Made With Pine and Love

I knew that we needed more storage in LZog's room. Currently we have a dresser and only a small closet that really belongs to KZog. Living in a hundred-year-old house teaches and reinforces certain lessons about architecture and conspicuous consumption. We have no walk-in closets, a luxury that accompanied growing wardrobes and the economy in post-WWII America, it seems. After searching for a suitable, similar case for purchase, KZog decided that rather than pay for particleboard, he would try his hand at carpentry. I can assure you that he had previous experience with the necessary tools - saw, drill, square - but as far as following plans for a functional piece of furniture, this was a first.

We downloaded free plans from this site, which I believe KZog found accurate and easy to follow. At least the process involved little cursing or throwing of things. Like the nursery repairs and renovations, I mostly supervised and peered over shoulders during its construction. I lent some muscle to the staining process - which we will never, ever do again; painting or natural-look wood only - and quickly filled it up once placed in LZog's room. Ultimately, the building of the shelf took relatively little time; the finishing - sanding, filling, staining took far longer than the building.

When we first learned of the pending arrival of LZog, in his mind KZog leap-frogged basic bookcase building to wanting to build a crib that would later transform to a bed. I don't think I am the only one thankful that he took at least this one intermediary step. Though he sometimes hopes he had learned more about the practicalities of woodcraft from his Pa Pa, who practiced carpentry all his life, this first successful project has inspired him. What better way to spend one's time than creating something with his hands that recalls fondest, earliest memories of time spent with a loved one? We may end up with a crib/bed yet . . .

Anyone have a table saw we could borrow?

XO,
JZog
For LZog's Registry, Click Here!

Hurdles Cleared

For three years I have held the dubious academic designation of ABD - All But Dissertation - an assignation something like 50% of graduate students never surmount. Now, with only one more hurdle before TAMU officially recognizes me as PhD - successfully waddling nearly 37 weeks pregnant across the graduation stage - I find myself in another phase of ABD - All But Diploma.

Believe it or not, during high school I spent three years on the varsity track team (I even won MVP my senior year), bouncing between such events as the triple jump, long jump, all of the sprints (100, 200, 400 yards), and even the high jump (before you laugh too hard, I could clear more than my mere height). By the end of my first season, the coaches settled on rotating me through the high jump (keep on laughing!), a series of 400 yard races (anchoring the 800 medley and the 1600 relay; sometimes the open 400), and . . . the 300 yard hurdles.

Given my years of dance training and reputation as a quite decent jumper as a dancer, my track coaches determined that hurdles might suit me. As one might suspect, clearing hurdles requires some finesse and technique. Running up to them and jumping over rarely results in success. During practices I mastered the art of counting strides to the first hurdle and eyeballing the appropriate takeoff point to send my lead leg straight over and allowing my trail leg to follow through. Learning how to hurdle usually involves some crashing and burning. In addition to several skinned knees, I once managed to skid belly first on the track after catching the hurdle with my lead toe. My dance training did help me clear the hurdles, usually over-clearing, a habit that did not help my speed any as I battled my short stride. Luckily, track and field events do not award style points, so I found a degree of success as long as I completed the race and left all my efforts out on the track.

After I defended the dissertation way back in May, the wash of relief soon replaced itself with a frenzy over the bureaucratic hurdles necessary to clear before graduation. Silly me, believing that six years of research to write 266 pages with over 500 meticulously crafted footnotes and four appendices would prove enough to satisfy the TAMU graduation gods! I needed to apply for graduation (at which point they levy a charge for your diploma); order my cap and gown (of course, doctoral regalia costs more than all others - must be the velvet stripes); and, most importantly, clear my dissertation through the thesis office (for yet another fee). This feat requires copious paperwork and adherence to a series of strict deadlines, including copyright statements; approval documents from the dissertation committee - not only one from the defense, but a second confirming their approval of the dissertation; completion of surveys concerning one’s half a decade in graduate school; and the correct formatting of the dissertation according to a forty-page manual. In fairness, I understand that perhaps allowing the thousands of graduate students each year to turn in their projects in whatever form they so desired might end in disaster. Regardless, the process remains a soul-sucking exercise in hoop-jumping, er, hurdle-clearing, at a point by which it proves difficult to assemble the mental and physical wherewithal to complete these tasks. For instance, the act of securing committee signatures not once, but twice, may take days if not weeks, especially if one has a retired member, members actively pursuing research, or members generally busy teaching and administrating. Furthermore, the required formatting of the document leaves little room for creativity, though I suppose that is usually the first victim of bureaucracy, along with individual initiative.

