Year of Movement and Wonder

Geof Huth, Document Dust 31 (6 October 2017)

New York, New York
Some years are better than others, and I’ve had enough bad ones for a lifetime, but some years are beautiful and life-giving, even as they demand much out of you—as this one has for Karen and me. I write about this year to remember it—and, possibly, to encourage myself to write more sentences in the coming year, rather than merely poems of one to six words, the occasional stanza, and a political paragraph here and there.

  Geof Huth, Document Dust 44.5 (30 December 2017)Yet this has been a good year for me and my poetry (a word I use in such a way that it can overlap with every form of art—a statement I mean literally). I’ve produced hundreds of object poems this year, including 85 bottle poems in my sequence (and book in progress), Document Dust; 13 poems in the form of stones and rocks with text glued onto them (Stoens); and dozens of boxed object poems in my book-as-a-box-of-boxes-of-objects The THIRTY Weeks of April. And I’ve written hundreds of tiny poems, most tiny enough to be forgotten an instant ever their being seen.

Geof Huth, Stoen 10 (30 December 2017)Travel
This was likely my year with the most travel ever, though other years in the 1970s are possibly in competition. I traveled overnight every month except February (the month Karen and I moved our home). Total, I spent 85 overnights, almost a quarter of the year, sleeping away from home. I traveled for at least one day (and sometimes for six) for 36 of the year’s 52 weeks—and I ended the year with 16 straight weeks that included at least some travel. In terms of air flights, I’m sure this was the most ever: I flew on 28 flights, which equaled 10 round trips, and I flew every month except January, March, and August.
All this travel has been tiring, so I’m planning to reduce my travel a bit next year, though I’ll certainly have at least a couple of full months of nights away from home.
What follows is a slightly chaotic, but almost chronological, story of my life this past year—and because it’s my life, it’s largely also Karen’s.

Stage for Nabucco, Metropolitan Opera, New York (3 January 2017)3 January 2017: Nabucco
Our year began with a night at the opera, Karen’s and my first ever, which was just one of the new experiences we had in this big year. My daughter-in-law, Jackie, has watched opera her whole life, so she and my son Tim invited us to this opera, which was a great experience. We have more operas planned for our future.
Spine Title of a Volume of Transcripts of  Supreme Court of Judicature Judgments7 January 2017: New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/new-york-documents-archives-records.html?_r=0
In early January, during the three-week process of transferring 1500 cubic feet of early New York state (and colony) court records to the New York State Archives, the New York Timesprinted a story about the project. This project (the massive inventory and the transfer) was the largest one of my archives career, though this portion amounted to only about one third of what the project will be. The attention from the Times led to many other interviews and news stories in print and on television, including a fairly long piece on Globo, the national television network of Brazil.

Karen Sitting in Our New Apartment, New York (17 February 2017)17 February 2017: Moving to Lower Manhattan
On this date, which was the eighth-month anniversary of our marriage, Karen and I moved into a new apartment—one that was two and a half times the size of our previous apartment. We moved from zero bedrooms and one bathroom to two bedrooms and two bathrooms, along with much more closet space and a clear view of the Hudson River and New York Harbor (in particular, the Statue of Liberty, which I can see just by looking up from this computer as I type this). Our life became more expensive with this move, but this new apartment allowed us to shut down four separate storage units. (More on this story in October, below.)

20–22 April 2017 MARAC, Newark, New Jersey
Because I’ve decided to write about all my out-of-state trips, I’ll note that I attended the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference’s spring meeting in Newark, which was an amazing meeting—even though I could not shake the thought that an improved Newark was a not-improved-enough Newark.

Karen at KWINT, Brussels, Belgium (13 May 2017)2–17 May 2017: Germany and Belgium
Our most significant trip of the year was a trip to Aachen (Aix-en-Chapelle), Germany, so that Karen and I both could give talks related to visual poetry. The organizer of this, Claudia Franken, did a great job setting up this multi-day symposium, and we spent much of our free time with her and her husband, Karl Thönnissen, both wonderful to talk with. Since we had travelled all the way to Europe, we turned left to Belgium for the rest of the trip, enjoying plenty of good beer and great art and architecture.

Jackie's Sister Alison Speaking and Tim and Jackie's Wedding (24 June 2017)23–25 June 2017: A Wedding in Chesterfield, New Jersey
My son Tim married Jackie Leung in New Jersey (her home state) over this weekend. Quite the beautiful event, and I have plenty of photographs to prove it.


25 June to 2 July 2017: Berea, Kentucky
This year marked the fifth of six years that a group of archivists (including me) will be running the Archives Leadership Institute for a cohort of 25 other archivists. It has been a good run for us, and I think we have helped many archivists take advantage of their leadership potential. It’s a great part of my year, and one that will end in the coming year.

Karen at the Oregon Brewer's Festival, Portland, Oregon (30 July 2017)24–30 July 2017, Portland, Oregon
Karen and I attended the Society of American Archivists’ conference in Portland, Oregon, where we enjoyed the company of our archives friends and had plenty of good beer. I also gave a fine outdoor poetry performance, late at night, from the top of a giant slide in a suburban backyard.

My Portion of Food at Homecoming (24 September 2017)21–26 September 2017, Newport, North Carolina
We visited Karen’s mother and family in North Carolina, just a little bit after summer, where we did what we usually do there: ate plenty of fish and searched for good North Carolinian beer, while enjoying the good company of her family. We also attended homecoming at Karen’s childhood church in Institute, North Carolina (population about 50—she is a small-town girl).

Our Living Room, New York, New York (8 April 2017)2 October 2017: New YorkTimes
In October, the New York Times printed its second story about me (this time about Karen and me, instead of records and lots of other people and me). To be in the Times twice in a year seems a little unusual for a person of my limited stature, one reason to make this year unlike all others. We were featured as renters with an interesting story: people who sold a small apartment so we could move to a larger rented one, while shutting down all our storage units. Karen was the engine behind this story; without her no-one would know all this about us, including the cost of our rent.

Karen Trivette and Jimmy and Erin Long, Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles (25 November 2017)21–28 November 2017: Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, California
Karen and I traveled to Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with my daughter Erin and son-in-law Jimmy—and their cat Callie. We saw many of the sites of Los Angeles, including a couple of archives—one of which was that for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And we had a great Thanksgiving, except for the part where I clogged the sink with potato peels for a few hours.

Geof Huth and Karen Trivette, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas (10 December 2017)
(photo by Tyler Selle)9–13 December 2017: Dallas, Texas
After a little break in traveling for Karen (and none, really, for me—since I flew to Rochester for a few days of work in between these two trips), we traveled again, this time to Dallas, where we each gave a talk about the big projects of ours that had come to fruition this year: my inventor and transfer of records to the State Archives, and the renovation of Karen’s entire archives. Dallas was much more fun than expected, and I loved the roads compared to those in New York State.

Christmas Dining Table, Newport, North Carolina (25 December 2017)20–27 December 2017: Newport, North Carolina
We headed back to North Carolina for Christmas, where Karen’s mother took more care of us than she should—just as she always does. It was a good long trip, so we were happy to be home, after being moved off two separate flights on the way back.
Now, our year is almost finished, except for dinner with friends followed by watching the New Year’s fireworks that will be set off on a barge beside Liberty Island, where Lady Liberty constantly holds her torch aloft to us.
ecr. l’inf.