Travels and Travails

Abe & Kroenen Noir Episode

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:07:09 GMT

In August I went to the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal and one of the most interesting things I did while there was attend a photoshoot of the webcomic Abe & Kroenen. Kim and Rebecca, the creative team behind this bizarre look at characters from Hellboy and beyond, are amazingly talented--able to create situations, props, sets, and even achieve tremendous expression from 8" action figures. It's astonishing. And highly entertaining. Watching them work was genuinely inspiring.

Kyle Cassidy was guest photographer for this special episode and it is now up on livejournal for all to see. Behind my cut here, I take a brief look at the making of Abe & Kroenen: The Jensen File.

[special thanks to Kim, Rebecca, and Kyle for allowing me to sit in on the session.]

-------
I met Agent Abe Sapien and badboy Karl Ruprecht Kroenen in a bar in Montreal. They ignored me as if I were some kind of crazy fan, but I tailed them when they left and managed to sneak into their latest photoshoot.

At the shoot I met (the lawyers keep using the word 'stalked') the brains behind the brilliance of Abe & Kroenen--world reknowned writers, photographers and web comic producers, Kim Belair and Rebecca Stacey. And did my eyes deceive me? They even had a special guest photographer, Kyle freakin' Cassidy.

There I was, a humble fan, in the very nexus of Abe and Kroenen operations. It was a room filled with sets and props cleverly derived on the fly from all manner of flotsam and jetsam. The very density of available objects did them in here, though, since I was able to hide amongst the sculptures, benches and tools and snap photos to my heart's content.

In the film noir episode, Abe Sapien would play a detective trying to solve the mystery of Agent Bateman's demise. And in the above, behind-the-scenes shot, we get a look at something you didn't see in the episode: Bateman's body itself! Exclusive!

But the most exciting shoot had to be the finale atop the Rugby Cigarette Warehouse. In this action-packed sequence... Well, you'll just have to read it for yourselves. As for me, I remained in Kim's basement for weeks until I found a way to sneak out unseen into the light of day. Sure, I had scurvy by that point, but, hey, it's the price you pay for fandom.

long, busy time

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:25:05 GMT

I've been busy. Sure, I know, you've heard it all. We're all busy and yet most people have time to update their blogs. Well, did you ever think I had nothing to say? That my life was all boredom during the school year? OK, maybe it isn't complete boredom, but I often expect my mundane teaching life just doesn't deserve the highlighting on a blog that perhaps my travels and more interesting digging life does.

So what have I been doing? Teaching, grading, writing. The usual. It's an intense term since I've gone back to teaching full time rather than part time with more research I've been doing in the last two years or so. And I'm teaching courses I haven't taught before--much more research writing in the instruction now. It's a good thing, just takes a lot of reworking of my syllabi.

Why report now? To introduce my next entry, something of great interest I did way back in August -- attend a photoshoot of the webcomic, Abe & Kroenen. The episode is now up and my next entry (above) will be my tongue-in-cheek behind-the-scenes look at the shoot itself.

Be sure to check out all of the Abe and Kroenen episodes under live journal user: abe_kroenen
And be ready for a bizarre look at characters from Hellboy as well as many guest appearances of other strange and wonderful characters in action figure form.

cruising?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:44:42 GMT

I suppose touristy stuff has its place. I sometimes do the more tourist oriented things to get a feel for them and if I don't feel like organizing things on my own due to time constraints or whatnot. I have to find out how the other half lives, after all. And what more touristy place than Orlando? There probably is more to Orlando than amusment parks, but it's hard to find. And the Atlantic shore of Florida is similar. Cape Canaveral is interesting, but we missed the launch on at least two occasions since it was scrubbed. That's the main thing I want to see. But I think Discovery is still sitting out there on Launch Pad 39, scrubbed again (though they said it might go up late Friday and I haven't checked to see if it did). We were hoping it would launch Friday morning when we were only 20 miles out at sea. But with Danny coming in, I guess they didn't want to chance it.

In fact, the most touristy thing I did was to go on a cruise to the Bahamas. My dive buddy, Steve, met me in Orlando and we drove out to Port Canaveral to catch the Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas. I've been on cruises before so I know what to expect. It is a strange world on that boat, a captive audience mostly eating and drinking, comparing notes on the latest port of call. Many are there to shop and we even attended the port shopping guide to get coupons for the various cruise supported merchants. We did end up getting some free stuff, and even won two of the onboard trivia competitions.

