Kalamazoo 2008

Off to my 14th Kalamazoo (14 out of the last 15; my wife though going when we had a one-month-old baby in the house might have been a poor decision). Due to many thesis defenses (students did well) and just a honkin big pile of meetings, I am only coming out on Friday, flying to Midway, leaving Chicago around noon, and driving in to Kzoo, maybe in time to hear papers or even catch Wine Hour (look for me at Phil Kaveny's book display or in the Arizona display).

Video at Into The West: Fantasy Festival in Salt Lake City

Two weeks ago I was honored to be invited to give a keynote address and a talk on Beowulf at Fantasy Festival, an event organized by the non-profit charity Into the West. My talk was about finding ways to judge Tolkien's and Rowling's work, coming up with fair criteria by which we might rate them in comparison with each other and with other works of literature (I believe I snuck Joyce in a lot, as well as a fair bit of Hemingway and Toni Morrison). iSCIFI.tv was there and did a quick interview about the relationship between Science Fiction and Fantasy. It was fun, and now it's on YouTube: at this link (I will work on embedding it, but piles of papers call).

There is also some commentary on the event, and pictures, by writer Paul Genesse, the author of The Golden Cord, which I am bringing with me to read on the plane to Kalamazoo when I'm not grading papers. Paul has a good blog entry on the conference here, with pictures.

I am going to be at Kalamazoo, but doing only medieval things, not Tolkien things. Then there will be trips to NYC (Recording another Recorded Books course, this time on poetry) and, in November, to Bergen, Norway, to talk about my technical meme research, but only one other Tolkien-related event, the Long Expected Party at the Shaker Village in Kentucky, which has the most beautifully done website I've ever seen (designer, would you re-do my web sites? Pretty, pretty please?).

Just barely made it

I have always been the tiniest bit disappointed that, because it took me a while to realize what I wanted to do with my life, I didn't manage to get my Ph.D. by 25 (that was the age at which the Professor on Gilligan's Island got his). I know that's a silly thing, but it's true.

So, back when I realized I was going to miss the Ph.D.-by-25 cutoff by a couple of years, I set myself a new goal: Full Professor before 40.

Today the Faculty Promotions Committee voted to promote me to full Professor. So I made my goal with exactly 12 hours to spare. I turn 40 tomorrow.

I'm really grateful that my department so strongly supported my coming up a year early, and I want to thank the colleagues, external reviewers, and students who wrote letters supporting my case, and even more the senior colleagues who showed me how to be a good teacher and scholar (Bev, Paula, Sue, Sheila, Dick). Most of all I thank Sam Coale, who has been my mentor at Wheaton for ten years and was my advocate at the hearing today. I've been blessed with great mentors: Peggy Knapp in undergraduate, John Miles Foley and Martin Camargo for my second M.A., and Allen Frantzen for my Ph.D. Sam took over where Allen finished (though he and my earlier mentors really never left off), and I can't express how valuable all his teaching and support has been. Having a great mentor makes all the difference. I hope someday I will live up to Sam's example. I hope readers of this post realize how important mentoring is and continue to do the hard work of mentoring (the work is especially hard when you have to mentor a pain-in-the-butt like me).

And now let me tell a quick story about Sam. During my first semester at Wheaton, Sam was awarded his gold watch for 30 years of service (and they spelled his name wrong on it). Sam was showing me the watch, and said something like, "I can't believe it's been thirty years since I started here. 1968"
I looked at him and said, "1968 was the year I was born."
"F*** you, Mike," said Sam.
That was the moment when I really started to believe that I would be able to fit in at Wheaton.

Now I'm just waiting to be taught the secret handshake and given the keys to the special full-Professor's bathroom and the liquor cabinet...

Evaluation of Some of My Work

I have now reached the level of Alexander the Great*, except instead of boiling blood, it's work, with not much of an end in sight. 

But I wanted to point you to an incredibly generous evaluation of some of my work by Steve Tompkins at The Cimmerian.  It's on the piece that I wrote for Allan Turner's The Silmarillion: 30 Years On,

and which I thought at the time was far too personal for scholarship (it also includes my first published drawing, a linoleum block carving I made of Angband when I was nine years old).

As I said, Tompkins is incredibly generous about the work, so I thought I would give a pointer to it so other readers can see what they think.





