Fitness to Work

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

And so, today is the last day when I’m officially unfit to work. I go back to the library on Monday, but not without some anxiety.

Mind the Gap!

There is a discrepancy. After my eye surgery, I’m now ‘fit’ to return to work, but all clinical advice says that full recovery takes a number of months, if not a year. The hospital doctor tells me I can’t even get new glasses (which I need) until after the summer, by which time the fixed eye should have settled enough to merit a new prescription. (I’ll also have retired from librarianship and will be simply a part-time researcher.) At present, vision through that eye is still blurred, although the two eyes together can manage okay. I’ve attempted to contrast what my two eyes see at the moment, by doctoring an old stereoscope image, seen above. The black bubble diminishes day by day – it might disappear by the end of next week.

Pixabay bubble, more colourful than mine!

I spent some time googling ‘return to work after macular hole surgery’, because I’m sure I’ll be asked if I need anything to support my return to work – but for myself, the only advice I’ve had is, ‘yes, you can return to work’. If you live in Blackburn, UK, you’re told not to work for three months! Three whole months? This is the only health authority suggesting such a long time off work. Otherwise, the advice sheets I’ve seen simply advise not to fly with a black gas bubble (not a problem); not to drive, ditto; not to lift anything heavy, and to take a rest if your good eye starts to ache. That’s it. It seems reasonable.

Emails? Sure, but the print on CD covers is TINY!

Just like anyone else returning to work, there will be a lot of emails to catch up on. I’m sure there will also be a backlog of cataloguing. It has to be done, small print or not. I do have a magnifying glass.

If you’re AT work, colleagues are entitled to assume you can do the work, all of the work, and no pick-and-choosing. Fit to work means, well, fit to work. The patrons you interact with similarly don’t know you’re still a little fragile, and will expect you to function normally. And if a patron is waiting for a book, they should have it catalogued – my fitness has absolutely nothing to do with it – that’s irrelevant. Similarly, a query should be dealt with timeously. I set up ‘out of office’ email messages before my operation, but one query directly to me, had been by telephone, and I wasn’t able to make contact with the enquirer before I took sick leave, despite a dozen attempts to return the call. I fear they’ll be annoyed by my silence. I’ll be as apologetic as I can!

And how do I confess if I can’t lift something, or indeed see something clearly? If I’m ‘fit to work’ as normal, I should be able to. As for taking a rest? Why should I be afforded that privilege? That would seem unfair on everyone else.

On the positive side, of course, it means I can get back to my research on Wednesdays and Thursday mornings. Heaven! And hopefully I’ll soon find out if any more needs to be done to my book draft before it can go forward into the copy-editing process.

Wish me luck.

Time to Reflect

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

My research has been on hold whilst I recover from eye surgery. Firstly, a UK ‘fit note’ says you’re unfit to work (and research is work); and secondly, my good eye soon tells me if I’ve placed too many demands on it. It’s weird to look at a computer screen when one eye  is compensating for the other one (that doesn’t fully focus and has an obstruction in the form of a black gas bubble). 

So, no research reading, though I have bought a couple of books for later.  But that doesn’t stop me thinking. I can’t help doing that.

The other evening, I started a very short list of potential research directions. I can’t proceed with any of them until (a) I am back at work, (b) I can get to various libraries and archives, and (c) I get the go-ahead to drive.

Each potential direction requires me to venture along the path to see what’s round the corner.  Not just, whether there’s enough to research, but whether there might be an interested audience for it. For example, there are two Scottish women musicians I’d like to know more about  – a Victorian and an Edwardian.  One never was a big name, except in her locality.  The other did enjoy fame, but she is virtually forgotten today.

Or, two Scottish music publishers with religious inclinations.  Does anyone care today, apart from me? I’m interested in what exactly they published; and whether they ever interacted in any way.  But is anyone else interested? (I had these hesitations about my mediaeval music research, decades ago. It was possibly one of the reasons it foundered.)

