In Which I Face a Tough Crowd

On Saturday morning I got up early, put a huge box of handouts and goodies into the car, and dragged Ryan out to Area High School so that I could teach a single-reed marching band clinic. We got there in time to watch an hours’ worth of field performances in the Unbelievable Horrible Brain-Piercing Cold, and then it was my turn.

Okay, so a roomful of fifty cold, hungry high school saxophone and clarinet players isn’t the best possible audience. For anything.

Sigh.

It was a lot of fun, though, it really was. I got to try out a few classroom management techniques that I hadn’t tried (one actually worked!) and the kids who were plugged into what I was saying made up for the ones who showed blatant disdain.

 

The clarinets were a real challenge – mostly because I’ve never played clarinet a day in my life, and had no real idea what to advise these kids about reeds or mouthpieces or anything else. I did have an answer for “should I march my wood clarinet or my plastic one?” and I was able to demonstrate perfectly appalling clarinet posture – largely because they’d demonstrated it for me a few minutes before, out on the field.

Fortunately, about a third of the kids were from my old high school, and I won them early on by evoking that whole “rah-rah, alma mater” thing at the beginning.

Unfortunately, I’d been told that these schools were “pro-Boise State,” and so brought some band logowear for prizes, and wore one of my staff shirts. As it turns out, there was a lot of anti-Boise State sentiment in that room, and at least one kid left his or her very nice BT hat lying on the ground when the clinic was over. They did seem to like the BT CDs, though.

I’m complaining, because I felt like it didn’t go quite as well as I would have liked, but I know I’m being a bit hard on myself. There’s only so much you can do with a totally “off” class, particularly when you have no authority.

Ryan and I were talking afterward, though, and we’ve got a great idea for next year! I hope that we get to try it.

Regardless of whether it went off without a hitch, it was a great experience – and hey, you can always use an extra fifty bucks.

In Which I Update! Eek!

Wow, I can’t believe that I haven’t posted on this blog for twenty days. I guess that’s just a sign of how crazy busy my life has seemed to be in the past few weeks. It’s hard leaving, starting, and getting used to jobs. Band camp is hard, too. So, as it turns out, is “intern teaching” – whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The worst thing is, I have very little to say…

I have the most awful blisters. Yesterday I tried to wear some cute new shoes to school – little orange leather slide-mules. Unfortunately, they made my feet sweat like nobody’s business, and I quickly found I couldn’t walk without stopping every few hundred yards to mop out the inside of the shoes with a paper towel. (Ew.) I guess that probably loosened up my skin just in time for me to put on heels for pregame; half an hour later, I was hurting pretty bad, and knew that blisters were starting. I wasn’t sure what to do, because I knew the orange shoes wouldn’t do much good, either. That’s about the point when I discovered Meredith’s flipflops under my desk and decided that they’d be an improvement. They were, too – all except for the tighter-than-anticipated toe strap, which rubbed oozing bleeding blisters between my toes. By the time I got home, I had silver-dollar-sized, teardrop-shaped blisters on the balls of each foot, and open sores between the big and second toes of each foot to boot. Today, I’m limping around in my plush slippers that – fortunately – actually look like normal shoes at first glance. I’m supposed to go camping tomorrow, and I’m really not sure what I’m going to be able to do other than sit in a camp  and whine. I definitely have to get some better shoes – there’s just no getting around it. No more Payless shoes for me.

You’d think I would have already learned that.

Yesterday was our season opener against Weber State. I’m afraid we beat them pretty badly, and broke one of their players in the process. Well, broke his leg, anyway, which isn’t as bad as it could have been. Unfortunately, the broken-legged football player was apparently scheduled to get married today, so that’s got to really suck. The band looked really good – and really big. Hooray, big band!

Owwww.

I’m not getting any reading, writing, crafting, cleaning, or anything else done.
Bleh.

That’s all for now. Got to go back to work. Smooches!

In Which I Stop and Look Around

Well, today is Tuesday, and Friday is my last day at MotivePower.

