Archive for April, 2008
The Sandlot
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on April 21st, 2008
Recently, exasperated at one of my student’s, ah, lack of clear thinking, I said the following:
“You’re killing me, Smalls!”
Alas, the young fellow looked at me like I had lobsters coming out of my ears (that, too, is a great old movie reference). It seems he’d never seen that classic of modern film, The Sandlot:
On the plus side, a student in the back of the room blurted out “s’mores!” — so there’s hope yet for the young folks.
Oh, in YouTubing this great film I came across this terrific splicing of clips from ye olde Sandlot and the uber-modern 300 films. Utterly brilliant, and I must share:
Dear Mr. Shanahan
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on April 19th, 2008
The annual NFL draft approaches, sir, and the Denver Broncos organization appears to stand at a crossroads. You’ve made some excellent choices over the years — especially in that awesome 2006 draft — yet you’ve also left some of us fans bewildered at times. Oh, I won’t blame you for drafting Maurice Clarett in 2005. That was high-risk, high-reward, and by negotiating a brilliant contact it didn’t cost nearly so much as those kind of gambles often do. And while I’m not sold on 2007 first-round pick Jarvis Moss (especially trading up to get him, when so many solid safeties — Nelson, Weddle, Griffin, Meriweather — were still on the board), I suppose we can give that pick a pass for another year.
Robert Jordan’s Office
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on April 18th, 2008
This morning I took up an invitation to visit Jim Rigney’s home and office. Robert Jordan’s office, in other words. The home of the Dragon Firstborn.
It’s hard to describe what a surreal experience this was for me. Robert Jordan was a name of dreams for most of my adult life. I never imagined I’d meet him. He was letters on a spine, a sketch of an image on a dustjacket, a source of inspiration. Indeed, he’s rather directly responsible for the first novel I completed (a magic-less fantasy epic that resides on a dusty floppy disk here somewhere, likely never to be seen again): in the terrible lull between Jordan’s Wheel of Time books, I got the crazy idea in my head to write one myself. He was a muse. And one never expects to meet a muse.
Academic Projects
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on April 17th, 2008
One of my students recently asked me why I don’t write much about my academic life here on the website. The question gave me pause, largely because I hadn’t realized that I’d not written much about academic things. Yet looking over the site I can see the student was right: I’ve not written much about it. So why?
Good question.
Well, what I write about here tends — for obvious reasons — to be a selective slice of my life, geared toward an outside world of readers. What I decide to include here is material that I think folks might be interested to know about for one reason or another, and the majority of my visitors — near as I can tell, anyway — come to me via my fiction life. My guess is they’re probably not very interested in hearing about, well, this stuff:
Five Academic Projects on my Desk
1. An edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament. I have posted a few things about this, but this 700-page beast isn’t exactly “fun” in most senses of the word.
2. An article about the structure, meaning, and authorship of The Alliterative Morte Arthure. I’ve “finished” this several times, only to begin adding additional stands to my argument.
3. An article about Robert Jordan’s placement in popular culture and the history of Fantasy. I have some drafted materials, yet the more I poke at them the more I think this deserves a book.
4. An edition of Cursor Mundi, a poem that is simply enormous. I suspect it will be published in multiple volumes when all is said and done — which is several years off, I’m afraid. Luckily, my colleague David Allen is working on it, too. Here’s hoping he has less on my plate than I do!
5. An article about Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. This one has been even more amorphous than item #2 … I really need to split the darn thing into three or four articles instead of just smashing so many thoughts into one. Or make it a book. Yeah. I got time for that, right?
WordPress 2.5
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on April 14th, 2008
I spent a good portion of this afternoon upgrading the website to version 2.5 of WordPress. Rather stressful, to say the least. I adore the simultaneous ease of use and enormous flexibility of this software, but upgrading is a tremendously frightful process in which you must delete primary function folders and files off the server. One wrong move, as they say, and you can kill the whole show.
And I’m a medievalist.
Still, it appears things have turned out well. I don’t see anything broken yet — please drop me a line if you do! — and the new version has some nice new bells and whistles in addition to the basic security improvements of an upgrade.
I also took an hour or so to add a few minor tweaks to the site in the form of plugins and code alterations. Some basic share links are now included at the end of posts, and over to your left (my right, I suppose) you can see a list of the most recent five comments. Other little adjustments may follow.
