A Sabbatical for the SJBlog

The sun goes down on San Sebastián, Spain, and on the SJBlog.

Dear friends of the SJBlog,

As you may have guessed, the blogging wind has gone out of the SJBlog's sails. It's been fun, and I truly appreciate your interest and pithy comments over the years. But just as the SJBlog appeared one day to a hushed fanfare, so too does it now quietly bow out. I will leave open the possibility of the SJBlog's triumphant return, but for now I bid you adiós. If you miss me, you can still find me on Facebook and Twitter (@profsjb) -- until I get bored of them, too -- and in the real world, wherever that may be.

Many happy returns,
SJB



         

Febrero: Barcelona (and pictures of food)

I have decamped to Barcelona for the next few months, working in libraries by day and trolling bookstores and catching up on Spanish movies by night.  There are three things that have proven to be indispensable for this particular stay: slippers for cold floors in an unheated apartment; my laptop cable lock to thwart anyone who wants to steal my life's work; and my tea infuser, which I should probably never leave home without.

Here's what else I've been up to:

Days #260-265: Quick trip down to Madrid for an international conference of young Hispanists.  Gave my first paper in Spanish in a room that looked like it was preparing for the arrival of a UN delegation.

Plaza Mayor at daybreak

Day #263: I love running in different places, even places where no one else is running.  Today's route: through the Plaza Mayor, past the Royal Palace and around the Campo del Moro.  Chilly morning in Madrid, pretty sure everyone who saw me thought I was nuts.  Didn't see the King.

Day #264: Saw the Basque author Bernardo Atxaga speak.  When I was asked later what he talked about, the best I could come up with was that euskera is an asteroid in the linguistic solar system and translating a novel simultaneously into Spain's four national languages is tricky.

Day #266: I may be missing the Oscars this year, but for once I got to see Spain's equivalent Goya awards, in their mind-numbing entirety, on TV.  Javier Bardem won best actor for Biutiful. He now has more Goya awards than anyone else.  I wonder if he wishes he could give back that one for Huevos de oro?

Biblioteca de Catalunya

 Day #267: My days in the Biblioteca de Catalunya begin, as does the humiliation of trying to use my rusty Catalan with the librarians.


Day #272: Saw Biutiful, and Bardem definitely deserved that Goya.

Day #276: Working on a project about Mauthausen, and was able to meet a historian and the president of the Amical of Mauthausen today.  Making plans to be at the camp for the 66th anniversary of its liberation.

Day #279: Thrilled to have been in Spain on the 30th anniversary of the attempted coup of February 23, 1981 to nerd out on the retrospective articles and TV shows.  Culmination: saw the movie 23-F, in which all of the bad guys have mustaches, and now I know all of the inside jokes, coño!  ¡Quieto todo el mundo!

Day #280: Three more running routes in Barcelona: 1) Down the Diagonal, 2) To the Sants train station and 3) Along the Barceloneta by the ocean, to the Peix (a big fish designed by Frank Gehry, of course)

Day #281: Back to the library...

February Appendix: Pictures of Food

Lentils with chorizo, crusty bread and a nice Rioja.

Goat and sheep's cheese.  This is what the fridge smells like right now.

Berberechos.  Oh! Cockles.  That's why the woman at the market told me they weren't clams.

The berberecho aftermath.

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...

Is this really December?

Two-at-a-time is de rigour at McSorley's Ale House

Any month that starts out like this is going to have to be good.

Days #192-196: A fruitful research trip to New York City.  Forayed into the Columbia University library, attended a conference on photojournalism during the Spanish Civil War at NYU, checked out the related and fascinating "Mexican Suitcase" exhibit at the International Photography Center (and bought the exhibit catalogue, which includes my new favorite photo of all time: a Republican soldier in the trenches on the outskirts of Madrid next to a giant black bear, courtesy of Robert Capa), drank beer, and ate cupcakes.

