asteroid B612

the ravioli di zucca is divine. But I invited a bunch more people over yesterday, so now I have to make more. I'll post the recipe later. Just imagine pumpkin being cooked down in heavy cream, sage, and thyme. How's that to keep you hanging on my every word!? Hahahahaa!!!

I'm really in a flurry. Trying to balance life and Thanksgiving is quite a lot. And my computer is STILL dead, so that means I'm in the library computer lab. (HORRORS!) AND I thought I would add a little extra excitement into my life (as if I needed anymore) by starting up the Collegium here once again. So I'm trying to organize that to start next semester.

All I can think about is cooking. In my other life I would be chef. Yesterday I made a fabuluous cream of carrot/pear/apple soup. Mmmm. SO GOOD!!!!

I've got to leave before I start drooling on the keyboard, which would be bad in a public computer lab. I might give someone latent meningitis or something.

Thanksgiving looms. I'm getting really excited. My project for today is making a huge batch of pumpkin ravioli...ravioli di zucca! I've sorted through a bazillion recipes on the internet. I'll let you know how it turns out. I also found a lovely fruit soup that I think I'll start the dinner with! mmmm

It's the chef's holiday!

MY COMPUTER IS DEAD!!!!!!!!

I don't know what happened. It has just decided not to start anymore. Chris put his ear to it and said, it sounds like the hard drive.

I'm ruined!!!!!!!!!!! My computer is more important than my car!!!! (you at least can walk if your car dies.) THe thought of hte possibility of never being able to retrieve the information (saved nowhere else, due to the fact that I never got around to buying a zip drive) is horrible, horrible, horrible.

Macs don't do this to you!!!! I feel betrayed!!!!! At least it went quickly. Maybe all hope is not lost. I haven't had it for a year yet, I'm really hoping it's still under warranty.

At any rate, terrible things have befallen me!!!!

with Monteverdi's Vespers!!!

The cd I have (picture right) is one that I listen to regularly, and goign to hear it the other night just enhanced my appreciation for this fabulous piece of music. I do not recommend the Boston Baroque recording (the one I have), the vibrato, I think is a bit to wobbly for early Baroque, and the vocal embellishments aren't as precise as they should be. I would recommend a Harmonia mundi recording, or perhaps the Gabrieli consort. They did a great period rendition of Messiah that I totally love!

On top of an exhilirating weekend, I finally turned in my term paper Monday morning. (In the end it clocked in around 17 pages. Immense relief finding out that the prof didn't mind if we went over 10.) I was thinking about writing papers and how much I've grown since undergrad days. How I have something to say now, or at least more so than then. Knowing how to research, construct an argument, support a thesis. I love writing papers!!!! (When they're done, of course)

Now I'm so tired. I don't have any huge projects to turn in. Back to normal life. I'm faced with the work for my other classes, wh. I've let slack, and a huge pile of grading I've been putting off, but I'm too tired to think about it. The end of the semester looms. I wish I could take just seminars. These stupid lecture classes take up so much time..... Tests are so stupid! Hello!!? Isn't that what generals are for???

Chris and i are really happy here in NOLA. We love our church. We love our jobs. But we're so dang busy. We're usually just happy to be together, thus don't really notice the lack of good friends. Sure, we're friends with the people in our church. But neither of us feel like we really click with anyone, though we're probably closest with our pastor's family. This weekend I made some new friends. Last night Chris went to a movie with some guys from Desire. We were thinknig a little how we miss the interaction, the companionship. He doesn't click at all with the folks at the school/ministry. (There's not much personality to click with anyway.) I'm not really complaining. We don't really have time to go out and make friends. There's not really a context to do that anyway. I guess I'm just kind of observing. Sometimes if I feel like chatting with a friend, and it's not a good time to call anyone, that is when I sometimes write in my blog. Since there really isn't anyone else to talk to. Well, better go to the library....

