The cards of Christmas past

I am a tradition killer.

It's been years since I've sent out Christmas cards en masse, though in the last couple of years I've sent out Valentines to folks who sent us holiday greetings.  I'll probably do that again come February, though at last count, Tom and I had only received about five cards in the mail.  I've received several holiday e-cards from people who used to send "real" cards, but in general, the custom of sending these obligatory annual missives seems to be dying a slow death.

That's fine with me, for the most part, since they seem like an added duty at a time of year that's busy and stressful enough.  But looking at the handful of cards we received, I also remembered how much I loved retrieving December's mail from the box when I was a kid, looking at all the different kinds of handwriting, the postmarks from places that seemed far away and exotic to me at the time.  It was a real treat when my parents let me open them, and even when I didn't get to open them myself, I enjoyed reading them.

In some ways, they were like condensed history lessons about my parents' pasts:  where they'd lived, what they'd done, who they'd been long before I was born.  There were many old friends of my parents who I only knew through their cards, like my dad's college friend Jim Dukas, who was a professional actor in New York City.  His cards were always the funniest ones, and I remember his distinctive, slanty writing that was sort of halfway between print and cursive.  I actually met him during a high-school trip to NYC, and in many ways, I felt like I'd always known him.

It's certainly true that we have multiple, ongoing, and more immediate ways of keeping up with old friends these days (Facebook, I'm looking at you), and I certainly wouldn't want to give up social networking in favor of a once-a-year holiday update.  But those interactions are (we trust) largely private: you can't display your Facebook wall like you can display a collection of Christmas cards.  And of course, they're even more ephemeral that ephemera, as we've written about here before.

Which brings us to this year's collection of holiday ephemera (as opposed to this year's).  My mom's ongoing basement excavation recently unearthed a file folder of handmade Christmas cards that my parents sent out in the 1950s and 1960s.  My dad, as I've mentioned here before, was a keen amateur photographer, and he also apparently had access to a typesetter and a silk-screening setup at his office.  So, they designed and sent out a different card every year.

I'd only seen one of these before, so it was quite a surprise to me to see pretty much the whole run of them come out of the file folder.

This seems to be the first iteration, from when my parents were still living in Morgantown, before my brother Mark was born:

The 1954 edition, with Phillip and Pam

Fortunately, the "Hathmark" logo (!) on the back of each card lets us know when each was produced.

So, here they are, in order of appearance:

1956: Contract with Santa.  Pam's comment: "That looks like the contract Dad drew up for me when I was five and started getting an allowance" (a document she still has, natch).

Add caption

1958: Slightly derivative model, with a copy of a Thurber illustration on the outside and an Ogden Nash ditty on the inside

1959:  Apparently, there was someone at Lazarus, a big department store in Columbus, making cutout silhouettes of children before the holidays this year.  These are the images made of Phillip, Pam, and Mark, transferred into the holiday card.

There's a story behind the 1960 edition, above, which I hadn't heard before.  The drawing at the top is the work of my brother Mark, who was about five at the time.  My parents had a contest to decide which of the three kids' pictures would go on the front, and Mark's won.  My Dad apparently decided to improve upon the original by adding a belly button right before he printed it.  When Mark saw the final version, he burst into tears, saying, "My man has no clothes on!"  That'll teach you not to mess with a masterpiece.

1961 edition, on the same silver-speckled paper as the previous year's card

1962: Classic Pieta, my mom

's handwriting, and the last of the speckled paper. 

And this elaborate, multi-lingual folding number from 1963:

There are, of course, extras: two-sided sheets, one side in red and one in green, ready to be cut up and folded.

1964:  Rented old-fashioned clothing, Victorian pose, and an actual tintype print glued into each card.

The tintype was the only one of these handmade cards I'd ever seen before, and there's a reason why, as the 1965 edition foreshadows:

So, there you have it:  my arrival apparently ended this tradition.  My parents still sent Christmas cards, but store-bought ones.  So maybe I'm not so much a tradition-killer as a tradition-modifier.

And I'll continue modifying it now by wishing our readers ( all three of you) a very Merry Christmas (or whatever December holiday you observe) and a bright, beautiful 2013.

Merry Strip-mas!

It's been a long, long semester, but yesterday we managed a quick trip up to the Strip District in Pittsburgh to do some Christmas shopping.

The Strip is crowded and lively on any Saturday, but especially during the holiday season!  And in addition to the usual seasonal decor, there are some distinctly Pittsburgh-y touches.

Tables full of greenery

Tables full of Italian cookies

Ceiling full of piñatas at Reyna Foods

"Si se puede, Steelers" sign at the taco stand outside Reyna--where a mile-long line kept us from indulging. (Google Translate says this means "If they can, Steelers":  surely there's a better translation?)

Festive holiday-themed Terrible Towels...and of course, the ubiquitous breast-cancer pink Terrible Towel

"Andiamo, Steelers!"

