Staring into the Void

This week is practice theory in my theory class. I like practice theory. In an exchange with a fellow student he asked if I had found any research in my area. 

I was sitting in traffic heading to my preferred swimming pool (because heated!) thinking about the question and getting the sense that I had felt this feeling before. No, there is not a lot in the literature about the student teacher relationship among artists. That relationship that makes up the practice of art education. There is plenty of information about art information seeking. Pacey and Hemmig and Cobbledick all covered that a while ago. Gorichanaz and Tidline write about art as information. Challener covered the difference between information seeking of art history teachers and studio artists. I could go on and on. I haven’t found, and I keep looking for, a study of the practice of art education which would encompass information sharing, information seeking, information creation...and I remember what I tell my students in library instructions -- you are not going to find an article that covers everything you want to write about because you have not yet written it.

But that feeling I have when I am searching brings me to another world of practice I inhabit. That feeling of staring into the void. I remember when my oldest was an infant. I knew something was different about him. I couldn’t say what it was. I would stare at him all day wondering. My husband would come home from work and I would toss him the baby and frantically start reading baby books. I just couldn’t find him there. Baby books didn’t have the information and I was staring into the void wondering if my son was the Kwisatz Haderach. Recently I participated in a skills deficit assessment for that same son. It’s a thing you have to do to get adult medicaid services. It can be rough because it focuses on what can’t be done. But the practice element was really in play. The interviewer and myself and a teacher and my very sleepy son and a document we had to look at the whole time that outlined the deficit scales. 

Anyway, I keep thinking about that assessment and how that feeling of seeking is the same in both of these completely different cases.  Staring into the void. 

A reflection

I wrote an informal reflection on my first doctoral class.  I thought I would share it here.  I'm going to link out to some of what I mention, but it's okay if it doesn't make tons of sense.

When I started this class I was unfamiliar with the idea of conceptual frameworks.  At first, I thought about the frameworks my deceased, ex-husband used to go on and on (and on and on) about.  Java frameworks.  Coding.  I knew that was not applicable here, but it wasn’t until reading Reason and Rigor that everything suddenly clicked.  Then the idea of basing your thinking and research on the backs of those who had gone before suddenly made sense. It’s much like the conversation I have with students about citation, but in a bigger way. This is one of the challenges of being a doctoral student at this stage in my life.  I have been living in academia, but not DOING academia for a long time. However, as much as this is going to be uphill for me, I feel like I have a lot to offer and a clearer eye than many who have been completely involved in their studies from the beginning.  For example, can I mention that as much as Gorichanaz has to offer, every time I read his articles I feel like he is about to tell me that he does CrossFit, eats vegan, and doesn’t watch television.  

At the beginning of the class, I immediately gravitated to Chatman and Erdelez.  The idea of the small world and the idea of serendipity suit so much of what I see every day.  The mere fact that my campus has no more than 700 students on-ground makes it a prime candidate for examination as a small world.  And information encountering is part of what makes artists artists.  But the more I looked at these ideas, the more I realized I needed something more encompassing. Both these ideas seemed too narrow.  Many of the ideas we talked about in class ended up feeling too narrow.  Everyday life information seeking didn’t work for me.  I felt like the emphasis on the gap in knowledge didn’t address what I was seeing in action.  Also, so many of the theories we have been looking at in the past few weeks have to do with that gap. My research population has gaps (oh my, the gaps) but they are all so individual.  

What I have enjoyed is seeing all the pieces fit together.  The narrow theories comprise the larger and that seems to make sense to me.  I can use the narrow theories, life in the round, to look at one element of my research: students in a small community.  I can use a larger theory to look at the bigger picture and see how that small world affects students in a bigger way.

I have identified Wilson’s theory as the most useful for me at this point. It includes all the smaller pieces that can be examined in more depth but provides a flexibility that isn’t inherent in narrower theories.  I think the Community of Practice idea is another framework entirely, but I’m including it has a narrower piece of the puzzle.  I think it speaks to the small world idea that resonated with me from Chatman. 

