Monthly Archives: June 2006

Out our kitchen window for the two months we were in Paris.  (Minus one week we lived with Dave and Cecile—but they also have a view of the Eiffel tower, much closer and minus the vista over all the rooftops.)  The big white structure in the foreground is unfortunate, chimneys for other apartments on lower floors in our building, which seems to have been either new twenty years or so ago, or greatly remodeled.  And yet the big white intrusion also makes the view—frames it in a unique way, foregrounds your own position inside.  The building on the horizon to the right of the white vertical is the Opera Garnier, that great 19th century pile of extreme grandeur in stone and gold.  To the left of that smokestack structure the only other apartment on the eighth and top floor has this same view but better, from an outdoor terrace, not large but large enough for a few people to sit and have drinks while watching the view.  I must have taken at least a hundred photos of this view, day and night and all kinds of weather.  Whatever else great views do, they have a power to make you snap them more often than necessary.  The camera becomes the instrument of loss.  You could even Warhol the view—set a camera up and film it for hours, days.  We now webcam views so we can see them in real time, conscious of time in new ways and the same old ways.  Watching, witnessing, getting lost into the view, killing time. 

Language, speak up.  Are these lovers or friends?  How can you tell? 

turn, so many clichés.  But then all those couples help make the city what it is.  The couple on the balcony, below, about them there can be no doubt.  The cigarette.  But the other couple here in corner windows, about them I could never be sure.  They talked like this on more than one weekend, and the head bandage showed up later, was not there a few weeks earlier.  It certainly adds to the narrative potential of the photos.  Rear Window and all that.  For a country dweller like me, this telephoto glimpse into what city life offers all the time added to the mystery of being in Paris.  Years ago in Chicago we lived in a big building but had no views of neighbors.  We only heard their lives through the walls. 

The Provost asked for a report by the end of last week.  An excerpt—

ANNUAL FACULTY REPORT 2005-06                                Page 2

SCHOLARSHIP/PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY

1.  Describe any activity that you are involved in that supports your growth as a teaching scholar.

       I have been on sabbatical this spring semester 2006.  This has involved writing and traveling and writing about my travels.  I’ve also been reading a lot. 

     In January in Oaxaca I interviewed a documentary filmmaker from New York who had just had a series on the Abraham Lincoln brigade aired on public television in the States.  She introduced me to the widow of one of the founding members of the Ab Ex generation of painters in New York, Esteban Vicente and I interviewed her.  Later in May we met for a further evening of talk in Paris.  A new    museum in Segovia, Spain is dedicated to her husband’s paintings.

     In March I attended the annual meeting of the AWP in Austin, Texas.  Particularly fruitful and interesting was a meeting I had with an important young poet from Buffalo.  We discussed his new book and his publishing projects, including the possibility of launching a joint editing of the papers of poet Robert Lax, collected in the archives of St Bonaventure University in Buffalo.

    In June I attended a seminar on modernist literature given at the University of Santiago in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  I also visited two museums in the region devoted to the leading modernist author in Spain, Ramon Valle-Inclán. (I describe him as Spain’s Pessoa.)   I also visited Copenhagen for three days to see the paintings of Per Kirkeby, Denmark’s leading painter.  The galleries visited included important works by a  number of other artists such as Asger Jorn in the Arken museum, which also had a major exhibit of Australian aboriginal art.  In Copenhagen I also saw the Tokyo Ballet perform Stravinski’s Rite of Spring.

     In April and May in Paris I visited the Louvre a number of times, the Musee D’Orsay,  the museum of Asian art, the Institute of the Arab World,   the Rodin Museum, the Museum Jacquemart Andre, the Museum of Romantic Life, and the Dubuffet Foundation.  I attended a contemporary African dance performance at the Teatre Chaillot.   I interviewed a film maker, Brice Cauvin, who had just released his first major film, selected for the Berlin Festival and chosen by Variety as one of the best 100 foreign films of the year.    I went to see exhibitions of contemporary art at the Parque Vincennes and the Grand Palais and of Peruvian art at the Petit Palais.  Monet’s garden and house at Giverny and the Branly collection of African and Oceanic art.  For a week I was able to have extensive conversations about literature, spirituality and cultural topics with the British director of Oxfam’s office in Moscow. I also visited a number of sites of art museums and folkloric  cultural centers in Austin Texas, Oaxaca Mexico and Madrid Spain, including the Prado and the Museum Thyssien Bornemisa and the Centro Reina Sophia.  In Madrid I interviewed a young architect and another film maker, an account executive and an economist, a psychologist,  and I had extended discussion with an executive director of long-range economic planning for Price Waterhouse Coopers and conversations about literature and social issues with  the Director of Libraries for the three-campus system of the Universidad de Carlos III.   

