The Big Sing

[frenchpony]

One of the things that I loved about living in the Midwest was that, every so often, there were these pickup choir events. I got to go to the singalong Messiah at the Lyric Opera once, and to KAMII's singalong Judas Maccabaeus the last year that they did it. lcohen and rhobike and I had many lovely June evenings in Oak Park tearing through their pickup choir

Comments

[fafojoy]

Your college experiences have been so interesting and i love how music plays such a large part of your social life. And then must expand Upon Elliska's question - if your fellowship is not around teaching, what do you do?

[frenchpony]

Now that I think of it, music has always played a big part of my social life. That seems to be how I meet people, by either making music with them or dancing with them. Not a bad lifestyle, when you think about it.

My fellowship is a research fellowship. Teaching is optional, but my main job is to work on my research. It really is a gem of a fellowship, and I'm amazingly happy about it.

[fafojoy]

What kind of research? Or have you already posted about it elsewhere?

[frenchpony]

I don't remember if I've ever mentioned it here before. The project is one that I had the idea for while writing my dissertation, but I couldn't do anything about it until La Dissertation was finished. This one has the tentative working title of "Musical Lives of British Synagogues," and it's about the ways that music works in British progressive Jewish worship. Who sings, why they sing, what they sing, why they sing what they sing, that sort of thing.

[fafojoy]

That is very cool and it explains why Cambridge was interested in you.

[frenchpony]

I think they liked that the project has aspect of the humanities, the social sciences, and divinity, the three divisions of the University of Chicago that are eligible for my fellowship. And I like the project, and it's one that I really wanted to do, and I suspect they picked up on that in my interview.

Either that, or I was just really rocking the high chignon that day!

[fafojoy]

This is off-topic, but an author named Pamela Smith Hill has written a book called Pioneer girl: An annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She taught a class last quarter at Missouri State University a MOOC about Laura Ingalls Wilder and she's teaching the second half beginning April 6. I did email her and ask her if the material from the fall would be available to those taking the spring class and she said yes. She said the course might also be repeated next year. I know you have an interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder and thought you might be interested. The class is obviously free and I have an email from them that I can forward to you if you want, it includes a link to register for the class. Let me know what email address to use or I can look up whatever is on SoA. I listened to an interview on NPR with her that was very interesting. The book is in second printing and I'm waitlisted for it. It's been published by the South Dakota historical society, it is available through them and also on Amazon.