I have made myself a summer reading list to get through Wenger’s Communities of Practice and read all the theories in Theories of Information Behavior.  I want to make sure I’m not missing something obvious.  I am so excited for the next steps and hope I do not disappoint anyone. My kids make fun of me a bit because I want to tell them what I’m studying and they just don’t care.  The quarantine has been a little tough on me.  Zoom meetings are exhausting and you can only read so many hours in a day.  Writing has helped because I can imagine an audience.  I am thinking about information in ways I never have, and it is exciting.  I am so looking forward to Fall.

Things I lost

I have four young women who work for me.  They are all in various stages of their early lives: one recently married, another engaged, another just moved in with her boyfriend.  I hear about their lives and I remember mine.

I want to tell them, keep it safe.  Remember this.  Remember what you do and how it feels.  Write it down.

It just wasn’t that long ago when Mark and I, long ago, packed our belongings and headed to California.  We found a place.  We bought a bed.  We played backgammon and listened to music and ate in restaurants.  We walked in AIDS walks.  We went to the gym. 

I know now that the riptide was already there, undermining our relationship.  I didn’t know then, though.  Then, we had our lives together and it was okay. 

And if he were alive, we could have talked about some of this.  We could compare notes and laugh about things.  The time he came home with a Keith Haring figure on his arm from leaning on a wet poster.  Our coworkers.  Our computer, that failed so spectacularly one day.  The time we bought two megs of RAM and felt like kings.  Reading William Gibson novels and Foucault.

We shared books and movies and experiences.  For ten years before Charles was born, Mark and I were together.  Sharing.  How about that morning I asked him about World War I artillery.  How about that time my dad died and he picked me up from the airport with no expectations except to hold me while I cried. 

He was the only person who shared those memories with me.  Even the early years of kids.  He is the only one who remembered the games we used to play with Charles.  Once Will was born, Charles was old enough to remember, so I have someone I can talk to about this…even if it is just a little.

Lately I have missed that comradery.  I think the young women at work remind me.  It was not so long ago that long ago Mark and I were together.  Write it down, I should tell them.  Remember it.  Keep it safe.

Summertime

With the rain and hail continuing unusually into July, it doesn't feel terribly like Summer.   But the season is here.  Last summer was too windy for fires.  This summer is too wet. But the season is here.

I have a new pastime this summer.  Every Thursday at work there is a cookout and Student Life grills burgers and brats and hot dogs.  There are potato chips and pickles and friends.  We sit at the hot picnic tables and chat and see each other, emerged for once from the little hobbit homes we inhabit across campus.

I like this little summer ceremony every week.  I like seeing how people come together.  There is music.  I wish we had a piano we could push outside.  I'm not ready to play in public, but I am sure someone is.

I want more parties. I think I have been alone too long and the presence of others is more like a medical necessity than a frivolous desire.  Can I get my doctor to write a prescription for parties?  And if she would, could I convince my introvert friends to come on by?

I want a hot evening and a bitter cocktail.  I want friends at my picnic table and around the firepit.  I want a simple menu with halumi and margherita pizza. 

My firepit is full of water so I will leave you with a cocktail recipe only.

Mix campari with vermouth and a little soda.  Drink with ice and friends.

Actual Knitting Content

I have suffered from years of "hey, grandma, watcha making?" and "My grandma did that too, but she used a hook" and "I have no time/patience/talent for that"

Ugh.

1. Grandmas don't all line up for knitting lessons.  Most people, men and women, learn way before that.  I learned because plain black sweaters were widely unavailable in the 80s and I was a plain black kind of girl.

2. There is knitting that uses hooks, but usually they mean grandma crocheted and they don't know the difference. They are not talking enough with their grandmas to know...remind them to call.

3. Time and patience are up to you.  And talent means nothing anyway.

Knitting is a great, productive, hobby.  There is a huge social media community surrounding knitting.  I am happy to be a part of it.  I know knitters around the world and they have been there for me during some happy times and some difficult times.  Sure we met through knitting, but we have stayed together through personal experience.

More people should be making things.  I know there has been a huge surge in pinterest and diy activities.  I also know that doesn't always translate into actual making.  It often translates into the buying of materials.  Just like all the people with gyms in their basement gathering dust. And the owners of gourmet kitchens who only use the microwave.  We are not always honest with ourselves about what we want.  

Making things makes you.

Talent is a fool's game.  I work among artists and while many of them have innate skill, that is not what makes them successful.  What makes them successful is the constant work.  This is far and away the hardest lesson for students.  Those who have always been told "you have so much talent" fail as fast as those that weren't.  The thing that art students need more than anything is drive.

