LET'S PAR-TAY!

Mutti serviert Bowle aus Fruchteis und Limonade.

Von Delphinen aus Bananen und Trauben überrascht.

Meine Schwiegereltern (links)

Frau Doktor Werden

Die Promovierten in Geschichte vor der Graduiertenfeier. Von SJC.

Links: die Alma Mater Figur, die ich Euch hier beschrieben habe. Fast alle Graduierenden wollen ein Foto vor ihr machen lassen, und die Schlange war sehr lang. Ich stand deshalb zur Seite. Hinter mir ist zu lesen: "Ihre Söhne [sic, Kinder] stehen auf und preisen sie selig." ~ Sprüche 31:28a

Rechts: der Dianabrunnen westlich dem Studentenwerkgebäude. Ich habe einen ähnlichen Hut zur Feier meines Bachelors getragen, aber der jetzige Talar hat Bände aus Samt die "Doktor" bedeuten. Die Kapuze ist dunkel Blau = Dr. phil. Die gelben Bänden heissen Geschichte oder Geisteswissenschaften--ich weiss nicht genau.

Links: die Professorin, die mir meinen Hood "gegeben" hat. Als Promovierte, das wichtigste Moment ist wenn ihr/e Professor/in den Hood auf den Schultern liegt. Diese Professorin recherchiert auch die Geschichte der Medizin, aber in den USA. Rechts: das glückliche Ehepaar nach der Graduiertenfeier.

Die Treppen der Bibliothek steigen.

Open Mouth, Insert BBQ

With family in town for graduation, I wanted to share good times over good food with them. I also didn't want to have to cook for so many! After running errands and doing chores on Friday, I thought we should refresh ourselves with the best BBQ in town: Black Dog. This place has such a great reputation that there would be a line out the door, if the staff would let you hold the door open. Instead, we put our name on the pad of paper inside and waited in the (partial) sun outside.

An hour later, we were seated at a high top. We had scoped out the food menu while waiting, and all that remained was to decide on a couple of beers. Before long, four metal trays appeared bearing our orders. For the folks, beef brisket with hot Texas sauce, pulled chicken sandwich with Carolina sauce, and sweet potato fries. Here's my pulled pork sandwich with mild Georgia peach sauce and cornbread. I got the slaw on top as recommended; everyone else ate theirs on the side.

I thought the cole slaw was acceptable, but I like Native Foods' herbed sweet potato fries better. I thought the menu was short on vegetables, but I guess folks come here for the meat and carbs, eh? Word to the wise: even the cornbread had meat in it!

Dear Husband had wanted a pulled rib sandwich, but they were already out, so he scored a famous burnt ends sandwich. If he looks happy in this photograph, it's because he's finally wrapped his fingers around a steaming pile of meat and bread. I couldn't capture the ecstasy on his face after he took his first bite: it broke my camera.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Czech it out!

Just after World World I, my father's father's parents left their respective villages in the Bohemian part of the new nation of Czechoslovakia. They traveled alone across the Atlantic Ocean, up through the port of Galveston, and into the heart of Texas. There they met and fell in love. They had four boys, whom they taught to speak English and love their country enough to fight for it during World War II. One of those boys grew up and fell in love with a certain nursing student, the daughter of a farmer. They got married--in secret, because nursing students weren't supposed to be married--and eventually had two boys and two girls. One of those boys went to Germany and, while studying in Munich, met and fell in love with a girl from Maine. Those two eventually moved to Texas, where yours truly was born. My two younger brothers and I are 1/4 Czech. Growing up, we learned about our heritage from our family and through Sokol, a gymnastics and fitness organization that was started in 1862 as a democratic organization against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My paternal grandmother in particular has conducted an amazing amount of research on our family trees. Over the year, she and my grandfather bought authentic Czech costumes, called kroje, to wear at festivals and the like. I have just inherited them! So here I am going through the big box of blouses, ribbons, skirts and petticoats. Dear Husband even consented to wear a hat and do a little polka with me in the living room. Yip, yip!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Ladies and gentleman, yours truly has made her directorial debut! My major professional organization, the American Association for the History of Medicine, is trying to find ways to join the 21st century, as it were, by supporting digital humanities. That includes a revamped website, a blog, live tweeting during the conference, and a call for short films on medical history topics. I took an episode from one of the chapters in my dissertation to compose the following 3-minute piece. It represents three days' worth of work between the dissertation deposit deadline and the film submission deadline. My efforts were nearly ruined by uncooperative video capture software and a thunderstorm that threatened to foil my attempts to record the voice track. The finished product isn't bad for an inaugural cinematic attempt, if I do say so myself.

