This Is Beautiful: Teaching Heavy Week

 I lucked out and somehow this week I ended up giving a guest lecture and proctoring an exam, but at least it was a relatively light research week! So I was able to focus a little more on teaching than I have been lately and that has been nice. I'll have to get back on the research grind next week though.

“Crucible of Gold” by Naomi Novik

This is the seventh book in the Temeraire series (check out books one, two, three, four, five, and six) and we are getting close to the end of this nine book series folks! This book involves the squad heading to a new part of the globe again, but it also brings back beloved characters towards the end so it makes for a nice mix.

The book starts with Hammond, the ambassador to China from a few books ago, traveling to Australia. He finds Laurence there and reinstates him to help fight in South America, Laurence agrees reluctantly, and they sail with Riley towards their destination. Tragedy strikes and the ship sinks, taking Riley with it. This death is felt very keenly, which contrasts with my earlier criticism of how minor characters get slaughtered constantly. They make it to a French ship and are then marooned somewhere on land. The sailors are largely criminals from Australia and they try to capture Demane when drunk once, leading to Kulingile slaughtering them. Eventually the party makes it to civilization and learn about the customs here.

Turns out that in South America each dragon has their own village that they consider the men in it to be their property. Due to the diseases that have killed off a lot of the indigenous populations, men are now one of the most highly valued materials. The group consists of a lot of sailors, meaning that the Sapa Inca will see them, and Iskerika tries to convince Granby to marry her. Granby reveals to Laurence that he’s actually gay so cannot marry her which was a fascinating reveal to me! The French show up with Napoleon and drive the English out where they run into the Tswana rescuing slaves in Brazil. Mrs. Erasmus makes an appearance as a leader of the group, and Laurence seeks an alliance with them. This doesn’t go over well with the Portuguese or Hammond, but aviator reinforcements from England (as in Maximus and Lily) agree with Laurence. They end up capturing several large ships from the French and load up the Tswana to return to Africa. The book ends though with Gong Su (the cook) revealing that he has been working for the Chinese government the whole time, and Laurence must return there. Laurence mourns the loss of Riley as getting there will be much harder now.

A lot of things are going on in this book, but I loved the balance of new and old characters. The return of Hammond was well placed as his pompousness is very entertaining throughout the travels. And seeing Maximus and Lily towards the end was wonderful as I missed their presence for the previous book. We didn’t get much of them, but I hope that it serves as a good omen for the next installment.

There are new characters that are also fun, a South American dragon tries to adopt Hammond and basically joins them on the journey, and a French dragon gets flirtatious with Iskerika. This ticks Temeraire off, and it is interesting to see his view on Iskerika change from annoyance to seeing her good qualities.

Now the queer representation, I was shocked by this reveal because I was not expecting it at all in this book. It had not mentioned queerness at all, if anything it was very deeply set in heteronormativity. Of course though, that was probably just Laurence’s biases coming through. At first I thought it might be asexuality, but a liaison is mentioned with another officer so Granby appears to be homosexual. What is interesting is that it isn’t the majority of Granby’s personality or choices at all, but he mentions how he keeps it a secret. Laurence refers to it as a “vice” and speculates on how the looser environment of the aviators might have been ore welcoming. I hope we get to hear more about this side of Granby, even if it isn’t a major part of the story, just because it seems very brief right now.

Finally I thought the culture in South America was really interesting in comparison to everywhere else. In England men own dragons, in China the dragons are equal to men, and now we have dragons owning men. This resonates a lot with the European dragons, especially Temeraire as he tries to take care of his crew more. It is an interesting progression in his thought process as we deal with liberation of both dragons and also people from slavery.

I’m excited to see what choices get made as the series comes to a close! Only two books left!

This Is Beautiful: Jazz at Lincoln Center

 Last weekend there was the (basically) annual Jazz at Lincoln Center performance on campus! It was so fun! There was a high school jazz ensemble that opened, and then the group came on. They played a cool variety of music, including a bari sax and cornet duet. There was only one woman in the group, 2nd alto sax player, but she ripped on her solo, I loved her! So it was a fun performance, I'm so glad I was finally able to go. They usually come around Thanksgiving when I'm out of town, so I'm so happy I caught them!

The Dragon Prince Season 7

Alright I need to air a few things about the most recent TDP season, so spoilers below for suuuure. 

Now overall I thought it was really strong. I definitely liked it more than seasons 4 and 5 which entered one ear and left through the other. But they super didn't stick the landing on this one y'all.

Not to gloss over the things I liked in favor of complaining, but I'm about to do that. I loved seeing Callum and Rayla interact with Runaan and Ethari. I loved seeing Ezran come apart at the seams and not be a perfect king a little bit. Terry finally left Claudia and I cheered. I really really liked seeing Callum struggle with his inner demons and his impulse to use dark magic.

Anyways, to skip to the end, the writers then proceeded to undercut it all. The archdragons sacrifice themselves to destroy Aaravos, even though he will regenerate in seven years, and there's a big happy ending.

