Uncategorized
These are posts which don’t fit an extant category, or, more likely, posts that I have forgotten to associate with a category. Hence this description, which means that Google will not object that this is a blank page when, in fact, it is not a blank page. I confess that while I understand the value of metadata for humans and search indices, I wish there were a better option than relentlessly labeling everything and placing it in a textual bento box.
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June from the Hours of Henry VIII
This image from the Morgan Library’s Hours of Henry VIII’s calendar page for June shows the first mowing of the hay, a fairly common labor for June and one frequently illustrated in books of hours. On the left three men swing long-handled scythes to mow the hay, while on the right, women use rakes to heap the mown hay into piles or stacks for drying. After it is thoroughly dried, the hay will presumably be loaded into the wagon waiting in the background, behind piles of drying hay. The wagon is a little odd looking; I’m not sure it was meant to be drawn by horse, mule or ox, but instead…
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Dray
A dray or drey is a squirrel’s nest. Dray is also sometimes applied to a nest of squirrels, or a litter of squirrels. The OED s.v. dray offers “A squirrel’s nest” with the following in context citations: 1607 E. Topsell Hist. Fovre-footed Beastes 497 They..make their nestes, like the draies of squirrels. 1627 M. Drayton Quest of Cynthia in Battaile Agincourt 141 The nimble Squirrell..Her mossy Dray that makes. The etymology of dray isn’t clear; it’s generally associated with the dray that means a sled or cart that lacks wheels, and is thus dragged. That dray derives from Old English dragan to draw; the OED suggests…
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Some Wisdom about Writing from Lynn Hunt
You cannot accumulate pages if you constantly second guess yourself. You have to second guess yourself just enough to make constant revision productive and not debilitating. You have to believe that clarity is going to come, not all at once, and certainly not before you write, but eventually, if you work at it hard enough, it will come. Thought does emerge from writing. Something ineffable happens when you write down a thought. You think something you did not know you could or would think and it leads you to another thought almost unbidden. So says Professor Lynn of Hunt of UCLA’s History department. The entire article “How Writing Leads to…
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Medieval Jousting Bloggers at Inside Higher Ed
The story about less-than-ethical medievalist bloggers that I posted about here, thanks to Another Damned Medievalist and Meg of Xoom has been picked up by Inside Higher Education here. I’ve been thinking about this some more, particularly in light of the Blogspot hosted Medievalist News. There are a few oddities, aside from the less-than-original posts. Not only are links and attributions removed from posts, it’s a one-to-many blog. There are no comment links. All comment are shut off. Blogging is in large part about conversation. As Tor Books editor, writer, and blogger Patrick Nielsen Hayden says: Effective blogging is a combination of good personal writing and smart party hosting. A…
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Luke 2:1 in Gothic
Warth than in dagans jainans. urrann gagrefts fram kaisara Agustau gameljan allana midjungard. soh than gilstrameleins frumista warth at wisandin kindina Swriais raginondin Saurim Kwreinaiau. jah iddjedun allai ei melidai weseina. hwarjizuh in seinai baurg. urrann than jah Iosef us Galeilaia. us baurg Nazaraith in Iudaian. in baurg Daweidis sei haitada Bethlaihaim duthe ei was us garda fadreinais Daweidis. anameljan mith Mariin. sei in fragiftim was imma qeins. wisandein inkilthon. warth than miththanei. tho wesun jainar. usfullnodedun dagos du bairan izai jah gabar sunu seinana thana frumabaur. jah biwand ina jah galagida ina in uzetin. unte ni was im rumis in stada thamma. Via Jim Marchand, medievalist extraordinaire. Technorati Tags:xmas
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Birth of a Blog
This is by way of an experiment for me; I’m new to blogging. My friend Paul’s iPaulo got me thinking about blogs as ways of creating communities, and that led me to think about blogs in instructional technology, serious and otherwise. I’ve had my digitalmedievalist site for years, but I find I’m not keeping it updated the way I’d like. So I thought I’d try blogging as a quick way to do small updates. For instance, I’d like to point out that the Dublin Institute, famous for physics and Irish scholarship, has put high quality scanned images of Lebor na hUidre/The Book of the Dun Cow on line. This is…