But the main reason we went was to go diving in the Bahamas. The cruise organizes shore tours with their preferred providers so we just let them do the work. The people at Stuart's Cove on the other side of the island thus met us with a van and drove us out to their dive shop, kitted us up, and took us out for our second day of diving. Our first was on the Royal Caribbean private island at Cococay. That one was a rather shallow one but had some good wildlife. We saw some very large sting rays and a sea turtle. But I'd forgotten to put a memory card in my camera so didn't get any shots of that dive. At Nassau we did two dives, one deep, the other shallow, but both had were wreck dives as well. Stuart's Cove works with a lot of Hollywood films that have underwater sequences so they have a lot of wrecks that were intentionally sunk for the purpose of diving them. We got to see some of the latest, including the airplane used on the movie Into the Blue. Seeing an airplane underwater was pretty interesting. We also saw two tug boats, one of them sunk only last week and so easy to dive in and around. And for some reason, there was a toilet bowl sitting on the seafloor right next to it.

I'm now back in Philadelphia and have to go to work on Monday. I feel like a regular guy, vacationing and then coming back to go to work. What happened to my simpler life of doing whatever the hell I wanted to do? Sigh.

adventure?

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:19:56 GMT

I didn't go into the field this year, but instead went to New Hampshire. Normally after my field season, I meet my old friend Steve somewhere in the world to go diving. Last year it was Egypt and we dove the Red Sea, the year before it was Turkey. This year perhaps not so exotic. Since I wasn't overseas and had spent my money attending Odyssey, we decided to stay mostly in the country, using Florida as a base. I don't like to fly, especially to Florida in hurricane season, so I took a 22 hour train ride to Orlando about a week ago. It's hard to sleep on the train, but I like the trip. I write mostly, good thing there's a plug near every seat.

My mother lives in Tampa so she drove to Orlando to meet me. We spent some time at Seaworld and other Orlando attractions. Here's me braving the wilds of Florida adventure golf. Not quite Syria or archaeology, but it was fun. And i managed four holes-in-one.

We went back to Tampa and did a lot of thrift store shopping, which I always find entertaining. You never know what you'll find. And my mother has a great collection of such finds already, strange things that she purchases or finds for use in art projects. I'm always inspired by her and decided I wanted to make something. We'd seen the Cirque du Soleil giftstore in Downtown Disney and I decided I wanted to make carnival masks. We went through various options of how to build them (I didn't want to buy some plastic mask and decorate it, I wanted to make my own from scratch, and who better than my mother to show me how I could do that?)

I had some concepts in my mind and my mother helped me to realize those concepts. I think they turned out pretty well, so I'm posting a picture of the two masks I made.

Now I'm back in Orlando. Steve flew in two days ago and we went to Cape Canaveral since he'd never been to the Kennedy Space Center. We're setting out for the Bahamas tomorrow to go diving. Should be good, there are a lot of wrecks to explore and sharks to see. I hope to get some good underwater shots.

Still on my Odyssey

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:08:43 GMT

There's an article about Odyssey that just appeared online. A shorter version was in the paper in Manchester, but now St Anselm College has a longer version on its blog. It's even got a blurry picture of me (because they were focusing on the more photogenic Lisa Poh, I just happened to be in the foreground. It's a good article so I thought I'd link to it here, and put a short piece I wrote in my personal journal about it here in my blog.

The Odyssey Fantasy Writer's Workshop is an amazing experience. It has helped me to consider my fiction in a new light and has inspired me to tackle the publishing world, perhaps one day getting my fiction out there for others to read. At the same time, it has highlighted the subjectivity involved--what one person likes, another will dislike.

In the wilds of New Hampshire, we bustled and fretted, surrounded by gray skies and Benedictine monks. It was an almost surreal experience, growing more bizarre with the increasing lack of sleep through the weeks. It took on new meaning for me as I read an article in a back issue of Weird Tales that discussed H.P. Lovecraft and his work, much of it set in New England. It quoted a letter he wrote in 1934 wherein he placed his fictional city of Arkham "…north of Salem--perhaps near Manchester."

He was speaking of Manchester, Massachusetts, of course. We were in Manchester, New Hampshire. But I could easily imagine us as maddened scholars writing our arcane stories within the haunted halls of Miskatonic University; though I suspect that, were we in a Lovecraft story [or rather a Batman story with Lovecraftian overtones--ed], we would come to find that we were actually locked away in the depths of Arkham Asylum. Perhaps Jeanne herself was one of the Old Ones, imparting forgotten knowledge, and Susan was her Shoggoth. It was rumored, after all, that Jeanne has Susan's soul in a jar in her basement.

I'm still trying to make sense of it all (can one ever make sense of Lovecraftian analogies?), or rather, to see how to apply what I learned effectively and settle on the process that works best for me. No two writers will ever be the same in how they write, but we can learn from each other. I seem to be focused too much on the infinite realities and currently unable to make my own unique reality out of them all. Instead of observing string theory, I need to take up one string and just go with it, become it. Like the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, perhaps I will just be carried off by an invisible demon and forgotten. Let's just hope I leave my own Necronomicon behind that folks will be talking about for years to come.

WorldCon

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:46:30 GMT

I went to Montreal to try to con the world. Imagine my surprise when I found out that wasn't what WorldCon was about.