Bulldog Challenge
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on April 12th, 2008
I don’t post too much about the fact that I live and work on the campus of a military college, but every now and then something strikes me as rather unique about this place.
This morning, for instance, not long after I rolled out of bed to greet the stacks of research papers I’m grading this weekend, the whole house was rattled by a cannon echo. Boom! One gets a bit familiar with these reverberations of detonation here — weekly parades are punctuated by them, as are home football games — but it is rather odd to hear one Saturday morning in Spring.
Even so, I didn’t give it any thought.
Just now, grading papers in the oakshade of our front porch, I began to see a sequence of folks in camoflage running in various states of exhaustion. Many of them were carrying what appear to be sandbags on their shoulders.
This, too, didn’t give me much pause, which I think is a fair description of how odd this place can be.
That said, as I write this I seem to recall that what might be going on is the Bulldog Challenge, a grueling physical race (to survive and finish, I think) that brings folks from around the country to prove themselves here at The Citadel.
Or maybe it’s just Saturday.
Patio Performances
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes on April 11th, 2008
What a busy week! Last night I was the MC for the annual rendition of Patio Performances, in which three talented cadets read their creative writing under the shading oaks of the library courtyard. It is a pleasant 40 minutes, especially on a beautiful spring evening here in Charleston.
The cadets featured were all published in this year’s Shako, and they all did a terrific job. A hearty congratulations to Travis Hedges, Jay Mabry, and Cary McNamara!
Jordan-Rigney Panel Discussion
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on April 9th, 2008
As first reported here (a michaellivingston.com exclusive!), a few weeks ago I gave a speech honoring the literary legacy of James Oliver Rigney, Jr, known to most of the world as Robert Jordan, on the occasion of his induction into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. It was a true honor, and the speech seemed to go well (video available here): Harriet Rigney, Jim’s beloved wife and talented editor, shocked me to the core soon afterward by publicly inviting me to join in a panel discussion about Jim’s work to be held at The Citadel library as part of the dedication of a permanent exhibition honoring him. The other participants would be the esteemed writer David Drake and none other than Brandon Sanderson, the lucky man she’d chosen to complete the final volume in Jim’s epic Wheel of Time series.
That event was last night.
If I’ve been quiet around here these past few days, I confess it has much to do with knowing this panel discussion was coming up. The whole thing, as you might expect, was a bit daunting. David Drake, after all, is, well, David Drake. Brandon Sanderson was no small fish before all this happened (Elantris is a remarkable first novel), but he’s certainly a big fish now. And me? A minnow. The grime on the rocks. Maybe, just maybe, a crayfish hiding under them.
To make things worse, I wasn’t sure just what I was supposed to do. I’d asked for clarification from a couple folks — do I prepare a speech? will we take turns? is it a free for all? — but no one gave me much to go on. It’ll be a panel discussion, I kept hearing. Everyone but me knew seemed to know exactly what this meant.
In the end, I just typed up some hasty notes, re-read some assorted bits of Jim’s works, and hoped for the best.
Well, it went splendidly. The place was pretty much packed, with a good mix of cadets and civilians, and David and Brandon were quite welcoming to this local yokel in their midst. Plus, I didn’t pass out once … not even after Harriet had me “start things off” — which I found somewhat difficult since I wasn’t yet sure what the thing was we were doing. But all’s well that ends well, as they say. The discussion was lively, with a good give-and-take between panelists and audience. I didn’t feel too terribly out of place.
After it was done, Harriet surprised me again (I’m not complaining!) by inviting me to join her and some guests for dinner at one of the finer restaurants in town. There were ten of us all told. In addition to myself, Harriet, Brandon, and David, we were joined by Jim’s wonderful brother/cousin Wilson, Jim’s two assistants Maria and Alan (both of whom are helping Brandon in his tasks now), and a few other guests.
Well, the dinner was incredible, even if I felt a bit wide-eyed throughout the evening. Terrific conversation and excellent food shared over fine spirits is a great way to pass the time, I think, even if I couldn’t drag out too many secrets about what’s coming in Book 12 (not that I tried very hard).
Plus, Tor Books picked up the tab. Can’t beat that.
Actually, you can: it appears I have a standing invitation to tour Jim’s office — which is more or less just as he left it. And when I mentioned my interest in academic matters focusing on Jim, both Alan and Maria offered their help on answering any questions they can about him and his work.
It’s all quite extraordinary. I’m sure I’ll wake up soon.
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