Earlier today I got tired of typing out procedures, so I decided to take down photos and posters from my cubicle walls. That, as it turns out, was a mistake. Now I’m sitting here in a depressing gray box, and it makes me feel sad and unwanted – even though I did it to myself. I’m tempted to print out a bunch of pictures of the workplace and put them up, if only to break up the grayness.

On Monday I go back to the band to serve as one of its graduate assistants for one last season. I’m happy and excited, even though I know it won’t be all rainbows and lollipops. (Rainbows and lollipops?! What the heck is that supposed to mean?) I really loved working for the band, and it will be fun to have one more season – particularly when it’s going to be as awesome a season as this one is shaping up to be. The band is going to be enormous, the team is going to kick butt, and – yeah. I’m excited.

(Also excited because my laptop ought to arrive sometime that week! Hurray!)

The following Monday is band camp, and I’m sure that will be an exhausting five days. They’re extending into the evenings two nights – looong days.

And the Monday after that, school starts. I’ll be working at the band office 20 hours a week, observing/student teaching at Capital High School, and taking nine graduate credits: English Teaching: Writing, Literature, and Language (T/Th 4:40-5:55); Teaching Secondary Students with Exceptional Needs (Th 6-9, yikes – Thursdays are going to be rough); and Content Literacy in Secondary School (Mon 6-9). Ryan will be in the Exceptional Needs class with me, which should be a lot of fun, I think.

Come January, I’ll be a full-fledged student teacher, and come May, I’ll be a certified teacher….

Well, I think I’m going to go home now. I’ve got some laundry to hang up (oooh, my aching wrists) and, hopefully, some pointless reading to do.

In Which I Post More Mural Photos

Middle of day 3.

 

In Which We Paint a Mural

Meredith has drawn an amazing mural and is painting it on three walls on the third floor of the Morrison Center (in the music department half, not the performance hall half). Mom and members/alumni of Iota Kappa are helping her paint the mural.

I wish I could have gone by on the first day so that we could have a “daily progress” sort of photoblog, but you’ll just have to use your imagination. Apparently at the end of Day 1, the walls had been painted peach, and the dark arches had been painted. Here are pictures from the end of Day 2: 

       

In Which This is Not a Good Post, But is an Update Nonetheless

Man, am I tired.

Lots of things soaking up my mental energy, none of which are the least bit interesting. I’m planning a company picnic for about 1,500 adults and 400 kids. That’s this Saturday. Maybe that’s a good excuse for exhaustion, but honestly, it’s one of the least of my brain-drains…

I sat down on the couch for a few minutes last night to nurse an icky stomach, turned the wrong way, and pulled a muscle in the left side of my back. That laid me up for the rest of the night, and I’m still having trouble moving around. Very unpleasant.

I’ve been spending most of my creative energy reading (like it’s goin’ outta STYLE, baby) and reviewing. I’ve got a couple of books I’ve been wanting to make, but just haven’t had time to dig into crafting. R and I are doing some heavy-duty housecleaning and whatnot lately, which obviously takes up a lot of time.

Looks like I’m getting my A’s for both summer courses! Hooray!

Oh, and if I haven’t already mentioned it on this blog… I got my placement to student teach. Whoo! It’s not a junior high, which kind of weirds me out, but I’m still excited.

Well, I’m too tired to think about complete sentences anymore, so I’m going to stop boring all two of my readers with this rambly bad post and go… uh… wish I could take a nap, I guess.

Donkey Man, Post the Third

I finished writing my explication which, in this case, is half “how I did it” and half “what I think it says.” It’s about four pages long single-spaced and only interesting to people who interested in such things, so I won’t bother posting it here. If you’re interested lemme know and, through the mystical power of email, I will teleport mine explication into your eager hands.

Anyway, I’m just about to leave work to go show Anderson’s Grimoire to My Sister the Artist, and then it’s to class where we’ll have one big happy party of finding out how other people tackled the project and what they think of my approach. Needless to say, I’m very excited. I love seeing other peoples’ bookworks, and I love talking to people about mine.

[snip in time (saves nine?)]

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the other Donkey Man books!

