion you hope for. It's dark, sure, but highly recommended to those who don't mind being temporarily uncomfortable. 

Another dark, but brilliant film: Ariel (1988). Written and directed by Finn Aki Kaurismäki, Ariel is one part of the Proletariat Trilogy. An economical film in every sense, it is exemplary of the minimalist style associated with Scandinavia. I appreciated the lack of excessive dialogue, explanations, and running time. Things were either made obvious or opaque depending on the needs of the scene. In this film, you could also say, as in the work of Murakami and Yoshimoto, that there is an avoidance of psychological interiority. 

The imagery is sometimes fantastically surreal and comic, despite the wintery landscape and generally cruel looking surroundings. Some of the moments, especially one of mannequins in a shop window, reminded me of the French photographer Eugène Atget.  

Avenue de Gobelins, Paris, 1925.

Avenue de Gobelins, Paris, 1925.

Coiffeur, Bd. de Strasbourg, 1912.

Shown here: the creepiest mannequins frozen in time. As Atget became interested in Surrealist photography and street scenes, he repeatedly exploited the reflective windowpane to create a palimpsest or double exposed world in which these very alive looking figures exist. What do you think the photographer imagined that these figures were doing? Did he create a scenario for them? It seems that he has composed the photograph in a way that suggests a particular scene; but there is no obvious narrative. The reading is open for interpretation. In its ambiguity our individual imaginations are stimulated; supplementing what is left out.

*(Roquet, "Ambient Literature and the Aesthetics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction," Journal of Japanese Studies, 35:1, 2008.)

New Things.

While the summer was spent mostly enjoying post-grad life, certain things loomed on my calendar. Some good, some terrifying. The maelstrom of activity swept in quickly and furiously and soon I found myself immersed once again in academic stuff. The first thing was the advent of the Fall semester and my professorial debut. This work is extremely satisfying for me. I get to read and write all day and then perform my results four times a week. I have to work hard on finding a balance between how I learned and how to communicate it in a less intense and fun way. It's a challenge, but one that I am well prepared for (thanks Tufts!) and overwhelmingly happy to have before me. 

After waiting six months to see it, Christian Marclay's The Clock finally arrived in Boston. How lucky I am to be here. Alex and I attended the first 24 hour screening last week and it was more than magical. Read his marvelous account of our late night stalking through the MFA: "How We Finally Saw The Clock."

Incredibly, there were clips from my somewhat obscure favorite movie, Sid and Nancy, during the big midnight sequence. Of course I was nearly jumping out of my seat. YES!! It was hard to leave, but we did around 12:30 knowing that we'd be back. We had to get to part two of the evening's adventure: Saus: Belgian frites and waffles. Just what you want for a midnight snack while wandering Boston in an inspired daze. Yum. The elation from our museum experience was potent. I've been walking around with a dopey grin for days, so good.

San Sebastian

The final event of the season, on my calendar since March, waits for me across the ocean. In just a few days I will present my musings on the abbey church Santa Maria de Ripoll, internationally. That's right. And then I will actually get to see the church in person. I'm afraid I might pass out in the monastery, overwhelmed. 

The final draft of my conference paper has been approved by my third advisor, a dear colleague, and my biggest supporter, Alex. The powerpoint is packed with fun images and I am ready! but still, Yikes. 

Kursaal Palace, where you'll find me next week.

There are so many presentations that I want to see:

Rivero Gil's «Aleluyas de la defensa de Euzkadi»: Comic Strip Images of Spain's Civil War and the Education of a New Citizenry Donna Southard, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
Theatre and the Action-Image: The Interaction between Image and Action in Theatrical Communication, Richard Murphet, School of Performing Arts Faculty of Victorian College of the Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Images in Anatolian Carpets Lect Ayla Canay, Fashion Design, Anadolu Univercity, Eskisehir, Kadir Sevim, Turkey
Evaluation of the Symbolic Expressions in Anatolian Seljuk Tiles and Ceramics in Terms of Clothing Culture Ece Kanışkan, Fashion Design Department Industrial Design School, Ece Kanışkan, Industrial Design School, Fashion design department, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Zehra Cobanli, Fine Art Faculty, Anadolu Universitesi, Turkey
In Search of “Aura” and “Immanence” in Telematic Art Dr. Matthew Burtner, Interactive Media Research Group Department of Music, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
Overview: Presentation of a theoretical research paper: In search of “Aura” and “Immanence” in Telematic Art preceded by a multimedia performance of excerpts from the author’s telematic opera “Auksalaq.”
Making Embroidery Speak: Images and Words in Miao Embroidery Zhaohua Ho, Textiles and Clothing Department, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan
The Unstable Image: Contingent Entropic Zones Alan Dunning, Media Arts +Digital Technologies Programme / Department of Computer Science, Alberta College of Art and Design / University of Calgary, Prof. Paul Woodrow, Department of Art, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Open Wholeness: Architecture as an Identity Carrier of Cities and Regions Dr. Beate Niemann, NIEMANN + STEEGE Ltd., University Leipzig, Urban Development Institute, Duesseldorf, Schaedler Priscilla, Düsseldorf, Germany

