No Luck is Good Luck?

Mr. Postman just brought me the SSRC notification--I didn't get the grant. Disappointed as I am about not "winning" it, I'm pretty relieved. Now I can figure out my summer plans, don't have to race to Ireland ASAP (going over is awesome, but having to leap from one thing to another without a break isn't!), and perhaps most importantly, am not bound to do the project I proposed. (In that grant proposal, I said that I would do a lot of research with refugees in Ireland, which would be fun enough, except that it would be WAY too much work to fit into an already sizeable topic--that of women in Irish traditional music.)

So--whew, and onward.

The Book I'm [Intermittently] Reading: Hirschkind's The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. Fascinating and a good read so far. I only wish I didn't have to write a paper on it!