Porch Portraits

Neighborhoods like mine are doing a variety of low-contact things to keep up neighborhood spirit during the pandemic, such as putting teddy bears or rainbows in windows for kids to find during walks. Photographers are also doing sets of portraits of neighbors on porches. In my neighborhood, Briana Snyder of Knack Creative did a round of portraits on Sunday. The weather was cold and windy, so most of us didn't stay outside all that long (and I hadn't exactly spruced up my porch for summer yet!), but she got some nice results.

Underway: A Four-Color Cover!

The cover design for Magnetic Woman arrived today, and it's exciting! Four-color printing on the dust jacket, and a very lively layout that employs several different works by Toyen, both paintings and illustrations.

I'd post it here, but there's still a bit of tweaking to do on it.

Weddings, Pandemic-Style

At a difficult time in world history, a bit of happy news: weddings are still happening, in new and inventive ways.

My cousin Jared's wedding was originally going to be something of a destination wedding, and although I wanted to attend, I had a work conflict, so I sent my regrets. But that, of course, was before covid-19 took the stage. My department sadly postponed/cancelled our student colloquium (don't really know yet which), and I wasn't even sure what was happening with the wedding.

But my family is resourceful, and put out word that the wedding would now take place in a local park with live-streaming video via Facebook. Only ten people were allowed to gather, so the local guests parked their cars near the site and watched on their phones, while many more of us tuned in from afar. The day was sunny but windy there (versus rainy weather here), and so although wind noise was noticeable, the bride's simple, elegant gown and veil fluttered beautifully throughout the ceremony. (Jared's suit also fluttered, but we weren't focusing on that.)

It was a lovely event and I wish them and all the others marrying in this uncertain time a long, happy, and healthy life together.

My 17th Day of Social Distancing

By this time, much of the world is required to perform what's called "social distancing" or "physical distancing." My experience with this began a little earlier than many people's, because my university was among one of the earlier American schools to switch to remote instruction, and my state soon likewise became one of the leaders in shutting down sources of what is termed "community spread" (catching the virus without knowing how you got it, or only learning later that you probably got it at a game or at a party or at church).

The news is full of stories from all over the world about coronavirus and the covid-19 illness it causes. My experience isn't that strange or remarkable (yet), and I don't want to focus this blog on it, but here's how's it going for me at present.

First of all, I'm working from home, so I'm fortunate that I'm someone who can do that, versus being someone who's out of work at the local bar or clothing store or factory during the state's shelter-in-place. I'm in contact with my students daily via email and our online platform. How my students are doing personally or in their studies is not so clear. I do ask them to let me know if they're having difficulties, and some have reported lack of home internet, or that they have to move before getting back to their studies, but quite a few just aren't responding. Others are watching films on art, exploring museum websites, and writing about it for me. Two classes have short papers due soon, and the other class has a big research paper due near the end of the semester. We'll see. The university is allowing pass/fail grading for any undergraduate who requests it. The date with withdraw has also been extended. While the switch to remote learning hasn't improved the education we provide, at least we haven't fallen apart, and it seems that the administration is doing a decent job handling this particular challenge.

Although my state is sheltering in place, we're allowed to go outside so long as we don't get too close to other people. I regret to say that the weather has not been very conducive to spending much time outdoors, apart from a couple of days when it got both sunny and dry. I took advantage of that to dig up some weeds in what used to be my small lawn, and to sow white clover there. My housemate walked over to a historic cemetery and enjoyed reading and photographing there. He even got a short video of a white squirrel leaping over the tombstones.

I keep hoping that I will get some spring cleaning and writing done, but so far my days consist of teaching-related activities, checking the news, and reading books. Somehow the time passes with lightning speed even though we're not actually having fun!

Yesterday I learned of the first person of my acquaintance to be ill with covid-19 (although I'm sure there are others). A member of my extended family first felt unwell a week ago, was hospitalized on Monday, and was soon on a ventilator. Shortly after the word went out to all the cousins, there was some good news: from 90% oxygen from the ventilator, my relative went down to 60%. This morning the percentage was 50%, so very good news! The goal is to get to 30%. We're all sending best wishes and hopes for a full recovery. And hopes that no one in that immediate family gets ill like that.

What I've Been Reading Lately

As someone who reads a lot--both fiction and nonfiction, although a lot of what I read is in the form of journal articles and snippets of books rather than whole books--I'm viewing pandemic isolation as an opportunity to read more of what's around the house. I own a lot of books, from childhood favorites (mostly in boxes behind my chaise for lack of shelf space) to books inherited from my father (maybe I should reread Art Buchwald's "I Am Not a Crook" or finally embark on War and Peace) to library books to a haul of books recently acquired at the AWP conference.