Actually, it was a great time. I saw a lot of informative panels, went to several awesome parties, and met tons of great people. For good portions of the convention I followed kylecassidy, helping to carry lighting and such for his photographic escapades. This gave me the opportunity to meet many of the big names, even getting to talk with guest of honor Neil Gaiman for a bit.

Kyle's got much more of the inside info on his blog, I'll just post a picture of him and Neil and Michael on the party floor of the Delta Hotel.

Playing with the Big Wigs (on the sidelines at least)

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:46:19 GMT

Last night I got the opportunity (courtesy of kylecassidy ) to have drinks with a gaggle of famous writers at the Pen and Pencil Club (Michael Swanwick, Tom Purdom, Gardner Dozois, Susan Casper, Mark Wolverton, and Victoria Janssen (her pseudonym--unfortunately I don't remember her real name, but she has degrees in archaeology and anthropology so I talked to her for a while about that)). It was truly amazing, and even a bit overwhelming. To be surrounded by so many Nebula and Hugo awards, well, if I thought too much about it I was likely to pass out. I think Swanwick, for example, has 11 Nebulas and Hugos combined and is up for another Hugo this year, and Dozois mentioned that he has 15 Hugos and 33 Locus awards.

The stories they told were fascinating and often hilarious. The things that go on behind the scenes at conventions, for example--amazing. But I suppose people are people, and they will tend to do crazy things whether they are writers or accountants. Well, maybe not accountants.

At the end of the night we walked Tom back to his house and I started talking with Michael about how he got published. It led to a great conversation about writing and he volunteered to give me a ride back to my house. Meanwhile, he told me some inspiring stories and gave me some very good advice about writing and publishing. Some of the advice was similar to that I'd heard at Odyssey, and of course he reminded me that not all advice is good advice. Or rather, that not all advice will work specifically for _you_ as a writer, and you have to weed through it all to find out what really _does_ work for you. In the end, the most important thing is perseverance. I'm taking that advice to heart.

Michael's got a great sense of humor and his website has some terrific (often tongue-in-cheek) advice for writers from 'Unca Mike'. And be sure to check him out on Kyle Cassidy's project Where I Write.

my mom is cool

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:20:20 GMT

I like my mother's latest creation so much, I thought I'd put a picture of it here. Of course, the first person I showed it to emailed my mother and purchased it, so I'm not the only one that thinks it's cool.

My mother is a sculptor but tends to see this particular series of utensil creatures as craft rather than art. I suppose that gets down to the definition of what art really is. Whether this is art or craft doesn't matter so much to me; I like it.

Odfellows make odd something or others

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:15:19 GMT

I've now entered the ranks of the Odfellows, those who have completed the six-week Odyssey Writing Workshop. The community of Odyssey fellows is really terrific, having continuing connections through conventions and the on-going workshops we can attend called The Never Ending Odyssey. Last night I got to meet the alumni coming in for the advanced workshop this year and to hear about their successes, trials, and tribulations since their stint at Odyssey. So many of them have gone on to successful careers that it is highly encouraging, but I personally have to do some heavy revisions, and most importantly, I have to send my stories out to editors or I'll have no chance of publishing at all.

Stats to date show that 53% of Odyssey grads go on to sell their fiction in some form or another; most of these are pro sales and many grads have gone on to successful novel careers. Our writer-in-residence this year was Carrie Vaughn, who graduated Odyssey in 1998 and who has gone on to a seven book series (so far) of urban fantasy novels as well as many short stories. She was a true inspiration and had wonderful insights into the art of writing and into the publishing world.

In fact, we had many interesting and informative guests, but the best part of the program was the anchor of it all, the writer and editor who created it, Jeanne Cavelos. Without her, Odyssey would not exist, and the community of writers that center on it could not either. Of course, her right-hand, Susan Selienski, was also immensely helpful. She had to talk me out of a metaphorical tree on several occasions.

In short, I've had a great six weeks of intense learning, and of communing with my fellow writers. It has changed the way I see my fiction and even, in a way, the way I see myself. I don't know if I will be one of the 53% who go on to publish, but I can only keep working at it and see.

Odyssey class of 2009

Writing, and Reading? Out Loud?

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:45:04 GMT

The 2009 Odyssey Workshop will be reading flash fiction at the Barnes and Noble in Nashua, NH. this Saturday, June 27 at 2:00PM If you're in the area, do stop by. Each of the 16 of us will read for about 5 minutes only, but it should be fun. I think I'll be reading a short short called
The Indolent Young Man or Where's the Sofa?

Yeah, I'm still working on it. But what do you expect for 1000 words?

