Research is like a tango...

...It's important to listen to your partner, and to have good floorcraft.

(To my tango peeps who I know are reading this page, I love of all of you, and I will work with this metaphor, but be warned this is a really nerdy research entry.  I promise a real tango one soon.) 

I know almost everything in life can be compared to a milonga (which after all is why there's a song "La vida es un tango") but it occurs to me that this is really true of doing archival research.  The first important thing to look out for is your partner - the librarian or archivist who's helping you.  Obviously it goes without saying that you should be polite and follow the etiquette of the archive (and accept a break if someone kindly offers you freshly made coffee and chocolates).  But you should also listen carefully to anything the archivist has to say and offer enough information about your project and what you're looking for to let them be helpful.  So basically, be a good listener and clear in your communications -- the heart of being a good tango partner, whether follower or leader.

I thought of this comparison yesterday after spending another very pleasant morning at the erstwhile Residencia de Señoritas, and an hour in the afternoon talking to the current (very knowledgeable) director of the International Institute who spent about 20% of our talk apologizing for not being helpful, and another 70% being incredibly helpful about both potential archives and also published sources that are wonderful background info.  (The other ten percent was me talking, and some socializing.)

Archive Adagio: the memos of yesteryear

Regimes rise and fall, but departmental admins are forever.

Special shout-out in this blog to my Columbia peeps.  Keep reading past the jump for a few Columbia-specific jokes.

I don't want my reaction to the stupid planes to overshadow what was really the coolest part of my day today, namely my visit to the Residencia de Señoritas, where I was very kindly received, in spite of the archive and library being officially closed for restoration.  (Sadly, the gardens of the Residencia are also closed, which my host today informed me was a shame because especially in the spring they are "una preciosidad" and I can well believe it.)  The Residencia de Señoritas is right down the street from the Museo Sorolla, and shares some of that buildings consciously gracious charm, though in a more modernist (if equally aristocratic) way.  The staircases reminded me tremendously of the sets for the Hercule Poirot series.

Staircase in the BBC Poirot series

Staircase in the Residencia de Señoritas (currently the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón)

You see what I mean?  Allowing for different light and angle, it's that same smooth, creamy white spiral that's trying to be super-modern and also nodding gracefully toward the classic.

"Song of Spain"

"Come now, all you who are singers,

and sing me the song of Spain...

...a bombing plane's

the song of Spain."

-- Langston Hughes, 1937

 

What.The.Actual. F..."estamos en horario infantil" as they say on Al Rojo Vivo, so I won't complete that phrase, but seriously, the Spanish government needs to chill out, and stop buzzing the embassies of friendly countries (not to mention many pleasant and innocent archives and the researchers therein) in a dubious show of military force.

I know intellectually that Spaniards do desfiles militares rather the way Americans have flags and play the anthem everywhere.  It's basically meaningless, and no one takes it that seriously, or considers it anything other than one of those regrettable relics of the 1950s, that people salute out of habit without particular critical thought or conviction.  But at the point when you send not one or two but a whole flotilla of military planes (a fleet of planes?  a flock of planes?  What's the collective noun here?  Squadron?) plus helicopters, zooming up the length of the Castellana, and flying so low that the nice librarians at the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón have to close the windows against the booming noise, I would say there's a problem.  

When school gets out

This should be an entry with photos, but isn't

I spent the morning doing work emails and setting up appointments with archives, and went out briefly at around 1:00 today to go to the bank (where I got to use my brand new ATM card), and do some minor food shopping.  I happened to head out just as the multiple elementary schools around me were being dismissed for lunch, which inevitably suggested a modified version of the "Teddy Bears' Picnic" along the lines of "at one o'clock, their mommies and daddies will take them home to eat, because they're hungry little teddy bears."  There was the public school down the block, and the two little Catholic schools nearby, the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores and the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced.  The former has a stylish green D (I presume for Dolores) logo on their polo shirts and sweatpants that looks rather like the Ryanair lyre.  The latter does not have as distinctive uniforms, but I happened to walk past them on the way to the bank, so I know who they are.  (The public school doesn't have any uniforms at all.)

Bike-walking

Commuter biking is a work in progress in Madrid.

My bike, by the Biblioteca Nacional.  It was harder to get there than you would think.