Outside of the amazing Penn Mac.  We didn't even try to go to the deli side on this trip--people were packed in there like sardines

Huge lines waiting to check out at Penn Mac, where we got several kinds of pasta, three-grain risotto, dried canellini beans, shallots, and other goodies

"Ritorna presto":  we most certainly will.  There's always a great reason to come back to the Strip.

Pittsburgh Step Trek

Yes, I know:  long time no blog.  What can I tell you?  The semester started.

However, today we did get out of town to participate in an event I've been wanting to check out ever since we saw a story about it on Rick Sebak's WQED show "It's The Neighborhoods":  the Pittsburgh Step Trek, put on by the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association:  a 3.5 mile walk up and down the hills south of the Monongahela River that includes 1,815 of the public steps that run along and cut between the twisty roads of the neighborhood.

A chilly, rainy morning in Morgantown didn't bode well for an outdoor adventure--but by the time we got up to Pittsburgh early this afternoon, the sun was out, there was a lovely cool breeze, and it turned out to be a total Chamber-of-Commerce, photo-op kind of autumn day.

The walk was a challenge, to say the least...but totally worth it for the amazing views of downtown Pittsburgh and the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, and for the intangible "Pittsburghness" of the whole event, for lack of a better word.

First ascent:  these stairs up from South Side Park to Mission Street...

...past the now-closed Church of St. Josephat, built in 1916 to serve a largely Polish parish, as the language of the cornerstone and the war memorial attest.

Then up 143 steps for some spectacular views of downtown across a weirdly jungle-y landscape...

And then lots more steps and lots more spectacular views.

Cathedral of Learning at the U of Pittsburgh in the distance

One of the highlights of this year's tour was its path through an area called "The Hollow," home to the city's Slovak community in the early 20th century (according to the guide, the Pittsburgh area is "home to more Slovaks than any other area in the United States").

The heart of the community was this place, the Kollar Club, more formally known as "The John Kollar Slovak Literary and Library Society."  Named for a famous 19th-century Slovak poet, the club is still in operation, "preserving Slovak language and culture, and serving as a venue for live music."

Have I mentioned how much I love Pittsburgh?  It's places like these that make this city such a remarkable place.  Many older, rust-belt cities may have places that used to house to ethnic clubs; in Pittsburgh, they're alive and well and thriving.

Then up another long flight of steps from The Hollow to Mary Street...

...with a peek into a charming hidden garden on the way...

...and back down some more steps...

...and up and down and up and down some more, until it started to feel a little Bataan-Death-March-like, and we wondered how on earth the steel- and glass-workers who lived in these houses and walked  to work in the factories on the river ever made it back up the hill to get home after a long day of work.

And we wondered where they bought groceries, and drank; presumably, back in the day, there were little corner stores and bars at the end of every block.  Now everyone seems to have a car, and they probably drive down to one of the many, many bars along Carson Street.

After we finished, we pondered having a drink ourselves, but instead went to Rita's Custard, also on Carson Street.  We figured we'd already burned off the calories.

Such an amazing city.  Such a great day out.  And such an inspiring story behind the group that organizes the event, the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association.

Apparently, the group started up fifteen years ago after three homes were destroyed in a fire because a standard city fire truck wasn't able to get through the neighborhood's narrow, winding streets to reach them.  (Some of the homes in the area can only be accessed by the steps--there's no street access to them at all!)  As the guide notes, "they gathered data and succeeded at making the case for a smaller fire truck with a tighter turning basis.  The city adopted the new design, and now a number of smaller, more-able fire trucks serve hillside neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh."

That's what I call successful community organizing.

Old dog, new (old) trick

My normally orderly home-office space
in pre-semester chaos mode

A colleague of mine is on maternity leave this coming semester, and I was asked to take one of her classes: a 300-level course titled "Methods of Teaching Composition," a requirement for our English-education majors.

It's a daunting prospect, since A) I'm by no means a rhet/comp scholar; B) any formal study I have done in that area is about twenty years old; and C) if I screw it up, I not only shortchange this class of students, but their future students as well.

No pressure.

While I've been reading up on the subject and thinking about the class all summer, I just this week actually started putting the syllabus together.  It's one of the hardest I've ever had to write.

I should say that my colleague very generously put not only her syllabus, but all her assignments and the course readings on Dropbox for me to steal, which has been a great help.  But what I've discovered is what every substitute teacher certainly already knows: having someone else's lesson plans doesn't mean you "get" what they're trying to do.  Ultimately, you're approaching from the outside a class that someone else has inhabited from the inside.

Well-designed classes have a deep context, I'm discovering--and you can't just borrow that context.  It has to be ingrained in your very way of thinking.  Disciplinarity matters, and it shapes everything we do as scholars and teachers.  Sure, I could give someone my folklore syllabus and the textbook and they could do the readings and teach the class, but that wouldn't make them a folklorist--any more than my upcoming stumble through the comp methods course will make me a compositionist.

I'll certainly know a lot more about it in three months--probably as much by virtue of the many mistakes I'll make as anything else.  But I still won't have that depth of knowledge that makes specialists able to answer complex questions, draw connections between ideas, and situate current approaches in a larger historical context.

