What’s up with me: Past
entries
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K. Bourdaghs homepage
Posted
December 29, 2003:
We had a very nice visit over Christmas with my mom; the kids especially
enjoyed the rare treat of a grandparent at hand. We had planned to spend
Christmas Day on Santa Monica Beach, but the pouring rain prevented that.
But we did spend Dec. 26th on that beach, as well as on the Pier. Walter
came home with several stuffed animals, courtesy of the Skeet Ball concession.
With my mom here, I was also able to visit
museums. We saw the Lee Bentecou exhibit at the UCLA
Hammer Museum, quite
wonderful. Her canvas-and-metal works from the 1950s and 1960s are
remarkable--abstract expressionist works that burst out from the canvas and try
to bite you. We also saw the John Manjiro exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum--centered on the illustrated manuscript by the Japanese castaway
who toured the world in the 1840s and then returned home to report on his
adventures. The exhibit wasn't quite as exciting as I had hoped, but
still some nice pieces from the John Manjiro manuscript.
Christmas brought me a thick stack of CDs that I'm
still trying to wade my way through. And it brough good food, Lord
knows: turkey on the 24th, ham on the 25th, roast pork on the 27th, and
various combinations of the above on the other days. I have eaten well,
friends, and we have an invitation to home-made Korean barbecue this coming
Friday.
Posted
December 20, 2003:
The past week started out on a depressing
jag, and it got worse by midweek: all sorts of crises, personal and
professional. But by week's end, the air had started to clear and things
are now looking up a bit. One of the few highlights of the week was
watching Sonia perform in two different holiday concerts at her school.
And now the kids are out of school for three weeks of winter vacation, meaning
no more morning rush hour blues for the time being.
My mom will arrive here Tuesday to spend Christmas
with us. We are all looking forward to her visit eagerly. The
Christmas tree is up and decorated, the Christmas shopping is nearly complete,
and we are currently embroiled in a heavy philosophical discussion about what
varieties of pie to bake for our feast. We've been in a bit of a
blueberry/apple/pumpkin rut for the past few years, so I'm lobbying for banana
cream, or pecan, or lemon meringue. Or possibly even mincemeat, though
Lord knows I've never been a fan of mincemeat.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to a few weeks spent
in the company of family, a rare treat, and one that will fade away quickly
after the new year begins and the busy-ness of the academic year resumes.
Here's hoping you all have a joyous and peaceful Christmas!
Posted
December 14, 2003:
It was a busy week, complete with an M.A.
exam for one of our grad students on Friday and a workshop I organized on
Saturday for the "Translating Universals: Theory Moves Across
Asia" series (a title, it turns out, that nobody except me seems to
like). The workshop was interesting, with good papers and
discussions--sometimes pointed discussions. With those things out of the
way, the pressure of immediate deadlines is off, and I can relax a
little--although it is now, of course, time to start preparing for winter
quarter and all the activities it will bring, including more conferences and
workshops.
On the homefront, we have shifted into Christmas
mode. For the first time in several years, we were actually organized
enough to send out Christmas cards, and we even mailed them more than a week
before the 25th! We have managed to catch all of the major TV specials --
"Rudolph," "Frosty," and "Charlie Brown" -- and
we're already onto our second round of baking Christmas cookies. The
Christmas shopping is nearly done, and today Sonia and I went out and found our
Christmas tree, a fine six-foot Douglas fir. On Wednesday we will go to
Sonia's school to see not one but two different Christmas concert performances,
and on Friday the kids finally get out of school for break.
Posted
December 6, 2003:
Well, UCLA
classes are done now--just in time for everyone to get sick. Sonia had it
first, and then it was my turn: I basically collapsed on Thursday, taking
a long nap on my office floor that afternoon and going to bed as soon as we got
home that night. I recovered a bit by Friday morning--only to have Walter
come home from school that afternoon with a fever and sore throat. Sigh.
Luckily, I don't have much grading to do this
quarter. What that means is that I can (must) get to work immediately on
a number of projects with pending deadlines: I'm reviewing a book
manuscript for a university press, am supposed to write a review of another
book for the Journal of Japanese Studies, and have to get two papers
ready for presentation early next year--one on Kurosawa Akira's use of music in
his films, the other on Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and its relation to
property law in 1910's Japan. Plus, of course, finish preparing for the
two classes I will teach next quarter. No rest for the wicked.