In any of these topics, I have to place the subjects into their social and cultural context, if I am to demonstrate relevance or significance in the grander scheme of things.  My motivation is to examine what these individuals and firms’ music and activities tell us about the era in which they lived and worked.

But then there’s the question of impact. I don’t have to so much as open my laptop, let alone a book, to start worrying that I haven’t yet come up with a mind-blowing angle that will knock the world’s socks off!   Moreover, there is no conceivable way I can make any of my research relate to climate change; saving the earth’s resources; social good or benefit to health.  

And so I sit, blurrily gazing into the middle distance, reflecting! I have the go-ahead to return to work on Monday. Blurrily!

Image by nateen08650 from Pixabay

Pat Thomson Blogs about Research Significance

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is thought-provoking:-

Research key words – Significance

I find myself looking at the various strands of my research that I’m considering pursuing, and asking myself sternly, ‘Does this have significance? Is anyone going to benefit from my finding out more about this, as opposed to that, or maybe the other … ?’ Why do I want to pursue these various aspects? What might the outcomes tell us?

Endurance, by Alfred Lansing – the Bitingly Harsh Reality of the Antarctic

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

After my last Audible adventure – well, its dreamlike quality felt more like sleepwalking than an adventure – I needed something a bit more gritty for my next audio book. There can be nothing more ‘real’, or in the moment, than the story of the remarkable Ernest Shackleton’s abortive trip to the South Pole aboard The Endurance in 1915.

Alfred Lansing, Endurance. Abridged audio book (Blackstone Audio, Inc., 2000)

I don’t often read books in the ‘Adventures, Explorers & Survival’ or ‘Expeditions & Discoveries’ categories.  However, I found this book gripping, and even terrifying, as challenge after seemingly impossible challenge had to be surmounted.  To rescue the entire crew from two icy and inaccessible islands was more than remarkable.

For myself, I’d like to know what happened to them all after they got home! Do I need to look for another book …?

Edinburgh Composers’ Workshop Tomorrow Sunday 25 February 2024

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

2-5 pm.

Charteris Centre, Pleasance, Edinburgh, EH8 9, United Kingdom

https://www.facebook.com/share/o7SoBUuj6WnjRYxL/

I won’t be there, but my choral piece, Not Like Noah, is one of the songs being tried out at this workshop.

I’m proud that, although I’m primarily a musicologist and librarian, my composition is getting a chance to be performed. Yes, it’s another piece about climate change. I hope the singers enjoy it!

[Later] And I have heard a recording. Gratifyingly successful, I must say.  When there’s a weblink, I’ll share it here. Sounds as though the sopranos enjoyed doing their ‘howling gale’ glissandi, too!

Everything in Moderation

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

‘You can read, use your laptop and phone’, says the post-op leaflet.  What it SHOULD say, in my opinion, is ‘You can read, use your laptop and phone for short spells, but don’t overdo it.’ 

I did a musicological blog post last night, web-links and all.  By the end of it, my good eye was protesting, and I had a headache for much of today. And I’m shattered!

So … back to the original plan! I will finish my next Audible book, then review it.  Bear with me, dear reader!

‘Repugnant to Modern Feelings of Propriety’? The Most Beautiful Scottish Song

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’ve started listening to another Audible book, but it’ll take a while for me to finish it. To take a break from listening, I sidled over to the piano and played a one-eyed rendition of my favourite song.

Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament (Baloo, my Boy)

My Song Gems (Scots), edited by James Wood and Learmont Drysdale (London: Vincent Music Co., 1908), is a nice big score that sits comfortably on the piano stand. This song is arranged by Finlay Dun, a Victorian arranger. As I squinted at the words, they didn’t look like what I remembered hearing sung from Cedric Thorpe Davie and George McVicar’s The Oxford Scottish Song Book (1969). What was going on? I suspected Davie and McVicar had taken their words from George Farquhar Graham and James Wood’s mid-Victorian Songs of Scotland. ‘You’ll see’, I told my bemused son. ‘The words will have been too smutty for Victorian ears, so Graham and Wood changed them.’

