Addio, addio, o miei sospiri! O, pieno di gioia il cor! Apologies for breaking into song like that, but I have some very good news: my long-shot Plan A for next year has come through. I’ve just been offered the postdoctoral fellowship I applied for, and I’ve just accepted it. I’m officially going to be […]
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Amanda
First, Andrew Marvell. I have a hard time choosing favorite seventeenth-century poets, but at any given point, Marvell’s likely to be among my top three. The Mower to the Glo-Worms Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light The Nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the Summer-night, Her matchless Songs does meditate; Ye Country […]
A meme from Caterina: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. I cheated a little bit, because I’ve got a stack of books on the table at my left elbow and […]
…and I’m zonked out. Generally fried, in fact. I should sleep before long. However, in trashy-television news, I watched part of tonight’s episode of The Swan out of a certain sick, fascinated curiosity, and it’s every bit as loathsome as people are saying it is. Further commentary is probably superfluous; I must, however, register my […]
1. Clean the refrigerator. 2. Go to the nearest big grocery store, which is two or three miles away. On foot. (Actually, it’s a nice energetic 45-minute hike if the weather is good and I’m in the mood for exercise, which I was yesterday. And I take the bus home, because another 45-minute hike with […]
Eyesight It was May before myattention cameto spring and my word I saidto the southern slopesI’ve missed it, itcame and went beforeI got right to see: don’t worry, said the mountain,try the later northern slopesor if you can climb, climbinto spring: butsaid the mountain it’s not that waywith all things, somethat go are gone — […]
Some of the associate professors who remain were the good hires of yesteryear who didn’t manage to find the jobs they once longed for. Many of them now spurn the academy in general, reserving their special contempt for the graduate students who teach our service courses (two a semester!). I’ve even heard some colleagues voice […]
Years ago, as a bookish teenager, I was prone to periodic research obsessions: I’d get interested in a given topic and then read everything I could find on that topic. (I still do that, come to think of it.) My big research obsession at age seventeen was the theater of the English Restoration — the […]
The knitter’s geek code. How brilliant is that? Here’s mine: —–BEGIN KNITTER’S GEEK CODE BLOCK—– Version: 1.0 KECmR Exp+ SPM+ Steel++ Pl+ Syn- Nov+ Cot+ Wool++ Lux>+++ Hemp- Stash(+) Scale(+) Fin- Ent? FI Int Tex++ Lace+ Felt- Flat++ Circ+ DPN+ Swatch+ KIP- Blog(+) SNB->++ EZ@ FO? WIP+ GaugeDK(F)(B) ——END KNITTER’S GEEK CODE BLOCK—— From the […]
First, some links. Found somewhere in the blogosphere but I forget where, damn it: a guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments. In case you wondered what a transverse flute, a shawm, a rebec, or a crumhorn looked (and sounded) like. I’m having early-instrument envy again. Lynn Sislo offers Vivaldi and Dvorak recommendations. [runs to library’s […]