It’s hard, I’ve found, to adequately write about artists’ books. They tend to be exceptionally tactile, so photographs rarely do them justice. Many of them are complete organisms, and if you look at only a page or two you’ll completely miss the point and impact of the message. Some make great sounds when you turn the pages. How am I supposed to share that with you online?

Eh. Pass the cheese, this wine needs a little something.

Going in alphabetical order, and skipping my own book, I present you with the ENGL 509 Donkey Man Book Exhibit of Extremely Photogenic Artists’ Books!

I Remember by Brooke Burton

I Remember is presented in a flocked satin folio wrapped in a lush satin cord. It takes some (calculated) effort to open it.

The book within is composed of a single altered photograph, replicated, and hand-cut…

…to create a tunnel which gradually eliminates the man and zooms in on the donkey.

The text is spare, showing – in increasingly agitated script – the narrator’s damaged relationship with her father. I liked this book in that it could be read in at least three words: at face value as a nice remembrance of a parent, at a deeper level as a stifled condemnation of the father as an ass, or through a Freudian-sexual lens tying in the text, imagery, odd appendages cut into the “frame” cover, and the slightly erotic nature of the outer cords. Also, this book offered up the opportunity for a full ten minutes of naughty innuendo, some of which went unnoticed, which amused this blogger disproportionately.

Photographs by Kim Labrum

Photographs is made from a like-new antique photo album, distressed and altered to replicate the subject’s actual photo albums.

The book includes prints of Anderson’s photos, including some of the ones that he doctored – with some skill, but plainly obvious (and funny) to contemporary eyes – as well as a number that Kim doctored herself in the style of Anderson.

The photos and pages are distressed within an inch of their life, and any abuse they may suffer at readers’ hands only adds to the effect. The large picture to the right in the above image is one where Kim, following Anderson’s tendencies, pasted an out-of-context American Indian into a photograph. This provides a lot of good opportunity for inside jokes.

The only source of text in Photographs is a letter to the author from a relative who has “found” one of Anderson’s lost albums and sent it along as a curio. The book is a fun hide-and-seek game of catching the doctored images (and discerning Kim’s work from Anderson’s, if you’re familiar with the latter) and a fine little commentary on Anderon’s artistic dishonesty. The idea of putting this falsified album in with Anderon’s actual things, and seeing if future book arts classes catch on, is very tempting.

Tergiversate by Sarah Lenz

“Tergiversate” means to turn ones back, as if to run away or flee.

This is a form called a flag book, which is – as I discovered – very fun to play with. It was almost like a slinky in book form.

One side of each flag has a portion of a photograph, while the other tells the parallel stories of Anderson’s first wife and oldest son leaving him.

On the reverse side of the accordian fold is Anderson, who – as an abusive personality – is pivotal to the upheaval in his family members’ lives. This book is not only great in that it draws parallels between two distant events in Anderson’s life but in the fact that it pulls together the verbal and the aesthetic so well. Sarah puts fledgling Photoshop skills to good use and has what looks to me like flawless technical execution as well. Pretty darn good for her first book!

Behind Anderson’s Camera by Earl Swopes

Behind Anderson’s Camera is presented in a wooden box covered with actual camera leather. The pull tab releases a fold-out section.

The book is almost like a museum exhibit. One panel includes a short biography of J.F. Anderson, and another talks about the kind of camera Anderson used. A third panel talks about the process of taking photographs using this kind of camera. The fourth text block is the colophon.

When the panels are folded back together, they form a replica of the camera, using photographs of the actual camera Anderson used. Apparently it was quite the ordeal to get the pictures just right, but the end result is fascinating.

Completing the interactive aspect of the book, the rear panel opens to illustrate how the pictures were developed. Photographs are included in a vellum “glass” case so that the reader can experience the sensation of pulling the photograph out of the camera, just as Anderson would have done. This is a beautiful work, and the expense Earl went to in creating it definitely shows and pays off. Very informative and engaging.

We’re waiting on one last book, and it will be interesting to see how the sixth member of our motley crew tackles this subject. I think it’s so interesting to see how people with different backgrounds can take the same story and the same photographs and come up with such completely different end results. It’s total creative playtime for growed-ups.