Mine was one of five works selected for a special screening (with popcorn!) on the first night of the conference, so I also sat on a panel with the two organizers and one other auteur, who managed to condense his entire book into three 3-minute clips(!). His and another submission by a graduate student were beautiful, almost cinematic. Mine and one from a professor were more basic Power-Point types with a voice over. A gorgeous cartoon advertising an online resource capped it all off.

The session was well attended, with 50-60 people squeezing into a narrow hotel conference room to debate the de/merits of digital shorts and podcasts in teaching and conferencing. How do we ensure students use open-access material or teach proper citation? How long does it take to make one of these? What about the risk of making the subject "too cartoonish"? Aren't there still barriers to using and accessing these technologies--say, for students who can't afford their own laptop, or those with audiovisual disabilities?

For my part, the exercise taught me that it really is possible to say something worth saying in only one page of double-spaced text--just four short paragraphs. What took the longest for me was coming up with an interesting question that could be answered with visual cues in the time allotted. What took the second longest was being unable to resist the urge to immediately open Power Point and start creating slides. I should have researched and written the script first, to save the time I spent animating two slides that didn't make the final cut.

At first I had worried that my short would look "too cartoonish" with all that Clip Art, but then I decided that its visual aesthetic of bright colors fits the subject. Audience members shared during the Q&A that the features that really stuck out to them from all the films were movement, sound, and humor. For instance, the red Xs are humorous but also effective, because they include an audible cue. I agreed that far from being "cartoonish," that effect draws on a common "vernacular language" and actually makes the historical point more easily comprehensible to non-historians.

At the very least, this project made one interesting episode from my dissertation research available to a much wider audience than the chapter on which it is based. I am not convinced that all the work that scholars do needs a general audience; sometimes we talk to each other to introduce, develop, or challenge ideas. But surely some of the insights we garner should be widely disseminated, as we contribute to the fund of historical knowledge. I will definitely come back to this genre in the future.

As a concluding thought, one of things I will work on is the audio. I have a lot of public speaking experience and think I read aloud well, but I found with this project that the range of my voice is too wide to make a good audio track, so the low register tends to drop off. I probably should have been a little closer to the microphone, too. This produced some interesting results when YouTube generated the automatic captions, which included such memorable lines as "and snow they exploited the specs tickling" and "skiing some and oil rest boat." I've edited the captions so they fit now, and it's something to remember for next time. I hope you'll come back to read and watch more!

Japanese Tea / House / Garden

Throwback Thursday: In May 2014, around the time I graduated with my PhD, I finally fulfilled my desire to experience a tea ceremony at the Japan House. I went with a friend, JGD, who has since moved to Montana. For whatever reason, this post remained unwritten for three years. I am happy to relive this memory: the sunshine, the greenery, the culture, and the friendship. Only you'll note that we are wearing jackets, as it was unseasonably cold.

On the appointed day, a group of us was greeted by a volunteer, who explained the history of Japan House and a little bit about the tea ceremony (chado). Since 1964, Japan House has spread understanding and appreciation of Japanese culture through history courses, art lectures, sake tasting, origami folding, flower-arranging and calligraphy workshops. After 9/11, Japan House and local school children sent 3,000 folded paper cranes to New York City.

As I recall, the tea ceremony itself was almost uncomfortably quiet. We were invited to appreciate the beauty of each tea bowl and the spareness of the kimono-clad hostess's movements. I distinctly remember that the long kneeling was uncomfortable, especially for someone like me with bad knees. I didn't particularly like the bitter tea, but I drank it. I think there was a little sweet to go with it.

Afterward we walked around the traditional gardens. You should read this excellent description of the philosophy behind them by their master gardener. 

I'll close with a haiku:

Two friends walked their paths:

one to the western mountains

and one to the East.

Introducing: Call for Food-Themed Poetry!

When science meets art, amazing things can happen. Have you ever wondered what the inside of an artichoke looked like? Or a cactus? Well wonder no longer, as over at the Inside Insides blog, Andy Ellison posts clips of fruits, vegetables, and plants going through an MRI machine. The images are ghostly, beautiful, puzzling, and sometimes just weird. I think they lend themselves to a little bit of doggerel, or maybe a pensive haiku, depending on your mood. Here at Frau Doktor Doctor, I invite you to send in a short poem to go with one of Andy's gifs.

I think you should check out the blog itself, but for starters I've picked out a few posts:

InsideInsides: Corn

InsideInsides: Grapes

InsideInsides: Banana Flower

InsideInsides: Cherimoya*

With your permission, the poem will then be published here. But don't worry, your submission can be anonymized if you wish!

*No idea what a cherimoya looks like IRL? No worries: Susan at Food Blogga describes them as "the king of fruits".