I believe that "la bici es transporte" as the t-shirts say.  But so far I must admit that the handy unlimited monthly bono de transportes seems more practical than my new-old bike, even though the metro is not right at my doorstep (which was one of the things that inspired the bike purchase - that and the "Madrid Celeste" ad campaign I wrote about earlier - I am way to sensitive to propaganda).

I'm used to comparing cycling in New York with cycling in the Netherlands and Flanders, the great bicycle paradises of the world, which make New York seem very shabby and difficult in comparison.  But now I realize how much easier cycling in New York has become over the last twenty years.  Aside from the fact that Madrid is cursed with both steep hills and a climate where the temperature regularly climbs to 30 C (85 F) for four months a year, the "bike lanes" here are rather more theoretical than in New York.  And when I finally arrived at the International Institute (sweaty and terrified) on Friday by bike, I looked around the Calle Miguel Angel and the surrounding side streets for bicycle racks with vain bemusement, and finally remembered, "oh, right, you can lock your bike to the pole of a parking sign."  Locking bikes to street signs was standard when I started riding to work in NY, ten years ago, but first there was a bike rack in front of my school, and then they started popping up along the avenues, and then the side-streets....and now I wonder where Madrid keeps its aparcamiento para bicis, as my little seven year old friend here puts it.  (He has been properly raised to ride a bici and was accustomed to being taken to pre-school on the back of his mother's, so hopefully in another generation Madrid will be the bike-friendly city it aspires to be.)

The Archive Two-Step (Part 2)

You send an email here, you send an email there,

you do the hokey-pokey and you email everywhere...

 

My advisor at the Complutense tipped me off that while the archive of the Residencia de Estudiantes was lost during the Civil War, its companion the Residencia de Señoritas succeeded in maintaining its records (perhaps because the señoritas looked less like combatants than their male counterparts -- a common mistake made by people who haven't worked with adolescent boys and girls respectively).  He also helpfully told me what fundación currently has the archive.  However, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón's archives and library are cerrado por obras until January 2019.

I sent them a begging email yesterday, and received a kind response within an hour, saying that they had no record of Dorothy Peterson in their collection (a fellow Fulbrighter who is more experienced in research mentioned at the Madrid Fulbright picnic this afternoon that she never gives specific search terms to archives but instead only asks generalities, so they have no chance to say they have no material -- a good tip for the future), but that they had a computer available in a small section of the library that was rehabilitada where I could consult the digital catalogue of the archives if I wished, and to please let them know. 

Flamenco in Carabanchel

As natural as salsa in New York

Compases beneath my window call to mind a flamenco lament for the tropics.

Popular culture is such a monetized and controlled thing now (and perhaps always, just in different ways).  We're used to thinking of things like music as being the result of careful advertising, or as propaganda, clichés designed to appeal to tourists, to some mythical "national" identity, or to some kind of brand loyalty.  (Vodafone has an ad playing non-stop across all TV channels here which smoothly slides from a background track of Peggy Lee's song "You Give Me Fever" to handsome young men at their computers humming along to them singing enthusiastically, "Ya tengo fibra...FIBRA!" and dancing in their enthusiasm at having "fibra" aka FiOS internet access.  It's a shame that the nickname for Fiber-optic in Spanish sounds like an abbreviation of fibromyalgia.)

So it's always a bit of a surprise to discover confirmations of things that you normally dismiss as mere tropes.  (Rather like Bart Simpson staring at his dog and saying "you ate my homework?  I didn't know you guys actually did that!")  I had a bit of that surreal experience yesterday afternoon when I woke somewhat groggily from a siesta, and heard what I gradually realized was someone singing cante jondo underneath my open window.  After a few wails of "Por cuuulpaaa de una mujjjjjeeeer" interspersed not with tacones or guitar solos but rather with what sounded like a slightly noisy high school hallway, involving a bunch of boys giving each other relationship advice (at the top of their lungs, because most boys yell as much as they talk) I bothered to get up and look out the window, where I saw a handful of what looked to be late teenagers, wearing sagging jeans, and respectively shirtless or in sleeveless tank tops, with the odd backwards baseball cap.  (The shirtless one was also wearing a crucifix.)  In between warbling like cats searching for mates and carrying on a discussion, they were attempting (not very successfully) to do some acrobatics involving balancing in a split on the bricks of the portico of the apartment across the street.  They weren't able to do it, either because they lacked the strength and skill, or because their high-top sneakers were too slippery, so after a while they drifted away, still chatting and occasionally singing.