What I found true of my high school track days holds true of completing the PhD.  Persistence pays. Did I need to be the most brilliant track athlete to win my team's MVP? Nope, but I showed up for and completed all of my events, compiling them into a tidy number of points and a not-too-shabby record by the end of the season. I have little sense now about the "score" of my work as a graduate student, but I do know that it is over, finished, done. As one of my fabulous dissertation committee members reminded me repeatedly: "Success is in the completion." So it was with track, and so it is with the PhD.

In two weeks, one may officially call me "Dr." Until then I wait, all hurdles cleared, everything "left on the track," as All But Diploma. 

XO,

JZog

For LZog's BabyList Click Here

Sweet Dreams for LZog

KZog has nearly as many projects in the works for LZog as I do. Nursery renovations, bookcase-building, and, perhaps most importantly, crafting ways to share his love and talent for music.

He has set a mission to record several songs with the aim of lulling LZog to dreamland. But no "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for our future rocker. We have compiled quite an eclectic list of tunes, including Guns 'N Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine" (on ukelele),  Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head," and Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'". We'll ease LZog into the likes of ZZTop and Zep, though I think we did try a version of "Black Dog" on the ukelele (which, incidentally, our black dog hates. She prefers Stevie Ray's guitar to Bonham's drums.) 

Ukelele, you say? Earlier this year KZog acquired a baritone ukelele from his Granny and quickly adopted it as his go-to instrument for accompaniment. He tinkers more with this four-stringer than his guitar these days, but it does lend itself nicely to softening the edges of hard rock songs for new ears.

As he often does (and seldom do I protest), KZog has recruited me to act as vocalist, engineer, and video producer. So, we've put together a mini-video melding some of the photographs collected for our nursery decorations and part of our recording of "Hang on Little Tomato" by Pink Martini. 

(Since posting, I have learned that the video does not appear on some mobile devices. Click here to link directly to the video.)

We would love to add some songs to LZog's playlist. Post your suggestions in the comments!

XO,

JZog

Click here for LZog's Registry!

Knitting for the Knursery

While KZog undertakes the necessary repairs and renovations to the nursery, my fewer-than-8-weeks-to-go belly and I have logged some serious couch time, indulging in various iterations of BBC/PBS Mystery! as I knit cute and likely unnecessary items for LZog.

If knitting anything in Texas, especially during the hottest part of the year, strikes you as knutty, bear in mind that I haven't quite figured out a practical way to haul all of my sewing accoutrements into the living area and run a machine while kicking my feet up. Knitting, in other words, proves far more mobile than sewing machine projects.

Sometime last year I first attempted knitting animals, which I found more difficult than first imagined. Hence taking a year to finish them. Knitting up the separate pieces - arms, legs, head, ears, body - took little time. Piecing them together on the other hand . . . Eh. One ear would end up on top of the head and the other on the side. Or, the legs looked like the bear would have a pronounced limp if it could walk. Charming? Perhaps, though the mismatches aggravated me more than anything. Finally I evened the bits up enough to present a passable bear.

LZog's First Bear

Since I needed practice putting them together, LZog's bear has a twin in Louisiana that lives with his cousin, EMit, who turned one year old in June.

EMit's Blue-Eyed Bear

Yes I have made leg warmers. And yes, if LZog is a boy, he will wear them. Even the mauve-ish pair.

Ready for Flashdance

In theory, I suppose it matters on which side one places the buttons and buttonholes depending on whether the article of clothing will be worn by a boy or a girl. When looking at the piece, a "boy" sweater should/would have buttons on the left; a "girl"sweater, on the right. A cursory search gave me little to go on, though the response offered from website Stupid Questions Answered seems at least plausible. Several of women's fashion cycles have favored styles that required others - servants/slaves/relatives to dress them. Think corsets, cage/hooped skirt, and tight bodices (and no knit fabrics!). To fully dress, women's clothing had buttons on the left, as those dressing them would likely have been right-handed; whereas, men dressed themselves. Now, I've watched enough period dramas to know that this doesn't totally jive with the portrayals of, say, the English upper class, but it satisfies my curiosity for now. Unwittingly I have made this sweater for a boy, but I don't know that I would put any stock in this accident as somehow psychic. I have only to finish the sleeves and find some little silver buttons so that I may put it away until the weather cools enough for LZog to wear it, sometime in November if we are lucky.

