You Must've Been a Beautiful Baby...

Guess who is the proud owner of a 1895-1915 antique baby grand piano? Moi.

Cost to me? Zero (so far). Good will I burned through to move this small behemoth into my house? Probably so far to the tune of six people.

Here's the back story. A professor in our department was moving into a smaller, closer home and was giving things away left and right. One of the things that came over the listserv was a baby grand piano. Wait, what? Seriously? For free? Turns out they didn't have the room to accomodate it at their new place. Do I have the space to accomodate it? Not properly. But ask El Hijo how much that slowed me down. Answer: not a pinch. I emailed about it, and he told me one other person was interested in it, but if they backed out he'd let me know. I figured it was over. But he contacted me a few days later to ask if I still wanted it. Hell, yes! His other option was to take it to the dump.

That horrified me. I saw that on par with saving someone's life, actually. It felt like a human rights violation, or something. I know that's the "moral equivalency" logical fallacy, but I don't care. It was a travesty. Some people stop for abused animals. I stop for neglected pianos.

Now, moving it was an adventure. I brought D/B's truck, plus her conscripted labor, plus poor El Hijo. I thought the four of us would be enough. Ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Not even close. With us plus the guy who was giving it away, we managed to disassemble the legs, pedals, and top "hood" (the part that lifts up and allows you to blast the hell out of unsuspecting neighbors with your tremendous piano sound) and then scoot/shove/drag the thing (which I swear to god felt like about 800 pounds) across blankets, through the man's house, across his patio, scoot across the grass, still on blankets, and then one giant shove into her truck.

I had no clue how we were going to get it up the eight wide wooden steps into my apartment. I had visions of ending up three stooge style on the ground on top of a bunch of newly created piano firewood, drinking the many beers I'd brought as payment for my conscripted labor.

But once we got to my apartment, all the neighbors were out dawdling around, because it was such a nice, sunny day. It's part of human nature when someone comes up and points at you specfically and asks YOU for help to say yes. It's actually a proven fact that when someone yells "Somebody help!" most people won't respond, because they all think there is a better person than them for the job; but when you point your finger and say, "YOU help", people fall in line. And that's basically what I did, with the promise of beers. So, with more men pressed into service, we brought the piano up my steps and into my "library", such as it is, in about 15 minutes. For some context, it took us about an hour to scoot it across the original owner's floor and into the truck. I had to zoom away to take Dante to his flag football game, and when I returned, there it was, sitting upright, everything in place, looking WAY too big for the room, but by god, it was mine. I've felt it up too many times to count in the past few days. I even laid under it, just staring at the bottom of the sound board.

This is how I fall into things sometimes. Silly little dreams of mine come true in the most bizarre ways. I've wanted a baby grand for, well, forever. I know how much they cost. I pretty much knew I was stuck with a Casio keyboard. Who knew some professor would be maniacal enough to give away a third generation baby grand piano? I know I certainly would've bought a house that fit the piano, instead of the other way around, but I'm sure some people would consider that crazy, as well ...

"Free," of course, is never really free. The piano is pretty well out of tune, because there is something internal that keeps making it fall out of tune. The old owner seemed to think it was because of the soundboard, but one of my conscripted laborers, who has a fascination with pianos, said it was probably the pinblock, because the soundboard looked great. It's hard to say until I get a professional in there (which may turn out to be the conscripted laborer, who seems to have developed an unholy fascination with the piano that just moved in across from his house). Humidity can cause the soundboard (and the pinblock and the bridge) to swell and then to constrict, so it might *look* fine, but that's not to say it *is* fine. Who knows. The piano is not really playable right now, though, because it's incredibly out of tune. So that's the first step. A full restoration will probably run about $3000, but that includes finishing, staining, installing a dehumidifier, all that fancy-pants crap. Making it playable will cost a lot less.

But it's a baby grand piano. How can you possibly say no?

