Category Archives: school

yet more reasons that we still have no Christmas card photo

On Monday evening I strained my shoulder, neck and back. So badly that I can’t move much at all without pain (and sleep, sleep where art thou?). It is a good thing that one of the few positions that I feel comfortable in is sitting on the couch at my computer. Because I am now the queen of writing grant/fellowship proposals.

Current count:
HU done–due 12/15 (confirmed arrival this morning after the application was LOST IN THE MAIL for two days)
WH in progress–due 1/2
SC in progress–due ASAP
PF in progress-due 1/10
MH in progress–due 1/15

Christmas will happen. But it may be a bit sparse and unfancy this year (IOW, those cards, if they are to arrive, they will be New Year’s cards). I’m glad to know that Friends will fill in the gaps as needed on both Christmas Eve and Day!

On a happier note: I now have a prescription for muscle relaxants. And if you want to see something funny you should see me trying to walk around our apartment all relaxed like that. One might think that I’d had a bit too much brandied hard sauce on my bread pudding (if you know what mean). And can I say how supremely frustrating it is to have to repeat my words like 3 or 4 times before I can be understood?

And people, I say that the smell of Ben-Gay is pretty festive this time of year. I’m now marinating in the stuff–oozing minty menthol goodness from each pore. Yum.

bookish

H/T for photo above of Trinity Library

This past week I’ve spent a bunch of time at the Huntington Library. I’ll be back again next week (and the week after that and the week after that….)

If I’m lucky, I’ll be garnering a Fellowship so I can research there nearly full-time. But even without the Fellowship I’ll certainly be there on a regular basis.

I’ve learned a few things in the past week:
1) The library’s cataloging system is only so-so. Key words and search terms are often nonsensical/illogical.
2) The old paper card catalog has items not listed in the online catalog.
3) Many of the items don’t appear to be listed anywhere at all–not on the computers and not on the bitty little cards in the drawers (which drawers, I still don’t seem to be able to pull out of the cabinet properly, so doing the research is a bit painful as I contort myself to see the cards)
4) The trick to knowing what’s in the library is to talk to the curators. They know all.
5) The other trick is to ask lots of questions and request items that may not even exist (e.g. “A finding aid for that collection?…No, there doesn’t appear to be one…”)

Even with all of the confusions and run-arounds of this week’s work at the H, I’m just loving it. Really. I am so very lucky to be close enough to such a place for my research. And it is a beautiful space to spend one’s days….
(IOW, people, more flower pictures from the grounds will be forthcoming…I’m hoping to step foot outside of the inner-sanctum on at least one of my visits next week!)

did you know…

Today I have been investing my time in “professional activities.” Because I suspect there’s very little chance that I’ll get a job as a professional blogger, I’ve been trying my hand at a few projects that’ll look good on my CV (in other words, taking flower photos and writing sweater poetry does not equal career success).

So I’ve started a podcast about History. You can find my first episode here, and it will be listed on iTunes shortly (under the title of “Making History” podcast). You might also be interested in taking a look at the blog affiliated with my new podcast. It’s pretty dry and professional stuff. But that’s life, right? 🙂

That said, I’ll bet you didn’t know this:

1) Did you know that there’s an Italian proverb, quoted by Montaigne, that says, “He knowes not the perfect pleasure of Venus that hath not layne with a limping woman”? Essentially it’s saying that women who limp, they’re better in bed. Just thought you might want to know that.

2) Betcha’ didn’t know that I just spent about two hours sitting in my cozy purple chair recording my podcast and then editing out most of my ‘ummms’ and then uploading everything. When I stood up I realized that the whole time I’d been sitting on a very lovely bar of certified organic 73% Super Dark chocolate. Thanks to my butt, it is now a very lovely certified organic 73% Super Dark chocolate soup.