Strike up the band for the archive two-step...

One step forward, two steps back.

So, aside from doing some shopping and cleaning and going for a bike ride today, I actually started doing my research project.  (Pause for shouts of tally-ho, and snufflings of blood-hounds.)

Following a tip from my sponsor at the Complutense, I looked up the Fundación Ortega y Gasset (and discovered that it is now the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Marañón), which currently occupies the building that was the Residencia de Señoritas, which accompanied the Residencia de Estudiantes, and was deeply involved in higher education for women in Spain in the early twentieth century.

Success!  The Fundación does hold the archives of the Residencia de Señoritas.  Even better, it includes extensive letters to and from alumnae, and the "expedientes" (or files) of its students.  Even more excitingly, these resources have not been extensively catalogued yet.  I know Dorothy Peterson was in Spain when the Residencia de Señoritas was active, and I know she mentions staying at the "Residencia de Estudiantes," which at the time would not have been co-ed.  So this looks like an excellent lead!

I was deeply excited for about fifteen minutes, while I tried to figure out the protocol for using the archive, and whether I would need my CSIC card, or another letter of introduction from the Complutense, or whether I should just show up.  The web page was not forthcoming.

So I did another Google search and -- despair!  The library and archive of the foundation are (according to another part of the fundación's web page) closed for renovations until January of 2019.

Aaargh.

They do have an email address that research inquiries can be directed to.  I am considering asking the nice people I know at the Complutense if they know anyone at the Fundación on whose mercy I can throw myself.  It's such a perfect re-play of what Arthur Schomburg writes about in "In Quest of Juan de Pareja," when he describes searching the Prado for a painting by Juan de Pareja and being told that it was on the third floor which was "cerrado por obras."  Lucky Schomburg managed to throw himself on the mercy of the director and beg that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that he had crossed the Atlantic for and could he please, please, please see the painting.  Unfortunately, jet travel has destroyed the "once in a lifetime opportunity" plausible excuse for trans-Atlantic travelers in Europe (though nowadays with the massive pilot strikes that are on the news here who knows?) but still, I only have one Fulbright year, and limited funds and time, and it would be so cool to find more traces of Dorothy Peterson, or even better more of her letters (she was a wonderful letter writer).  Or a draft (or drafts) of the article she published about Spain.  But alas...no guarantees.

So that was today's elation and disappointment in research news.  Fingers crossed that other leads work out.  In the meantime, I've been thinking about how to structure the Peterson chapter, and what to look for about her while I'm here (aside from every single scrap of writing I can lay my hands on).

The archive two-step can be exhausting, but it's exhilarating when you bound forward, and this is just barely the beginning of the first set.  I'm going to get all the way around the dance floor yet.

"I do not know your name my friend, but I've seen that face before..."

Madrileños remember their past...and try to pay it forward.

One of the famous stories of the Spanish Civil War is how the famous fountain of the goddess Cibeles, on the Paseo del Prado in front of what was then the main post office was covered with sandbags to protect her from bombings.  The people of the city called her "la linda tapada," which means something like "the veiled beauty."  Here's a picture of Cibeles during the Spanish Civil War, covered in sandbags, with a corner of the post office in the background, courtesy of the blog El rincón de Mayrit.

Fuente de Cibeles, 1936-1939, "La linda tapada"

And here's a picture of the Fuente de Cibeles taken this afternoon, with the same post office in the background.

Of pescaderías and parrots in the park

There are parrots in the Parque San Isidro

This is not an important fact, but it's good to know in case you worry that some kind of massive radiation leak has created a flock of electric green pigeons.

The parrots are unfortunately in shadow here.  But I had to take the picture against the path, because they're perfectly camouflaged against the grass.

The parrots were in fact a fairly small part of my day today, but it amused me to stand still and take pictures of them (that's a real pigeon in the background, looking forlorn and left out because he doesn't speak parrot), the way Europeans take pictures of squirrels in Central Park.  I have no idea how the parrots got there (I presume they've bred from escaped pets), or how long they've lived in the Parque San Isidro, but there are many of them and they are loud.