*Dante reference. Alexander the Great is forced to stand in boiling blood so that only his eyebrows show. Next year's teaching includes the Tolkien class, Chaucer, and the medieval lit class that includes Dante and Egil's Saga. Should be a great year. Also a new extension to the Math/Science Fiction class, Logic and Language (done as an unpaid overload: what was I thinking? But it will be fun and my co-professor and I will probably get a book out of it).

Never a dull moment

So last night I look out the window and there is a wild-haired, older man walking around our street, seeming to search along the ground.  So far, no problem: we live on a small circle and people sometimes come up to ride bikes or walk dogs or just walk.  But then I notice that the man was carrying something that looked like a gun.  I looked again. 

He was carrying a crossbow.  

I got more nervous when I noticed him scratching his neck with it.  It didn't appear to be loaded, but weapon safety was obviously not a big deal.  I was going to go out to talk with him, but my wife vetoed that idea, saying that a man with a weapon should be spoken to by the police. 

Well, I guess we used a magic word when we told them that there was a man on our street with a crossbow.  Many police arrived (though by then the man was gone).  I guess he was found, admitted to having the crossbow, and explained that he was shooting squirrels and that the bolt went across our fence and into our yard or onto our street.  I still haven't found it.  The man, who is somewhat mentally disabled, was willing to give up the crossbow to the police. No hard feelings, no charges, etc.  I have no problem with anyone eliminating squirrels, either, though maybe a nice have-a-heart trap would be better than firing crossbow bolts through the fence. Never a dull moment around here. 

...a flippin' crossbow...

The Paris Psalter on Anglo-Saxon Aloud

But before the actual post, a couple of things.  First, my apologies for neglecting the blog. A never-ending series of minor illnesses have swept through the family.  As those of you with young children know, that's not surprising, but this year, for whatever reason, we have had the very weird situation where we've all been sick in series rather than parallel.  So just as one person gets well, the next gets sick, and by the time the stupid virus has worked its way through the whole family, we're all set for a new one to start in.  

But today, although I was home with a kid with a fever, my own voice finally cleared up enough to get back to Anglo-Saxon Aloud.  I recorded, edited and posted the Psalm 51 from the Paris Psalter.  I still haven't entirely achieved true chant style, but at least the psalm is actually sung (though those of you who listen to my singing might think it might have been better had it not been sung).  There are about 100 psalms in the Paris Psalter, so I will be trying very hard to post more than one per day so that I can actually finish this project, but the medium is absolutely unforgiving, so it takes a long time to get a psalm recorded properly. 

I wonder what my colleagues and students will be thinking when they walk down the hallway tomorrow morning and hear singing (and cursing, when I mess up) from behind my office door.  

Update on the 16 four-year-olds and the live goat

My son's fourth birthday party was this past Saturday.  We had used two rules of thumb for planning:  

1) we have had good weather every birthday of his life thus far.

2) when you invite the whole class to a party, less than half can come.  

We were wrong on both counts.  The weather was terrible, and every kid we invited came.  That meant that we had to have the party inside, and it was going to be crowded. 

Because the Barn Babies were coming.  

So, come 12 noon on Saturday we had sixteen children (actually more, because some people brought siblings without telling us that they would), a pig, ten rabbits, five chickens, two cats, two puppies, a rooster, and a diapered goat were in my basement. 

And it was great. 

The Barn Babies people put down tarps and then playpens to contain the pig, goat and puppies.  The goat was wearing a diaper (really).  The kids could take turns climbing into the pens with the larger animals or holding the small animals.  And the genius of Barn Babies, which they should patent, was that each animal to be held was wrapped up in a baby blanket.  That meant that the rabbits, chickens, kittens, rooster (really), didn't squirm or kick.  There were some great moments when I looked around to see every kid sitting and gently petting an animal. 

So Mitchell had a good party.  Then the next day we went to see the PawSox play.  I have been at football games in January where I was less cold than we were for that baseball game, and I wore a ski mask and winter gloves.  But we all got our pictures taken with the two Red Sox World Series trophies, so it was worth it.  

(Medieval content will return when I get over my latest miserable illness and get the proofs for Tolkien Studies volume 5 to the printer and catch up on grading).

P.S.:  Recorded a new Recorded Books course last week, on Grammar (and the producers loved it -- go figure).