Stress

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:04:18 GMT

I'm stressing. It's difficult to maintain confidence in the face of various issues. For one thing, the closer it gets to Odyssey time, the more worried I get about my writing. I've been working hard; I've written three science fiction stories in the past few weeks and think they aren't bad, but I know they'll be torn apart in critque. I need that but it's not going to be easy to take, I fear. Plus, I can't seem to break in to the publication realm at the moment and rejections can be depressing even when you know they are more likely than not, particularly in the beginning. I'm not just beginning writing, but I'm certainly a beginner at submitting to professional fiction magazines. It's quite different from the non-fiction I've been doing. In fact, I have a new assignment for a non-fiction piece. It's for DIG, a kids' magazine on archaeology, which should be fun. I've been writing for its sister publication, Calliope, off and on for years.

I went to the City Kitties auction on Friday despite being rather down in the dumps. It didn't help much at first, but thanks to petitbout , it turned out pretty well. If it weren't for her, I'd have had a pretty crappy time. Many thanks, Mary. It's always great to hang out with a good person of such talent and beauty. We even got our picture taken with an instant camera from 1948 (can't remember the name of it but it's essentially an archaic Polaroid) that they'd set up to benefit City Kitties. I think it's a great picture and it made the night worthwhile. Of course, the art was pretty impressive too and I even ended up getting a piece at the end of the night.

a good day to wed

Mon, 18 May 2009 05:49:27 GMT

Two of the best people in all the world got married today and I was lucky enough to be one of their witnesses. In my cynical world of belief in nothing, they are a beacon of hope and serve as an example that good things can happen to good people. I wish them all the best in all the universes that ever were and ever will be.

Congratulations Kyle and Jennifer!

A Great Sunday

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:31:59 GMT

I'm starting the spring training for writing teachers today. I'm one of the group leaders, teaching the new teachers how our writing department works. Meanwhile, I've started Facebook despite the fact that I've often questioned just how much we need such things. It has its appeal, much more immediate than LiveJournal. And it managed to remind me of the reading/concert yesterday that I'm very glad I didn't miss.

Carolyn Turgeon read from her first two books, Rain Village and Godmother, as well as from the third she is working on right now. They are filled with vibrant description of lively characters, moving voice, and beautiful story. I'm glad to have met her.

Afterwards, Nicki Jaine played her unique brand of music, an added note of beauty to the afternoon. It was a small gathering of interesting people, the cosy sort of meaningful interaction that I find so much more fulfilling than giant parties or shows. My thanks and appreciation go out to all who were involved.

My Odyssey into the world of Fantastic Fiction begins

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:18:44 GMT

As kylecassidy mentioned on his blog, I was recently accepted into the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. It means that I will not be going to Syria this year, but I'd already warned the crew that I was thinking about using this summer to chase different demons. This field season is to be a relatively small one and I realized that if I was going to do some serious writing, it needed to be this summer. Clarion's deadline had passed by the time I decided this, but Odyssey was still open, so I applied. Now I'll be attending that workshop from June 7 to July 18 and, provided I survive the program, I'll become an OdFellow, joining the ranks of at least one of my longtime friends, labrysinthe. If anyone else has experience with this program or opinions on it, please let me know what you think.

Kyle, trillian_stars and I had drinks to celebrate (how much more writerly can you get) but the full implications of the program have only just begun to settle in my mind as the gin leaves it and only the headache remains. It's an intense program and some have warned me that the extreme criticism involved can cause some writers to implode rather than grow. But I think these potentially stressful six weeks of writing, reading, analyzing and giving & receiving criticism is exactly what I need. It can potentially build community for me as well.

Luckily I've done exactly what I needed to do in order to prepare for Odyssey. As I filled out the application, I also began my own intense program of reading and analyzing short stories like never before, and I've completed and submitted two short stories within the last month. I'm now directing my fiction much more toward the market rather than writing strange things that aren't really classifiable to genre. I probably won't hear back on those slush pile pieces for a while, but just making the attempt is good for me. I want to try to continue to submit relentlessly throughout this summer.

A friend of a friend, who fancied himself a writer and who had just self-published a book was once flaunting his apparent success. So I told him I'd just finished a book. He looked at me with disdain and said he was glad more people were reading. I wonder if he really thought I was telling him I had finally finished _reading_ a book or if he was just trying to be cleverly biting. Either way, I think he had an inflated opinion of himself. I don't want to turn into that kind of person, I want to find out if I have what it takes to make it in the published fiction realm, though. I need community but I've been so much of a loner that getting that has been almost impossible. There are a few people who read my work, but almost none that are writers themselves. I've joined the PSFS writer's group but getting to and from their meetings is difficult for me and I feel bad about relying on others for a ride (especially people I don't really know).

I don't plan to give up archaeology or teaching. I couldn't do that, I enjoy both too much. In fact, the term just ended on Monday and my students were quite happy with the course, many staying after the class to tell me how much of an impact I had made on them. Things like that can't be replaced, it's rewarding to reach your students and help them grow. But ideally I want to teach part time for a living wage and write in the extra time for supplemental income. I think it would be rewarding to also help people escape in fantastical stories that perhaps move them and influence them in different ways.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll attain that goal. Regardless, I've taken the next step in that journey. That Odyssey.

