A research trip to NYC

I am oh-so-behind on updates, but again, I figure sub-par blogging is better than no blogging at all. (I know that blogs are out and Instagram stories are in, but I still feel sad when a friend's blog I loved no longer exists/has stopped posting altogether. I still want to keep blogging, even if it's not as often as I would like.) 

ANYWAY. 

I wanted to post pictures from my research trip to New York earlier last month (in October). This year has been (to use the over-used and the Oxford English Dictionary's word of 2020), unprecedented. It has also been disappointing, in many ways. For me, the most disappointing thing has been that I haven't been able to travel to and access archives like I was planning to--it definitely delays my dissertation and is overall very stressful. 

So, I am always very grateful when I get opportunities to go to archives,  and very, very grateful when that research is supported by grants. Grants are always much-appreciated, but especially in a time when Princeton is not giving travel funding. 

All this preface is to say, I got a grant for archival research in New York City and was able to go there in early October. Sam came along (because, even though working from home is not as glamourous as we thought in 2019, it still has its perks--especially when Sam can travel with me to my research locations). And we had a nice time. New York is beautiful in the fall, I got some archival research done (and got to go to the museums and libraries where I did the research for free), and we enjoyed some amazing food (pizza, ramen, bagels . . . yum). We also got a chance to visit our friends James and Bailey in Connecticut over a long weekend, and that was definitely a highlight. 

We also made it through the two weeks we were there with zero parking tickets (although we did have to get our car battery jumped--left the lights on--oops). 

[empty subway car in the morning.]

[at the morgan library and museum.]

[some snapshots of nyc.]

[columbia.]

[we sat in this deserted park and ate thai food.]

[central park at dusk.]

[microfilmmmmm]

[tiffany glass exhibit at the new york historical society]

[i remember that my grandmother--my dad's mom--had a beautiful stained-glass lamp similar to this one, and i just loved looking at it when i was ten years old.]

[central park at dusk ii]

[a sam]

[a me.]

WFH adventures (and some away from home)

A collection of memories of working and baking from home last month (plus a few date nights around town): 

[typical]

[remember how we picked bushels and bushels of blackberries? behold, blackberry crisp.]

[spent a couple of weeks on this beauty]

[work in progress--it's finished now, but somehow the picture didn't load? will try again.]

[date night with sam at little pearl.]

[reasons to dress up during a pandemic are always appreciated.]

[a sammmm]

[it's beginning to look a lot like autumn]

[loving this brick detail.]

[sam will stop at every single free library. just another reason to love him.]

[you can't see it very well, but that's a monarch butterfly! i saw it on one of my runs [read: jogs] and took it as a good-luck sign.]

[another date night--the national portrait gallery is open by appointment!]

[sharisa and i met up in richmond, and it was a sweet, sweet reunion.]

[and back to home. with new plant friends.]

RBG

[I meant to post this on my blog weeks ago, but here we are. This is the same thing I posted on social media, but it captures my thoughts well from that day/weekend.] 

"Morning at the Supreme Court; mourning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. // This morning, Sam and I walked up to the Supreme Court building to pay our respects to RBG. The scene there was reverent—people placing flowers, handwritten thank-you notes, and handmade portraitures in a makeshift shrine for this American icon; people writing chalk messages on the sidewalk (“RBG helped me find my voice”, “Hope is discipline”, “Dissent”); people wiping away tears; young women with their hair done up in a ponytail and ribbon à la young RBG. It was—altogether—a moving sight. Her passing reminds me of a Jewish proverb: “It’s not given to you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” She worked to the end, but that work is far from over."

A couple of trips to the (old) Southwest

Soooo, 2020 hasn't panned out the way I thought it would. I wrote that knowing that was 1) a huge understatement, and 2) can be applied across the globe.

But really, it hasn't. I expected to be traveling to various archives across the world and across the United States this year. (My proposed research plan has me coming back from Berlin right about now.) I can't even go to the Library of Congress, which I could literally walk to from our place in D.C. 

I know this sounds like nothing compared to what others have gone through this year, but there is grief associated with not being able to go to those archives like I planned, see friends across the world, get to spend extended amounts of time in places like London, Paris, Moscow, and Tangier. There is also SO MUCH UNCERTAINTY around the time lost not being able to get to these archives I need. I have felt like I am in perpetual "back-up-plan mode," thinking of so many different possibilities to somehow get the materials I need, rethink through chapters, etc. It's hard. It's really, really hard. 

So, I've seen any archival trip this year as a win. And I have been able to do a few. In August and September, I got to travel to Nashville, Tennessee and Lexington, Kentucky to do a bit of archival research there. And even though they're not Berlin, it was nice to travel to places I never had before. 

A Nashville Photo Essay: 

[I unintentionally was in Nashville on the centennial of the ratification of the 19th amendment. Tennessee's claim to fame is that it was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, thus giving women the right to vote.]

[the state capitol. across from the state archives.]

[microfilm, microfilm, microfilm.]

[my friends, vera and tyler, gave me the best food recommendations, including puckett's. it was also great having a socially-distanced picnic with them.]

[dreams come true here, apparently.]

[the state capitol, a different view.]

[i finished at the archives early, so i went on a self-guided tour of the ryman auditorium.]

[if you have a favorite band, they probably played here.]

And now for a photo essay of Lexington, KY: 

[the reading room.]

[i miss libraries.]

[covid chic.]

[excursion in the botanical gardens.]

[now to read more wendell berry.]