I am quite thankful that we've decided to stay put
here in Los Angeles for winter break this year. We'll miss seeing our
family and friends back in Minnesota and Japan, but this way we just might be
able to preserve our sanity....
Posted
November 29, 2003:
Here's hoping you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We enjoyed a quiet
day, with my sister and her fiancé coming over for lunch. My turkey turned out
just fine, juicy and tender, and we toasted the season with a nice bottle of
French champagne. Satoko tried a new pie recipe from the newspaper, one
that called for intense amounts of butter in the crust. The pies--apple,
blueberry and pumpkin--are delicious, but the crust is so rich and filling that
a single slice fills you up quite literally for the rest of the day!
The day after Thanksgiving, my sister and her fiancé were
married in a small, private ceremony here in Los Angeles. A big event for
family and friends is planned for next summer. At any rate, we wish them
many years of happiness, and our kids are delighted to welcome their first
uncle into the family.
So, it was a memorable week for us all, and we are
using what's left of the weekend to rest and relax--and to digest the pie
crust. One more week of classes at UCLA before winter break.
Posted
November 23, 2003:
I
spent the latter part of the week attending the Association for Japanese
Literature Studies annual meeting here at UCLA. It was an intense, at
times overwhelming conference--more than fifty papers in two-and-a-half
days--but it was good to see many old friends and to make some new ones.
Two old friends from Japan came especially for it and were part of a panel with
me, something we've wanted to do for years now, so that was nice. And
some of the papers presented were remarkably good -- the sort that give you the
faith to go on in this profession.
Unfortunately, halfway through the conference I came
down with a cold, so I spent the last day and a half in a daze. And now
that it's over, I find myself exhausted. Thanksgiving comes at just the
right time this year. I have about twentyfive letters of recommendation to
write in the next three days; as I cough and hack my way through them, the
vision of roasted turkey will keep me going (I
hope)!
Posted
November 16, 2003:
It was a rather ordinary week, busy with work and with chauffeuring the kids around.
I am nearly ready to present my paper--such as it is--on how the Japanese
proletarian literature movement viewed Natsume Sôseki this coming Friday at the
Association for Japanese Literary Studies annual meeting. It's the most
boring paper I've ever written, but I should see a number of old friends at the
conference, including some from Japan, so it should be a pleasant
weekend.
Walter is now taking Aikido lessons twice a week, and so far
he seems to love it. Sonia, for her part, has been in ballet class
for a couple of months now, and it too seems to be a big success.
And we are looking for a good piano teacher now, for both Sonia and me.
Word came yesterday that Musashimaru, the last of the three
great Hawaiian sumo wrestlers (the other two, Konishiki and Akebono, are
already retired), has decided to retire. Sigh. I have been
following his career closely since 1989, when he broke into the top
ranks. One look at him and you knew he was going places--a remarkable build
and fierce technique. He eventually made it to yokozuna, only the second
foreigner ever to reach the highest rank in sumo (Akebono was the first).
He won a total of twelve tournaments in his career --sixth on the all-time list
-- and holds the record for most consecutive winning records in tournaments at
the start of a career (55). He has the most wonderful face, a
sad bulldog expression, even when he's smiling. His wrist has been hurt
for nearly a year now, and after missing all or part of the last six tournaments,
he decided to go for it once and for all this time. After seven days, his
record was three wins, four losses, and he decided to hang it up. So the era of
the Hawaiians in sumo is over--and, it seems, the era of the Mongolians is well
underway.
Posted
November 8, 2003:
This was the week when things broke down, as if there were a nasty epidemic
sweeping through the household appliance population. Our garage door
opener stopped opening garage doors, our garbage disposal stopped disposing
garbage. Our main family computer gave up the ghost, and our phone lines
went dead. The fax machine ran out of printer film. The smoke
detectors started chirping that their batteries were low. Even Sonia got
a cold and stayed home from school for a day.
So how did we respond? By buying another
electronic device, of course. After months of talk but no action, the
dead phone lines finally pushed me out the door and into the neighborhood
Circuit City to buy our first cell phone. Yes, that's right, we have moved
forward boldly into the 1990s. And so now the kids have a new toy to
fight over, and I have another excuse to put off pressing work: I spent
most of one day this week uploading every telephone number I could think of,
including some that I hadn't dialed in years--and some that I had never
used. Because you never know: someday we may be stranded in an
isolated mountain top resort and I just might need to call my undergraduate
senior thesis adviser.