Blogging

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:24:44 GMT

It seems there is a virtual overload of blogging, facebooking, tweeting, and whatever else we call these things today. I see the importance of maintaining a network and even of disussing things with friends, but maybe I don't use these things correctly. Blogging, to me, feels different than talking to friends maybe because it's actually written down. Is that more of an admission of my thoughts, thus making me more culpable for my failures?

Here's my reasoning behind not blogging recently. Yes, I've been busy, but that's mostly a covering excuse. The real thing is that I'm trying something relatively new. Bored with some of the things I've been doing, I want to work more on my fiction writing. It's frivolous, yes, and why do something that is so unlikely to make me any money when I have a good job and even teach writing? It's not exactly creative writing, but we do discuss creative elements in our critical writing. And even if I were to start selling fiction, it would in all likelihood earn me far less than nonfiction writing and certainly less than my Ivy League teaching job.

Nonetheless, I want to write. And maybe I want some validation of the process that I've been doing in reltaive secrecy for 15 years or more. Only recently have I begun to take my fiction seriously, however, and I've begun to create short stories much more quickly and much more directed to a reader market. I have yet to see if any will sell, but I'm taking further steps toward earning that potential 5 cents a word (whereas non-fiction has earned me as much as 1 dollar a word) all because it catches my fancy, holds my interest, and makes me smile to write creative whimsy with an ultimate message.

So what does this have to do with me not blogging? Well, if I say 'I want to get stories published' and then months go by and I don't get any published, isn't that a blatant admission of what a big failure I am? Or is the point of blogging to reach understanding people who will say 'it's OK, keep trying'?

Bolting to Boston

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:11:26 GMT

I spent much of Spring Break in Boston with friends. Perhaps not the warmest, spring-hearkening of places to go on a break most people find destined for sun and fun, but it was a good trip. I took the Bolt Bus to save cash and its internet connection and plugs for my laptop definitely made the trip more enjoyable than a standard bus. Of course, there was no tray/desk to hold my laptop and thus the heat burned into my lap and there wasn’t quite as much room as a train, but these are relatively minor setbacks and I managed to write about 5,000 words on my latest story.

A bit more disconcerting is the shift over on the street in New York City. In other words, you can’t book a bus directly from Philadelphia to Boston, you have to stop in NYC and change buses with hundreds of other people in the street since the Bolt doesn’t drop off in the Port Authority like most buses. Still, it was only a problem coming back because of the timing and a hockey game that had just let out at Madison Square Garden.

In Boston we explored writer’s houses and revolutionary war sites. Writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, War sites: Lexington Common and parts of the circuit of Revere’s ride and the march of the British troops from Boston to Concord in Minute Man park.

I enjoyed Emerson and Hawthorne’s house. Its furnishings were largely complete and the scratched writings on the windows from Hawthorne’s time were very interesting. I can’t say I was overly impressed by Walden, however. The paths were fenced off in narrow channels that gave the impression of being herded into a concentration camp more than a nature trail. I suppose the idea of preserving a park for everyone was one of Thoreau’s motive forces, but did he mean it in this strict a way? Yes, erosion is a problem and people need to be aware that their presence impacts nature--we need to preserve places like this for future generations, but if by that we mean follow a claustrophobic, controlled path, I’m not sure it’s worth it.

I didn’t hear any shots round the world, but Lexington and Concord are both charming places now. There isn’t a lot of ‘battlefield’ to see and the information centers don’t have a great deal of objects or museums, but imagination goes a long way in places like this. Along the more open preserves of the Minute Man park, it’s easier to imagine the march of troops and the beginnings of a nation.

And at least now I can say:

I came, I saw, I Concord.

dilemma of life

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:19:11 GMT

In reference to the question (imagine an old Twisted Sister video) ‘What are you gonna do with your life?’ I think I would answer ‘I wanna write!’

Yes, I enjoy archaeology and I like teaching it, so I’m not suggesting giving up my ‘real’ job, just adding a new one, or rather a new dimension to an already existent second life. Because, of course, I do write and I even teach writing, but I’m at the point where the only way to improve my own work is to tie in with other writers of the kind of material I like to create, to find an editor/publisher/agent, and to get my work out there. But all of that seems so stupefyingly difficult or subjective or luck-induced that I’m beyond frustrated. It seems that such things take a far more extroverted personality than I have. So I’m stuck.

Most of what I’m doing these days is teaching a version of Freshman English we tend to call critical writing. It’s a fun course of my own design with an overarching topic that has involved my research for a long time -- that of the concept of money, trade and exchange through time. We discuss the topic, read various writers on it, and write many papers about it. I like teaching this course, but do I want to teach non-fiction (even of the creative sort) for the rest of my life?

