There exists a Library of Congress subject heading for "roller disco." Unsurprisingly, when I searched WorldCat for it, eight of the ten results were first published between 1979 and 1981. You can also catalog works on roller disco using a combination of the subject headings "Roller skating" and "Disco dancing." There’s an entire MARC fixed […]
One loaf of bread One big bunch of Swiss chard One bag of arugula (more than I can eat in salads, so some of it will go into pasta) Five strange little cucumbers with yellowish-green skin, each the size of a lemon Four tomatoes of various colors One bunch of purple basil Three donut peaches […]
Wrapping my head around data modeling, particularly entity-relationship modeling, which is bizarrely fun. Also Dialog, a.k.a. (depending on one’s perspective) “You’re learning Dialog? Oh my God, why?” or “a powerful teaching tool” or “hours of pain, but you’ll be better at power-searching databases than anyone else.” Even though I persistently forget that S is short for both “set” […]
I’m formulating something in response to the discussion at Frogs and Ravens and Liliputian Lilith about intellectuals in and out of the university. In the meantime, here are a few of the other (massive and weighty) questions I’ve been pondering: 1. When did all novels start appearing with the subtitle "A Novel" on their front […]
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 […]
Found at my local library’s big semiannual used book sale today: Alice Fulton, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of PoetryPaul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic FormHerbert Liebowitz, ed., Parnassus: Twenty Years of Poetry in ReviewJ. D. McClatchy, ed., The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry All together, they cost a grand total […]
1. I’ve just finished drafting my personal statements for my application for the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship in Scholarly Information Resources. Go me. (Is anyone else out there applying? Please, let there not be countless hundreds of applicants. Please, let them like my application.) 2. I didn’t go to this year’s MLA convention, and after reading […]
Thumbing through Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns and A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns in search of lace patterns I can actually make without losing track of where I am,* I keep coming across patterns with oddly poetic names. Consider, for instance: Parenthetical Rib All Fools’ Welt Tilting Ladder Crest of the Wave […]