A Little about Katherine
In the blog entries, Those Handel Friends, I am bringing some of the characters from my book The Handel Letters to life again, along with some newer characters, in a continuing endeavor to see what our thinking about Handel and his times might inspire in us today.
From Katherine: I promised a little more about me. I expect all of you will be anticipating some announcement to the effect that Ross and I have married, moved in together, or tried cohabiting and then split up in a huff. I will let Ross speak for himself—which he has said he will do—but meanwhile, no, none of the above scenarios is true. For now at least, neither Ross nor I want to be identified by any of the various labels society places on people: lovers, partners, boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, mates, or live-in friend. We will likely each have more to say about such designations at another time, but for now, rest assured that Ross and I remain happily a part of each other’s life and that I hold Ross now and forever in great affection. So, there is that out of the way, at least for now.
What else? Some of you may remember that, just in passing, I mentioned having a daughter. If I recall correctly, I declined to say much more about her when we collectively shared a bit of our biographies with the Handel Seminar. My reason for not sharing more about her is simply that I feel it would be an unfair abuse of her privacy to say more about her or her life without her approval or participation. I may ask her if she would like to join us. We’ll see. But, in an effort to share information on my life over the last decade, I will say that, yes, happily, I still have a daughter and we get along wonderfully. No new news on that front.
Finally, a bit more on my life in retirement. I retired from teaching five years ago. My department gave me a lovely retirement party, and I treated myself to a little vacation in Hawaii. Ross went with me. I think we both enjoyed the trip immensely, but I’ll let him comment further if he chooses. I continued to serve on a few PhD committees at the university, and I stayed on some supervisory committees as well. But, for all practical purposes, I am now fully retired and happy to let younger folks carry on with teaching students all about the joys and evils of folklore. I’ll expand upon this “joys and evils” thing at some point.
Meanwhile, I have been trying to follow Rayette’s lead and do some poetry writing. And I’m currently working on a paper about one Norwegian folktale I find particularly relevant to today’s state of affairs. I’m still occasionally attending academic meetings but more with the aim of maintaining some long-distance friendships than padding my CV. And it’s a fun way to visit interesting places. Of course, the university doesn’t help pay my expenses anymore. Ah well. I’m not a big fan of traveling anyway, especially when it involves flying. But I enjoy hearing about other people’s travels. So, please do feed into my vicarious travel experiences. Hoping to include some of your input very soon.