For various reasons, I have not taken a work from home Friday in over a month. Last week, I took a WFH day on Tuesday, but my last WFH day that fell on a Friday (my usual day) was back in April. I have some things to work on for a class I’ll be teaching on Monday, but this afternoon, I need to do some shopping for work. I need some supplies for this class, and on Sunday, I need to get some snacks for my students. The class is about four hours long, so they will need a break halfway through.
This week has been a good but busy week. My new director started on Monday, and so far so good. It’s only been a week, but it already seems that she is not only what I was hoping for in a new director, but also what we needed. I am feeling optimistic about this new era at the museum.
And, since I did not post an Isabella pic yesterday as I usually do on Thursdays, I thought I’d make up for it today with two pictures. I have a black faux fur throw blanket that I keep at the foot of my bed. I call it “Isabella’s Invisibility Cloak.” It’s the same color she is and if she doesn’t open her eyes or I’m not expecting her to be there, I don’t see her. It has caught me off guard a few times when the blanket suddenly moved as I walked by and two green eyes unexpectedly appeared. If I’d been looking directly at the blanket I’d have seen her there, but when I see it just in the periphery of my vision, I don’t notice her. The first time it happened, it actually made me jump, but I’m used to it now and usually scratch her little head or pet her as I walk by.
A glare showed up in the picture, but imagine that not being there. She’s naturally camouflaged.
And there are those pretty green eyes, though she looks a little peeved that I woke her up.
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, June 6, 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
It’s more important than ever that we remember the sacrifices made to liberate Europe from the grips of fascism. While fascism in Spain and Portugal did not end with the Allied victory in Europe, it did end Italian and German fascism. With far right politicians are using violence, fear, and hatred to make political gains. Whether that is through outright lies and propaganda, changing to voting laws making it harder for people to vote, or passing laws to brainwash young minds by forbidding the teaching of history they disagree with, these right wing politicians are using the same tactics and rhetoric that led to the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. They completely ignore facts, twist the words of others, and believe laws only apply to other people.
During the Second World War, over 61 million soldiers and civilians died resisting fascism. We can’t allow fascist governments to gain control again. Remember the sacrifices made to liberate Europe. Remember the men who died in the largest seaborne invasion in history eighty years ago today.
I can’t remember when I read the first of his books. It could have been in college, but mostly likely it was when I was in grad school, and I discovered that the local public library had a dozen or so gay mystery novels. I’d have never guessed that a public library in Mississippi would have any gay novels, especially not mysteries. I can only assume that someone in town had bought and read them and then donated them to the library.
It could have also been when I subscribed to the now defunct book of the month club, InsightOut Books, which introduced me to authors like Greg Herren and many other gay authors. I devoured all the gay books the library had and as many as I could afford from the book club. Contrary to present-day gay novels dominated by male/male romances and female authors, these books from the late 1990s and early 2000s, were almost always written by gay men. As a newly out man, this was a fascinating world to discover.
Like I said, I don’t know when I read the first of his books, but once I read the first in Michael Craft’s Mark Manning series, I was hooked. The series began with Flight Dreamsin 1997. In the book, Mark Manning, and investigative journalist and the accidental detective in the novels, begins his gay awakening, which begins with a series of dreams after meeting and falling in love for the first time with the man of his dreams, architect Neil Waite. There was a mystery in there too, but I think the love story made these books special to me. The series continued with six more books.Eye Contactand Body Languagewere next, and the series concluded with Bitch Slap in 2004.
Craft was always a bit of a campy writer who injected a fair amount of humor into his books. This was typical of gay mysteries of the time with titles like Fred Hunter’s National Nancys and Capital Queers (terrible names but fun reads) and Mark Richard Zubro’s Tom and Scott series which features as main characters, a gay schoolteacher and his lover, a professional baseball player. Grad school stopped a lot of my reading for fun because I had a ton of history books to read for classes, but I usually had a stack of books to read throughout the summer months when I was not taking classes. Eventually research and writing my dissertation, my migraines, and teaching took up most of my time.
After Michael Craft concluded his Mark Manning Mysteries and his Claire Gray Mysteries (a somewhat spinoff of the Mark Manning mysteries and his first novel Rehearsing) in 2005, he seemed to have quit writing. A few months ago, I was telling Susan about these books, and she discovered he had begun publishing a new series in 2018 called the Mister Puss Mysteries which featured a talking cat. It’s the first of these, FlabberGassed, that I started reading last night. It’s different from his other mysteries, though it takes place in the fictional town of Dumont, Wisconsin, where the Mark Manning Mysteries concluded.