     I also visited the Clinton Presidental Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

2.  Describe your efforts in publication/research/grantwriting, juried art shows or musical performance, or other analogous professional accomplishments that contribute to your scholarship and teaching development.

     I am developing a series of essays and poems about these travels.  Six poems written last fall in collaboration with Rupert Loydell were published in  March on Shadowtrain.  http://shadowtrain.com/id40.html

Three people on the plaza in front of St Sulpice, Paris.  Which one is in love with her?
Who is she friends with?  How long have they known each other? What is the look on her face?  I tried to take photos of people but it is difficult, isn’t it.  The telephoto can get you only so close and you’re afraid of breaking into their privacy while of course you are at a distance anyway.  Sort of.  Intriguing smiles, expressions but no real knowledge of what is going on.  Are two of them a couple?  People watching might be the greatest pleasure of all in travel.  How many of us in museums, say, tire quickly of scanning the art, looking closely or long, and go back and forth between paintings and the people strolling through.  And what are the expressions on people’s faces in art galleries, museums, versus their expressions in churches, malls, pedestrian streets, shops. 

Mid-May, at a restaurant over by Dave’s apartment in the Trocadero area, a restaurant called La Villa Colonial.  We ate there in early April and thought it was pretty good.  After eating in lots of other places for six weeks, we found it to be this night only ok, even as we had a delightful evening.  The theme of the restaurant celebrates the heady days of high colonialism as a positive thing—no hint of the evils of empire, only the gustatory suggestions that the empires brought lots of spices and tastes into the European palate.  This is the sort of photo that should be deleted.  It is too blurry.  And yet the color is wonderful and of course the memories suggested.  And it may provide our friend Nicholas, seated to Dave’s left, with an image he is currently in need of.  His employer, Oxfam, wants him to have a website made for his office, he is director of the Russian branch in Moscow, a website that would show all the good activities of Oxfam, so he needs a photo of himself that is not too formal, not too informal, shows him in a good light as relaxed and having a good time and entirely pleasant and approachable so potential muscovites seeking the services of Oxfam will be encouraged to come in person to the office or to apply online.  So he sent out a general call for such photos and I offered this one and another.  With the assistance of his computer specialists, this one might be enhanced and re-edited and made entirely suitable.  The marvels of digital carry us onward.  Since the image is all blurry and rosey it would be most perfect if I would say that we had a hearty rosé wine with the dinner, but I honestly can’t remember at this point.  We may have had.  In the week he visited us, Nicholas did say that Some important people "are saying these days" that rosé is now the new red so far as wine trendiness goes.  We need further researches and independent confirmations in this department. 

Bob and Nancy sped through town over the weekend and are off on the second leg of their cross-country trip, the way back.  Bob cycled from San Jose to Plymouth to celebrate his 65th birthday; Nancy drove support in the vanagon.  Now they go the other direction–West by way of the northern Canadian and Upper Peninsula of Michigan route.  Nancy had joined us for a week’s visit in Austin in March.  She was also visiting friends from her days in Silicon Valley who are now working in Silicon Gulch (Austin).  Earlier in the year, in January, they were with us in Oaxaca for the first three weeks there.  We feel we’ve traveled a lot this year but the McD’s get the prize—in addition to Oaxaca and this double cross-country trip, they went to Macchu Picchu in April, Nancy and girlfriends went to New York in May and in October they go to Italy and London for two weeks.  After that?  Follow their return trip on their blog site at  http://web.mac.com/rvmcd/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html

Steve Pink is in the news these days in connection with a new movie called "The War Tapes." You can see a video preview and reviews at:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775566/

Pink graduated from Plymouth’s English program a few years ago, so naturally we are proud of him and excited about his success.  I’ve not yet seen the movie, Joe Monninger has and says it is great, and it seems Pink’s journals provide most of the narrative text for the images many solidiers recorded with video cameras.