Here's what I've finished in the past month or so, and maybe you'll see something you'd like to order.

Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization, by Jan Alexander. Two young women, one an aspiring writer from a remote Chinese village and the other a New York grad student studying China, find themselves accomplices to the immortal Monkey King, who has a plan to make China (and later the world) kinder, more poetic, and less hyper-capitalist. I really enjoyed this novel.

A Strange Scottish Shore, by Juliana Gray. This is the second book in a series, which I didn't realize when I brought it home. But it's a wild and unexpected mixture of historical novel and time travel. While it would have helped to have read the first book first, I still quite enjoyed this.

The Book of Anna, by Carmen Boullosa. This is another novel full of unexpected turns. Here we've got the children and servants of Tolstoy's famous character Anna Karenina, alive in 1905, when Russia nearly had a revolution. Everyone knows which people were invented by Tolstoy versus which ones were not; no one mentions being invented by Boullosa, however! Bombs, shootings, paintings, and dresses all play important roles, as does a long fairy tale attributed to Anna herself.

Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, by Adrian McKinty. This is a police procedural mystery (but hardly an average one) in a series set in Northern Ireland during the bloody 1980s. If you like mysteries, and don't require them to be cozy, this series is worth looking into.

Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice. By a First Nations Canadian writer, this is a post-apocalyptic tale about a small First Nations band in northern Ontario who have just begun to get used to having reliable electricity, cell phones, and video games when suddenly electricity is diesel-generator-only and contact with the outside world ceases except for the arrival of a few refugees from the city.

Strangers in Budapest, by Jessica Keener. Sorry, I didn't like this one, but you might. A youngish couple (not really all that young but they've just adopted a baby) move to Budapest in the 1990s with entrepreneurial ambitions. Hungarian friends from back home ask them to check up on an elderly American in Budapest. Things get kind of disturbing for Annie, the wife. The third-person narration keeps the reader trapped in Annie's naive and neurotic point of view except for brief excursions into the old guy's cynical and angry point of view. This really irritated me and also eliminated any real uncertainty about what would happen. I think the reader is supposed to like Annie and sympathize with her feelings, but the better I knew her, the more I despised her. And I don't usually mind reading about neurotic people.

Oh, and right now (among many other things) I'm rereading The Diary of Anne Frank. It just seemed like a good time for that.

How's Working at Home Working Out?

My state doesn't have an actual shelter-in-place order, but since my governor has been in the forefront of those closing down potential sites of contagion, we're fairly close to sheltering in place. Bars are closed unless they also offer take-out sales (food or containers of beer); restaurants and cafes are take-out and delivery only; theaters are closed; hair salons are closed (just before my appointment, rats!). Etc. A whole lot of us are working from home now.

As a writer and professor, I'm already pretty accustomed to working from home. Even my work for school is largely done from home, because my office at school is in a windowless concrete-block space and I use it for two main things: meeting with students and storing art books.

At home, I normally work on a laptop, although I do still have a desktop machine bought around 2005. The desktop still functions, but I got it shortly before CD drives also read DVDs, shortly before USB 2.0, and shortly before wifi became common. So it's not as practical as it might be. Besides, the laptop allows me to move around in the house as well as (when it was possible) working elsewhere.

Since I live in a part of the country where home ownership is possible for a) people who aren't all that highly paid and/or b) weren't in a position to buy back when housing prices were more affordable throughout the US, I currently live in a house with quite a range of potential work spaces. It's a Victorian in what was once a working-class neighborhood, and in recent decades the attic was turned into living space, so I have two floors plus an unfinished basement where the furnace lives. But what does this translate to in actual work-at-home practice?

Well, let me begin by saying I like my house a lot and enjoy being in it. But it's not ideally designed for working at home even though I can and do work in no fewer than eight different locations in it--I'm currently seated at the foot of the stairs beside a large window, where the bookcase to my left holds fiction A to G and the bookcase to my right holds pocket-size nonfiction and foreign language books. This current spot is good for light and the chair is comfortable, but sometimes the light is too bright, often the air is cold, and it's not a part of the house where rabbits are allowed.

Most of the spaces in my house where I work, like my bedroom, my so-called office, my front room, and my living room, get very little natural light. My upstairs rooms are extremely hot in the summer and one of them (the one with good daytime light) is cold in the winter. Since I teach (normally) in a darkened room and meet with students in a windowless room, I want natural light the rest of the day!

