(Pictures of people's desks always amuse me. [That is only one book stack of several.])

(My desks. Yes, desks plural. See also: teacups, plural; oranges, plural.)

   
Hey look! It has been less than a month since my last post. I am now on the home stretch of my dissertation, which feels so amazing. I did final edits this morning, and I have a few bits I want to smooth out, but now I am ready for the final bits and pieces: Table of Contents, Acknowledgements, printing and binding.
     I've wrestled a lot with this paper. At first, I never thought I would get to 15,000 words, but now I'm pushing the grace limit at 22,000 words. But I've also felt at a plateau with my writing this summer. This has happened to me before, most lately, my junior year of college. It's a really frustrating feeling--you just know you're writing can be better, but you have no idea how to get there. At the time, I had two professors who had some excellent advice for me, which I wrote down and carried around with me for years. Basically: be sharper, clearer, and deeper.
     This time around, none of my professors have been able to help me in the same way, except to remind me to be confident in my writing and my research. Instead, I've been reading a lot of authors I really admire (both fiction and nonfiction) and studying their prose for guidance. I can't say it's worked terribly well, but at least if I'm reading good writing, I might absorb some of it?
      Trying to be deep, sharp, and confident are three things that are incredibly difficult for me to do. I like to write in the passive voice, be polite in my analysis, and qualify every judgement I make. This might make me sound like a nice person, but it really doesn't come off well on paper. In an effort to combat this, I've spent the last week or so editing my paper, taking out qualifications, showing what research I've done, and writing and rewriting in an active voice.
     Today, I did a final edit, and my goodness. I had been so worn out with my paper; I felt so frustrated because my summer of research didn't seem to come to any real result. But after taking ownership of my research, being unafraid to critically judge museums, and having confidence in my conclusions, I am so proud of this paper. It feels like it was worthwhile, and that I have something to add to the discussion about heritage.

     And that's a really good feeling.

(Apologies for the continued summer dissertation blogging. After next week, we'll return to your regularly scheduled blog, which will highlight all the other non-dissertation things I've done this summer. Same bat time, same bat channel.)

"‘Cultures’ defined as homogeneous ensembles are the most dangerous of all social illusions, the sources of all discriminations and pretexts for violence and the permanence of poverty."

So I've been sitting on this for a long time now, but with my final draft in to my professor, I feel like I can share without jinxing anything (which has happened to me once before).

I'm about to be published! In a book!

This is the greatest achievement of my life!!

(!!!)

Last autumn, I wrote an essay for my cultural heritage management class about a new heritage Convention, called the Faro Convention, and its possible impact on the LGBT community. Faro is notable for its insistance that heritage be defined by local communities and people, not by heritage professionals. With individuals making the decisions about what places, objects, skills or traditions are important to them, we as professionals can do a better job of preserving it. Simultaneously pretty cool and sadly revolutionary.

But! Where does this leave invisible communities? Ones that don't often have a voice in public discourse? When I set out to write this essay, I was thinking of the Romani community, who aren't tied to a physical place, which is a large part of traditional heritage definitions. But then I started thinking about the LGBT community and how many people often 'pass' in the wider community, as a safety measure. This notion of passing isn't limited to people--it effects buildings and meeting places as well. That means that, 50 years down the line, a pub that was very culturally significant to the gay community might be knocked down, because it was never seen as significant by the wider community. Which I think we can all agree is a bit of a problem.

So. I wrote an essay. And received a pretty rockin' mark for it, though I had strayed from the prompt quite a bit.

My professor suggested we send it off to some people who work with the Council of Europe, which wrote the Faro Convention. And then a few months ago, my professor invited me to revise it and submit it for a book on the convention he was putting together.

How could I say no?

So I am about to be published. I am so chuffed. This is a subject that's really important to me, and I'm really hoping that this can continue the conversation about how we think about disputed heritage, which is usually the province of war-torn countries, not unremarkable street corners. And it's just an honour to even be asked. I really respect this professor, and he's quite respected by the heritage community both here and abroad. In the midst of dissertation madness, I've also been scrambling to do this--going to Manchester for research, agonising over quotes, and just thinking long and hard. I can't deny that I'm also a little nervous--what if people don't like it? What if some one writes in and tells me I'm totally wrong and there's a whole body of research I overlooked?

But then I have to trust in myself. It will be good experience, even if I do get criticism. And I get to put it on my CV!

(So chuffed.)

Lathing Maidens in Devon

Greetings, dear Internet! Most of you probably thought I had died overseas, but this is not the case! I am alive and well, and oh so busy. I thought my summer would be a gentle one, full of research and croquet, but this is also not the case. Turns out, my summer has not been gentle at all. Nor has it been much of a 'summer', come to think about it. It's been rainy and 50 degrees since early May. And the one sunny week we had in May was the week before our assessed lectures, so none of us really got to enjoy it. Typical.
But my assessed lecture went really, really well. I got a 73 on it, which to American readers is heart-stoppingly low. But in fact, it's a distinction! So even though my gut reaction is always awful when I get my British grades, after a few seconds, my brain kicks in and tells me how well I've done.

But this post is not about grades and lectures. It's about Devon. Because Devon is amazing. One of the reasons  my summer has been so packed is because I've been helping other people with their building surveying recording and other such weekends.  I spent one week in June surveying a mill at Castle Howard, which was amazing experience but oh so time consuming. (Though I was also fed a lemon cake that was so amazing that I proposed on the spot.)

And this weekend, I went to Devon for a timber-framing course. Originally, I wasn't going to go, but as the course got nearer, people dropped out, and I stepped up so that a friend (she of the proposal-worthy lemon cake) wouldn't have to make the seven hour drive by herself. Also, carpentry looked fun.

Well. I  might amend that statement. Carpentry is hard. Really, really difficult. But also rewarding as heck. In three days, myself and six other amateurs constructed a green oak porch, and while it turned out a wee bit wobbly, it was solid! And all my mortices and joints fit! Talk about a sense of accomplishment.

(Lath making. On a shave horse. Most of the time I had to use the carpenter's son's horse because my legs are so short. Sigh.)

(Hammer of Thor. Charlotte does not approve of my antics.)

Charlotte and I drove down early Thursday morning, and arrived in rainy Devon around two in the afternoon. We set up camp in the rain, ate dinner in the rain, and played cards, in the rain. And didn't sleep for fear of being blown away in the night. The next morning, our course tutor, one Henry Russel told us we could sleep on the floor of the bake house. And then the caretaker of the Yarner Trust, which was running the course, agreed. Thankfully. Because holy cow did it rain. It was niceish the second night, but there was torrential rain the third. During the day, we had a barn to work in, and we learned all about timber and medieval carpentry practices. We learned to scribe joints--basically figuring out how wobbly wood fits together in a nice, tight joint (and the bane of my existance), we learned to lay out frames, and fit them together in multiple dimensions, we learned how to drill and chisel tenons and mortices (the holes tenons fit into), and learned to make pegs, lath and probably a millon other things. So it was a packed three days. Usually this course is over five days, and I think it would have been better in five. But three is what we had, so three is what we worked with. In the end we had a fantastic porch complete with seats and lathe sides, and two happy owners who fed us cake and tea. 

(The group of us feeling well chuffed.)

(Women laughing at lath.)

So it was an excellent weekend. I have a new name for a pub: The Lathing Maiden. I have only one slightly clamped finger. I have allergies from hell. I have now broken into an English Heritage property by accident (it was the largest cruck-framed building in the country, how could I resist?) And I have a new appreciation for medieval carpentry practices. What a weekend.