What does a medievalist do on a Saturday afternoon in early September? Smash skulls? Go jousting? No, no. Better than that. He walks the hundred yards to his department building in flip-flops and ragged shorts, saunters down a quiet hall to his office, scoots past the polished and ready weaponry, …
A twice-former student of mine from my University of Rochester days, Tina Tsao, sent along notice of an article in the New York Times comparing the actions of a squirrel in right field of the Yankees’ 5-3 victory over the Red Sox Tuesday night to the figure of Ratatosk in …
I wrote a short story last night, a Science Fiction piece centering on curbing global greenhouse emissions by changing our diet. As usual, I coughed and handwaved my way through anything that required actual numbers or figures, like the number of cattle on the planet or how many million tons …
What does a medievalist do, exactly? Is there more to it than brandishing swords at cowering students? Well of course there is. (Sadly?) And while things like discovering European maps of the New World that pre-date Columbus sound pretty exciting, much of my life as an academic medievalist is spent …
Had high hopes to get much work done this weekend, but all was shot by parties in need of appearing, cars in need of researching, emails in need of answering, and hobbits in need of attending. So little was accomplished. Oh, and I lost a solid half-hour of worktime at …