Illustration of Elephants, Persian, 1295.

This image seems to be generating a lot of interest on my other blog, weirdolovesyou, which got me excited about it all over again. 

From the Manafi’ al-Hayawan (Usefulness of Animals), by Ibn Bakhtishu', 1295.
 The Morgan Library and Museum, NY.

I found this special painting while researching something completely different (medieval Hispanic liturgy).  The colors and patterning are just spectacular. I love the gold disc jewelry and the sort of cozy feeling created by the curvilinear forms that fit into one another. The foliage and birds are pretty fantastic as well. This is an illumination from a bestiary, a medieval compendium of beasts that describes the functional, symbolic, often religious meaning of animals and plants.

In the 11th century a Persian known as Ibn Bakhtishu was a physician to the Abbassid Caliph in Baghdad. Bakhtishu compiled information about various animals, mainly featuring any healing qualities that they might possess. Two centuries after he wrote it, the work was translated from Arabic into Persian and illustrated with 94 charming miniatures (Great Ages of Man: Early Islam, 1968, by Desmond Stewart).

According to Stewart's translation of Ibn Bakhtishu, "An elephant lives three or four hundred years; the animals with the longer tusks have a longer life. The elephant is afraid of a young pig and a horned ram but he is annoyed most of all by the gnat and the mouse. One dram of his ivory is good for leprosy; his fat relieves headaches when it is burned and the patient sits on the fumes."


The incredibly detailed look at The Morgan Library & Museum gives me goosebumps.

Shroud of St. Josse, 961, Musée du Louvre

I'm still attracted to medieval images of elephants ever since the Shroud of St. Josse project from my first semester at Tufts.

Oof, the roughest semester, but so long ago now!

There are still many mysteries surrounding this Persian shroud from the tenth century, and the only two articles written on it, as of 2010, are old, in French, and mostly technical. It is a silk textile, embroidered with Kufic script, Bactrian camels, and caparisoned elephants. The textile itself may have been the very same decorative cover that the embroidered elephants are wearing. We don't know for sure what the function of this textile was since there are only two small scraps left. It was brought to France after the Crusades and used to wrap the relics of St. Josse in his monastery. Since the textile was made in proximity to the Holy Land and considered a souvenir from the Holy War, (reclaiming Jerusalem from Muslims) it empowered the relics and church in France.

Candidate-->Master

We look so little in our "first day of school" pictures!

Somehow, every day is a new celebration. Despite the unstinting rain and extended plague-like symptoms, spirits are high as we move together toward the ceremonial event. Papers have been turned in, caps, gowns, and special Masters regalia have been purchased and looked at with perplexity. How does the hood work? There are intricate instructions. And you are not to cock your mortar board! Parties at Professor's, colleagues, and friends, small moments of pride, unity, and joy have taken over the stressful penultimate conclusion of the program.

At one point last night, at a party given by our charmingly garrulous Methods Professor, we stood in a circle to hear a toast. It was a moving moment (ok, maybe the wine had warmed me up a bit as well!). But, it seemed to be a significant marker. We entered this program as a unit in our Methods class, with its Munchkins invariably set in the center of the seminar table, making first impressions, and now we have closed the circle, meeting again, but transformed.

Puff Balls and Valborg: Primavera

Today marks the actual beginning of Spring, a season I have mixed feelings for. I used to think of it as renewal, but this time it feels like a protracted death. However, when the puff balls start fluttering in the breeze, there is no other choice but to get caught up in the fever.

