While I am usually all over the idea that judgements about What People Really Achieved can be crude and based on coarse indicators, I am not entirely sure that Aditya Chakrabortty persuades me that the late Lord Dacre, historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, is being terribly ill-used by the new biography and the reviews thereof out of sheer career ill- ( Read more... )

Not only has the panel I put together been accepted for the Berks Women's History Conference next year (hedjog can b going 2 Amherst!!!)

But

Referees' reports are in on proposal for 2nd edition of textbook, and can I just say

*Highly gratifying*?

('Classic' is a word several times invoked.)

This entry was originally posted at http://oursin. ( Read more... )

At yoga yesterday, the instructor reminded us that it's not about competition - 'not even competition with yourself'.

Which I've been mulling over ever since.

Okay, at one level it's about not beating oneself up because e.g. last week you maintained a balance posture for, oh, 10 seconds at least, and this week all you do is wobble.

But it does seem ( Read more... )

For some reason, have recently been musing over a couple of things:

That a time of life my grandmother always seemed to return to, when talking to her grandchildren (or at least me), was her final years at school (top of the top class, great pet of the headmaster) and as a pupil teacher there. It was mentioned (but I don't recall anything like the ( Read more... )

Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?. Oliver Burkeman does perceive that there's a certain amount of dodgy gender stuff going on in these paeans to Real Manly Work fixing motorbikes and masoning stone, but doesn't take it further either in the direction of ( Read more... )

These are the sort of strokes that are extremely welcome to me today (from 2 separate emails):

I have now closely copy edited your excellent review of [book for learned journal]. I wish all our authors presented copy so well! Other than a few tweaks to make it conform to house style, I have no changes to make.

And

I would like to thank you again ( Read more... )

Holding a balance pose in yoga for significantly longer, and, indeed, with a greater degree of steadiness, than is my usual wont.

Okay, there was no way I was going to manage the progression on from that standing balance, but it was still an achievement.

Statistix: 3,731 Journal Entries. 27,566 comments received, 17,726 comments posted (cumulative totals: for 2008 that's 734 posts, 6165 comments received, 2618 posted)

( First lines of months (omitting birthday greetings and locked posts) )

Still got the lurghi, and not liking it at all. It's not that I feel positively, definitely, ill with obvious symptoms, it's just that I don't feel well, except in short bursts, and then I do something, and feel extremely blah after quite minor effort amd occasionally spontaneously break out in a feverish sweat perspiration glow.

My mood is not ( Read more... )

I can haz just over 90% of essay review! And I can pad out the necessary 200 or so words to make it a feasible essay review (rather than just a Rather Long Review) by doing a quick whip-through of what the various sections of the book cover in a bit more detail.

But gosh, that was a lot less arduous than I was expecting.

Possibly because I have a ( Read more... )