Month: July 2025

On the Recent Flooding in the Texas Hill Country

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First, let me report that my family is safe and I am safe. Second, let me say that I am not asking for anything for me or mine; we are safe, and we are well, and we are not those in need at the moment. But there are many, many people in and around the town where I grew up who are, because, early on 4 July 2025, a strong storm dumped a whole lot of water in a very short time on the headwaters of the Guadalupe River. The sudden rainfall triggered a flash flood of historic proportions; estimates I’ve seen put it at the second-highest levels of flooding on record, and reports I’ve seen indicate that the flood and flow meters that monitor such things were knocked out of commission by the flooding. Footage I’ve seen puts the river over roads that I don’t recall ever seeing go underwater, and pictures I’ve seen tell of damage that will take years to fix–in those cases where it can be fixed.

This #KerrvilleStrong image comes from Scooty Garrett.

Because it is also the case that there have been dozens of lives lost in this–unlike the flood of my own experience in 2002, which somehow managed to spare people. No few of them were children camping along the banks of the Guadalupe River as they have for decades, whose cabins were ripped from their foundations in the pre-dawn hours by waters that rushed in before there was time even to gasp in surprise at their arrival. No few others were holiday goers, in and around Kerrville to celebrate, staying in RVs beside the water and waking to terror when they had gone to sleep in idyllic peace before. And there are few if any words of comfort that can be found in such days; such as there are surpass my ability to speak or write them.

I have done what little I can do, which is all too little against the demand. What else I can do, and what I do do, is to point out that donations to a local relief fund can be made here: https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201. Another is here: https://www.kerrvillechamber.biz/foundation-kerrville-area-rebuilding-recovery-fund/. Please give if and what you can to help the folks in my hometown and both up- and downstream from it. I’m familiar with the Community Foundation from my nonprofit work; they’re local folks and have been in town for a good long while. I expect that giving done through them will get where it needs to go to do what the community needs.

Another Rumination on US Independence Day

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It is somewhat odd to me that, as I look back over this webspace, I’ve only had one prior post come out on this date, and that relatively recently. Given how calendars tend to work and that I’ve got more than ten years posting here, I’d’ve expected to have marked the occasion more than once before–but such hasn’t been the case. Some, I’m sure, will accuse me of anti-patriotism or anti-Americanism for it; it wouldn’t be the first time, and I’ve my doubts it will be the last. After all, how many people who have bedecked themselves in red, white, and blue, draped themselves in flags, and shouted their jingoism with full throat are themselves thusly accused?

Someone’s having a bang-up time…
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This is not about that, though.

I believe I’ve noted before that holidays–not just this one, but the fact of the holiday today invites reflection on holidays generally–are…difficult for me. I’m not a celebratory person by nature or habit (which is the case is not entirely clear); I am…wary of revelry and the indulgence that often accompanies it, certainly for myself. And it’s not, or not just, and issue of wanting to maintain appearances; were I more concerned with how I look to others, I would make a point of being out more among the day’s festivities than I have yet been. I’ve put in appearances, now and again, but rarely; I’ve attended the big Fourth of July event in my hometown exactly once, for example, and I’ve never made it to any of the other major area events for the day. Instead, I’ve either worked the day, or I’ve kept more or less to home–although that’s not really different from most other days for me; they find me working or home, rarely “going anywhere” or “doing anything.” But that’s not a new observation for me, either.