Well, AMS turned out to be a really great time despite the noticeable absence of my old prof and my friend Joanna. (I was a little worried that I would be able to have a good time for a while.) Matt Kickasola showed up, and he seemed to be doing really well. We had a lot of fun hanging out.

I rode over Thursday morning with a professor and two students (another musicology student and a theory student) from my department. It was an easy 4 hr ride from Baton Rouge to Houston. Thankfully, LSU paid for the hotel and food for us, wh. was a huge unexpected blessing (it's always nice to have a winning football team...it makes everyone happier). I worked again as a student volunteer, serving my time at the registration desk. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll do it again. The past couple of years it was great, because it was a ready context to meet people and to place faces with names, but now I feel like I don't want my time to hear papers and hang out with people cut into by hours at the registration desk. I'll have to think about that for next year.

This year I came to buy books. I haven't for the past couple of years, but this year I had a pretty specific idea about what I wanted to get on the conference discount, and that was the Josquin Companion, wh. I got for $40 cheaper. I also finally picked up _Tonal Structures in Early Music_ and Cristle's book on reading Ren music theory, wh. I'm really excited about, especially in the context of stuff I've been working through in my editing Ren mss class.

This semester I feel like I've arrived at a level knowledge that allows me to be functional at papers. In other words, they're not so completely over my head that I can actually follow them and engage with them in my head. Highlights included a L'homme arme paper, offering a fresh context for examining the phenomenon, looking at church militant symbols in the ritualistic aspects (like priestly vestments, etc.). Also an interesting paper in nice Meg Bent style examining the translation from mensural notation to tabulature as basically the same kind of translation process that goes on from mens notation to our modern notation. Some interesting critical thoughts about the whole editing process. There was also a cool paper about a manuscript given by a Flemish merchant family of Italian origin to the Henry VIII Tudor family (Royal XI E 11). My favorite part about those kinds of papers is the iconographical discussions. Apparently the gift of this ms collides with a reunion of the Henry and his two sisters after many years. Flowers representing them, as well other Tudor symbols were all over. In the discussion following, Mary Lewis pointed out that she actually possessed in her garden an antique rose, supposedly from the 15th c., that really bloomed with red and white petals. I think my favorite paper, though, was by Honey Meconi. She talked about this made-up vocabulary, vaguely reminiscent of Greek in alphabet, in some chants by Hildegard von Bingen. At one point, Honey stopped and sang the chant. It was beautiful, and then Honey started crying! And trying to collect herself said "I sing this all the time! It's so beautiful!" and laughingly said "I've never cried at AMS before!" Her enthusiasm for the topic, ease in presentation, and good scholarship have made her a new favorite scholar on my list of favorite scholars. I'm going to have to read more by her.

On Thursday evening we went to a fabulous performance of Monteverdi's Vespers. A Baroque orchestra complete with two massive chitarrone accompanied an amazingly precise choir. The soloists were really good, too, some with excellent early Baroque vocal embellishments...the first time I've ever heard gorgia live! I'm all inspired now to really get going on this resurrecting Collegium thing. And I got a lot of helpful advice concerning that over the weekend. Early Music America had an informative question/answer period for directors of early music ensembles. I beginning to get some ideas. Now if I could just get some money from the dean.... :-)

The highlight of the weekend for me, though, was getting to know the other FMCS students. Emily and I have emailed a couple of times both expressing our desire to get to know each other better. We connected at the beginning of the weekend and hit it off right away. Few people I meet can I say right away that they are a kindred spirit. Laughing and talking throughout the weeknd. It was exciting to have that time of connection and bonding with her and a couple of others. It was startling, too, that once I started hanging out with them how starved I felt for Christian company. It's like I was just used to not having Christian fellowship at school, so when I was around it again, I didn't realize how much I missed it. I cornered another FMCS person and chewed his ear off for a while, too. He made some interesting points that I'm eager to pursue. For instance, I panic when I think about connecting the musical score to the larger "world". He made a point, though, that reading hte theorists often make the connection. To which I thought, "OF course! Why didn't I think of that!? after all, that's what I'm doing all the time in Ren stuff!" I'm excited to back and revisit some thoughts in light of this. Anyway...I really enjoyed getting to know FMCS people that weren't Cov people. I can't wait for March, and if at all possible, I'm goign to try to hop over to Princeton when we're up there over the holidays to visit my new friends (if they're there and not on their Christmas break). I can't wait to see them again!