I’ve considered going back to school to get an MFA in creative writing, but almost every program in the US teaches the so-called ‘MFA story’, that is, a form of domestic realism that, frankly, I’m just not interested in. I’ve always read and written stories as an escape and thus I like those tales that take me to new worlds and let me imagine life as it isn’t. MFAs are mostly literary fiction, trying to show life as it is, struggling characters dealing with the heavy issues like prejudice or terminal illness. That’s not escapism . I could probably write such things, but would I be happy doing it? More importantly, would I be happy teaching it after I completed the degree? And, could I even get into such a program?

I suppose I should just try to get into a Clarion workshop, but whatever I do, I should find other writers who are interested in what I do and can help me with critical readings and discussions, maybe even collaborations.

Any suggestions?

Gremlins at Work?

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:53:43 GMT

I got in to work this morning to find an airmail envelope from Hannah Montana on my desk. I suspect that it was Michael's daughter, Kersten, whose influence allowed me to be graced with such a letter. Inside was a drawing that made my day. It now hangs on my office wall next to some drawings her brother did years ago.

Along with the envelope (don't tell anyone but I suspect it may not really have been from Hannah Montana) were various notes from other elvish intellects with words of wisdom like:

This is your conscious. Eat more pie.

It's always nice to hear from your conscious like that. Usually mine is telling me that everyone is out to get me.

I have some very silly friends.

Art

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:13:26 GMT

My mother, Nita Mehnert, will be one of the artists featured in an upcoming event at the Tampa Museum of Art. She's a sculptor and the pieces to be shown in this event are part of a particularly interesting and insightful series of her creations. They are formed from various rusted and recycled pieces, reformed into apparent devices for searching our souls. The titles of the works involve these apparent tasks, such as 'stamping out greed'. I wish I had better images of her work, but here's some low res shots of a couple of the series from an earlier exhibit.

And here's part of the initial ad for the upcoming event:

Be sure to check out the sponsoring organizations on the web and of course, attend the show if you're in the Tampa Bay area.

www.TampaMuseum.org

www.theexhibitionists.org

Look for Nita Mehnert in the list of associated artists.

Chinese Articles and Lizard People?

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:26:20 GMT

A colleague told me he had heard good things about an article I wrote on incense burners. I was a little surprised and asked, "Does he read Chinese?" because the only article about incense burners I had written was published solely in that language. Mind you, I didn't write it in Chinese, but it was translated because I wrote it and five other articles for the Beijing World Art Museum, more specifically for the exhibit we at Penn sent there more than a year ago.

It turns out that the Beijing Museum has now put those articles up on their website, in English. We had sent them the full text to translate, but I thought we'd kept the English publication rights. I'm not sure about that, but I'm relatively pleased they did put the articles up because now more people can read them. In my entries I tried to go into the significance of the individual artifact, to do much more than simply describe the particular piece but to tell about what it might mean for the people who made and used it. Thus, I see this writing as much more than catalogue entries in a museum, and as a whole we wanted our exhibit and our catalogue to be an overview of Mesopotamian culture seen through its material objects. It turned out that of the six cultural regions represented in the larger museum exhibit, our text was by far the most detailed.

So it was nice to hear that someone had seen one of these entries and thought it was worth reading. I link to one of the articles below, one about 'lizard' figurines from the Ubaid period (Image at left is of the object on loan from Penn to BWAM). These are very interesting artifacts that are quite distinctive, with large eyes, high hair and broad sholders. The fringe elements out there, the ones who believe in mass conspiracy and abductions, etc. (crazies, pyramidiots, or whatever you want to call them) want to see these figurines as representations of extraterrestrials, but the funniest correlation I've heard is that they look a little like Sarah Palin.

You can read my interpretation and summary of the scholarly ideas on these 'lizard' people if you feel so inclined. And if you go to the page on Mesopotamia for the BWAM, you'll find my entires are the first five objects as well as the very last one (the incense burner).

Forever Writing

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:03:30 GMT

Listening to Joe Haldeman speak at Friday's Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meeting was both insightful and inspiring. I read his book The Forever War many years ago on the suggestion of my friend Nigel and I thought it was tremendously good. But I didn’t read more of his books even though I should have. In fact, I haven’t been much of a reader for a long time, with the exception of all the reading I’ve done for all the classes I’ve taken and taught, etc. So, it would seem that I lost the enjoyment -- or lost touch with the enjoyment -- of reading a story for a story’s sake. When I was young, I often escaped the farm world I had been strangely swept into by climbing a tree with a science fiction or adventure fantasy novel, trying to reach the heights of some imaginary kingdom perhaps. What happened to those experiences?

I’m searching now, seeing that they aren’t really gone, just set aside in the wake of something arguably more important, the non-fiction world of education. That world has served me well and was certainly the one I sought after, the shining something that had meaning beyond the goat dung and the chicken entrails, something up there in the sky above the trees I was trying to reach by climbing. And reading. Only this something was attainable somehow in the 'real world'.