Yum 🙂

pilgrimgirl classic: sour

A reprint from 2/14/2006

Note to self: next time John gets you your favorite super-sour gummies for Valentine’s Day Eve, squeal when he presents them to you. 🙂

However, do not proceed to eat said gummies while wearing a low-cut top and reading scholarly journal articles because sour gummy powder will then accumulate in your, um, cleavage while you are concentrating on the arguments of the very stimulating writings of 19th-century historians.

And then you’ll wake up in the middle of the night w/ cleavage sore and burning from said powder and you’ll have to teach the next day while trying to ignore that you want very much to scratch that particularly irritated area….

blogging in academia

Attended this panel today about blogging and academia. It was a bit discouraging to be one of the three people in attendance who weren’t getting course credit for being there, but I guess that’s just to be expected when you plan a panel on Halloween…

That said, there were some good points made, perhaps the most memorable contribution was Liz Losh‘s rejoinder: “Don’t blog while angry, it’s like driving drunk.” She mentioned this in the context of a discussion about the ‘permanence’ of webwriting and other forms of electronic communication. Each panelist concurred that blogging is best done with a ‘drafts’ folder to let ideas gel for awhile before hitting the ‘publish’ button.

A few other thoughts:
Scott Kaufman spoke about how blogging made him love writing again. Daily, he stops working on his dissertation after dinner and then allows himself to blog. What he said rang true with my experience as a blogging academic. When I am blogging I am a better academic writer because I feel so much ‘juice’ running through my brain. I also have a momentum built from blogwriting that carries through into all other types of writing. I can literally feel my wrists and hands loosen as the words just flow. The only challenge of being an active blogwriter is that of time–making sure that I don’t get so preoccupied with blogthoughts and blogdramas that I forget what’s most important (i.e. my dissertation).

Liz gave a few statistics that I thought quite telling. She quoted the following percentages of responses as to why academic-types blog (note: just a few stats of the many she offered and I wish I had the citation for the study, but I didn’t get that either):

91% praised the intellectual stimulation of blogging
63% liked blogging because it facilitated interdisciplinarity
64% said it fosters community

My two criticisms of the panel discussion:

1) Each blogger seemed sheepish about their blogging, admitting that it was extra-curricular to their “real work.” This made me sad–what I wanted to see was a panel that legitimized the ways that blogging can enhance an academic career, not a bunch of folks who admit its frivolousness.

2) There was the expected ivory tower elitism–some slams at BoingBoing and the ‘bad writing’ of most blogs. While I agree that many blogs aren’t masterpieces (I’ll include myself in that bunch), I’m not sure that all of the panelists really ‘get’ the genre and form of the blog. It has a different audience and intention than a NYTimes article. For the most part, it’s intended to be rough and raw and fast. It’s more about connection to communty than polish, IMO. Of course, YMMV.

Make me smile…


As a historian of 19th century medicine, I spend a lot of time reading grody accounts of diseases and botched surgeries. Believe it or not, I love it. Here’s a tasty little bit of history for you–an account of a c-section performed in 1857 (which was back in the day when they thought inflammation and oozing pus was a good thing in wound healing and not a sign of infection….):

“The first three days a single thickness of domestic [linen] moistened in cold water is applied to the exposed abdomen over the wound to get the refrigerating action of evaporation. As soon as suppuration is established [a discharge of pus], this dressing is replaced by a warm poultice of bread and milk, which is continued until she is well. A weak dilution of chloride of soda was several times injected through the vagina into the womb, from which it issued at the abdominal wound, and did not return by the natural passages. These cleansings diminished very much the almost gangrenous foeter of the days of suppuration. The abdominal flatus was drawn off by an esophagus tube per rectum. A silver catheter remained constantly in the urethra by which the bladder was kept nearly always empty. The bladder was incised first accidentally, then purposely, during the operation, before the womb was reached. These slight opening closed kindly, by first intention.”

Bleh. The gangrenous foeter? How’s that for a flowery way to say nasty stench?