Now we are experimenting with all the different positions
from which one can make a phone call: you can call when you are stuck in
rush hour traffic, you can call when you are walking across campus, you can
call the phone that is sitting there two feet away. Ah, life is so
wonderful with all the modern con(venience)s--if only our garbage disposal
would work.
Posted
November 1, 2003:
It's been a strange few weeks in Los Angeles. For starters, we endured an
awful heatwave, nearly three weeks of daytime highs around 100 degrees here in
the San Fernando Valley. Then the busses and subways went on
strike. We don't use them much in our family, but it added about 5% more
cars to the rush hour traffic, very noticeable. A day or two later, all
of the major grocery store chains in town went out on strike (or
lockout). Everyone had to get creative: buying bread at the drug
store, picking through exotic vegetables in the fresh produce racks at small
ethnic grocery stores (we have a number of Thai, Mexican, and Armenian shops in
our neighborhood, for instance), etc.
That's when the fires arrived. They came nowhere
near us; the Simi Valley fire was closest, and at its worst there were still
maybe twenty miles of urban flatlands between the flames and us. But
starting last weekend, we could see huge plumes of smoke on the horizon, from
both the west (Simi Valley) and the east (San Bernadino). By Monday, the
sky was hazy everywhere and you could smell the smoke in the air. By
midweek, the skies everywhere in Los Angeles were a dense gray haze, the sun a
blood red disk in the sky even at noon.
The heatwave finally broke on Thursday and, miracle of
miracles, it has even rained a bit the last few days, our first real showers
since July (Sonia had to cut short her trick-or-treating due to the weather).
The strikes are still on, but things seem to be getting back to normal -- or at
least, to what passes for normal here in Los Angeles.
Posted
October 25, 2003:
Things are
perhaps settling down to a normal pace, thank goodness. I finished my
last lectures in the big freshman "cluster course" for this
quarter. Not a particularly distinguished performance on my part, but
it's done, and what's done is done. Saw an interesting lecture yesterday
by Prof. Richard Jaffe of Duke University on "Relics, Monuments, and
Realpolitik: Constructing Pan-Asian Budhhism in an Age of Empire"--a
discussion of how Japanese Buddhists in the early 20th century tried to
reconstruct a worldview of Buddhism that was compatible with the politics of
Japanese empire. And with things quieting down, I am able to turn my
attention to the most pressing problem at hand: a paper I am supposed to
give at the Association for Japanese Literary Studies annual meeting next month
on how the Japanese Proletarian Literature Movement critics in the 1920s and
30s viewed Natsume Soseki. Satoko and the kids are all fine.
Halloween dominates much of our conversation these days, especially with Sonia,
who is planning to go as a witch this year. She has also provided me with
a list of recommended candies for us to give out, all neatly ranked in order of
desirability. Walter has decided he is too old to go trick-or-treating
this year. They grow up too fast....
Posted
October 19, 2003:
A busy week, lots
of rushing around but little to show for it. I'm exactly halfway through
the two-week section that is my responsiblility in the large freshman
"cluster course" I am co-teaching this quarter, so I've spent much
time and energy scrambling to write lectures, find video clips, etc., for
that. The kids are midway through a patch loaded with doctor and dentist
appointments, school testing (Walter took the PSAT for practice yesterday),
etc. And today is the big Halloween Carnival at Sonia's school, so we
will spend the afternoon there. One way we've been soothing our jangled
nerves lately: watching "Honma mon," the Japanese NHK morning serial
drama about a plucky young woman (as always) who respects family tradition yet
wants to become a great chef. It was broadcast last year in Japan,
but is just now underway here in LA on one of the local Asian stations.
As always, heartwarming and soothing, like mashed potatoes smothered in melted
butter and gravy. (I suppose I should use a different culinary
simile: how about, "like steamed rice with a homemade pickled plum
on it"?) We tape the fifteen-minute episodes each morning and then
catch up on the weekends. We're on episode 12 now, meaaning about
125 episodes to go....
Posted
October 12, 2003:
Welcome to the
new web address! I figured I'd better nail down the domain name now,
since it is sure to be in such great demand.... It's been a nice quiet weekend,
after the excitement of our trip to Minnesota last week. We visited the
San Fernando Mission (built in 1797) yesterday for the first time; today will
be a quite Sunday, spent mainly getting ready for the week ahead. We had
a nice visit from Prof. Kamei Hideo last Thursday. Stay tuned as I
get things set up around here.....