In other words, while my house is a pretty neat place with an interesting variety of spots where I can and do work, under normal circumstances I also do a lot of my work at cafes and libraries. There are two cafes in my own neighborhood, several more within walking distance, and the public library is also in walking distance, while the university library is a good place to work when I'm on campus and not holding class or office hours. Well, at present the libraries are closed and the cafes are take-out only, so while I do try to support them by getting the occasional take-out, I'm working solely at home.

So far, it's okay--and I'm in a much better situation than many, many other people--but I really do miss going to the cafes and libraries!

A Week of Social Distancing

These days we're supposed to practice social distancing, and I for one have been taking this pretty seriously, having begun my intensive social-distancing efforts on March 11 when our face-to-face classes were obliged to go remote. Since each person's situation and temperament is different, the social distancing experience varies.

For me, as a not all that extroverted person (call me an ambivert) with a housemate and pets, staying home most of the time is pretty much normal behavior. Sure, I like to travel, but I attended two conferences in the past month (possibly unwisely, but what's done is done). Sure, I like to see my friends, but most of them live in other states and countries anyway (and while I like my co-workers and neighbors, it's not as though I constantly socialize with them).

Staying six feet away from people in public places has been trickier. I'm happy to do it when possible, but it's not easy to keep a six-foot distance at the cash register, and other people in stores often don't have a good grip on the six-foot idea. A few days ago I took my housemate to a craft store that was going out of business (housemate needed to get mat board and frames, or so we thought at the time), and it was crawling with families who seemed to think this was a good place to spend the afternoon or something. I was eager to leave, although happy to get quite a few knitting needles and some embroidery floss for a huge discount (maybe someday I'll get back to knitting and embroidering, like during this pandemic or else during my retirement).

A lot of people are eager to support local businesses that will suffer. So am I, but within reason. I was certainly not out at the pub on the last night it was open, despite the fact that I am a charter member. Nor was I about to hang out at the bakery-cafe around the corner when I dropped by last Friday to pick up coffee and a scone as a gesture of support (could not believe how many people were just sitting there breathing on one another in close proximity). I picked up a coffee the other day at the cat-adoption cafe in my neighborhood, again purely to support them, since I do have coffee and half-and-half at home for now. I'm guessing that so long as restaurants are allowed to do take-out here, I'll get the occasional meal to go to help them stay afloat.

Speaking of food, I began gradually stocking up several weeks ago, because it's always good to be prepared for disaster anyway, and I didn't want to be out there during panic-buying. Now when I go to the grocery store, I can just run in and grab some fresh produce and one or two other things and get out. And I'm pleased to say that our local Kroger rationed items like toilet paper, so I didn't have any trouble getting a fairly big (not enormous) package last week. I'd still like to get a second thermometer (one for each human) but the drugstore was out last I checked. At least we have one in the house and when I took my temperature, it said 97 degrees. Apparently I don't have a fever and maybe I'm a reptile.

Closing Down Campus for Safety

We're in our first week of "remote" instruction here and the situation continues to develop. Initially, our university library, computer labs, studios, and offices remained open. But then the library closed (I know our library staff breathed a sigh of relief!), and now pretty much everything on campus is closing as far as I can tell. At any rate, the Art Office, studios, labs...

As for teaching, well, it isn't exactly going all that smoothly for many of us. Those who wanted to put lectures online or even hold synchronous online discussions are reporting some problems. If nothing else, lots of students don't have very reliable internet access or are trying to take care of their kids or elderly parents.

So far, I've tried giving assignments that are fairly open-ended, but I'm having trouble with students (even my one MA student from another department) not reading the instructions very well. When the instructions say that I've put a list of suggested films on our course site, I don't want to have people emailing asking if I can give them a list (but they've done so). When the instructions say to post info about museum web sites on Discussion Board and discuss, I don't want people emailing me or the whole class with what they've found (but they've done so). When I say to watch as many films as they can, I don't want to be asked "how many do you want us to watch?" (but they've done so).

I get that they are feeling discombobulated and stressed out, and I know I don't always pick up key information when I read either. It's just that each unnecessary email of that kind takes time to deal with, makes me worry that a whole lot more are about to arrive, and takes my focus away from grading take-home exams, commenting on actual Discussion Board posts, and planning how to go forward.