Day #199: Watched Almodóvar's Kika (1993).  Not my favorite.  Almodóvar's low period.  Now I understand why it's not even released on DVD in the US.

Day #201: Finally finished Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes, which, by the way, is 600 pages, 500 of which could have benefited from a good editor.  Not sure I can agree with his posthumous genius status, but I suppose I should read more than one of his books.

Days #204-206: In the interest of crafting an engaging multimedia presentation for my upcoming MLA performance, I spent hours ripping DVDs and tinkering with them in iMovie.  Hours.  For two clips that total less than 2 minutes.  Don't say I never did anything for you, MLA.

Day #205: Two rejections in one day!  An article is sunk and the NEH says no to my funding application.  It's not all wine and roses here in sabbatical-land.  Well, it's wine.

Day #207: Back to planning our 5 College symposium on war and historical memory in Spain, now even better for 2011!

Day #211: After a flight delay, I have extra time to re-grout my kitchen.

November: sabbatical stride

It's been over a month, and my careful record-keeping of my sabbatical activities has fallen by the wayside somewhat.  Here's what I remember...

Day #151: I had tea with J.A. González Sainz, who is the first published Spanish author I have ever had tea with.  He was delightful, and loved the New England colors.

Days #158-#160: St. Louis for the MACHL.  The what?  The Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature.  Also hung out with my two favorite Wash U econ professors who have 99 problems, but econometrics ain't one.

Day 161

Days 162-173: I read El violinista de Mauthausen, by Andrés Pérez Domínguez (who also has a blog), a 2009 Nazi spy novel that now becomes at least the second Spanish novel about violins and concentration camps (see: Violí d’Auschwitz or The Violin of Auschwitz, by María Àngels Angelada).

I watched two Spanish documentaries about Mauthausen (El convoy de los 927 and Lágrimas rojas) and corresponded with two documentary filmmakers from Spain, both of whom were kind enough to send me their films.

I watched Átame! (1990), which I confirmed is still my least favorite of Almodóvar's films, and Tacones lejanos (1991) which I'd never seen, but enjoyed, and not solely because Javier Bardem makes a brief appearance as "Javier."

Along with some far-flung colleagues, I got into my first conference on the Iberian peninsula, scheduled for February 2011.  ¡De puta madre!

Along with some near-flung colleagues, I had lunch with the Spanish Consulate of Boston.  He was... interesting.

Days 174-191: We warmed the house and put the TV on the wall and cooked a 16 lb turkey.  We saw Emmylou Harris and Aimee Mann and Christopher Taylor and I used my faculty ID to get us into a show at the Smith campus center ("You're faculty?  Um... I guess $10.").  We hiked and I biked and ran and namaste-ed.  The dog got a turkey-shaped cookie with frosting.  I looked up all those "-ology" words people are always tossing around.  I read theories about the Holocaust.  I started Juan Marsé's Si te dicen que caí but couldn't get into it.  I finished the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo trilogy and started Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes.  I watched a lot of The Wire.  I started writing my MLA paper.  I found a sweet apartment in Barcelona for the spring!

October Trails

Leadville, Colorado

This month, I've been on the move.

Days #131-135: The 'rents visit, and we zoom around the Berkshires, Historic Deerfield, Non-Historic Greenfield, and the top of Mt. Holyoke.

Days #137-141: A weekend in the Colorado Rockies, touring Frisco, Leadville, Copper Canyon and Vail.  Plane reading: Ojos que no ven, a quick read by Spanish novelist J.Á. González Sainz, and Helen Graham's excellent The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction.

Day #142: I find out that Javier Cercas' book Anatomía de un instante has won the Spanish National Narrative Prize, and the delight that I have actually already read this book washes over me.

