Thalassa, thalassa

And to think that the answer to my problems was there all along, just 40 miles away: on Friday after work Chris and I drove to the famed (infamous?) Jersey shore, as I had been craving beach and sea and sunbathing since, I don't know, April or something. And as I was lying there in the sun (pretty hot despite it being gone 5pm!), listening to the impressive Atlantic waves, it all just....came together. I was happy, I was caaaalm, relaxed, blissed out - all the stress of the past week, and even more of the past few months went 'puff' and disappeared somehow, or at least, it didn't matter any more. Maybe I should have thought of going there earlier in the year? It was a great feeling, and I want to try and hang on to it for as long as possible.

[A more diaristic post will follow shortly.]

Testing the waters

After Nick left, I headed over to Ann Arbor for my first conference presentation on something that isn't prepositions - a weird feeling! I was flying to Detroit (in a tiny tiny airplane - like the ones they use in remote Norway, except this is a Newark-Detroit flight, not a random rural service, wtf?!), and Detroit airport was a bit of a sad sight - it's a really cool building, architecturally (though there is a creeeepy passageway with changing lights and darkness and matching music which is just WEIRD) - but you can tell that it's aimed at a particular kind of business traveller, who may not be coming that way for much longer....a lot of the announcements are also in languages which I took to be Chinese and either Japanese or Korean; among the shops is one for golf type things; and also souvenir stores such as "The Henry Ford Shop" and "The GM Shop". It was all very poignant.

Not that Ann Arbor seems to notice any of these problems - it felt not unlike being in Princeton - small university town, somewhat low on diversity, lack of sensible stores and lots of antique and vintage shops instead (very nice ones though, I must say - and amazing second hand bookshops!). Overall, I was rather taken with both the town and the campus (which are fairly interchangeable anyway) - it felt like it had its own character, especially in the range of non-homogeneized shops, and like it would be fun to be a student there - it was a bit hard to get a good sense of what it's like in full swing as it was out of term time. The university seems to favour a building style that looks a bit like the bastard child of Keble and the Parthenon - lots of red brick and columns, as you can see.




And of course, no respectable university is complete without a quad which channels Oxbridge/the Ivy League, as in the one below, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Law Quad.



I also managed to fit in a short tour of two museums there, the Natural History Museum which was full of rather endearing, retro dioramas, and the Art Museum which had, among other things, a spendlid array of furnishings and decorations made by Tiffany for a house originally in NYC - cf the photo below, apologies for the slight fuzziness. It's always nice to be surprised by wonderful objects where you're not quite expecting them!



But as I said, I was there for a conference, and the title of the post refers to the fact that I was basically dipping my toes into what is a new discipline for me - I've been interested in it for a while, but always as an external observer, never as an active participant. I'm going to be a bit vague here because it is after all a public forum, but a few random impressions of my first humanities conference follow. So many women! So few men! [insert my oft-repeated rant about the gender imbalance in my discipline - it's not like you haven't heard it before...] Scene that you would never see at an NLP conference: the keynote speaker arranging her pearls in the mirror so they wouldn't tangle with her name tag and she would look good for her talk; said keynote speaker, and others too, displaying a rather high degree of glamour, such as Prada handbags, and pashminas which matched the trim of their coats. (Not sure what it says about ME that I noticed these things....)

Also the average age was a bit higher than I expected, there were grad students there, but not as many - which perhaps didn't help with the socialising, which was a bit difficult anyway. I stood out a bit, perhaps for the wrong reasons, such as my reluctance to engage in any of the dense jargon being bandied about, and the fact that I didn't have a handout, and my slight disbelief at the content of some of the presentations (be it because of the amount of data used, or the quality of it), but hey...I guess a new field is always hard to break into especially if one just turns up uninvited and unintroduced, so I am not too upset about it. Maybe a little disillusioned, as I always thought this topic was a lot of fun, and now I'm not so sure anymore...

New York Times II

Needless to say, my cousin's wedding was spectacular and perfect in every detail - the only thing that one could have complained about was not in her control, and that was the weather: it rained a lot, all day. After a hectic morning on a wild goose chase for a suitable pashmina for my outfit (I know one ought to avoid them if at all possible, but I am now realising that they are actually rather useful objects...), which culminated in three very sodden people trying to feel better by eating hot soup in a hotel room, we regained our composure(s) to put on our finery and head over to the church. Not that this was straightforward: it involved us getting to my uncle's flat (in the rain), gathering a host of relations from various corners of the city, making sure everyone had shelter from the rain, realising at almost-the-last-minute that I had left my 3inch heels (yes, I'm crazy, I know) at the hotel (thanks Nick...), trying to discover if anyone had the keys to the flat...eventually we piled into a sort of limo/SUV hybrid and made our way downtown, after some discussion with the driver as to where exactly we were going.