AWP, Small-Scale

During my Spring Break, I went down to San Antonio for the annual AWP conference. Actually, I went down early in order to do a little bit of research on a great-grandfather who went down there in the 1890s and changed his name, but that's a whole other story!

The AWP conference is normally a huge event. Both CAA and ASEEES, which I attend every year as an art historian specializing in Czech Modernism, are very large, but AWP is gigantic, as in addition to writing professors and their MFA students, it also attracts lots of undergraduates and writers not affiliated with universities (or who, like me, work in a different department), plus loads of people who work at presses and literary journals.

This year was different.

Had AWP been scheduled for just two weeks later, it would almost certainly have been cancelled to prevent spread of coronavirus. However, it fell in that weird moment when the virus was spreading and people were getting worried, but the US had not really faced the problem. (No, the US certainly has still not really faced the problem, but at least more people, especially state and local governments, are waking up to it.) Consequently, the AWP conference was not cancelled, but the organizers recognized that many people would not feel safe attending, and let everyone know that that was okay. "If you... have requested to defer your registration to #AWP21 or a refund for #AWP20, please note that we will begin to process refunds on March 10."

Rightly or wrongly, I was among those who went ahead and traveled. I planned to be as careful as possible, although I knew that that might not fully protect me. Still, I wore gloves most of the time (wearing leather gloves in weather approaching 80 degrees was a little strange, but...), washed my hands frequently in the manner recommended, mostly managed to avoid touching people, etc. We'll see. At that time, few cases had been reported in the US, and while I was sure there were more than reported, back then it seemed plausible that the virus was not widely infecting the community.

Attendance was light, and many exhibitor booths were empty. Although AWP kept updating the panel cancellations, not every cancelled panel alerted AWP that no one would attend. I managed to attend a few panels on book promotion and/or what the first year of your first book can be like; I also went to one or two on craft (not particularly impressive ones, I'm afraid); and a panel of writers who had used family stories (particularly about immigrants) in their fiction. This last, and the promotion panels, were very good.

I got to see a couple of Bay Area friends, and had a surprising and delightful reunion with a writer friend with whom I'd been out of touch for about thirty years. As usual at AWP, I talked to quite a few editors and other staff people at various presses and journals. I bought more books by André Alexis at the Coach House booth, where I also got other promising Canadian fiction. Indeed, I bought as many books as I thought I could pack in my luggage, like Carmen Boullosa's The Book of Anna and Camilla Grudova's The Doll's Alphabet from Coffee House Press, Joao Gilberto Noll's Atlantic Hotel from Two Lines Press, Micheline Aharonian Marcom's The Brick House from Awst Press, Joanna Pearson's Every Human Love from Acre Press, Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow from ECW Press, Chris Geier's Silt directly from the author (Alternating Current Press), and Christina Chiu's Beauty directly from the author (SfWP). Naturally there were many more books from many other presses that I was also tempted to buy!

Now to stay home and read and write.

Face-to-Face Classes Go "Remote"

Last Tuesday, my colleague in Art History and I were making final plans about order of program for the Riess Undergraduate Art History Colloquium, which we were scheduled to host on March 28. The Riess is an annual regional opportunity for art history students (not necessarily majors) to present their work and receive feedback from a small and friendly audience, and we were excited that we'd be hosting the event for the first time.

Alas, it was not to be. No sooner had we gone home to feed our pets before meeting again for a more relaxed supper, than we received word that face-to-face courses would be going "remote" for the rest of March due to the spreading coronavirus pandemic and that events would need to be postponed or cancelled. By the end of the week, the "remote" instruction had been expanded to the remainder of the semester. It's possible we may be able to postpone the Riess until fall, but many of the students may have graduated by then and would not be available.

My university, of course, is by no means the only or even the first in the US to make this move. A growing number of colleges and universities are shifting to "remote," and soon I heard that the annual Czech and Slovak Workshop, which my alma mater the University of Pittsburgh was about to host for the first time, was also not going to occur as scheduled. Like Riess, the Workshop is all about discussion of the participants' research, except that the Workshop has historically been for advanced graduate students and early career scholars with a sprinkling of established scholars.

But events aside, what does "remote" instruction mean? Most faculty have never taught online courses and are not prepared to do so; creating an online course involves a whole lot of work above and beyond that involved in most face-to-face courses.

