Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
This week the Old Music that I’ve been listening to has centered around Yuletide, specifically a hyperion recording of the Sixteen from 1987 called Christmas Music from Medieval and Renaissance Europe. As usual, Hyperion doesn’t work with Spotify (grrrr) so I also have been streaming Christmas with the Tallis Scholars. I also have a Pandora…
Sometimes I feel like a zeitgeist. When I was 11 I started putting granola in my yogurt. Suddenly in a few years Dannon is selling little prepackaged granola pots stuck on top of plain yogurt. My 14 year old self thought I should have patented the idea. I’m feeling a little vindicated (read: smug) at…
The church I go to is called St. Richard’s of Chichester, and so on one of my trips to the UK I felt compelled to spend some time getting to know St. Richard, and his town. Fortunately for me, it’s a nice place to visit, and I was also able to get some work done…
Another fantastic Oyster find, I devoured Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the End of the World by Joan Druett this past week. It’s a true story about two simultaneous shipwrecks on Auckland Island in the 1860’s (though they never met each other, being on opposite ends with a mountain range in between them). Auckland Islands is…
While browsing on youtube this weekend (I love that sentence because it implies long childfree days spent clicking from one interesting program to the next) I found this 2013 BBC documentary from David Starkey, the most fabulous British historian (and who puts on a fabulous show in the 1980’s Channel 4 Trial of Richard III…
“As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle” 19th century philosopher Balzac Before I had a kid I was never a big coffee drinker. Oh, I knew coffee – when…
When eBooks first started gaining popularity, many people were surprised to find out that they actually don’t own the ebook that they bought. What they have purchased is a license to read the book. This first got some press in 2009 when, in a beautiful bit of poetry, Amazon remotely erased copies of 1984 and…
Let me tell you about a weekend trip I had to Bournemouth a few years ago, which has made it become one of my Favorite Places in England. I was ridiculously behind on work, and I wanted to get out of London and go somewhere quiet where I could catch up and relax. Hubby was…
When I lived in the UK one of my favorite things to do was go to Cambridge where I’d attend evensong service at King’s, and then go to the Cambridge University Press bookstore on the corner of King’s Parade and the market street, and I’d buy a book that made me look eminently intelligent and…
This week The Cardinall’s Musick has seen some heavy rotation on my Spotify. They are a UK based ensemble that, like many early music groups, is scholarly in their recordings of 16th and 17th century music. They mostly record with Hyperion – a label I love – but sadly Hyperion isn’t on any of the…