April 2012
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3nater-deactivated20120518 asked: The envy I feel toward your life is immense. Exactly how rough is the world of academia?
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I have the final proofs, images and all, of my first publication in hand for final reviews. Quel exciting. After two years, a major volcanic eruption, lots of edits and library hours, our multinational baby is coming in for a landing. Go Team Vercelli 2010!
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Will write something soon. I promise. Just getting feet back under me. And I am up at 4am daily and @ work baking by 5am each day and have things to do like go to horse races, study latin, climb, brew beer, etc. etc. etc.
Things coming:
-Me ranting about the lie of the professional reader w/r/t English Lit
-A real climbing article
-A Southern City Sampler (likely Knoxville or Lexington)
-Pix...
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“He was but seven-and-twenty, an age at which many men are not quite...”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 15. W/r/t Tertius Lydgate but applicable to most men in their mid-twenties…aka the oldest 1% on tumblr
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“This is the only way for me to inform you for now.You need to be very careful...”
– Real email I received. How amazing is this.
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“Local response to this innovation followed historical precedent: English...”
– Tony Judt w/r/t the varying reactions of English and French motorists to the emergence of parking meters in the 50’s. How cliche. Post-War, (London: Vintage, 2010) p. 340, n. 16.
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Faculty Salary.... →
Data is, of course, open to interpretation and specific salaries vary radically by field. And, for example, a handful of superstars pulling down a million or two a year (not impossible for say, the dean of an Ivy League Law School or maybe a hot shot scientist who will bring in tons of gov’t research grants) would wash out a lot of 50k English lit salaries but still blow up the average....
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“The Gonzaga were a tolerably harmonious family; for a long period of time no...”
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Jacob Burckhardt, The State as a Work of Art, Penguin Great Ideas #90, p. 43.
I LOVE the Italian Renaissance. Note Burckhardt’s nuance w/r/t the relative morality of murder in principle vs. being caught for murder. Oh yah, homeboy was a part of the ‘Holy League’ and lover of...
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“Just about every other school in Virginia likes to bash UVA kids for being...”
– ESPN’s review of college campuses + Ryan Bitzer
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What I do
So. I recently accepted a PhD offer in English Literature at University of Virginia. Periodically I get questions as to what I do, why I do it, and advice as to how to pursue similar paths. At the risk of becoming too self centered, I, over the next few weeks, am planning to outline why I decided to pursue a career in Medieval Literature and how I went about it.
[[MORE]]I hope that these...
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Someday came. More anon.
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Today
5am-Noon…Baking
Lunch…veggie pasta at home
Afternoon…cutting down trees with the chainsaw+shooting clays with Ian
Evening…run above the river and dinner w/the fam
Night…clean guns and read
I like life.
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I don’t often talk about politics. But I just want to publicly lay claim to the fact that I invented the term ‘Romtorich’ (i.e. Genericly insane republican candidates vs. the type Republicans (Paul, Ryan, Huntsman) at least coherent enough to agree/disagree with) before it goes viral. On facebook. On Charlie Finch’s wall. Jordan Dongell saw (in a FB sense) it happen.
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“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and...”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch, ch. VI (p. 57-8 in the Oxford World Classic paperback). In all seriousness, I may disagree with Eliot to some degree but this is still basically true for Brits. At least the upper middle class type that one encounters in the Oxford-West London-Home Counties-Cotswold-Lake...
oh man. just found goodreads.com. Evening over. Must show people how well read I am.
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“1. Let other men’s wives alone
2. Strike none of your own followers , or...”
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Jacopo Attendolo to his son Francesco Sforza, the future Duke of Milan. Still three pieces of sound advice.
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A Day in the District
I love DC. Luckily with a sister and brother in law to be living in DC, as well as many more friends in the area, I find excuses to visit frequently. Here is a sampling of DC’s delights from a recent Monday
10am- Meet a friend from Wadham @ Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe for coffee/tea and then peruse books for an hour. The shop is small but well curated and the attached cafe is...
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Whew. I am headed home in what will make an epic 10 days. Knoxville, Charlottesville, Baltimore, and DC. Grad school visits, National Championships, friends- old and new- family, and food. Back to Kentucky now, though.
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March 2012
47 posts
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