Posted
October 8, 2003:
Back in hectic
old LA now after a very nice weekend in Minnesota. I took Sonia along;
she had a lovely time of it, the first time she's ever been able to monopolize
the attentions of her Minnesota grandparents. On the plane ride home, she
wrote up a list of all the things she got to do while in Saint Paul--it went on
for five pages! I was happy to spend more time with my Dad, whose
recovery has reached a bit of a plateau. We were able to get him out into
the world and onto his feet quite a bit while there, which was a good thing.
I saw several old friends, too, and managed to watch in person the awful fourth
(and final) game of the American League Division Series between the Yankees and
the Twins. Now it's back to work. One highlight of the coming
week: Prof. Kamei Hideo (whose book I helped translate) will be passing
through Los Angeles on his way from a conference at Yale.
Posted
September 27, 2003:
Well, the 2003-4
academic year is officially underway, and we all seem to have survived week one
(perhaps because I have yet to step into a classroom: that comes
Monday). My book, The Dawn That Never Comes is now out--it looks
very nice, thank you! Walter is selling candy to raise money for a class
trip to Catalina Island later in the year; Sonia is starting ballet lessons and
loves them. And Satoko is settling into her second year of teaching,
which should be much easier than the first. Our front and back
yards at home are now ripped to shreds and full of construction workers--here's
hoping they finish soon! And the highlight of the coming week is that on
Thursday, Sonia and I will fly to Minnesota for a four-day father/daughter
trip, mostly to visit my dad. But along the way, I've managed to track
down tickets to game four of the American League Divisional Series between the
Yankees and Twins--now I pray there isn't a three game sweep....
Posted
September 20, 2003:
Classes start at
UCLA later this week; I'm almost ready. And the first copies of my book, The
Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Toson and Japanese Nationalism,
should show up any day now. It will be nice to see the book finally--it's
a project I have been working on for more than ten years. A number of
summer projects are moving toward completion, too: research fellowship
applications (I want to spend the year 2005 finishing a book on Japanese
popular music), and a volume of essays I am editing that is long overdue, but
that is finally now ready to go to the publisher for review. The
other great end-of-the-summer project is to get some work done on our house.
In a few weeks, we should have a brand-spanking new stone patio in our
backyard, a new driveway, and a new privacy fence--and we should be many
thousands of dollars poorer thanks to it.
Posted
September 13, 2003:
A mostly quiet
week, though the pace is picking up: UCLA classes start in ten
days. I've taken to volunteering each morning in the "drop-off
lane" at Sonia's school, helping children out of their parents' cars and
making sure they get safely into the school. It's been quite educational,
actually--you get tiny insights into all the different sorts of parent-child
relationships there can be. It's a wonder our children manage to grow up
at all.....At work, I've been easing into my new role as Director of Graduate
Studies, finding out mainly how many questions there are that I don't know the
answer to. I'm trying to finish up a few loose ends on various projects
before classes start. It's going to be a busy year, no doubt, but after a
good summer break, I'm feeling refreshed and (almost) ready to tackle things.
Posted
September 7, 2003:
The week began
and ended with displays of rock music reshuffled and recombined. Last
Sunday, I went to see the exhibit of Christian Marclay's conceptual art at the UCLA
Hammer Museum, all based
on the theme of rendering the sound of music into visual art. There were
works that used melted vinyl records to create shapes, remarkable musical
instruments that looked like Dr. Seuss creations, collages that combined
multiple LP covers to create surreal portraits, etc. Then, on
Friday, I took Walter to see "Weird Al" Yankovich in concert at
the Greek Theatre here. Yet another reworking of the cliches of pop
music. Walt loved the show, which was very professional and
entertaining--and he even closed with a Kinks' song, his "Yoda"
version of "Lola," complete with the houselights-up-on-the-audience
singalong that the Kinks use.
Posted
August 31, 2003:
It's my
birthday! A low-key day is planned; my sister will come over this evening
for cake and exchange of presents (her birthday is in a couple of days).
The biggest event came last night, when we drove to Rancho Cucamonga to watch a
Class-A California League game -- the RC Quakes against the Inland Empire
66ers. We got to see two of the players Baseball Prospectus ranks
among the top 40 Major League prospects -- Shin-soo Choo (ranked #16) and
Casey Kotchman (#27). Choo, a former pitcher with the South Korean
national team but now an outfielder, had a rough night of it: hit by a
pitch on the wrist in the first inning, he then fouled a ball off his own ankle
in the sixth. Ouch! The visitors won, 6-5, but a great time was had
by all--the usual minor league silliness kept everyone entertained. And
they had fireworks after the game, too. Such a deal! Have a happy
Labor Day, y'all...