I've loved pianos since I was a little girl. Even though I've played music since I was four, the piano was the first instrument I ever had formal lessons on. My grandmother gave us the piano that had belonged to her mother-in-law who gave lessons to neighborhood kids (making it a 4th generation piano) for me to play and practice on -- of course, my mother has it now and plans on keeping it. It was the only instrument I can truly say I played for my own personal enjoyment, and not for the sake of someone else or for performance. People who know me well know how much I hate performances, which makes it ironic that I was in a band for ten years. I only played the piano for my pleasure. It was like reading a really good book.

I played everything I could get my hands on -- ragtime, classical stuff, sheet music from the '70s my mother kept laying around. I bought my own sheet music -- the only thing I've ever bought for myself music wise except for my guitar. I can play the theme music to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in glorious detail. I worked furiously on things that Bach wrote. Grieg mystifies me, but I'm intent on playing it one day. I've never had a vision of being a concert pianist or even playing for visitors for entertainment. It's the only "selfish" instrument I've ever had. It reminds me of why I loved music, even though I hated performance. Playing the piano is what I did when it rained all day in the summer way out in the mountains where I grew up. It was one of the few pieces of "culture" my parents let me have growing up as a JW, even if Mom did make me learn a few "Kingdom Melodies" -- JW hymns, for lack of better explanation -- to play (for the record, I think they suck).

And so, as pianos go, my dream was to one day own a baby grand, and bang out the theme to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly in glorious, ringing sound; or to play Phil Collins' Groovy Kind of Love with much pathos and melancholy. Or to trot out Mozart's Turkish March like little soldiers clicking over the keys. That would all have to happen after I'd afforded an apartment of our own, of course, and probably Dante's college education. In the meantime, I figured I'd be stuck with a Casio.

But every now and then, you're in the right place at the right time, and you get ... this:

And yes, that's my grey cat Jane laying on top of it already. Click on the picture to see a close up of how utterly adorable she is as well as the original honest-to-god ivory keys of this awesome piano. I can't put the hood up yet, because, erm, I haven't exactly found those screws yet... but once I do, I'll totally post another picture with the hood up!

-- DV

On the Nightstand

For unexplainable reasons, I feel the need to keep track in some public way of what books I'm reading. Sometimes during the year I don't really have a chance to read much on my own at all. I'm just too busy keeping up with college essays. I barely have time to read magazines. Other times, I'll catch a break and I'll want to read something. I find myself moving away from literature and philosophy, that sort of thing, and more towards social science, biography and the random piece of pulp. I think I'm still recovering from graduate school (and have feverish moments where I contemplate going back for a PhD), and I don't really want to read more scholarly articles or academic books, unless they're not so cut and dried. Here are three I've just finished recently and am passing on recommendations for.

The first one is called I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams. Sister loaned me this book, and it's absolutely hilarious. It's the kind of book that makes me think I ought to write something about life after JWs, just to have the complete set going on for people to get into. I think it would be rather amusing to talk about figuring out how Xmas works, running into people years after you've been kicked out, etc. I might try my hand at it, who knows? Kyria Abrahams has a way of showing you just how incredibly bad her life was while at the same time interlacing it with such humor and sarcasm it's easy to forget that she basically dropped out of high school, got married at 17 to a man who didn't really care about her, cut herself, was an alcoholic, got kicked out at around 19 or 20 and engaged in all kinds of risky behavior that could have gotten her killed. You really just don't notice it, because the whole story is laced with JW lore and religious urban legends. It's a great book. Normally I don't like ex-JW stories; I find them too sobby. Yes it sucked, please move on and do something with your life. For the ex-JWs who read this blog, I don't mean that to be harsh or unkind. I just don't find it to be a very productive way to cope, I suppose. But you all would love this book.

Turn Coat byJim Butcher is book 12 in the Dresden Files series, about a guy who lives in Chicago who is a wizard. A former student of mine loaned me this book. They're like crack. Some critic describes this series as "Phillip Marlowe meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and really, that's absolutely perfect. But where Buffy really hit people in their teens and early twenties, Dresden seems geared more towards people in their late twenties and their thirties. I don't know that I've ever thought much about the age demographic certain books are aimed at, but that seems to me to be the case about the Dresden files. He's grown up, and he has grown up issues. Again, crack.

Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell's third book, and I guess it falls under the category of "social science." It's a lot like Freakonomics, if you've ever read that book, which if you haven't, you really should, because it's very good. Gladwell looks at what we think of as "geniuses" and determines whether that is really so, and his conclusion is that there are certain things that make people successful that we would never think of looking for but that can be proven without a doubt statistically. It's fascinating. He proves, for example, that in terms of successful intelligence, it isn't so much that you need a high IQ -- just a high enough IQ; high enough, basically, to get into college. Intelligence has a threshold, and once you've crossed it, it doesn't matter so much if someone has significantly more points than you do. What makes up the difference after that is the ability to be creative and the ability to get along with other people. It's really fascinating. He argues very, very convincingly that what would close the achievement gap is not more money nor more equipment -- but less summer vacation. He proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason most Canadian hockey players turn out to be great is not because they have more talent ... but because they were born between January 1st and March. If you want to know why, you'll need to read the book. It's really worth it.


What's still on the nightstand? Michael Berube's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politicas and 'Bias' in Higher Education; Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader (a collection of his writings with a forward by Howard Zinn); Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (a collection of essays); and Salman Rushdie's The Jaguar Smile about his time in Nicaragua -- a small but good book so far.

What about you?

-- DV

So Many Updates, So Little Blogging Time

So, there is so much I want to post about, and I have no time to do it! Look for the following in the coming weeks.

The Derby is coming up this weekend, so I'll be out of town starting Thursday (back on Sunday). I have a new, fabulous hat (pics, I promise), but it's supposed to rain all day there. So, I'll be in a fabulous hat and a poncho, I suppose.

I have lots of San Francisco pics to post; I have news about my students I want to brag about.

I want to explain why I'm not on Facebook.

I want to freak out about teaching ... high school kids ... this summer for six weeks. What the hell was I thinking? No, not seniors. Freshmen. Sophomores. Juniors. Oh my.

Ah, and lest I forget to mention it, over the weekend I got an antique baby grand piano circa 1915, although it could be as old as 1895. For free. It's heavy as hell, and it doesn't really fit in my house, and it needs some restoration. But by God, it's there now.

As for now, I have some last minute Derby galoshes to pick up, last day of class with my experiemental students (so sad!), and a metric ton of portfolios to grade when I get back. So, updates probably will be sparse.

Just know I'm having a fabulous time! :D

-- Dante's Virgil

Moving On

I've been a bit busy for updates, as I've been sitting on a committee to discover the new "me." Because of the kind of work I did this past semester, the Provost approved another "me" position; we've been searching for the right person and interviews were concluded yesterday. Unless something goes horribly awry, I think I have a new co-worker -- and I'm excited to start working with him. The experience of sitting on a hiring committee has been invaluable to me, because it gives you the insider's perspective of what a hiring committee is really looking for, what little things in your portfolio they evaluate; in short, you get The Low Down.

Hiring somebody was a little harder than I thought it would be. We went through all the applications separately and made our top tier list. Then we had to agree on who would make the final cut. That wasn't easy at all. I lost my top two prospects, but I also successfully kept a couple of very not good teachers out of the interview process. It's a war of attrition. But in the end, I'm satisfied with how the top three turned out. The interviews themselves were ... interesting. One candidate was absolutely wonderful, and one bombed completely; the other was a bit dicier, and it was more of a judgment call, but I think we made the right decision.

Apparently last year, when I was hired, there was some backlash from the people who interviewed but didn't get it -- complaining about seniority and that sort of thing all over the place. Either it wasn't too bad or I was oblivious, because I didn't hear anything about it. We had to talk about strategies to handle such a possibility again. Naive little me had never reckoned that would be an issue, so that has my feathers a little ruffled, considering the announcement will probably be made at the end of this week if all goes well.