In seeking to understand the world and still address creativity in some way, I found archaeology. It held my interest and allowed me to experience the world as well as attempt to solve puzzles of sorts. Eventually I ran into an academic mentality, however, that seemed to stifle all but the most pedantic.

Listening to Joe talk about his creative process made me want to create more, to go back to exploring the wilds of my imagination. Maybe I’m just starting to find the motivation to do it in earnest. I’ll start looking for workshops and retreats, and potentially one day, go for an MFA in creative writing (still chasing the academic in me, I suppose).

I bought a copy of one of Haldeman’s latest books, The Accidental Time Machine, and he signed it for me. I read the whole thing over this past weekend, reconnecting with my former love of reading a story just to read a story. But if Joe had just been reading from his novel at this latest talk, I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it. Instead, he talked about the creative process itself, and many of the things he mentioned are similar to the way I approach writing, so finding out that I’m not so strange in the way I write was truly inspiring. Basically, I want to say:

Thank you, Joe Haldeman. Thank you for your writing, for your advice, for your inspiration, and for your time.

(and of course, thanks to Kyle Cassidy for telling me when and where this talk would be, and for taking the fabulous picture of me and Joe at the Philly Diner. Thanks also to Darrell Schweitzer for discussing all things science fiction and mystery writing with me at the diner and to Mike Van Helder for his encouragement and information there, as well as just for putting up with me.)

More on the Museum Researcher Firings

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:52:57 GMT

There's a good article on the firings and the interest that the open letter has generated:

Higher Ed article on Museum funding, mainly about Penn

It covers the issue quite well and the comments on it are interesting. Just thought I'd share.

Book Trailers

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:12:14 GMT

I've got a cold today so I'm sitting around surfing between gulps of Nyquil. Currently I'm exploring this phenomenon that is so commonplace now as not to cause an eyebrow to wiggle - YouTube. But what brought me there was not the search for something to entertain my mucus-addled head, but an article I read yesterday about 'book trailers'.

I suspect I'm just behind the times here and that everyone else knows about these things already. They're short promotional films (a minute or so) that advertise the release of a new book. I suppose it makes sense, but will this really sell more books? I hear that it's basically de rigeur now and that some publishing houses automatically produce them as part of the marketing package. After all, trailers are essential for films, why not books? But my first thought was that films are shared visual media, books are more personal in that characters and places are created in the mind's eye by the author's words interacting with the reader's imagination. This means that Sherlock Holmes, for example, may look to me a little different than he will to you. Once films get in the way, we start to see him as Basil Rathbone or some other actor. If we show characters in a trailer for our book, we are directing the imagination of our readers.

But what do book covers do? They often show some hero that must be the protagonist. Sometimes it seems the artist hasn't read the book and the hero looks nothing like what we as readers see in our heads, and we can shake that off. So maybe trailers are the same. I watched a few to see what they typically were, and most showed the book cover itself, moving across the scene, approaching or some such. various wipes are common and text that tries to spark interest in the story. But most viewers think that plain text on black background is boring and they want more action.

Anyway, I'm just ranting, wanted to see what others thought of the book trailer phenomenon.

Legal is not necessarily Ethical

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:06:48 GMT

Thinking about the balance between administration and research, profit and intellectualism noted in my last post, I quickly saw the similarity between the current struggles within the museum and a discussion I attended at the archaeological meetings last weekend. The particular panel I went to see was essentially on the difference between archaeologists and treasure hunters, specifically as related to the realm of underwater archaeology.

I’ll make a long story relatively short. As of Jan 2, 2009, the UNESCO convention on UCH (Underwater Cultural Heritage) went into effect. Cultural heritage on land has been protected internationally since 1970. The text of the underwater convention has been on the books since 2001 but didn’t have enough signatories to function. The US is not one of the countries that have signed the convention but even it were, this is only an international agreement and individual laws would still have to passed within the country for it to have any prosecuting power.

In the last two weeks of my underwater archaeology class we discuss ethics, salvage, treasure hunting and archaeology. I always have the students read the basic tenets of the UNESCO convention and the final paper they must write covers the topic of ethics. We look at salvage wrecks like the Republic and the Central America but last year I got wind of the recent find by Odyssey Marine, a ship they were claiming was a pirate vessel and one they dubbed ‘The Black Swan’ (obviously for commercial effect to sound like the Black Pearl from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean). The discussion at the meetings this year was placed in the context of this wreck as well as the UCH convention, so naturally it was of interest to me.

I won’t go into too much detail about the ship, only to say that it was found near the edge of Spanish waters outside the straits of Gibraltar and that Odyssey flew two charter plane loads of coins from the ship estimated at several hundred million dollars in value to the US. Spain has filed suit and shown quite well, I think, that the ship is not a pirate vessel at all, but the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a ship that sunk in 1804 and reinstated war between Spain and England after a truce in the Napoleonic struggles. The legal case is being heard in Tampa right now but it involves exactly this question of money or history, perhaps money for history. Should the finders/keepers rule apply, or is this important ship one that belongs to Spain no matter what? And how should it be investigated?