Regarding my own book, I think it went over well. I am continually surprised at my own inability to vocally explain my own work – I always just draw a blank, even after spending the past several hours thinking and writing about it. Hope I didn’t look like a total dope. If you’ve ever been unfortuante enough to be a person who is reading one of my stories you’ll know that I crave the experience of hearing other people analyse and critique my work, so I was a tiny bit disappointed to not get more of that in classroom discussion. (Not that I’d ever get enough of it to really be satisfied. I’m a total egotist in that way, I guess.) I did get some good tips for aging the paper if I want to try it, though.

::shrug:: I hope they liked it. I like it.

Well, anyway, there you are! Aren’t they fantastic? What do you think?

Donkey Man

Howard Anderson only told his story once.

There are six of us in the graduate-level Defense Against the Book Arts class, and we are all doing a “Donkey Man” book for this Wednesday. To make a long story shorter, the Donkey Man was an itinerant photographer in northern Idaho at the turn of the century (the last century, not this one) whose donkeys helped him get business because kids wanted their pictures with the animals. We were each given a short bio of the man, written by his son (and by “bio” I really mean a ramble of almost connected information punctuated with some tantalizing details) and a selection of his photographs. We could then do ANYTHING with that, as long as we could tie it back to the source material. We could use the source material or not, could limit ourselves to what we knew, could take wild flights of fancy inspired by the stuff. Anything. Subject, format, all up to us.

Bookmaking is a very organic process for me, so I didn’t try to force the story. (Bookworks, or artists’ books, are kind of the place where art and literature collide. With my English background, I tend to focus more on the story aspect rather than the art aspect, so the story usually comes first.) I spent some time shuffling through the Donkey Man’s photographs, letting them soak into my consciousness.

Some of them stuck in my mind’s eye, chief amongst them the wide-angle shot of the empty living room. The distortion of the lens gave the picture a creepy quality that seemed to rub off on all of the other images. A story began to brew in my mind, a story of evil and magic, of poor impulse control and short temper. It was a dark story, one that painted the Donkey Man – who was probably a very nice man – in an entirely different light.

Once the story had germinated, the physical structure came close behind. I wanted to create a book as auratic object – something that held, or seemed to hold, a mystical or symbolic power. I mentally engineered a book with velvet and satin covers, wildly bound with a crazy mane of fibers and beads – pages of thick paper – that old book smell – typewritten!

It took me six hours straight to write the 1,200-word story. I wrote three different drafts, each time fighting the impulse to write too much - more book than bookwork. I wanted it to be even more spare than it turned out, but this was as tight as I could get it. I pulled inspiration for the voice of the story from old memoirs from Ryan’s ancestors, books I’d read as a child about the Oregon Trail, and – perhaps moreso than anything else – the physical sensation of composing via typewriter. Sure, my machine is probably from the 1970s, but forcing myself to slow down as I typed had an effect.

Now I have two text blocks, four covered book boards, and the makings of two complete books. I’m anxious to bind tonight – “anxious” being used both in the positive and the negative sense. I’ve created this hybrid binding in my mind and I have no real idea whether or not it will work. Yeah, I probably should have done a dummy first. But that’s not how I roll.

By this time on Wednesday – hopefully by this time tomorrow – I will have at least one copy of Anderson’s Grimoire: A Forgotten History of Idaho in hand. And I’m really, really excited. (That’s my subtle way of telling you to look out for photoblogs in the next day or so.)

Well, I’m wearing orange and as close to maroon as…

Well, I’m wearing orange and as close to maroon as I could find, and I’m having a really bad hair day, but it’s all okay because it’s Friday and my department is buying us a pizza lunch.

I’ve come to the conclusion that National Poetry Month is easily two weeks too long. I’ve just got far too many other things to think about, and if I thought anyone cared I might make room for the poems, but I really think they’re just the new manifestation of American Idol posts (i.e., things everyone skims over), so I’m letting them drop. It’s the end of the semester and I’ve got projects to complete, not to mention work, and the campaign.

Wear Orange/Maroon This Friday

I sent this email to my colleagues about an hour ago, and now I see that it’s making the rounds on Xanga as well, so I thought I’d post it here.