Boy I have some good stories to tell about it, too, but I don't want to risk publishing them here! Gah. But the good news is, I think I have somebody I can work with and who would do a really good job. And I like him. He has all the requirements this job needs -- except he doesn't appear to be a hellraiser. But I can teach him that. It's what I do for a living anyway.

-- DV

Twitterific

I'm now a Twitter-er.

You can find me via my normal internet handle: Dante's Virgil.

I already have two followers, and they're students. Gack.

This could've been a poor choice....


-- DV

A Twitter to Contemplate

So, if I were on Twitter, this is what I would say.

What is DV doing?

DV is:  harassing strippers in T-minus-20 minutes....

Let's hope they're better than the last botched encounter I had with strippers.

-- DV

Mommy Is So Proud!

So, yeah, homework around our house is a hostile event. It's terrorist threat level red. We do on average 1 1/2 hours of extra drill plus whatever homework happens to be required at the moment every night except for Saturday. We practice spelling, because Dante seems to be slightly dyslexic. We drill in math. We read comprehension sheets. I have fully resigned myself that this will be what I must do for six days out of every week for middle school and for high school as well until Dante graduates. I'm prepared for it mentally. Sometimes it feels like something of a siege mentality; but Dante plain old doesn't like school. It's not school's fault. He'd just rather be rolling in the grass. Many times it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, to forget that there is more to being a good parent than helping your kid understand fraction simplification.

Dante reminded me that everything will be just fine last night.

He was looking through the Scholastic book order sheets he brought home. He stopped on one title called "America's Dumbest Criminals." He put the paper down, looked at me, and said in a very offended tone:

"You know what? Isn't it bad enough that they have to, you know, go to JAIL for doing something bad? Do they have to be embarrassed by making a book about it for everybody to read? That's just wrong."

He then gave a very disgusted snort and tossed the paper across the room. Human dignity recognized as an essential human right. Check. Demonstration of righteous indignation. Check.

I don't know if that's good parenting, a genetic predisposition toward flag waving and brick throwing, or just his personality.

But I'm so goddamn proud right now I can't stand myself.

-- DV

Twitterpated

So...a couple of my keener students want me to start "Twittering." If I hadn't known already what Twitter was, I would've been highly confused and/or offended at the suggestion. At this point, I'm on the fence. Input on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

I went to check Twitter out, and turns out it's essentially microblogging.

This is how it works, according to Twitter:

With Twitter, you can stay hyper–connected to your friends and
always know what they’re doing. Or, you can stop following them any time. You can even set quiet times on Twitter so you’re not interrupted. Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.

Twitter answers the basic question: What are you doing? I'm not sure that's a very important question to answer on a daily basis. I'm not sure I want to be hyper connected to anyone, nor do I think I want them knowing what I'm doing constantly. I do not believe this is the "modern antidote" to information overload. On the contrary, I believe it is the latest addition to info overload--why would anyone care what I was doing in the next five minutes? How can this possibly be information worth knowing?

On the other hand...
........ I love blogging.

My updates may not reflect it, but I think about blogging all the time. But as you may have noticed, I'm not exactly good at short blogs. Anything journal-oriented usually turns into a long diatribe. Twitter is about pithy-ness. I'm not sure I can do pithy. But I like the concept of the microblog.

I love blogging because I love writing. I love teaching writing, I love figuring out the formula for a particular genre, I love reading other people's writing. I love watching writing develop. I'm probably one of the few people who loves student conferences. And I love my own writing. I like scholarly writing (when it's about stuff I'm interested in); I especially love my own creative writing. I am so looking forward to getting into May and getting back to my creative pieces and sending them out again. And as it turns out, there's two particular fiction genres that I love the most out of all writing.

It's called flash fiction and short short fiction.