The reception was lovely, the food was really good, the speeches absolutely tear jerking, the dancing fun (if perhaps not quite as plentiful as I would have expected), the drinking more than satisfactory: in short, it was all good, and we went back in limo again, too.
[more details available upon request!]

The next day was one of debriefing and hangovers - it was nice to spend a bit more time with the family in now more relaxed mode, with this huge thing that had been sucking up their energy finally out of the way. We'd only been in the city three days, but we certainly felt all our energies were drained! Sadly I don't have any photos to show - both the church and the venue were rather dark so I didn't take any pictures, I'm waiting for some nice ones to turn up somewhere!

New York Times I

So on Wednesday we set off for 'the city', discovering the profound truth of just how hard it is to find parking at P. Junction on a workday, and cursing the rain somewhat. After being upgraded to an enormous room, which atoned a little for the horrors of the rain, we set off for the first much anticipated event of the week: an 'event' with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman at Housing Works Bookshop in SoHo. As an aside, I will note that it is a beautiful bookshop in a beautiful building, with extremely high quality second hand books which made the Oxfam volunteer in me green with envy (I had originally written puce, because it sounded nice, but then discovered that it is not a shade of green at all. Sad.). And that there were a LOT of women. Almost all women, in fact.

The general idea of the event was that Neil Gaiman would read bits from what he's written for this book, and Amanda Palmer would play some songs, and they would do some Q&A, and it would all be nice. And it was nice! He reads really well, and she is awesome and looked beautiful rather than deranged (and sadly quite clothed, unlike, say, her performance at Coachella [youtube link]). Sadly she didn't play many songs because a long, long time was spent on auctioning a signed copy of the book - yes it was for a good cause, but it did drag only slightly too mcuh and it would have been good to hear a few more songs, since we couldn't go to the actual gig later in the week.

Anyway, when she plays she gets really intense, aggressive almost towards the piano, like she wants to climb on it or something - and her voice is amazing. Maybe in that respect it was nicer to see her in a more intimate setting with less tech stuff in the way (I can't really say unplugged because it was an electric keyboard...but the ukelele was definitely unplugged!) as it gave us a better chance to appreciate her voice. All in all, it was a great night, the Q&A was lots of fun too though right this moment I can't remember any instances which stand out particularly :-(

Thursday was very much a family day - my great aunt (the one who turned 90 in March) and my aunt (x Fulvia: la sorella di mio padre...) had flown over for my cousin's wedding, so I spent most of the day with them as I don't know when the next time I fly home will be. Then there was the wedding rehearsal which wasn't quite what I expected - I had, perhaps naively, thought it would be something like a dry run or dress rehearsal of a show, instead it was very bitty and I'm not sure it actually left us much wiser than before. We then headed here for the dinner. It is a Persian restaurant, and I am including a link to it because it was very good. There were also speeches, which were sweet and emotional.

And then, the next day was the wedding - but we will leave that for another post...

Princeton Times II

(Part I is here)

Because of course we hadn't had enough fun and games and American-type things on Saturday, the next day - after brunch with a friend, and a somewhat eventful drive to Trenton - we went to watch a baseball game at the Trenton Thunder home ground. A bunch of Girl Scouts were going, and it was cheap, and seemed like a fun thing to do. It was also a beautiful day, which helped. I had vague memories of baseball from my childhood, and was surprised to see that the pitch (well, the diamond really) seemed to be a lot smaller than I remembered. This being a 'family day', there were a lot of corny little things going on in between moments of play, where local businesses sponsored prizes for fun-fair type games - very cute - and even one or two exciting moments in the game itself.

Oh, and for the record, apparently my driving isn't so bad, and it definitely helped to have someone act as navigator and telling me where to turn: it greatly cuts down my getting lost, and I am now seriously wondering whether I should invest in a GPS talking thingy, because it made me feel so relaxed to not have to worry about getting lost!

What else...oh yes, we had some of my friends over for dinner, and inspired by the no-meat requirements of a couple of them, I decided to go all Southern Italian and cook various kinds of vegetables antipasto/contorno style: zucchine alla scapece (fried courgette marinated in vinegar and mint), melanzane a funghetti (fried aubergine with tomato), peperoni arrostiti (marinated roasted peppers), to be eaten with nice bread, followed by a radicchio risotto (not Southern Italian, I know, but still very yummy), and doused with excellent local micro-brewery ales (yes, nice ale over here too!). I was very pleased with our efforts, especially since I hadn't tried many of these recipes before, and it's always good to be reminded that one can rustle up a perfectly nice dinner without using any meat.