Part of the purpose of my saying this is simply confessional: I'm very anxious about this class, and am trying to prepare myself--if not for outright failure, then, at least for serious imperfection.

But another intriguing discovery has been that because of my lack of context, I physically have not been able to put the course syllabus together the way I normally would.  Typically, I tend to write my syllabi in a linear fashion:  I have a sense of how much time we need to spend on each book/topic/time period, depending on the course, and also have a sense of how the course content should build as the weeks go by, and where we need to end up.  So, I just plug that sequence in, week by week, until I get to week 15.

I can't tell you how many times I sat down at the computer with my blank syllabus (Week 1, Day 1...Week 1, Day 2) and looked at it just as blankly.  So I resorted to the grids that I created long ago for mapping out classes.  I haven't used them in years, because my brain just doesn't need them to plot out a class anymore.

Until this one.

Not only did I use the grids, I eventually taped them all to the wall, side-by-side, so I could see the whole semester in one shot.  Then I started working backwards from the end of the semester, blocking out weeks for various topics, and then gradually filling in the readings and assignments for specific dates.  All in pencil, so that I could erase and revise as needed.  Which was often.

I was somewhat amazed at how much easier it was to get down to the nitty-gritty with this method.  And I'm glad I thought of it, because otherwise I might still be sitting in front of a screen with a bunch of empty spaces next to dates, and feeling increasingly panicked.

So, maybe the first lesson I've learned about Methods of Teaching Composition is that even old dogs like me need to try new invention techniques sometimes.  When your usual writing process fails you, it may be better to do something radically different than to keep trying to force your usual process to work.

* * * * * * 

This post is dedicated to my friend Jane, one of the most thoughtful, hard-working writing teachers I know, whose many blog posts about the difficulties of teaching writing (even to students at MIT!) have been a big influence on my thinking about how to put together this course.  Take this entry, for example.  

Kalamazoo (and Leeds) Update

These dancers are probably not medievalists.

Once again, I went to the big Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo in May, at which I went to the dance, but did not dance.  This year, though, I also went to the alternative, European Medieval Congress in Leeds, where I tried to go to the dance, but an hour and a half after its nominal start time, the music hadn't yet started.  Needless to say, I did not dance.

 Too bad, I guess, because I heard later that there were Daleks at the dance, which might have been worth seeing.  But I had to get up early the next morning to set out on my trip home, and (as it turned out) it was probably a good thing that I got a good night's sleep.  Because here's a brief run-down of my trip home from Leeds.

City bus from dorm to train station in time to get a coffee and a pain au chocolat before my 9:15 train.
Arrive at Kings Cross at 11:30.
London Underground to Paddington Station, where I purchased a ticket for the Heathrow Express.
Heathrow Express 12: 10 train.
Heathrow check-in and security cleared by a few minutes after 1:00.

At this point, I was delighted: I've spent literally hours before getting through Heathrow check-in and security, so I thought my time from King's Cross to the Heathrow lounge was really great.

Get on plane for 3:00 departure.
Plane takes off, and then about the time they were going to come around with drinks, the pilot announced that we needed to return to Heathrow: there was some sort of pneumatic leak.

When we landed, fire trucks came out and sprayed water on the brakes to cool them down.  At first they were trying to get the engineers to fix it so we could take off again, but that turned out to be impossible.  We sat on the plane until about 7:00 waiting while the airline staff arranged a hotel for us, and while they scrounged five buses to take all 250 passengers back to the terminal. 

Bus back to the airport, where we had to go through immigration again and pick up our luggage.

Air Canada did put us up in an airport hotel (another bus ride) and provided us with dinner and breakfast vouchers. I shared a dinner table with two other guys, one who was also going to Columbus and a college student from Toronto, who figured it was his chance to load up on free food.  He and I, I admit, each took three desserts, including little lemon parfaits in tiny shot-glass sized glasses--but the table spoons that were the only spoons available literally wouldn't fit into the glasses, and we couldn't eat them.  5:30 AM wake-up call, courtesy of the airline: I certainly didn't request it.

7:00 AM bus trip back to Heathrow; 9:30 departure time.  Same flight, actually, according to how airlines count these things, just delayed 18 hours and in a different physical plane.  But same seat, same neighbors, same flight crew.

Arrive in Toronto about noon, where I waited over an hour for my bag, which I needed to collect and take through customs before I could move on to the next flight.  Missed the flight, of course, because of the misplaced bag.

Flight to Washington National Airport, arrive about 6:00 PM.
Flight from Washington to Columbus, arrive about 8:30PM.  Unfortunately, during my phone call to Rosemary from Toronto I had mistakenly said "about 9:30," so that's when she picked me up.

Forty-one hours plus, I make that, from 9:15 AM GMT in Leeds to get on the train, to 9:30 PM Eastern time to leave the airport in Columbus.

Oh yeah: one of those days was Friday the 13th. Three buses, two trains, one subway train, four airplanes, four airports, three train stations, three countries.

It's good to be back home.