Posted
August 23, 2003:
The last week of
summer vacation before the kids go back to school (UCLA classes don't start for
a few weeks yet). We just found out that Sonia can stay in her old
school, a great relief to us. And of course she's delighted to be able to
stay with her old friends. Walter seems ready to go back to school,
too--it's hard to believe he will be in 7th grade. I am slowly easing
into my new role as the Director of Graduate Studies in our department, a
daunting challenge but also a new opportunity to learn more about how
universities really operate. And now it's time to finally do all the
house repairs that we've been putting off all summer! The week will end
with a bang: my 42nd birthday arrives next Sunday.
Posted
August 19, 2003:
Back in LA now,
after nearly three weeks of vacation in Minnesota. A wonderful time was
had by all, especially the kids, who reveled in the chance to play with their
second and third cousins. While there, I saw the Twins clobber Cleveland,
stopped by an exhibition of my mom's artwork, visited many old friends and
family, ate too much potato salad and bratwurst, helped my dad celebrate his
66th birthday, etc. And now we find ourselves back home here in California
with no food in the refrigerator and a dead battery in the family auto.
But it is nice to be back home and I look forward to getting back into the
routine of life again. And at least it isn't as humid here as it was the
last few days in Saint Paul.....
Posted August
12, 2003
We’re
enjoying our stay in St. Paul, where it is appropriately hot and
muggy. The corn is up to my nose and
the mosquitoes are biting. We traveled
to South Dakota last week, sharing the state with 300,000 bikers in town for
the annual Sturgis rally—always educational to travel in the company of a
subculture. Sites visited included
Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument (last time I visited it, in the early
1970s, only the arm was complete; now the face is done and they are starting
work on the horse’s head), the Badlands, Custer State Park, Wall Drug, and the
fabled Mitchell Corn Palace. In Sonia’s
honor, we visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum and homestead site in Walnut
Grove, MN, too.
Posted
July 26, 2003:
We spent a
pleasant week hosting my cousin and her two kids, here from Germany:
visits to Universal Studios, Santa Monica, Disneyland, Zuma Beach up in Malibu,
etc. Now they've left (though we'll see them again soon in Minnesota) and
the house is quiet. It's time to get some work done before we head off to
Saint Paul at the end of the week. I'm trying to finish up, among other
things, is the editing of a special "Japan" issue of the on-line
literary journal BigCityLit.com, which should be available in October.
Posted July 20, 2003:
My cousin and her kids are here now from Germany. We spent Sunday afternoon melting in the heat at the Tofu Festival in Little Tokyo. It was nice to see the UCLA Taiko drumming club in action, though. Later this week, visits to Universal Studio, Disneyland, and the beach are planned. And just when you thought the Twins were dead in the water, they go and sweep a four game series from Oakland....Hmmmm..... Maybe it's time to jump back onto the bandwagon I just jumped off.
Posted July 11, 2003:
I had a letter to
the editor published in this morning's Los Angeles Times. You can
read it here.
Between visits to the UCLA family pool with Satoko and the kids and
barbeques in the back yard, I'm trying to get a little work done. But my
sister is now back in LA from a long stay Down Under, and my cousin from
Germany is due next week for a visit with her two kids. So family matters
will take priority for the new few weeks. But that's okay--it's summer,
right?
Posted July 5, 2003:
Back in LA
now. The last days in Minnesota were spent in a flurry of visitng old
friends, watching a few more films, and trying to finish at least a fraction of
the work I had hoped to do. I was happy to get back home (sat next to a
man who was terrified of flying on the flight to LA) and have been enjoying
summer vacation activities with Satoko and the kids: visits to the family
pool at UCLA, a 4th of July barbeque in the back yard, etc. In the coming
week, I start gearing up to tackle my summer projects, which seem to grow in
numbers every day.
Posted June 28, 2003:
I'm enjoying a relaxing, quiet
stay in Minnesota. Most days, I go in with my dad for his rehab and then
spend the afternoon with him at his house. He is slowly but surely
getting better. I have also been visiting with other family and friends,
seeing movies, eating at some of my favorite restaurants, etc. It's been
a great way to wind down from a hard and stressful year. Satoko and the
kids back in LA have summer vacation off to a good start, too, it sounds.
Anyhow, I am back to LA this coming Wednesday.