Day #144-146: Attended the mouthful of acronym AILCFH conference in Austin, Texas, and presented a paper on one of Mercè Rodoreda's lesser-known short stories, "Nit i boira."  So far in my academic career, my conference presentations have generally been the equivalent of an avant-garde jazz duo playing a Ramada Inn: sparse attendance, occasionally with people who have clearly wandered into the wrong room.  My presentation in Austin was, happily, the opposite: audience members numbering in the 20s (!), rapt attention, and a lively, relevant and insightful discussion.  Also managed to sneak in a trip to Ironworks barbeque, where I stuffed myself to the gills.

Plane reading: Miguel de Castillo's Child of Our Time, a book my Dad found referenced in a 1950s issue of the New Yorker that just happens to dovetail with my current research.  Synchronicity.

Day #148: The SJBlog has made the blog roundup of Books on Spain!  New visitors will certainly be confused and befuddled by the seeming randomness of the timing and content of SJBlog posts.  For those just joining us: I'm on sabbatical.  That's why I have so much more time to read things, watch movies and go places.  Usually mid-October finds me buried under midterm essays trying to eek out a few minutes to sit on the couch and watch "Mad Men."

Garbo: The Spy

And on Day 124, during a quick trip to Seattle, I managed to catch the Goya-award winning documentary Garbo, el espía, shown as part of the Third Annual Festival of New Spanish Cinema, (coming to a theater near you if you're lucky enough to live in New York, Portland, San Juan, Houston, Miami, Chicago, DC or Calgary).  This film is a captivating example of how far Spanish documentary filmmaking has come in the last decade.  Although the film's producer is Edmon Roch, a Catalan filmmaker who founded the Barcelona-based production company Ikiru Films, and it's billed as a Spanish documentary, Garbo is a prime example of transnational cinema.¹ The fact that Roch worked on Whit Stillman films and directed a series for Spanish television doesn't hurt his international cred, either.

In a blend of English, Spanish and Catalan, Garbo tells the story of a Catalan double agent during World War II who had an out-sized impact on the course of history.  It's a fascinating story, told with an engaging blend of snippets of old spy movies, interviews with scholars and historians, and filmstrips and home movies of pre-war Barcelona and post-war Venezuela.  Watch the preview here.

¹ What's transnational cinema, you ask? My article "Filming the (Trans)Nation: Spain and Mexico in Guillermo del Toro’s Cinema" currently under careful review at Journal X, will answer all your questions.  Someday.

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.

August: If a blog falls in the forest...

The sabbatical saga continues, amid the blistering heat and refreshing breezes of August...

Day #70: Vacation ends and email resumes.  I am awash in blueberries.
Day #71: Back to reading about Nazis.  Maybe not the most uplifting summertime tome.
Day #74: Oh dear, I join the ranks of the iPhone minions.  Justification: checking email remotely from conferences and coffee shops and Spain.  Bonus: I am reunited with Tetris.
Days #75-77: Out-of-town visitors!  Cotton candy, BBQ, Apples to Apples, beer, six people sitting in a room all connected to their individual mobile devices.  Fun!
Day #76: The Almodóvar Project begins with Laberinto de pasiones (1982), Almodóvar's second film and first wide-release feature.  Nymphomania and Spanish punk music are never the same again.
Day #79: A hobby is resurrected when I'm granted access to the campus darkroom and dive back into printing photographs.  It's been at least five years, and I'd forgotten how cool this is.
Day #80: And 80 days later, our Five College conference bites the dust for 2010.  Qué pena.  Here's hoping it will be resurrected in 2011!

Look closely: it's Wilco

Days #83-84: Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA in North Adams is the most enjoyable festival I have ever been to (I can only think of one other one, but still).  Seeing Wilco is starting to become a summer tradition, one that I can really get behind.
Days #87-89: Vacationing in Martha's Vineyard with the Obamas.  Or near the Obamas.  There they are!  In those Obamacopters!

Obamacopters over Martha's Vineyard

Days #89 and 91: Two Team Taboo reunions.  Wow, remember when we were, like, grad students and stuff?
Day #92: Sigh.  Back to work.  Book and Nazis, here I come.

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.