The discussion was very interesting. We started out by watching an interview held by Bryant Gumble with George Bass (founder of the Institute for Nautical Archaeology) and Greg Stemm (Odyssey Marine Salvage company). I can’t find that interview online but here is an article about the current legal case and if you search for ‘Black Swan shipwreck’ on youtube you can find some rather frightening ‘secret mission’ videos about how Odyssey flew the coins out of British Gibraltar under cover, presumably for protection from modern day pirates, but perhaps so as not to be spotted by the Spanish government.

On the panel were archaeologists and lawyers who were all involved in the ethical issues, both nationally and internationally. Although I agree with their ideas on protection of heritage, this meeting was certainly not a true debate, because the other side was not there. Salvors say they want archaeology done and often take some sort of archaeologist on the team, but they are not allowed to present at official meetings like this one because they don’t follow archaeological guidelines, one of which is not to make a profit off of excavation. Because this is a prime directive, so to speak, the two sides seem unlikely ever to come to terms.

Legal jurisdiction seems to be favoring the heritage angle of late and salvage laws (or at least their application to historic wrecks) and permits are dwindling. Nevertheless, international waters tend still to be fair game. Except for countries that have signed the UNESCO convention treaty, that is, and Spain is naturally one of those probably because of this Black Swan incident. But the court case is being heard in the US. And in Florida at that, a state that has often supported salvors. I see that it took Odyssey a good deal of study and time and money to find this vessel, but I also see that it is a Spanish ship and Spain would not want American treasure hunters to exploit their national history for profit. Spain would, they say, excavate the ship and put it on display as a cultural icon. Odyssey would sell off the coins to individual collectors to make money.

And here is what I found particularly interesting in the archaeological meeting. The panel members said that there was room for compromise between archaeologists and treasure hunters/salvors. But their solution was not much of a compromise. Remember, I do agree with the archaeologists on almost all points, but I like to try to see the other side. The archaeologists and lawyers said that the ship must be kept together, all of its artifacts studied equally. That’s a great goal, but they said that they would let salvors make their profit by taking a portion of the gate price at a museum showing these objects. That would mean that the salvors would have to excavate the whole thing, conserve it, and put it on display (build a museum) and then try to get enough attention to make a profit at the gate. If a profit could be made, it would be decades before it would be realized and no investor would put up for such a deal. In short, there is no way salvors would agree to that.

Perhaps there isn’t a compromise, I don’t know. That’s why we discuss it in my class as an open-ended issue. Many of my students like the idea of adventure and treasure, and they argue that we are a capitalist nation and virtually a capitalist world, so why not let someone go out and find something and make a profit? Others say that world heritage is more important, that it must be preserved because if we don’t, it’s lost forever. Ultimately, I give my opinion but let the students decide for themselves.

Writing, Research, and Cold Hard Economics

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:21:23 GMT

I’m back in a frigid Philadelphia and classes have begun. I had to change my syllabus once again as the writing department, now a department instead of a program, is still adapting its procedures. The ultimate goals are good and there has definitely been improvement in student writing over the past five years so it’s a good thing. Last term’s course progression was a little over-the-top, however, so the rescheduling was necessary. Now it looks like we may have reached a good balance and I think this term will be more manageable.

Meanwhile, controversy in the museum continues. In November it was announced that 18 research positions would be axed, effective in May. Many of those terminated had been working in the Museum Applied Sciences Center for Archaeology for decades and were still turning out important research in the field. Yet, they weren’t bringing in cash, cited as a goal not met in a letter sent to said researchers, so the entire Center is being disbanded. It is true that MASCA has been something of an enigma to some, hidden away as it is in the bowels of the museum, but it has been an important resource for students and it has never stopped investigating important archaeological issues with real scientific method. Getting rid of all researchers and closing MASCA itself seems heavy handed. So, as of Jan 7, an online petition has appeared in protest and it already has some 2200 signatures. The opening line says “we the undersigned, academics and graduate students…” but I think it should have included the concerned and interested public as well. Perhaps it should say something about balancing all this with monetary concerns, but that would be giving too much to the other side I suppose. Other than that, it is a pretty good statement about belief in the research and non-profit mission of the University Museum. Take a look and sign if you feel so inclined. I’ve already signed (somewhere around #995 I think)

They can’t axe my position since the money for it comes mainly from the writing department. And when not from there, it comes from Anthropology which is housed in the museum but a part of the School of Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, I do believe in research as a goal and dedication to research and teaching as the prime directive of a college museum. Of course, it does need to stay afloat and should bring in money where possible. Finding a good balance is important -- I’m just not convinced that’s been done in this case.

I’ll just keep on teaching. And researching. Hopefully.