A walk through San Isidro's "pueblo"

The San Isidro district of Carabanchel is a mixture of old and new -- with a surprisingly small-town feel

Today was a chance for me to play photographer, and take lots of pictures of the neighborhood.  Be warned.  Many of them appear in this entry.

The panoramic view looking north across the valley of the Manzanares, from the Calle Zaida.  In the distance you can see the "leaning towers" of the Plaza de Castilla, and the "Four Towers" above Chamartín, at the other end of the city.  In the foreground are the more modest homes of Carabanchel.

Since today was Sunday, I took the opportunity to sleep late, do laundry, catch up on emails (some work related) and to explore the website of the Biblioteca Nacional Española, prepatory to going there.

Then I decided to go for a walk with my real camera, not just my phone.  These streets are worth proper pictures.

Serious Partying

 

A walk through Madrid Río and the Festival con B de Bici

This is a post about how "the greens of summer...make you think all the world's a sunny day," so there are lots of photos and videos.

Selfie on a sunny Saturday afternoon, on the Arganzuela Footbridge(aka the "swirly bridge" or "unfinished bridge") in Madrid Río

What a lovely day.  I don't normally like selfies (so this blog will not feature many), but I think that in the picture above all of what is now the official "Saturday Hang Out Group" look as happy as we felt.  And the kind of happiness that comes from sharing a meal and a walk on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with friends is something that should be shared.

Heavenly Madrid - When a City Commits to Alternative Transportation

(De) Madrid por el cielo

You can tell a lot about a city from its public announcement campaigns

I've seen the following photo on a number of bus shelters and advertising spaces in Madrid over the last few days, from my home immigrant barrio of Carabanchel to the super-pijo Calle Serrano.  I think it gives a nice sense of what I like about this city and its ayuntamiento.

Madrid's ayuntamiento is promoting bicycle travel

Take my money! (Please!)

 My woeful tale of trying to open a bank account in Spain (so far, unsuccessfully)

 

I have been trying to open a bank account in Spain, so that Fulbright can pay me my stipend, and I can in turn pay my landlord here (who has very kindly told me not to worry about the fees for international transfers, and that he can wait a few days for the rent).

I was never one of the absurd number of undergrads at Columbia who wanted to work in finance, and I've always found money too boring to study banking and finance closely, but my naive grade-school understanding of how modern consumer banks work is that they make money from having people open accounts, because they then invest their clients' deposits, as well as any commissions or maintenance costs they may charge.  I have lots of friends (particularly here in Spain) who would add a lot more expletives about exactly how much money they make and the ethically dubious methods they use, but leaving aside these opinions (whether reasoned or otherwise), my nutshell understanding of what is euphemistically called the "financial services industry" is that it is a SERVICE industry.  Everyone in Spain has seen the dramatic ways banks can go under, but they also fail if they have no clients.  So you'd think that banks would be very glad to have a new person walk in and say "I want to open an account."  After all, new clients are - if you'll forgive the phrase - money in the bank for them.  My limited experience in the US has certainly been that banks are happy for new customers.  So you would think it would be easy to open an account.

You would be wrong.

Welcome to "Las aventuras de una gringa andante"

¡Bienvenidos!

"Hay muchos los gringos que erran, pero pocos los que llegan a ser errantes."

A bit about the who, why, and what of this blog

I'm a former high school teacher, a current PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a novelist who has written quite a bit about Spain. I'm a lifelong New Yorker, but now I've come to Spain for a year to do archival research about African American writers who have spent time here.

I've promised letters about my adventures in Spain to various friends at home and abroad. But I've also promised dissertation chapters to my thesis committee, and if I can squeeze time in I'd love to work on some fiction a little. So this blog is intended as a sort of group letter to all the people to whom I promised to write. Sorry guys, I love all of you, but telling the same anecdote once is easier than writing it multiple times, and this way you get pictures (and maybe even a few videos) as well.

I can't make promises about the content, except that I'll try to make it amusing. This is NOT going to be a guide to living in Madrid (which would be pretty arrogant of me) or even to being a tourist here (though I know more about that). Nor can I promise daily diary-type entries. (I do have those thesis chapters to write, plus the research I'm doing.) If I can make the detective work of hunting in archives interesting to anyone besides myself, I'll do that with pleasure. Otherwise, this is just a record of the amusing, beautiful, moving, or curious things I find on my travels. Please do read, comment, and share. And enjoy one of my favorite cities with me!