Issue number 1 I have is that there are zero emotional stakes for the viewer. We haven't seen the archdragons all season, they hop in at the end for an episode or two and to take out the big bad. Callum tries to do dark magic but gets interrupted, Ezran finds the Novablade but doesn't get to use it. So it makes no sense to go with the dragon sacrifice option because the Novablade is literally right there! Instead of him regenerating we could just be done with it but that plot point goes nowhere. It just sets it up for the next arc without wrapping things up because that's how Netflix works now I guess.

Other issue is the happy-go-lucky ending with them founding a town where people will be nice to each other or something. Now this could be fine, but also the thing that was interesting about season 4 was seeing the conflicts between elves and humans as they try to coexist. If there's just a time jump and we see people living happy lives without any conflict or lingering trauma, that is so uninteresting to me. I want to see the hard conversations that have to arise and the fact that rebuilding trust and community takes work!

And I didn't expect this to break me, but then Zym spoke and Dante Bosco (of Zuko voice fame) came out and I LOST IT. Started screaming on the spot. Not because I hated it, but it just so doesn't fit Zym's small, chirping body. I hope that he gets a little bigger and grows into that deep voice but OH MY GOD it doesn't really fit at the moment.

And then the thing that baffles me is that the show might not continue, so what I was seeing leading up to the show was that the writers would give us an ending. And uh, no not really. There's the fact that Aaravos is returning, and they finally confirmed that Harrow is a bird now. And where has he been for the past seven seasons? Don't leave me on this note please...

All that to say is that I sure hope that the third arc gets greenlit and we get the rest of it because I sure CANNOT leave on this note. We need a more satisfying ending (and also I need Soren and Corvus to kiss) alright that's all.

This Is Beautiful: Lyra

 So I've been taking lyra classes for a little over 2 months, I took trapeze classes this summer too, and I finally hit the point where I feel really good on the apparatus. I got through all the poses that we did this month multiple times, versus last week I could do them once, maybe twice. And it's just incredible how much progress that represents! 

It's got me covered in bruises, but it's shaping up into a fun hobby. I unfortunately have to take February off for scheduling reasons but hoping to get back up there soon!

“All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me” by Patrick Bringley

I picked this up at a bookstore recently as it seemed like something I would enjoy: thinking about the experience of being in a museum and how that can help you think through or process emotions. And it was a delightful book, it is short, I would have liked a little more, but it hits deliciously.

Bringley is a late-20s New Yorker who just got a job at… the New Yorker. Unfortunately his brother then gets terminally sick with cancer. After caring for him on his deathbed Bringley does not want to be part of the grind anymore and pretend to be someone he is not. Instead, he applies to be a security guard at the Met. Having grown up around art, he simply wanted to lose himself in the collection and could not see himself doing anything else at the time. He talks about different works of art and interactions he had with museum visitors, as well as special exhibitions and how the museum changed over time.

Eventually Bringley has two kids and realizes that he got what he needed out of this experience. He applies to do walking tours in the city and ends up leaving his position as a security guard. He got what he needed and realized that his life can still change and grow in many ways, and leaves to grow alongside his kids.

Now this might seem like a premise that is a little navel-gazey, but also, any memoir is. I personally really appreciated more the discussions of art than the anecdotes of life. It is cool to see what the guards are doing in the background, and I liked the parts where life and art combined, but hearing about his kids just was not as interesting to me. I liked the parts where he used art to talk about his grief or how his family has processed emotions in the past. I also really liked talking about how patrons come up to guards to ask about the art. So much of life is in art, and separating it out felt bizarre after reading about his date at a museum or his mom crying in front of a pieta.

The best part of the book talks about how some kids doing a school assignment need to learn from the art and not about the art. Because that is a thesis that I inherently agree with, I think you should learn about the artist and the context if you really want to know what they were getting at, but on a basic level anyone can learn from art just by standing in front of it. And thinking about how it makes you feel. What does it bring up? How does it resonate with you? An expert can’t tell you that, only you can. And a security guard is inherently positioned to know this as someone who is paid to stand there for eight hours a day and just keep an eye on the art.

Which is the fascinating thing as security guards are nearly always people that I simply do not notice. I am not one of the patrons who ask them questions or for directions, honestly I try to not get in trouble so I usually avoid getting their attention. But it was so cool to hear about their experiences, and even how they sometimes get looked down on. Even though they are doing what now sounds like one of the most enlightened jobs in the world, protecting and standing near art.

Anyways, I loved this. Again it is not very long and I would have liked more about different works of art and things like that, but probably that is enough for me to not get annoyed with the memoir aspects of it. Art is so powerful and speaks to us so profoundly in different moments of our lives, I thought this was a fascinating look at that during a key point of the author’s life. And it resonated with me as well, there have been so many times I was in crisis and went to a museum and came close to crying in front of different works of art. Some great and some just hitting the chord it needed to. Sometimes that is just all we need.

This Is Beautiful: Organizing

This past weekend I was at a retreat for my university union. It was really nice, I don’t know, I always dread these busy weekends but having to have to put aside the time to focus on exactly one thing is always really great and energizing for me. So had a lot of good discussions and made good progress, and in these times (ugh) it felt good to just be working on this and looking out for each other. I’m glad I picked up this role even though it’s late in my graduate school career.