When I learned to knit I couldn't see my stitches.  But man, I had drive.  I remember being given some double pointed needles and sitting down with a magazine and some yarn and those needles and teaching myself to knit in the round. No youtube.  No yarnshops.

I have subsequently tried to teach all my knitting students to see the stitches early on.  Many have, some have not.  It's not talent. It's education.  I recommend seeking out Ira Glass's discussion on Taste.   Talent doesn't get you far if you won't work.

Work. 

Fighting the darkness

I have a friend who says my joy receptors are clogged.  That is the only explanation.

I have been low for months...really for the past year.  Maybe a little more.

I have been doing things I typically enjoy.  Things I have loved in the past. I get satisfaction from a job well done, but I haven't felt that joy that I am accustomed to as someone who has never struggled with depression.

I have lived with depression, just not mine.   In my brother's blog post about Mark he talks about the family fight with Black Shuck.  I have seen it in my siblings and Mark, of course.  I have just always, somehow, not had that fight.  And now I do.  Life is gray and there is not much joy.

I get up and move and do all the things that have brought me joy before.  I feel like maybe I put enough of them in my path, it will work.  My joy receptors will unclog and I will be free.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I will continue this stupid struggle.  Maybe it is part of menopause, which I have otherwise been experiencing symptom free.

I know so many people with bone-deep depression.  I worry that what I am fighting is ridiculous in comparison.  I don't want to say that what I am experience is anyway like that.  Remember, I lived for decades with Mark.  I remember what it looked like.  There were times that getting out of bed couldn't happen for him.  I have never been so stricken.  At the same time, my feelings are legitimate and I need to pay attention.

Maybe I need new joys.  The old things are not working.   I have added more exercise and new experiences for me and the kids.  I talk to my friends, who are beyond wonderful.  I try to throw myself into work.  I feel like I might have a tidal wave building and I don't know what direction it will send me. My dance card is filled with things to do. Taking kids to see Shakespeare.  Planning our meal for Bourdain Day.  I just want to wake up one morning and go running and feel what I used to feel, that rush of the joy of just being outside in the morning air.  The joy of seeing the kids after work and listening to their thoughts.  The joy of watching a bonfire in the evening air.

Thank you for sticking with me through this.  Let me know how I can help with your struggles.

Church dinners

I have spent a bit of time in church.  As I have mentioned before, I spent many Sundays and many Wednesdays at church as a young girl.  The kids could run a little wild, waiting for their parents to finsh the eternal talking (or the talking of eternity). We watched the silliest of movies (Pigs is pigs)
We sang songs. We ate.

Midweek dinners were memorable.  It seems like my church arranges for food nowadays, but back then it was all potluck.  We were exposed to the most midwestern of casseroles on a weekly basis.  When I still had Mark's grandmother's personal cookbook, it was full of those recipes.  Often given classy names "a la roi."

There was little spice and no adventure.  My mom might have tried, longing as she was for the food she could get in in Southern California that she could not get in the suburbs of Chicago.  

I don't remember what I liked to eat.  I do remember the time several of us kids reached into what we thought was a bowl of potato chips and instead was potato chip casserole.   In the spirit of the church dinner I attended a few weeks back.  And in the spirit of trying to bring some humor to the world, I leave you with a recipe for potato chip casserole.  It is best when piled high with chips and deception.

Potato Chip Casserole

• 2 Tbl. butter
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 can cream of celery soup
• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 tsp. coarse ground black pepper
• 1 small can of mushrooms
• 1 (12 oz.) can tuna, well drained
• 1 cup shredded swiss cheese, divided
• 4 cups uncooked egg noodles, cooked al dente and drained well
• Potato Chips

Instructions

In small sauté pan, melt butter and add onion. Sauté until tender. (about 6-8 minutes on medium-low to low). Don't brown. Set aside.

Cook the noodles

In a large bowl, stir together the soup, mayo, milk, and pepper until creamy and smooth.

Fold in mushrooms, tuna, sautéed onion mixture, shredded swiss cheese.

Fold noodles into tuna mixture.

Bake uncovered in a 13x9 casserole at 350º oven for 25 minutes. Top with potato chips and bake 5 minutes longer.