Changing of the seasons: a public talk, a new job, and other miscellaneous updates
Hey all! Every time I start writing one of these missives, I think it’s been too long since I wrote the last one, and surely this will be the time I get back into a weekly routine like I had at the very beginning. Maybe that’s still magical thinking. Maybe I’ll actually be able to make it magical reality this time, so to speak.
Since I last wrote to you two months ago (good lord), I’ve changed jobs. I’m no longer at Northwestern University, because Oregon Catholic Press — where I’d been a contractor since the end of November last year — offered me a chance to wrangle music metadata for them on a full-time and fully remote basis (and for a much nicer paycheck, frankly). In most cases, I’d be loath to leave a job after so short a time, but for this incredibly specific scenario, the choice to jump ship was a no-brainer. It’s taken a minute to adjust to the new life rhythm again, and of course the week I started at OCP full-time was the week one of our cats kicked off a bit of a medical saga, so I very much jumped from one frying pan into another frying pan.
(Bladder stone, so, better out than in. I’m happy to report that the kitty in question is over two weeks out of surgery and almost 100% recovered!)
It’s kind of funny to have ended up (almost) back where I started job-wise, before I embarked on this whole library-school journey. I absolutely don’t feel I’m in a rut, though, or that I’ve traveled in a flat circle. I get to return to the kind of work I know I love, and that I know I’m good at: using metadata to help musicians receive fair compensation for their creative labors. That’s one of the things I found most meaningful about my time at Musicnotes, and since studying Claribel’s life and career I’ve found yet more fulfillment in it. Between that and the realization (prompted by a bio I had to write recently) that I’ve been a music researcher in various paid or unpaid capacities since literally 2016… honestly, at this point I think what I’ve been doing counts as a full-on career. I think I’m ready to embrace that.
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Alright, moment of pensiveness over. I’m giving another public talk about Claribel, and you’re all invited! 💖 Plus this time I get a super-official-looking FLYER.
Zoom registration link, if you don’t want to futz around with QR codes: https://luc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEuduyvrzIsGda83aV81RpocOdbGwzRGOfK#/registration
If you’re in Chicago, this talk is in fact open to the public! You’ll need to sign in at the front desk of the Information Commons (what IC stands for), but that should be it. Come one, come all! Invite your friends! Join me for, idk, hitting up a nearby happy hour afterwards? Because that’ll probably be a thing in some form.
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I did say “other miscellaneous updates” in the subject line, didn’t I, so, hm… howsabout a quick peek behind the scenes of my periodical scans collection? Here’s the top ten countries I’ve got represented in here, by number of periodical scans I’ve collected:
UK (including England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland as well as Jersey and Guernsey in its remit): 9,978
USA: 4,007
Australia: 1,506
New Zealand: 797
Canada: 691
India: 224
South Africa: 98
Netherlands: 60
Norway: 51
Barbados and Sri Lanka: tied with 47 each
A lot of British-empire presence here, to probably nobody’s surprise. I’ll note that although I’m focusing most of my searching efforts on 1859-1873, a fair chunk of these scans are from later dates, depending on what’s been available to me through the various databases I’ve searched. It’s also been genuinely interesting to see ways in which Claribel’s name and songs have persevered into the 20th century. For example, a lot of those Norway results are for radio programming lists in the early 1930s, largely because sometime in the early 20th century, a Danish guy called Erik Bøgh liked “I Cannot Sing the Old Songs” so much that he translated it into Danish. Under its new title, “Skærsommersangen,” it popped up on Norwegian radio with some frequency. While attempting to fact-check the special characters, I actually also found a digitized 78 RPM recording of it via Gustavus Adolphus College — listen to that here if ya like!
Anyway: that’s basically all the updates I’ve got for now; I have a few big looming deadlines, so posts about new discoveries or research methods or whatnot will likely have to wait for a hot minute. Till then, though, à bientôt!
Thanks for reading! Find out more about my project at the links below.
Past letters (updated archive coming soon!) | Research materials gift registry