Expectations for "remote" instruction will vary from school to school, department to department, and course to course. My university has, fortunately, made clear that it need not mean creating the kind of online course that one might do in the normal course of things. After all, students in face-to-face courses did not sign up expecting to have an online education. Not all students have internet at home. Not all students own a computer. (These facts may amaze you, but they are facts, not fake news.) So, expecting everyone to have constant access, and bandwidth for, synchronous lectures and discussion, or what-have-you, is not realistic or fair to less-advantaged students (which means many of my own students). Sure, most students these days do have a smartphone, but I sure would not like to have to expect them to do large amounts of coursework on their phones.

I don't know what my colleagues in studio are doing beyond allowing students to work at home and in our studios (which remain open for now), but we are being allowed a good deal of latitude in figuring out alternate assignments. For now, I've asked my students to watch as many art-related films as they can and write discussion posts about them. This naturally requires some internet access, but I'm not assigning specific films. Our library is still open and so some films can be watched on VHS or DVD. Any art-related films are acceptable (although for each class I've provided a list of options pertinent to the course--good thing I'm not teaching Czech Modernism this semester!), they just need to have enough internet access to discuss what they've seen. Meanwhile, I have an exam to redo to be take-home, a paper assignment to be rewritten since the museum is closed, and so on.

Hoping the pandemic is soon over, but not feeling too optimistic about that for now.

Upcoming Toyen Exhibition!

Here's a bit more good news that I didn't get around to posting earlier. Back in November, when I served as discussant on a panel of papers about Toyen at the annual ASEEES conference, Anna Pravdová revealed that the National Gallery in Prague is preparing a major Toyen show for 2021 that will travel to France and Germany. Magnetic Woman will have just come out, so it should be possible to stock copies in the museum stores.

And, further exciting news... last month when I was in Chicago for the annual CAA conference, staff from the Art Institute of Chicago (which, by the way, will be closed March 14-27 for safety) told me that they had just arranged to bring the show to Chicago!

During my visit to Chicago I not only got to catch up with various friends and colleagues, but also saw the Art Institute's exhibition on Bauhaus weaving just before it closed.

Magnetic Woman has been Copyedited!

The hardest time to blog seems to be when there's actually a lot to say--during a conference, during grading, during periods of concentrated work on projects. At times like that, my mind is full of great ideas for blog posts, which then don't get written because doing a good blog post involves (or so it seems) more time than just writing a similar amount of text on something else. There are hyperlinks to include, tags to choose, and a surprising amount of proofreading. That said, failure to write blog posts is not due solely to being busy, any more than failing to enter books I've read into Goodreads. Sometimes I just don't get around to it.

Things have, however, been a bit intense of late, for both good and bad reasons. So I'll try to do a set of separate posts that can be rolled out gradually. I always like to get more than one post ready, anyway!

This one focuses on some good news, which we can all enjoy in this time of coronavirus pandemic. Yes, GOOD NEWS! Production on Magnetic Woman is picking up speed! Awhile back I sent in my edits on material for catalog copy, and last week I turned in my edits on the copyedited text. For authors, this is a very exciting time.

For those who aren't too familiar with the process of book publishing, the copyeditor's job involves things like making sure everything is spelled correctly and consistently (I am pretty good at spelling, but the copyeditor rightly pointed out that we can't have both Shklovsky and Shklovskij for the same person). And do all of the sentences make sense? Has the author said anything that might be unintentionally offensive (intentionally offensive is another matter, although still questionable)? Has the author capitalized words that the press doesn't? Has the author failed to include page numbers on citations? Etc. If this sounds like a proofreader's job, well, it's their job too, but the proofreader comes later, to catch whatever the copyeditor and author missed.

Copyediting comes in light, medium, and heavy forms, depending on both the needs of the press and how well the author writes. I would describe the copyedits on my book as light (I've been a copyeditor myself, and my sibling also went over the manuscript more than once before I turned it in), but there were still a fair number of queries for me to answer. Most, luckily, were easy. And as for Shklovsky vs Shklovskij, I said that the press was welcome to use whichever style of Russian transliteration they prefer, because this is an area where I have no expertise. The task that took me the longest involved the captions for the many figures. I had supplied standard identifications for my images, but the press also wanted me to write additional text. This took me longer than I expected, because in many cases I felt the chapter said all that the reader needed to know about a given image. In those cases I tried to come up with something that didn't sound too repetitive or lame, possibly unsuccessfully. More pleasantly, in some cases I was able to provide some added value by saying something about the caricaturist (I'm using quite a few caricatures of Czech cultural figures) or about the magazine in which the image had originally appeared.

The manuscript, with my fixes, now goes back to the copyeditor to finalize the changes.