Just One of Many

This was the saddest article I read yesterday. Especially the last four or five paragraphs.

Librarian's Nite Out

Went to see No Age. I was watching the kids moshing- yes, they were actually moshing, or slam dancing, and yes, they actually stage dived- and I thought- ah, I remember when that quickly became very uncool to do. I was so happy when that happened because in the '90s for a while it was actually quite dangerous to go to a rock concert. I mean, they were so idiotic they actually moshed to Juliana Hatfield. I don't remember why I was even at a Juliana Hatfield concert, but I remember that it was painful. So, I guess with bands like No Age, the punk attitude is back. I like jumping up and down and bobbing my head at a show, but I like to do it in my private little circle of space. I don't enjoy people shoving me. Luckily we were up in the balcony.

Actually, you can see J. in the very front of the balcony in the 2nd photo here from the show. He's wearing the white button down shirt. Because he came from work.

It was a high energy show. I enjoyed it, and I'm glad No Age is coming back in July for a free Southstreet Seaport show.

Here are some shows I hope to be enjoying this summer besides the Feelies show at Maxwell's and the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago.

May 30th WIRE

July 4th Sonic Youth Feelies

July 11th No Age
South Street Seaport

There are also probably some McCarren pool shows I'll go to. Especially since I don't plan to work from July to September. I will be taking classes 4 days a week though, so I'm not going to be completely living the high life of writing and rocking.

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I just hope I can get a library job for next year. It's such a drag that I have to do two semesters of student teaching even though I have 4 years of teaching experience and am now working as a librarian in a school. State requirements can be a real pain in the ass, but I am almost done. I passed my certification test so now I just have to finish my coursework and student teaching. Oh, and that lousy math class! Did I mention that I got a scholarship for one of my student teaching classes? Apparently I am a real trailblazer in the library media specialist track at my school. I looked at all the scholarships available, hell bent on winning one, and I picked the only one that applied to what I study. It was for a practicum but since I have to student teach I can't do an internship or research. So I applied anyway and I argued that it wasn't fair not to offer LMS track students any scholarship opportunities. I also argued that my research would be developing an information literacy curriculum, which I'd have to do anyway. Well, even though they initially lost my application, they decided to award me the scholarship. The director of the LMS program told me that I set a precedent for all of the other LMS students, so she's telling everyone that I got the scholarship, and she's encouraging others to apply next year. Too bad I can only apply for school scholarships once.

I'm Alright With You

There's lots of juicy stuff going on in the lit world. Over at Ed Lin's blog he talks about representation, as it relates to his work.

Apparently the VQR aired their slush pile reader's comments. I'm sure that it seemed like a funny idea, and believe me, I've erred on the wrong side in favor of humor before, but that was just tacky and unkind. Well, the Ward Sixers let 'em have it. Loads of comments.

And I'd like to point out that the James in the comments section is not my husband. Not that anyone was wondering, but sometimes he posts comments and it could be confusing. I thought he had posted at first but quickly realized it was not him because he's not getting an MFA and he's not an immigrant's son (part of his family has been in America since New York was New Amsterdam, but for some reason they decided to make New Jersey their home. Go figure.)

In my own news, I was finally rejected by the agent. I don't mind the rejection so much as how long it took to receive it. I've been too busy to do anything writerly for a month or more, but I did manage to e-mail a small publisher to find out their submission guidelines and I received a nice little e-mail where they actually apologized for taking a few days to respond to me.

Hey, courtesy in the publishing industry! Who would have even imagined it was possible.

My last class for the semester is over on Monday. I'm celebrating by seeing No Age on Tuesday. Then I think I will get back to writing. I do start a new class the next week, but it's just one class plus work instead of three classes plus work. I can surely squeeze a few hours of writing in there. Everyone says that persistence is the key to getting published, and a friend of mine says that you shouldn't emphasize publishing over the act of writing and what you gain from that as a person, so I think I will take both pieces of advice. Keep writing, keep submitting, but also enjoy the process and learn from it.

Cross Pollination

As I walked by this bush of flowers the gardener said to me, "They cross pollinated! Just this year!"



I love how the branches are thrust up in the air.



I wish I could sit under this tree because it's like one big puffy pink cloud. The blossoms are at their peak fluffiness.

Orchids are Extraterrestrial

Summer Bliss

J. and I are going to Chicago for the Pitchfork Festival this summer. What really sold me on going this year was the prospect of also staying with, and visiting, my friend B. I'm super excited as I haven't seen her in a while.

The last time I was in Chicago it was winter and I didn't really see the town at all. I've also had layovers there, and driven around the city itself. That was fun. I listened to my father curse, "all this god damned Chicago traffic!" Apparently Mapquest had screwed him and steered him dangerously close to Chicago proper when he'd wanted to avoid it entirely.

I'll be daydreaming about the fun I'll have this summer while I tackle a stupid paper I have to do right now, and then again while I study for my reference final tomorrow. This is that crazy professor I talked about earlier, and I still think she's cool, but she changed my grade on a paper twice. I saw the whiteout and checked the back. I first had an A, then a B +, then a lousy B! I didn't ask her about it, but it bums me out that I have no chance of getting an A in this class. Even though I, and everyone else, knows that nobody cares what grades you get in library school. As they say, B's get degrees.

I keep puzzling over this Malkmus lyric in a song called Pennywhistle Thunder:
drink the sweet elixir breast milk, breast milk milkshake. At least that's what I think he's saying.

Nerves Ease into Bliss

I wasn't nervous until we started setting up our equipment on stage. Everything was so last minute that I didn't really have time to be nervous. We met up in Brooklyn to practice our set for a few hours. Then we went back to J.P.' place to eat snacks and get the equipment. On the taxi ride over to the club, as we crossed the Williamsburg bride, we joked about how this was the band's first road trip. We did cross a body of water, so that has to count.

When we got to the big city it was kind of strange for me. I've walked those streets so often, but suddenly I was helping unload the equipment and I was in a completely different context. I'd never been to Lit so the basement performance space was an experience. A very dungeon-like experience. We then waited a few hours at the club because we ended up going last (technically headlining the show, even though no one there had ever heard us with a few exceptions). The other bands had already told their friends what time they were going on so they didn't want to change the order.

There is so much downtime when you play a show. I went for a walk then came back and went out again with J. because J.P. needed a screwdriver. We bought one in Walgreens and then walked back and bought some french fries at Pomme Fritte. (Note to self- two people can definitely share on regular order of fries.)

See, there's all this time spent waiting. Then when you're about to go on everything happens so quickly. I began to get very nervous during our first song, Moon, but then when we launched into Form Disappear, our second song, I felt better. By the third song, Lights, I even managed to smile. Once we played our last song, A Guest, I once again felt quite triumphant.

I think we sounded good, though it's hard to tell because it all happened so quickly. It was good to finally play at a proper rock club because those other times were very makeshift. There was also a rock audience which helped tremendously. As far as I know, no one left the room because we were too loud. I am told we were very loud, but I had ear plugs in so I didn't feel the full brunt of it. I don't want to go deaf!

After the show the singer/guitar player in the 2nd band complimented us and said he thought our music sounded beautiful. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that. Their band was good, so I'm glad he liked us.

I wish I had a recording of the show so I could have an idea of what we sounded like. It's very strange to perform and not have a good concept of what the outcome was.