Davie used their words – which were perfectly acceptable for a collection intended both for classroom and adult use – but his musical setting is updated.

A Deserted Mother and Child

Graham and Wood’s collection revealed in the footnotes that it was an old ballad collected by Bishop Percy. However, Graham said that …

The Old Ballad, though poetically meritorious, is so coarse in most of its stanzas as to be repugnant to modern feelings of propriety. We have, therefore, adopted only the first stanza of it, the additional stanzas here given having been written by a friend of the Publisher.

Songs of Scotland (Edinburgh: Wood & Co., 1850), Vol.2, pp.30-31

Percy’s original version is in the National Library of Scotland’s Digital Gallery (Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 1767). Today, the lyrics are inoffensive!

And here’s the Cedric Thorpe Davie setting using Graham and Wood’s sanitized words:-

Kathleen McKellar Ferguson sings the Oxford Scottish Song Book version, divinely, here on YouTube

The Song Gems (Scots) version is in modern English and the text has been partially rewritten again –  it falls halfway between the original and the sanitized words! And the musical arrangement? Straight from Graham and Wood’s collection.

Percy, verse 3: Smile not as thy father did, to cozen maids, nay God forbid / Bot yett I feire, thou wilt gae neire Thy fatheris hart, and face to beire.

Wood and Drysdale, verse 2: Smile not as thy father did, to cozen maids, may God forbid / For in thine eye his look I see, The tempting look that ruin’d me …

Olde English or modern, take your pick!

As for Graham and Wood, or Thorpe and McVicar? Not a ruinous smile to be be seen! The lady may have been deserted, but no hint that she had first been seduced!

Banana Yoshimoto: The Premonition: heard on Audible

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Eccentric old house

I’m still new-fangled with this Audible book app. It told me I had a monthly credit to spend, so I had a look at the recommendations. Yoshimoto’s The Premonition sounded intriguing, from the blurb – and the cover art was attractive; proof that book design matters!

Had I walked into a bookshop and seen it, would I have bought it? I don’t know. I’d have been surrounded by appealing new titles, and I can’t say whether I’d have chosen this above all others. It’s quite short, compared to the other books I’ve listened to, and – frustratingly – it is not broken up into chapters. I find it easier to put a book down if I’ve come to a structural break.

It’s a strange, dreamlike book, set in or around Tokyo. It’s richly descriptive of its physical surroundings, but I got a bit tired of reading about Yayoi’s brother’s straight back, the set of his shoulders and the way he walked!

Yayoi, the heroine is paradoxically both clairvoyant after a fashion (the word ‘clairvoyant’ isn’t used, but what is a clairvoyant if not someone who has premonitions?) and amnesiac, having lost all childhood memories after a traumatic incident. She knows that there’s something she doesn’t know. She has two loving parents; a wonderful brother a couple of years younger than her, whom she adores; and a completely eccentric young aunt who lives alone in a ramshackle house, from which she somehow emerges sane and tidy enough to work as a school music teacher every day … except when it rains.

We never find out quite why the house has been allowed to become so dirty and run-down (was there no-one to help her learn how to run a home?); why the aunt never seems to cook proper meals; or why she seems so dreamy and other-wordly. It takes a while to work out why the heroine feels so drawn to her.

There are loose ends. What was the significance of the heroine intuiting that someone had killed a baby in the leaky bath of the temporary accomodation that her own family rented during a house renovation? This seems to be completely unrelated to anything else in the story. And why did the aunt not like going out in the rain? Most particularly, once the heroine had worked out her real relationships to her brother and aunt, you’re left wondering why she hadn’t been told before.

