April 14, 2020

Up, and coffee from the usual--Dunkin' Donuts. A beautiful morning. Prepped more papers for the May board meeting. Emailed the board with details of the meeting.

Interviewed by Skype an incoming HOPE Center fellow to vouch for his English proficiency. He passed, as I knew he would: the interview was a formality. He lives and works in Freiburg. He says that all the borders have been closed in Europe, which is worrisome for a European, given their history. He's Bulgarian, and his parents need to explain themselves every time they want to leave the city limits. He has been working in his office at the university; he's needed special permission to do that. People in Germany were on edge two or three weeks ago, but they seem to have calmed down since then.

Posted a HOPE Center working paper by Roy Weintraub on science studies and economics. I read the paper and corrected a few errors. Tweeted about the paper.

I skimmed a new batch of submissions and sent them to the filter partner, along with brief comments on each paper.

Thirty-minute walk at lunchtime, past the new hotel they're building at La Salle and Erwin. Lunch was leftover butter peas. Breakfast was the rest of the Easter bread from Guglhupf.

Reviewed again some of the papers that will be discussed at the board meeting.

I started a second new blog today: Professorspeak, which explains academic articles in plain English. The first post was on a new Politics & Society article on "metropolitan fragmentation," which is when communities form their own jurisdictions and hoard resources. What happened in Bartlett, Germantown, Arlington, et al. after Memphis City Schools gave up is charter is a perfect example of fragmentation.

Watched an episode of Better Call Saul and Homeland.

A used copy of vol. A of the latest Norton Anthology of English literature arrived today, delightfully annotated by the student who last owned it. I no longer write in my books and haven't for some time. I'm suddenly fascinated by student annotations.

Another 30-minute walk this evening. Gorgeous all day. Talked to AR for an hour. She has two new coloring books and ordered eighty (!) rolls of toilet paper.

Read Heaney's translation of Beowulf tonight.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

June 30, 2020

June 27, 2020

June 25, 2020