well, anyway, this is my AMS report. Houston isn't much to speak of. It's the deadest city I have ever been to! I hope I never have to go back there. Looking forward to next year and Seatlle.

i just want to say that it is 2.30 in the afternoon on November 12 and the heat index is 87 degrees F.

paper, test, packing, road trip, AMS=camp for scholars.

How to Write an Argument

WHAT STUDENTS AND TEACHERS REALLY NEED TO KNOW

1. Enter a conversation just as you do in real life. Begin your text by directly identifying the prior conversation or debate that you are entering. What you have to say won't make sense unless your readers know the conversation in which you are saying it.

2. Make a claim, the sooner the better, preferably flagged for the reader by a phrase like "My claim here is that ... You don't actually have to use this exact phrase, but if you couldn't do so you're in trouble.

3. Remind readers of your claim periodically, especially the more you complicate it. If you're writing about a disputed topic — and if you aren't, why write? — you'll also have to stop and tell the reader what you are not saying, what you don't want readers to take you as saying. Some of them will take you to be saying it anyway, but you don't have to make it easy for them.

4. Summarize the objections that you anticipate will be made (or that have in fact been made) against your claim. This is done by using such formulas as "Here you will probably object that. . . ," "To put the point another way...," or "But why, you may ask, am I so emphatic on this point?" Remember that your critics, even when they get mean and nasty, are your friends: you need them to help you to clarify your claim and to indicate why what you're saying is of interest to others besides yourself. Remember, too, that if naysayers didn't exist, you'd have no excuse for saying what you are saying.

5. Say explicitly why you think what you're saying is important and what difference it would make to the world if you are right or wrong. Imagine a reader over your shoulder who asks, "So what?" Or "Who cares about any of this?" Again, you don't actually have to write such questions in, but if you were to do so and couldn't answer them you're in trouble.

6. Write a meta-text into your essay that stands apart from your main text and puts it in perspective. An effective argumentative essay really consists of two texts, one in which you make your argument and a second one in which you tell readers how and how not to read it. This second text is usually signaled by reflexive phrases like "Of course I don't mean to suggest that. ..,""What I've been trying to say here, then, is that. . . ," etc. When student writing is unclear or lame, the reason often has less to do with jargon, verbal obscurity, or bad grammar than with the absence of this layer of meta-commentary, which explains why the writer thought it was necessary to write the essay in the first place.

7. Remember that readers can process only one claim at a time, so resist the temptation to try to squeeze in secondary claims that are better left for another essay or paragraph, or for another section of your essay that's clearly marked off from your main claim. If you're a professional academic, you are probably so anxious to prove that you've left no thought unconsidered that you find it hard to resist the temptation to try to say everything all at once. Remember that giving in to this temptation to say it all at once will result in saying nothing that will be understood while producing horribly overloaded paragraphs and sentences like this one, monster-sized discursive footnotes, and readers who fling your text down and reach for the TV Guide.

8. Be bilingual. It is not necessary to avoid Academicspeak — you sometimes need the stuff to say what you want to say. But whenever you do have to say something in Academicspeak, try also to say it in conversational English as well. You'll be surprised to discover that when you restate an academic point in your nonacademic voice, the point will either sound fresher or you'll see how shallow it is and remove it.

9. Don't kid yourself. If you couldn't explain it to your parents the chances are you don't understand it yourself.

From Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003, pp 275-277.