I wondered if I’d like the new series. In high school I’d read the The Cat Who… Series by Lillian Jackson Braun and the Mrs. Murphy Series by Rita Mae Brown, which both featured cats. (At the time, I did not realize that Rita May Brown was the iconic lesbian author who wrote Rubyfruit Jungle, which when published in 1973 was remarkable for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism). A bit of trivia, the television movie “Murder She Purred” starring the actress and talk show host Ricki Lake was based on Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy Series. Though I had read these cat-based mysteries some 30 years or so ago (and how did I not realize I was gay?), I hesitated to read Craft’s Mister Puss Series, but I gave it a try last night, and while I was not far into it when I went to bed, I was hooked. Yes, a talking cat is strange, but the level of camp is so much fun and reminiscent of the first gay mysteries that I’d read for the first time over 20 years ago. I’m looking g forward to reading more, which I’m about to do before I get ready for work this morning.
Out of the mid-wood’s twilight Into the meadow’s dawn, Ivory limbed and brown-eyed, Flashes my Faun!
He skips through the copses singing, And his shadow dances along, And I know not which I should follow, Shadow or song!
O Hunter, snare me his shadow! O Nightingale, catch me his strain! Else moonstruck with music and madness I track him in vain!
About The Poem
“In the Forest” appears in the “Uncollected Poems” (1876–1893) section of the volume Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol, published in 1909 by Methuen & Company. During the 1890s, Wilde faced three criminal and civil trials due to his relationship with the poet Lord Alfred Douglas. In March 1946, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse published the article “Oscar Wilde’s Poetry as Art History” by American poet Edouard Roditi, who wrote: “The evolution of Wilde’s descriptive style in his poetry, from the museum-piece ornateness of his earlier works to the simpler and more delicate art of his more mature poems, was accompanied, moreover, by an analogous evolution of his poetry’s intellectual content, from the discussion of general problems of politics, ethics or esthetics to a greater attention to personal impressions or to the elucidation of particular problems of the poet’s life, such as his temptations and moral conflicts. […] Wilde proved his ability to compose, had he but dared, a body of poems, on themes of sin, suffering and remorse, which might have been the Fleurs du Mal of English literature, with much of Baudelaire’s concise quality as opposed to Swinburne’s vagueness.”
About the Poet
Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854, was a playwright and poet. His first book of poetry, Ravenna (T. Shrimpton and Son, 1878) won the Newdigate Prize. Wilde won more acclaim for his plays, particularly An Ideal Husband (L. Smithers, 1899) and The Importance of Being Earnest (E. Matthews and John Lane, 1899). He died in Paris on November 30, 1900.
It’s a new work week, and sort of a new era at the museum. My new director has her first day today. While she’ll probably spend most of her time with onboarding procedures and paperwork, she should be in the museum this afternoon. I initially had trepidations about this new era. I usually do not deal well with the anticipation of change, but once it happens, I generally go with the flow. With a new boss, I was worried about someone coming in and being a micromanager.
However, a few weeks ago, I had a long meeting with her, and we discussed the museum’s educational activities and our public programs. At that time, she reiterated that she was there to help not micromanage or change anything. My former director had already told her that I was very good at my job, and she was lucky to have me. I don’t expect a lot of upheaval, but I do expect a more competent director.
My previous director was a nice guy, sometimes too nice, and a good friend, but he was never cut out to be a museum administrator. I’ve always felt like his wife pushed him to pursue the position, and he was just not ready. That led to some issues, and there were times when he would hide his head in the sand instead of effectively dealing with issues that arose. I am hoping that our new director is a stronger person and a better advocate for her employees, and I hope she’ll take on problems that come up and handle them competently.
Of course, only time will tell how she will perform as director, but what I’ve seen so far, I am optimistic. I am not always the best judge of character, nor the best at recognizing red flags. I was in the hiring committee for our new director, so I hope we made the right choice. In the last two hiring committees I was on, I think we made mistakes and missed the red flags. So, I worry that I may have missed any red flags; however, I hope I learned from my previous experiences. In the song “Feelin’ Good,” Nina Simone sang:
It’s a new dawn It’s a new day It’s a new life for me, ooh And I’m feeling good
I guess we’ll see how it goes, but as of now, I’m feeling good.
The Closet Professor 