I’ve been immensely busy with school lately.  It hasn’t been so bad to the point that I haven’t seen the light of day, but the last three weeks have been pretty intense.  I don’t want this blog to be a place to complain (and even if I did, this isn’t a complaint), but I did have a lot of school work. First I had a week of papers being due.  One was about the history of miniature golf, a project I had been slowly collecting information on all semester.  Overall it wasn’t that large, but by the time it came down to it my enthusiasm was no where to be found, especially since I had other smaller papers to write at the same time.  The next week I had four finals, three on Monday and Tuesday.  Then on Saturday night we were supposed to present our completed papers at my professor’s house.  This was a semester long research project that had become very consuming for me, mostly because I ended up picking a topic that I was interested in and spent a lot of time digging into.  I wrote about Henry Houston, a free mixed-race barber in pre-Civil War Jacksonville.  I was excited about it, too, because no one had looked into him before and it was clear that he deserved some attention.  The paper ended up being due on Monday at noon, and I had to pull an all-nighter to get it done.  I was exhausted.  Everyone else was done with school and I looked forward to the prospect of gathering up a little sleep before plunging into a large paper about Jan van Eyck’s Jael and Sisera sketch.  I finally got it done Friday late afternoon, after working for several days straight and almost pulling another all-nighter; I got two hours of sleep Thursday night.   In the end though, it turns out I’m done for the semester!  I’m happy about that because of all the hard work that I’ve done, but also because I feel like I’ve accomplished some real work this semester of substance.  I feel like I made a lot of progress into the Jael research, and I also feel like the work done on Henry Houston was important.  I had a lot of “you should make this your thesis” sort of encouragement, which was pleasant.  I did get a C in one class.  I just didn’t have time to focus on it.  But otherwise I made three As and a B.  Had I turned in one assignment I would have made a B or A in the C class, and had my miniature golf paper not been late, I would have made an A in the B class.  Though those are just excuses really, I feel okay about it, because in the end I know I still learned the information and earned the grades that I did because I was focusing on some other work.  The most important thing I did this semester though was learn how to research more effectively, how to write a lot better, and create work that I can be proud of.  Usually for me a semester is just a series of grades on a sheet, but I feel like I have two papers I can show my husband and  parents and grandfather  and really feel good about.  :)  And who doesn’t want to smile about that?  Even better, my professor that I did the Henry Houston (local history) research with wants me to do more research with him and my friend Carmen over the holidays.  For the first time, I’m getting paid to do research!  I think that in itself is one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten.  :)  Plus I think what we’ll be researching will be useful to people in the future so that’s really a nice feeling.  Aside from that, my house is a wreck and yet I’ve decided to have a party on Christmas night for my friends.  I haven’t had hardly a moment to breathe so today was the first chance I really had to get started on it.  I got the beginnings of my presents for Ed and my parents (its a secret… shhh), and I also enjoyed a rare burst of consumerism with mom today.  We went out and bought a desperately-needed rug for my living room.  The floor is terrible looking with tiles missing here and there and I thought it would do well to cover the holes up.  I thought it would be good timing for the party.  I also bought a new shower curtain and a new toilet seat.  And, for the first time, Febreeze.  It sounds lame but I grew up in a very clean house where we wouldn’t have needed something to “freshen” like that, and Ed and I are usually so poor I’ve never felt comfortable splurging on something that didn’t accomplish anything other than smelling pretty.  But today I did, and after putting down the new big rug tonight and rolling around on it with the cats,  I sprayed all our chairs and just smelled and smelled and smelled them.  I think I’m going to go smell them some more. Tomorrow I’ll probably go to church, and then its a day of intensive cleaning.  Though I’m going to be busy between now and Christmas, I’m glad that I’m done with school for a few days and that what I’m busy with now is focusing on being with my friends.  :D   

Well I don’t mean to brag at all, but I’m rather pleased with myself. In order to counterbalance the previous Halloween post about rarely doing the creative things that I’d like to do, I decided to make this post to announce my first ever “song.” Basically I sampled quite a lot from a song called Alone in Kyoto, taken from the Lost in Translation soundtrack, and then just mixed around and edited a clip (plus my own voice for one line) from Rose’s answering machine. For those of you who know who Rose is, great. Otherwise I don’t really feel like explaining, but you’ll either enjoy the little ditty I made or you won’t. It can be found under by clicking Is This Rose at Jacco and I’s band page on myspace, The Next Hours.

One of the projects that I’m busy with right now is the article my professor Scott Brown and I are writing. I often refer to it but I know most of you don’t know exactly what I’m referring to. I don’t want to give too much away on the dangerous world of the internet of course, considering the thing is in the process of being researched and written, but I thought I might take the time to give a general idea of the players involved.

The main character is Jael. Her story can be found here on wikipedia and in the Book of Judges, chapters 4 and 5. More specifically our article is concerned with the iconography. It turns out that very few people have taken a look at this before, and even those who have only noted it in passing or made generalized studies. One of our main focuses is a sketch of a work by Jan van Eyck. That in itself is something I’m very excited about.

The study will also focus on other Biblical murderess heroines and their artistic representations, though likely only as general references and not for a detailed study like we will do for Jael. Come to think of it, the only one we’re really discussing is Judith. We’ll also discuss Tomyris, but she is non-biblical.

Here is a nice picture of our friend Tomyris from a Speculum Humanae Salvationis.

And another image, with Jael killing Sisera on the left and Tomyris with Cyrus on the right from another Speculum Humanae Salvationis.

There’s a lot more “to it” than that, but really that’s essentially it. There’s a great picture I found the other day about “the true woman” but I don’t want to have to go find it right now. I suppose I’ll post it some other time. It and some other images are going to be useful in demonstrating how the people of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance viewed women in many different ways. They loved these specific women because they were heroes of the Bible or historic times, but they also feared them because they were powerful killers.

Anyway, I’m having a good time with it.

Today is Halloween and I spent about a month hoping to get a group of friends together for costumes and good conversation only to once again let myself down. In a way its the thought that counts, or at least I tell myself that while I think about how I’m a little too old for dressing up. But then I think if I lived in England I’d have fancy dress parties all the time, and really my social planning skills just don’t cut it. To be honest its not just about time with friends. Holidays are supposed to be about noble things like that: family, friends, time spent together. But for me Halloween is about finding bits of scrap cloth to put together a fun elaborate something. Not participating is really disappointing because I don’t do those creative things that I’d like to, and I don’t feel like I indulge myself enough. At the very least, a negative thing I realize about myself is a small step towards changing it, maybe.