Flash fiction or "short shorts" are extremely short stories. Flash is usually 1000 words or less. Short shorts (which sound like a clothing item from 1995) are between 1000 and 2500 words. What is recognized as a "short story" usually starts at 2500 words and goes up from there. I am most comfortable with short shorts and flash (a combination that sounds like doing something lewd in public in 1995). I wrote short shorts and flash before I knew they were credible genres. It's what I do best, and it's what I love to read. The point is to engage the imagination and to create impact--sort of like the way a pebble ripples a still pond. A good flash story makes the reader do the work--the reader creates scenes and imaginings that aren't textually there. Here's a good example from Papa Hemingway, and currently the shortest flash story I know of:

For Sale: Baby shoes; never worn

Very Twitter worthy. All the imaginings of how this happened or why are up to the reader. It's heavy with possible meaning. It's probably the JW in me, but we were also raised to see heavy meaning in the "flash fiction" of a Bible verse. Gad, you just can't ever get away from it.

So maybe I will, and maybe I won't Twitter. I don't know yet.

Maybe I'll consider it "flash blogging."

-- DV

WV Shockingly Does the Right Thing

OK, I had a righteous rant all prepared for my WV state legislature, but the threat of it in my previous posts clearly made the state officials do the right thing. My rant was going to be about how WV had a bill making its way through the legislature to encode discrimination for marriage into the state constitution, a la California's Prop 8. Here's a link to the story about the bill: bill goes down in blaze of glory

The Senate approved a bill earlier on March 14 that protected gays in WV from discrimination in job hiring/firing--massive progress for this state; the House (I believe) still has to vote on it, but I don't see how it wouldn't pass. Now the House has stopped the discrimination for marriage bill cold. We're also probably not done quite yet. The Family Policy Council (har) has tried to "name and shame" some of the people who prominently spoke out against the bill--a bullying tactic that should be seen for what it is: intimidation by Christian fanatics. This bill was eventually to go before the voters, if it were approved by the House, but it was stalled in committee; this pissed off Republicans, who moved to take it out of committee to a full House vote, where they got thumped 67-30. Democratic legislators have questioned the motives behind the amendment, which I think is an important starting point.

This is progress of a sort. We do have a law that requires marriage certificates in WV to say "marriage is designed to be a loving and lifelong union between a woman and a man." Snort. But I don't see any evangelicals persecuting people who choose to divorce. This bill was brought forward by evangelicals, and that in itself pisses me off. They are the loudest group bitching about having other beliefs "forced" on them; but they're the first group to try to have discrimination that favors them coded into the law. The Family Policy Council of WV reportedly called the revision committee chairwoman and the head of the House Judiciary Committee with abusive phone calls (how very Christ-like of them). That we continue to allow them to intimidate others in our society is beyond my ability to comprehend.

The Republican minority leader, Tim Armstead believes, "This is an urgent issue. It's an issue that needs to be addressed." WHY? Why must we rush to approve discrimination for marriage? Because that's exactly what you're doing when you support a ban on gay marriage--coding discrimination into your state laws. People have yet to demonstrate a logical reason to keep gay people from enjoying the same legal protections and tax breaks that hetero people enjoy. The concept that this will somehow damage hetero marriage defies logic--stupid and selfish hetero people damage hetero marriages. Gays have nothing to do with it. The rhetoric about "imposing" gay marriage also makes me laugh. Because it implies that now, by law, you MUST go and get Gay Married right away. So hurry up, readers, and go get your gay spouse. After all, it's now The Law.

We need to continue to question the motives behind these moves. Because what is at stake is maintaining cultural dominance. It is absurd to believe that gays getting married somehow cheapens, or worse, destroys your own marriage. What you are asking for when you ask for discrimination is to be the dominant one instead of equals. You are asking for special privileges over other groups of people, and you believe that you are entitled to these privileges because of your religious choice. Rights for all people is supposedly something this nation in particular strives hard for (even though that idea was given the lie from the very start). Here's to hoping the WV legislature continues to do the right thing.

-- DV, heading out to get "gay married" because It's The Law.