Japanese mountain volcano peak
Image by kimura2 from Pixabay

At the end of the novel, Yayoi has pieced together the story, with the help of her aunt/sister. But what will become of the changed relationship with her brother? And how will the aunt/sister resume a romantic relationship with another young man, who had until recently been a classroom pupil? From a British vantage-point, all I could think about was child protection policies, ethical breaches and the involvement of social services, the teaching council and potentially the police. My knowledge of Japanese culture is so minimal that I don’t know if such a situation would be viewed differently there.

Discovering the truth may not make things any easier

So, if I had to summarise the book in one line, it would be this:- ‘Discovering the truth may not make things any easier.’

I’m not sure what I’ll read next, but perhaps I’ll opt for something a little more conventional!

Flashbacks no.14, Thomas Nelson and Sons

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Picture of book cover

‘Audible’ books are great for someone who is trying to rest their eyes. But the problem starts when the book you want to read isn’t on Audible! Only being able to read a few pages at a time made reading this book a bit more of an endurance test than it needed to be. It wasn’t difficult reading in terms of comprehension – just a bit of an effort for my left eye without the assistance of the right one, which will take a few more weeks to catch up!

Thomas Nelson & Sons: Memories of an Edinburgh Publishing House, ed. Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001) ; Flashbacks series no.14 (Book cover shown above)

In the final pages of the book I’ve recently submitted to my publisher, I have referred to Thomas Nelson and Sons, the Edinburgh publisher. In connection with the research behind that book, I had acquired a copy of the paperback edited by Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein some months ago, but I didn’t read it at the time – because it was clearly not going to inform me about editorial decisions of the sort I was writing about. Nonetheless, I did want to read it at some stage, and I made a start last weekend.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I learned a lot more about what it was like working in the print works, as recalled by four different individuals who were time-served printers – but I didn’t learn a huge amount more about publishing decisions in general, and there was nothing at all about publishing music. Nonetheless, it was useful; I’ve got a lot more background, and a few more facts and figures. Moreover, it was helpful to read about the demise of Thomas Nelson and Sons in the 1960s, the same decade that saw the decline of Scotland’s music publishing industry.

The ‘Flashbacks’ series is (or was) published by Tuckwell Press in association with SAPPHIRE (the Scottish Archive of Print and Publishing History Records) and The European Ethnological Research Centre. The latter sponsored the series, c/o the Royal Museums of Scotland. I think the National Museums of Scotland publishing page may be out of date, since it says there are six Flashbacks publications to date, yet the book I’ve just read is no.14, and was published in 2001. So far as I can make out, the series ended around 2004, and I think the SAPPHIRE oral history project ended about five years after that. (There are articles by Finkelstein, Sarah Bromage and Alistair McCleery dating from 2002 and 2009.)

As it happens, this was exactly the kind of book that I needed right now. Whilst I’m temporarily out of action, it’s useful to read around a subject without the pressure of needing to take notes. I can do the detailed scholarly work later!

No Audible Book Review?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yesterday, I intended to start another audio-book. But somehow, nothing pleased me. I tried a book by a renowned TV presenter, but after a few minutes, one of the characters was standing gushing blood – and I just didn’t fancy it. No problem, I thought to myself, and started a twenty-first century pastoral narrative. Somehow, that didn’t catch my interest either. Finally, I read a few actual, paper pages of a book about the Edinburgh publisher Thomas Nelson – before my healthy eye got tired. Reading with one eye works fine for a wee while, but there’s no point in straining it.

I had yet another cuppa, and wrote a quick note to a friend, and that was all I managed. An attempt to go out for coffee failed at the first hurdle – my inability to see what I was doing was too annoying for my companion, who simply wanted me to pass a slice of cake. I couldn’t coordinate my hand with the different versions of what each eye was seeing.

I haven’t been in a reading frame of mind since then. Maybe tomorrow …

For folk with a Macular Hole
Our treatment has only one goal:
By careful incision,
To better our vision,
Then rest up and do as we’re tol’

Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay