Household Opera

Announcement: blog changes are afoot!

This winter, I took the plunge and set up a new permanent web-presence at limetreebower.net (props if you recognize the poem I referenced with the domain name). I've now migrated this blog over there; you can now find it there, archives, comments and all. I'm still tinkering with the link settings, but you can always get to it from the front page of the site.

I'll keep the blog going here at Typepad for another few months, but I'll be posting over at the new place, and this incarnation of Household Opera will eventually disappear. See you all at my new virtual digs!

State of the blog: a meta post

So you've probably noticed I haven't been posting much lately. There's no specific reason for that, really; I just haven't felt like I have as much to say, somehow, which kind of bothers me. Something about having shifted from still-learning mode to full-time job mode, or possibly it's because a lot of my linkblogging and briefer thoughts have gotten siphoned off into Twitter. Or maybe it's just that there's been less posting among the community of bloggers I started out with. Or perhaps all blogs have a finite lifespan; mine turned six in July, which is verging on elderly as blogs go.

I'm trying to get back into writing more, because I miss it, even when I can't think of anything to write about. But I've also been looking at my (steadily dropping) visitor stats and wondering how many people are still reading, and if anyone besides me is getting anything out of it.

I still like having a blog as an impetus to think and get words out, and I don't think this one is going anywhere anytime soon. Ideally, I'd be working more on various writing projects in my spare time, and I'd also manage to post about them. (I suspect at least some of my current blog-angst has nothing to do with my posting schedule and everything to do with my motivation to pursue interesting projects, and my fear of becoming boring now that I'm starting to settle down.) But I'm a bit betwixt and between at the moment, and wondering how much of my energy to devote to blogging. So I thought I'd say something about it, and if you, Readers, have any advice on reviving a flagging writing habit, or dealing with the haunting fear of being dull—or if there's something you think I should consider writing about—I would love to hear.

2008 in review

The year through my blog archives:

January: I attend the ALA Midwinter conference, get interested in network theory, enjoy some terrific theater in New York, and kick off the search for my first post-MSLIS library job.

February: A conference paper proposal I submitted gets accepted. I think about print culture, and take a really fun research trip to the New York Public Library.

March: I start getting nibbles from prospective employers, and have a wonderful time at my first live Met movie broadcast (and my second). I give my conference paper while surrounded by scenes from the past.

April: The beginning of my last term of library school. Also the beginning of a series of in-person job interviews. Barely a free moment to be had.

May: Job offer! Much job-offer-related spazzing! Also, I enjoy my Digital Libraries class a lot.

June: The end of my library school coursework. I officially spill the beans about my new job and officially become a librarian when I receive my MSLIS. I hash out the details of my move to New London.

July: My five-year blogging anniversary. Packing. More packing. Summer fun enjoyed in between moving preparations. A fond, rather sad farewell to Philadelphia. Moving. The immense pleasure of unpacking my books and thinking about their arrangement. My first days in my new job.

August: Settling into New London. I start thinking about writing articles on scholarly social networks and information technology in Dracula.

September: The economy goes pear-shaped, and I thank my stars for gainful employment. I read some John Crowley and ponder Twitter.

October: I get into an apocalyptic mood, then visit my nearest used bookstore. Fall in New England goes into high gear, and I begin to see why tourists come to look at the leaves.

November: Obama is elected President. I'm thrilled, though also pissed off about the passage of Proposition 8 in California. I revisit some of the academic labor issues that I used to write about way back when I started this blog.

December: When not worrying about the recession, I think about minor poets, cinematic favorites, and knitting. Also, the first snowstorm of the season transforms New London.

It was an eventful year for me, and mostly a very good year. I feel immensely and undeservedly lucky that I managed to get my life stabilized before the economy took its big hit in the fall. I hope that all of you who read this are safe, healthy, not getting snowed on too heavily, and surrounded by people you love.

Happy new year, everyone, and may 2009 bring better tidings for the world than 2008 did.

Meeting of the bloggers

Fellow Philadelphian Jeannette (of Moot Thoughts & Musings) beat me to the punch posting about our blogger meet-up yesterday, and has a better description of it than the one I was planning. A good time was had by all, and (as she says) we turned out to have an unexpected and kind of obscure research topic in common, not to mention a fondness for Indian food and Baroque instruments. (Not that the Baroque instrument thing wasn't already common knowledge.) We've got to do that again sometime when we won't get sleeted on!

Referrer spam?

Question for fellow Typepad users (or fellow bloggers more generally): Lately half my referrer stats have been coming from the same Google Image search. Even after I deactivated the link that the search led to, the hits just kept coming. Is this a new form of spam, or what? It's not as obnoxious as comment spam or trackback spam, but it's still kind of annoying. And weirdly inexplicable. Anyone know why it's happening? Thank you kindly.

A shout-out

So last week, apropos of a discussion about the uses of blogs in a library setting, I mentioned the existence of this blog to a group of work colleagues, some of whom have since stopped by for a visit. Hello and welcome to my scratchpad, all of you! Hope you enjoy. It feels a bit strange to be addressing readers who don't know me only as a disembodied online presence (and vice versa), but I wanted to say hi, even so.

We now return to your regularly scheduled linking, poetry-quoting, and scribbling...

Blog at your own risk

Like a whole bunch of others, I found this Chronicle article ("Bloggers Need Not Apply," by "Ivan Tribble," 7/8/05) ... puzzling, at best. Professor Tribble, who's served on a search committee that didn't hire several blogging candidates, wonders why anyone applying for an academic position would keep a blog:

The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.

Worst of all, for professional academics, it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor.

The article concludes, "Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know 'the real them' -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more."

Hmm. I don't think I'd want to join Professor Tribble's department, even if I were still looking for academic jobs. It sounds like people who have interests outside their jobs, or even people who admit to having personal lives, aren't all that welcome there. (And I'm not even going to say anything about the way Professor Tribble dubs the candidate with the personal blog "Shrill.") What bothers me about this article — apart from the way the search committee seems to think it's fine to hire a candidate without knowing "the real them" only to discover, too late, that they don't like "the real them" — is the way Professor Tribble's disapproval of the few examples of legitimately Bad Blogging Behavior (the candidate who misrepresents his research, for instance) drifts into a general disapproval of the sharing of any "inward thoughts" with the reading public.

Blogging during a job search is a risky business. I'm fully aware that potential employers are probably going to Google me, and they may well end up here. That knowledge is always in my head when I'm composing new entries; I revise a lot, I try to stay away from excessively personal topics, I worry about whether my political posts are too ranty and whether my jokier posts are too silly.* People I know from professional contexts do read this blog from time to time (hello, all of you!) and have had nice things to say about it so far (thanks!). But I'm still wary of what should and shouldn't be said in the presence of people who currently work with me or may do so in the future. And I'm all right with that. After all, "don't forget that you have an audience composed of actual people rather than imaginary phantoms" was one of the main principles I tried to teach my students when I taught college writing.

But the idea that candidates, during the job search, should avoid giving any impression of a personality or outside interests or opinions — that seems a little on the absurd side. To answer Professor Tribble's initial "why?" question: for me, at least, blogging is a 21st-century variation on the 18th-century salon. It's conversation, sometimes very intellectual, sometimes not; it's a social activity, but one that's mediated through the written word. It's not the same thing as publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, nor should it be. It's an opportunity to test out new thoughts, but in a forum where others are present to discuss, join in, go off on tangents, be snarky or serious, and make connections to what other people are saying. And if being interested in carrying on that kind of conversation disqualifies me in the eyes of potential employers, I might not be a good "fit" for them, and vice versa, in the first place.

(See also Timothy Burke, Dorothea Salo, Ancrene Wiseass, and Matthew Kirschenbaum.)

* Perhaps job-seeking bloggers need someone like the Colonel from Monty Python's Flying Circus to indicate when things are getting too silly?

Writer's block

I can't think of a single thing to say. How lame is that?

I want to write something about folksonomies. There are thoughts in my head, but they won't coalesce into anything postable. (Maybe later.) I would write about the wonder that is Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's voice, but there aren't the words for it. I would write about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I haven't quite finished it yet.

I can't even think of any poems to post in the Personal Anthology category. This is some kind of nadir of blogger's block.

So here's a question for you all: what helps you write when your brain just won't get into it? Prompts, suggestions, amusing anecdotes about weird things you've done to invoke the muse, all welcome. Discuss.

Die spam die

If you're wondering why I've closed the comments on all posts over a month old, it's because there's been the beginnings of an upsurge in comment spam here lately. If you'd really like to comment on an older entry, send me an e-mail and I'll re-open the comments on it for you.

There's got to be a very special level of hell reserved for spammers...

Pre-election resolution

I've come to a decision. No more political blogging for me until at least November 3rd. There's plenty to get worked up about, but the trouble with me getting worked up is that once I'm up-worked enough to post about it, writing the post just perpetuates the state of mind (brooding, anxious, enraged). Michelle sometimes refers to her own writing as a purge of what's inside her head; for me, I think it works in the opposite way, keeping otherwise transient thoughts from getting away, which sometimes just keeps them rattling around in my head. So I start writing about something, e.g. the latest depressing Salon article about frothing-mouthed homophobes in Ohio, and the whole process turns into a feedback loop of "Aaargh!" and "Look, more links to back it up!" and "It's even worse than I thought!" (No wonder I've been having trouble sleeping.)

I suspect that self-induced panic* is not especially good for my overall mental state, nor is it especially helpful to spread around. There's already too much anxiety in the air without my sitting down and detailing everything that's currently worthy of a freakout. I need to think about other things for a while, and fortunately there's a backlog of other things to post about. So, coming up next: the problem of organizing one's notes; why bother to read (a series); and, as usual, much random bricolage.

* I'm thinking of the phrase "panic and emptiness," one of the refrains of E. M. Forster's Howards End, particularly the description of the Beethoven concert in chapter 5:

"No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world. After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for the second time. Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and seen the reliable walls of youth collapse. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were right. ...
     Beethoven chose to make it all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. ... But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.