The rest of the week was spent in NYC, but that is matter for another post....

Princeton Times I

Argh, I have so much to recount, and am so behind, and have been so busy...so I apologise in advance for the potential lengthiness of the next few posts, and/or the fact that they might appear in quick succession.

So. Where do I start? Last time I blogged, I was expecting Nick's visit, which has now sadly come and gone. But it was very fun, and very busy, and tinged with great Americana experiences...

The weekend of my birthday coincided with the Princeton Alumni Weekend. Unlike our Oxford gaudies, which have only a few years' worth of alumni turning up, this is an annual event that alumni from ALL years flock to - with special focus on those celebrating anniversaries (if that is even the right word) that are multiples of 5. So these masses of Ivy League elements descend upon the town, and each year (where year here is year of graduation rather than matriculation - why can't they all be like us I don't know) has a distinctive jacket/blazer type object which of course has to be orange and black, and possibly also incorporate a tiger. Much as I love the colour orange, and am guilty of its overuse in various aspects of fashion in the past, this is often rather vile even for my taste. But you get tons of then swarming about, wearing name tags, high-fiveing and hugging each other in various Princeton landmarks such as cafes and sandwich shops.

But the best is yet to come! In the afternoon, said jacketed alumni appear in the P-rade (get it? 'P'-rade? for 'P'rinceton? Hoho. So witty.) : each year marches down through campus, culminating in the class of the current year, and with the multiples-of-5s having a bigger float/band/similar. Oh.My.God. What a show. Full photographic evidence and commentary is available on an album at my Facebook page - be warned, there are over 80 photos, and we left in 1986 as we'd been there two hours and weren't sure we couldn't take any more!

This is just a small example of what we could see

Many thoughts arise from this event, above and beyond the inevitable comments of the effect of lots of black and orange patterns on the eye. In no particular order -

* the oldest alumnus was from 1925. 1925!! He was adorable. And rode in a golf cart. There were quite a few from the 30s, actually - mostly in golf carts, but some stoically walking with the golf cart following them anxiously - for the most part rather spry and lively. Very admirable.

* by far the most touching group was 1944, where a placard informed us that 89% of that class had served in WWII. And not all of them had returned - their family members were marching in their place, carrying signs telling us in what battle they had lost their life. It was very sad, and sort of made it hit home for us Europeans, seeing the names of familiar English or Italian places on the signs. I guess we forget that there was a time when US interventionism was really a rather good thing, and that despite the best efforts of one's partisan grandfathers, we probablly really needed the American helping hand (I simplify wildly obviously, but this was more or less the bottom line of my thinking). Also, it reminded us that the war started affecting the US a lot later than Europe, which one tends to forget - we were looking at the 40s groups wondering when the war would make an appearance, and were momentarily surprised when it took so long.

* on a lighter note, it was incredible to see the extent to which these grown men and women were willing to look ridiculous, from wearing tails to dressing like Barbie and all things in between. Really this goes hand in hand with the general degree of wild passion that the alumni clearly feel towards their old university - and this is what really got me. I had a great time in my college and I love Oxford and I am grateful for all the amazing opportunities it has given me. But I don't know if I love it to the extent that I would march in a parade 40 years later, wearing tiger ears or tails. And make all my children march with me, looking equally silly. More than one person has told me that Princeton is particularly renowned for having such adoring alumni. Obviously I can't really say what the reason is, not knowing what goes on behind the gilded doors (actually this is a bit harsh - the University is very good at sharing its events and resources with the general public), but clearly there is something very powerful at work there.

* and of course this feeds into a more important issue, namely that of alumni donations: clearly having such large and passionate alumni ensures that your endowment stays healthy, and explains why so many of the facilities are so spiffy. Oxford doesn't stand a chance to even match a fraction of American-style fundraising if it can't master the same kind of enthusiasm in us. And frankly, as long as my college's telethoners call me and say, upon me telling them that it isn't a good time to talk, "Great! Let's chat for a few minutes", my enthusiasm will remain rather lukewarm. They (the Princetonians, not Oxford) seem to have turned even donations into a competitive activity: many of the years marching had placards noting how much they had donated that year, that decade, since their existence, etc etc, with the clear intent of coming out top.

The day's events were concluded by a firework display set to music - it sounds cheesy but actually it worked really well, different kinds and colours of fireworks going off in time to the music - I am used to nice fireworks displays in Italy, but this was pretty amazing too.

And so endeth the first part. For more adventures, read here...