Spring is here. Spring has been here for weeks, complete with snowdrops and daffodils. There’s a giant magnolia tree in front of the Rotunda that’s completely covered with potently aromatic white flowers. Today it got up into the 60s and half the student body was outside in flip-flops and shorts. A week or so ago […]
Via Crooked Timber, a report from Florida on a bill aimed to curb "leftist totalitarianism" in the classroom and prevent "a misuse of [professors’] platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views." Now, I’m pretty left in my political views. When I taught, I had students who were proud members of the College […]
So, the longer report on Tuesday’s concert with Katarina Karnéus: Thanks to the luck of the Tuesday Evening Concert Series ticket-buying procedure, wherein if you aren’t a subscriber you have to get on a waiting list and then they give you the first sold-back tickets they can find for you, I got a seat in […]
Very quick summary of today: Phone interview: not quite sure how it went. Think it was all right, but won’t hear until next week. Library discussion group this afternoon (topic: folksonomies and social tagging): neato. News received later this afternoon re: other job applied for: encouraging. Very encouraging. After-work pool game at Orbit: fun despite […]
Tomorrow’s going to be a big day. In the evening I’m going to hear Katarina Karnéus give a recital at Old Cabell Hall. I’ve never heard her sing, but the program looks marvelous (Mahler, Strauss, Grieg, a few bits from my favorite Baroque guys here, a dash of Weill there). And for once I lucked […]
Herewith, the results of the pseudo-aria contest. Though, really, since I couldn’t pick any one entry, it’s more like the caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland, in which everybody has won, and all must have prizes. Anyway, the winners are: “Come vergine”: simile aria from a baroque opera by Handel, in which the hero (countertenor) compares […]
Check out this exhibit of hand bookbindings through the ages from Princeton University Library. Among the highlights: disappearing fore-edge decoration (scroll to the bottom of this page for an explanation of how it’s done); books meant to be attached to your belt; a sixteenth-century book satchel from Ethiopia; lovely embroidery; and recycled manuscripts used as […]
Over at About Last Night, Our Girl in Chicago wants to see more close reading in the blogosphere. As a still card-carrying member of the Partnership of English Majors (tm Garrison Keillor), I’m happy to oblige, but first I’ve got a frantically busy week to finish. Actual exegesis to follow eventually (as will the results […]
Thanks to le blogue de Rana en français, I see that this blog, in French, is Opéra de ménage. C’est drôle, n’est-ce pas? Did I ever post about Edward Gorey’s The Blue Aspic, which recounts the rise of a soprano named Ortenzia Caviglia and the parallel decline of Jasper Ankle, her most insanely devoted fan? […]
If you haven’t yet visited the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, you must. Among many other things, it offers the joy of serendipitous image-discovery. I browsed around the collections for a while and then tried a keyword search for "snow." I used the selection tool to grab everything that looked particularly interesting, and ended […]