Girl Sweater? Boy Sweater? How About Just a Cute Sweater?

I found all of the patterns used on Ravelry.com, a fantastic site for knitters and crocheters that boasts thousands of free patterns and many reasonably priced ones as well. The bears I based on Theodore the Teddy Bear; the leg warmers, Free-Range Baby Legwarmers; and the sweater, the Sunnyside Cardigan.

Here's to distracting myself over these last weeks!

XO,
JZog
For LZog's BabyList, Click Here

For the Family

Some of you reading this know the depressing realities of the current academic job market either because you have wrestled with it or know someone who has. Though I would still very much prefer to land a tenure-track position in a small liberal arts college (or SLAC in academic-ese) in the Midwest or South and focus on teaching while still working through my research projects, this prospect dims somewhat when I consider a number of factors: the proportion of jobs to job-seekers (I don't have the statistics in front of me, but they are not good); my stubbornness/persistence/refusal to move for an adjunct or temporary position; and the daunting pace of the publish or perish imperative necessary to obtain tenure. I understand that some may argue that beggars cannot and should not be choosers, but between LZog's pending arrival and a lifelong commitment to doing things my way, I feel little compulsion to sacrifice my soul to the academic gods.

That said, I neither regret the years I have spent pursuing the PhD nor believe that I cannot identify alternative avenues for the skills and talents I have cultivated over the past seven years. I refuse to assume a vitriolic position towards my lack of a tenure-track job immediately following graduation (or ever) and the vagaries of the job market.

Over the past year I have begun to tell people that if the professorial world rejects me, I will turn to writing historical fiction. Funny, every time I say it, the idea sounds better and better - and sometimes even more feasible. Though certainly no more stable or easier to manage than a career in academia, I may research whatever I want and publish on my own timeline. And I could make stuff up, which has appreciable appeal after some of the drudgery that I executed in the name of the dissertation. I aim to, though, err heavy on the historical and light on the fiction. Using family - facts and figures, legends and lore - offers me a fruitful foundation for future research.

Really I have several prospective projects, but over the past week I have focused on the Zogs and their entrepreneurial origins in St. Louis. By taking advantage of my waning weeks as a student, I accessed the most circulated paper in the area between 1911 and 1922, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,  from the university library. Covering the years from the establishment of this Zog venture through the last year available in this database, I dug up some gems that lend some sparkle to Zog history.

Advertisements for their business, the Star Dyeing and Cleaning Company (spelling in context), comprised the bulk of what I found, but even these suggest a cheekiness true to both the time period and all the Zogs I know today. In 1919, they ran contests for the "Star Sayings" that accompanied many of the ads and informed potential customers of their "up to the minute equipment, long experience and extreme carefulness" that made "STAR SERVICE so successful - so satisfying" (May 27, 1919).

St. Louisans learned a little of the family roots from an ad that appeared in the July 29, 1918 edition. It declared that Star possessed "the best dyer that ever came out of Holland, but has been too modest to say so." I confess that I did not realize that Holland prided itself on its clothes dying traditions.

Modesty may/not have missed the mark as a genetic trend, but pronounced - and sometimes misguided - patriotism clearly began early, likely at least in part a reaction to American involvement in World War I. In 1916, an article titled "Warrants Charge Two With Using U.S. Flag in 'Ads'" explains that one FZog (KZog's great or great-great grandfather - we cannot confirm which) refused a request to remove a flag shield emblem emblazoned with the company name from their wagons. Another similar article followed the next day, though we have no indication of whether or not the authorities convicted FZog of the violation, which carried a fine of $100 or 30 days in jail for each offense (August 5 & 6, 1916). Advertisements later in the war focused on cleanliness as a patriotic duty.

My favorite find, however, remains the long-time slogan: "Our Proposition Is a Clean One".

To what ends will this work come? Who knows?. All the same, it gives me a productive project for the family in the meantime . . .

XO,
JZog
For LZog's Baby Registry, Click Here!