The first thing to do is commence with the springtime rituals.

1. Amarcord: Fellini's 1930's set film from 1973. The beginning treats you to the advent of the puff balls then takes you directly to the burning of the winter witch. This is the first Italian film I like to watch before moving into Michelangelo Antonioni for Summer and closing the season with Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (aka Lina Wertmüller's Swept Away, 1974). The music in all of these is so evocative of its respective season. Sometimes I listen to the menu music (Piero Piccioni) for Swept Away on repeat. 

2. Swedish Valborgsmässoafton. 

Originally celebrated by Viking to hasten the arrival of spring and ensure fertility of their crops and livestock. They would do this by lighting huge bonfires to scare away evil spirits and predators. This is the night when the witches ride on their broomsticks through the sky, and the natural world clashes with the super natural. I had a chance to experience this in Philadelphia, at the American Swedish Historical Museum. A bonfire in front of a majestic museum, culture>art. 


3. Risi Bisi (Spring Pea Risotto) and Carrot and Pine Nut Cake.
Venetian style dining. It is said to be the first dish served at the end of April, at the Venetian feasts honoring St. Mark.

St. Mark, Carolingian Ebbo Gospels, 9th c.

Otherwise, in my small world of academia, things come to a close. My last class took place on Tuesday, though I attended not as a student, but as a teacher. It was a bittersweet moment. Many moments these days are. For two years my world revolved around this campus, this consuming experience at Tufts. Watching the seasons change, the sparkling beauty of the warm naive days, the stunning colors in the fall, the long, cruel winters, and now Spring, where we will disperse like so many seeds. All of these served as a silent, stable backdrop to emotional ups and downs, articles read with giddy curiosity while working on three hours of sleep, research, papers, nervous firsts, camaraderie, exams, presentations, lesson plans, overdue books, the special Tower tea, shared snacks, late night library delirium, challenges and epiphanies with faculty, students, each other, office hour tears, friendships made and unmade, isolation, triumphs and disappointments. None of these mundane descriptions can fully illustrate this complex experience. Somehow, Peggy Lee sums it up for me.





Exiting this small universe comes with questions of identity and the future. The program went by so quickly, as quickly as it is now coming to an end. Complete immersion in this atmosphere makes the abruptness of the end much more dramatic, as though we are completely ejected from the safe nurturing home. This month will consist of non-stop efforts to fully realize all academic possibilities and then, that's it. We are no longer students, no longer teachers. The transitions between high school and college and post college were never so harshly distinct as this. In two weeks, I will complete my academic duties. Soon after that, the occasion of commencement. Then, the slow fragmentation of our community.


For now, I am spending quality time finishing my second QP and this weekend, with a stack of papers and exams to grade. I'm excited to see how my students have grown since the first half of the semester, which centered on traditional African art. Some of my favorites from Modern and Contemporary: a major theme comments on freedom, identity, and movement (in terms of recreating, leaving traditional static compositions, and literally leaving for the diaspora), so maybe there will be a sort of renewal, I just can't see it yet.

Nuit de Noel, Malick Sidibé, 1962

Between Heaven and Earth, El Anatsui, 2006

Mid Semester Scenarios

It's time to descend into the piles of books (only 29 this semester!). I have a rough draft due in...nevermind. The object of inquiry is an Armenian folio that has no previous scholarship. No state of the literature. It's all up to me. Next to Cambridge, in Watertown, we are lucky to have an Armenian Library and Museum (ALMA). This is where several pages (including mine) from what may have been a Gospel Book were donated. Watertown, or as I like to call it, Armenia, is also the second largest Armenian community in America. One of my favorite things about going for a visit is checking out the food shops. The best feta cheese and other Middle Eastern treats.

I am excited to get into this, my last project here at Tufts. In addition to my research this semester, I am working with our Africanist as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. For their first paper, many of the students have chosen to write on masks. I especially like this one: a 19th or 20th century Mukudj Mask from Gabon.

Ripoll

Today I graded fifteen papers and submitted a proposal for a conference that takes place in Spain, close to where my beloved Ripoll stands! Productive, exhilarating day. It would be just fantastic if I were to receive an offer to present. It's a long shot, I know, and the first of many.

Thrilling, nonetheless.