heehee

day by day

reading...

i may not have had to buy any books for the class, but this is how my grad seminar started...

That emelye, that fairer was to sene
Than is the lylie upon his stalke grene,
And fressher than the may with floures newe --
For with the rose colour stroof hire hewe,
I noot which was the fyner of hem two --
Er it were day, as was hir wone to do,
She was arisen and al redy dight;
For may wole have no slogardie a-nyght.
The sesoun priketh every gentil herte,
And maketh hym out of his slep to sterte,
And seith arys, and do thyn observaunce.
This maked emelye have remembraunce
To doon honour to may, and for to ryse.
Yclothed was she fressh, for to devyse:
Hir yelow heer was broyded in a tresse
Bihynde hir bak, a yerde long, I gesse.
And in the gardyn, at the sonne upriste,
She walketh up and doun, and as hire liste
She gadereth floures, party white and rede,
To make a subtil gerland for hire hede;
And as an aungel hevenysshly she soong.

i enjoy middle english, but as a grad student i am going to have to read a lot more closely than i did as an undergrad... so if you wonder what i am up to there is a good chance it is this... or this...

The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are now in the course of publication, and many thoughts unpublished are going on in every reflective head, is justly regarded as one of the most ominous, and withal one of the strangest, ever seen in this world. England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce,supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest and the willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest shape; but on the rich masterworkers too it falls; neither can the rich master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape, but all are like to be brought low with it, and made 'poor' enough, in the money-sense or a far fataller one. ~Thomas Carlyle

happy reading to all you students, except for art students who have no reading, and thus suck ... =)

read much?

so i got my books for my classes, those that are available, and while i am still excited to start grad school i am having a bit of an oh-my-good-goddess moment... these are the books for one of my two classes, not counting the additional reading i will have to do for my research project that makes it so i get grad credit for the class...

Apologia Pro Vita Sua by Cardnial John Henry Newman
Autobiography Of John Stuart Mill
The Carlyle Reader
Culture & Anarchy by Matthew Arnold
Father & Son by Edmund Gosse
The Genius Of John Ruskin
Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose
Past & Present by Thomas Carlyle
Victorian People & Ideas by Richard Altick

this is also not counting the reading i will need to do for my shakespeare/chaucer class, because the teacher(s) have not ordered any books from the bookstore...

still excited, but wow, that is a lot of reading... most of it i will enjoy, but still, wow...

As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it. ~ Albert Einstein

some odd facts...

so here are some oddball body facts... don't know if they are in fact true, but they are fascinating... strangely fascinating...
-A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.

- Approximately 75% of human feces is made of water.

- It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

- One human hair can support 3kg.

- Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.

- The attachment of human muscles to skin is what causes dimples.

-Your thumb is the same length of your nose.

- A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

- If the average male never shaved, his beard would be 13 feet long when he died.

- Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.

- There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

- Side by side, 2000 cells from the human body could cover about one square inch.

- Women blink twice as much as men.

- The average person's skin weighs twice as much as their brain.

- When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.

- It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it.

- You're ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren't.

- Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.

- If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

- The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.

You checked out the length of your thumb.. Didn't ya?

lammas

Lughnasadh (August 1) is the time of the first harvest, when the seeds of spring give up their fruits and seeds for us, to feed us through this year and to continue the cycle of life into the future. the feast has many names - Lughnasadh, Lammas, Feast of Bread, Harvest Home, Feast of First Fruits, Loaf-mass... whatever it is called, it is a celebration of the bounty of summer, a thanksgiving for the blessings in our lives, the food on our table... it is a feast celebrated by Christians and pagans alike ... it is a recognition of the passing of summer and the need for death to bring new life... it is the smell of sun-ripened peaches and the explosion of sweetness as you bite into fresh corn... may you never go hungry on this or any day and may we all be brought to greater awareness of the blessings in our lives

Blessed Be...