January: Snowmaggedon I, II, III, IV...

January began in Costa Rica, swinging over the rain forest on zip lines and gazing at monkeys:

Suspended bridge in Monteverde, Costa Rica

 And the month ends in Northampton, slipping down streets and trying to find the dog under 3 feet of snow:

January is not a bad month to be on sabbatical, especially when every other day you wake up to another foot of snow knowing that your Honda hybrid would have gotten stuck on the way to work anyway.

Days #227-231: After swapping hiking boots for heels, I flew out to LA for the MLA.  Gave my first MLA presentation on a panel called "The Globalization of the Holocaust," caught up with myriad colleagues and left coast friends, and scoured the city for culinary delights unavailable in New England (namely Pinkberry and Beard Papa).  Also, I caught some great views of the Grand Canyon out the airplane window.

Days #234 and #246: Phase one of the Almodóvar Project is completed, with the viewing of La flor de mi secreto (1995) and Carne trémula (1997), both excellent mid-period Pedro films.  I was excited to discover that La flor includes, embedded in the narrative, a plot synopsis of Volver with the delightful Chus Lampreave playing essentially the same role in both movies.  Now I've seen all the early and mid-period Almodóvar films I'd missed!  Late period Almodóvar I've got covered.

Day #238: Cross country skiing!

Days #240 - 245: Eating, American style.  Meat loaf, mac and cheese, burgers, pizza and wings.  Vegetables are for losers!  Stocking up before it's all paella, paella, paella.

Day #241: I cold-emailed one of my academic idols who said he'd be "delighted" to give a keynote at next year's Five College Symposium.  Whoo!

Day #242: 6 hours on the road/6 hours in the city: a beer at Pete's Tavern, dinner at the Union Square Coffee Shop, and the Jayhawks at Webster Hall in NYC.  We make it home riding the front end of another Nor'easter. 

Day #244: Saw The King's Speech.  Reminded me of my first, disastrous conference presentation and how I overcame it to become the King of England.

Day #246: Finished Keith Richards' autobiography, Life.  Then I burned it and snorted it.

Day #250: More snow!  More X country skiing!

Days #250-252: A visit from an old friend (and certainly the most fashionable U.S. government employee I know) for a lovely weekend enjoying the sights and delights of Snowho.  A great staycation before I leave for España...

September: Back to the Future! Or work, I mean Back to Work.

[September]

Days #99 and #100:  Academics love to debate the relative merits and work environments of their favorite coffee shops.  I'm no exception: at NohoCo, there's no wifi (and thus the urge to check Facebook is quashed) but it's relatively quiet and the tea is great.  At Haymarket, the wifi is free and the tea is super, but it's popular, so you have to suffer through everything from roommate interventions to the florid prose of a women's writing group at the table next to you.  Bruegger's is not a coffee shop, and their tea sucks, too.  They have free wifi, but is it worth it with the Eagles soundtrack you'll have to try to ignore?  Once the bagel has been consumed, it's not so conducive to hanging around.

Day #101: Roasting beans when it's 97 degrees out and the A/C is on the fritz makes Esselon Cafe's free wifi immaterial.

Day #102: My Almodóvar series continues with Entre tinieblas from 1983, which is Pedro's first real step into the big leagues.  Nuns with ridiculous nicknames, serious drug problems, and Carmen Maura being pawed by a tiger.  Loved it.

Days #106 and 107:  Catching up on more Spanish movies.  Las trece rosas (2007), based on the true story of thirteen young female Republicans imprisoned in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (and a good compliment to the novel La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón) and Mario Camus' Los días del pasado (1978), which is an incredibly subdued tale of a small-town teacher in postwar Spain and her connection to the maquis (resistance fighters) living in the hills nearby.  Camus is a prolific director perhaps best known for his 1984 film Los santos inocentes, but his work seems to dovetail with Carlos Saura's post-Franco films, so he's on my to-watch list.

Day #108:  Feels like the last day of summer.  Mulling over taking the air conditioners out.  Grabbed by Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, from the first page.  Dreaming that I've forgetten to show up to classes.

