Monthly Archives: May 2025

Note to Self

Pedantry is an occupational hazard for someone in my profession(s), so I’ve been trying to nail down the salient trait(s) of a pedant, mostly in order to watch for them in myself. A few stabs at the target: A pedant … Continue reading

Posted in academia, art | Comments Off on Note to Self

All-Night Theater: Heistus Interruptus

Last night at the movies: a daring raid on an 24-hour check-cashing place on Halloween night was planned by a thirtyish Laura Antonelli and a middle-aged Jim Backus, who had the Hawaiian shirt of Thurston Howell III and the mannerisms … Continue reading

Posted in art, cats, dream, Minnestoics, mystery | Tagged | Comments Off on All-Night Theater: Heistus Interruptus

Alphonso I, Conqueror of Erewhon

One of the features or bugs of reading five or six books at a time is that sometimes you finish them all in the course of a day and then wander around feeling strangely bereft. One of the books I … Continue reading

Posted in biograpy, books, history, review or meta-review | Tagged | Comments Off on Alphonso I, Conqueror of Erewhon

18th Century Mashup: White’s MISTRESS MASHAM’S REPOSE

I came to T.H. White’s brilliant fantasy Mistress Masham’s Repose (Putnam, 1946): immediately after reading two much inferior (but not worthless) books. One was by White himself, The Age of Scandal (Putnam, 1950), a social history of the later 18th … Continue reading

Posted in Adventures in the Public Domain, books, fantasy, history, language, sff, words | Tagged | Comments Off on 18th Century Mashup: White’s MISTRESS MASHAM’S REPOSE