Such ruminations, such reflections, are typical of my holiday experience. I fail to feel what those around me do, and instead find myself living largely in my head. (Again, that’s not really different from most other days for me.) I don’t much feel connected to the traditions being honored, which I will stress is an issue of me more than it is of them; I am not owed outreach in this regard, and I am not complaining that I do not receive it, but am simply observing that I do not and that I do not seem to have it in me to reach out, myself. While such things as the cookout happen with me–I do enjoy doing so, but that’s another thing that’s not different from most other days for me, and I keep in mind Robb Walsh’s comment in one or another of his cookbooks that there’s a perversity in heating your house while you’re trying to cool it off–I don’t necessarily understand why so many of the other surrounding traditions have grown up or continue, and they don’t speak to me at this point in my life. Fireworks are pretty, yes, but they’re also expensive, and neither pets nor people with many forms of PTSD do well with them. Parades are neat, yes, but I’ve marched in enough of them to know they’re also markedly uncomfortable. A day off is nice, for those who can get it, but a whole lot of those who can make things an awful lot worse for those who can’t–and I’ve been one of the ones who can’t pretty often in my life.

I suppose that’s moving toward an actual point, here. Celebrate what you celebrate, sure, but keep in mind as you do that what you do still affects others. That it’s a holiday doesn’t mean you should be a jerk.

But that’s yet another thing that’s not really different from any other day.

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A Rumination on #Kzoo2026

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That I have done and still do academic conferences is not a secret; I’ve mentioned it more than a few times. That I have focused a lot of that doing on the International Congress on Medieval Studies, held on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is also not a secret; in this webspace, I’ve written for or about it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, if not also elsewhere, as well as referring to it in my About page, my reported Abstracts, and my too-slowly-ongoing Fedwren Project. It should not be a surprise, then, that when the Tales after Tolkien Society, of which I remain a member and an officer, posted its initial call for papers for the 2026 iteration of the Congress, I took note.

I have stared out at a lot of these…
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I had known about the sessions that are on offer for the 2026 Congress; I was involved in drafting the texts of the proposals and discussion of what and how to send them out. I was somewhat surprised to see that three sessions got accepted; the cosponsored one is not unusual, but that there were two paper sessions in addition was. Tales after Tolkien does not often do so well, but I guess, given the alignment of the three sessions (all of them treat adaptation more or less explicitly, each focusing on a different aspect of how the medieval gets re-presented to current-contemporary audiences), that there’s an expectation of papers to fill the sessions. (If you have an idea, send it in to them; it’ll be nice to have the company.)

I’ll be doing my part, as might be expected. One of the things about having so many scholarly somedays as I have is that I can easily pull on one or another of them for such purposes, take the opportunity the demand to produce provides to develop an idea I have had in passing. Given how many such somedays I’ve pointed out–most frequently with reference to Robin Hobb, as might be expected, but not exclusively with reference thereto, I don’t believe–I should have no trouble looking back and finding one thing I can pitch for a roundtable and another I can pitch for a paper session. (Congress rules prohibit presenting in more than one of each kind of session, with one notable exception that I’ll not get into here.) A roundtable talk generally runs five minutes or so, with discussion following, and that translates into something like 750 words; my normal blog posts run around 500 words anymore, so stretching to half again that much is not too much of a struggle. A conference paper is more variable; for me, such things run from around 2,600 to around 3,900 words, depending on how many other people are in the session–eminently doable for work I care about and that will necessarily have some citation and quotation in it (meaning I don’t have to come up with the whole text; I just have to identify what text needs to be present, which is its own challenge). I’ll have things to say, to be sure.

Determining just what my topics and approaches will be will take some doing, of course. So, too, will deciding whether or not I will attend the Congress in person or only remotely. The latter has been how I have done things in the past several years, not only because of COVID-19 dislocations but also because of my own attenuation from academe and, frankly, financial concerns. Getting from central Texas to Michigan isn’t easy or inexpensive, after all, and time away from my family is not always good for me. (That said, time to myself is not always bad for me, either, and it may well be good for them to have some time with me away…) I’ve got time to make some of those choices, though, and I look forward to putting in the thinking time of making them–as well as the time and effort I will spend on putting together my presentations.

Somehow, even after all the time, even after the disappointments, I still enjoy doing this kind of work.

It’s not just conference-writing that I do, though I do that. Maybe you could use some help with yours? I definitely do that.

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