Day #109: I am consulted for a plot point on TV's How I Met Your Mother.  Call me Professor to the Stars.

Days #110-112:  The Rock Critic moves in.  The dog and I are delighted to have him here.

Days #113-116: Researching and writing a conference article on Catalan author's (Mercè Rodoreda's) 1947 short story about a concentration camp.  Interesting and draining work, with eye-opening revelations about the author's life and beliefs.  Also discovered that if you can get past kids named "Sierra" occasionally running around, Woodstar Cafe, along with free wifi, plays decent music (Neko Case, for instance) and has really excellent vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Day #117: Lady Gaga and her fire-breathing piano come to Hartford.  Not for the faint of heart or the fully clothed.

Day #119: Bike ride.  Fall in New England is... well, just see for yourself. -->

Day #121: The Almodóvar series continues with La ley del deseo (1987), which followed up his 1984 release ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (a dark film that puts Almodóvar's twist on suburban life in Madrid -- and, now that I think about it, has a Nazi storyline, too -- that I've taught twice now, so I skipped it this time around).  Watching Almodóvar's films more or less chronologically, I'm beginning to put the pieces together, finding a very cohesive set of themes that he's been hammering away at for decades.  In La ley del deseo, there's the creepy captor/captive theme (reappearing in Átame!), a hint of incest (Volver), transsexuality (Todo sobre mi madre), Antonio Banderas as a sociopath (Átame!, again, to a certain extent), and amnesia (Hable con ella), among the usual set of drugs, sex and the always captivating Carmen Maura common to most of his early films.

Day #122: Discovered a treasure trove of Hispanist-themed blogs, calendars of upcoming international conferences, New Spanish film festivals in the U.S. and notes on journals from the perspective of those on the receiving end of arduous reader reports that have expanded my bookmarks exponentially and may get me to start using my RSS feed again.  Thanks, Kirsty!  Also, finally finished Javier Cercas' new nonfiction novel, Anatomía de un instante, and I now know more about the failed February 23, 1981 coup in Spain and Adolfo Suárez than I ever imagined was possible.

Days #123-127:  Another great thing about sabbatical?  Long weekend vacations in the middle of the semester.

La copa del sabático

A colleague said to me in the throws of celebrating Spain's victory in the World Cup: "Nice job, SJB!  You picked the right field!"  Yes, in my mind, watching La furia roja's run-up to the copa was in-depth cultural research, accompanied by beer.  And now I can toss off the relevant names -- Iker, Xavi, Pedro, David Villa, Iniesta, Del Bosque, etc. etc. -- like a pro.

[June]

Day #36: Cleaned out old grad school papers, and remembered how much fun that Galdós class was.  Not.
Day #37: Spain vs. Portugal.

[July]

Day #39: Finished revising a journal article that 2 out of 3 anonymous readers found redeeming.
Day #40-43: Decamped to Brooklyn for heatwave and Manhattan for air conditioning.  Urban high culture attained.
Day #41: Spain vs. Paraguay.
Day #44: Finished reading La voz dormida, a novel about imprisoned women and the post-Spanish Civil War resistance movement, and The Holocaust in Spanish Memory, a book that led directly to my prolonged game of phone tag with an eminent German historiographer who lives in Buffalo.
Day #45: Spain vs. Germany.  Celebrated Spain's win with an imported vermouth on the rocks with a twist of orange.
Day #49: Spain vs. Flandes aka los Paises bajos (aka The Netherlands): ¡Gol! ¡Triunfo!  ¡La copa del mundo!
Day #50: I finally got a card for Northampton's Forbes Library (home of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library), took advantage of reading areas and the in-house tea brewing machine, and celebrated at Northampton's most highly-lauded new frozen dessert establishment: GoBerry Frozen Yogurt (aka Noho froyo).
Days #55-69:  On vacation.  Off the grid.  Do not disturb.

23 Orchard Street

Apparently, my parents lived at 32 Orchard St. when I was born, so it seems serendipitous to be moving into my first house at 23 Orchard St 32 years later. Here are some photos of moving and the house, mostly starring Addison, who won't stop following me around.