“And what would your good name be, sir?” asked the greeter, with the Dickensian formality that only India has preserved. So begins writer Benjamin MacIntyre’s visit to the Jaipur Literature Festival (read it all here), an event that’s been held the last six years to relish in and appreciate the colorful wordplay, rhyming, and dose [...]
Part of the profession of writing and studying history demands an indifference to place. One reason for this is the slim chance of finding an academic position in the exact city where you might want it, so we want to be assured that any location is surely a great place to do our jobs. But [...]
I’ve lost count how many times a story featured on the World in Words language podcast has shown up on my site, but it continues to be a thoughtfully produced weekly pod that clues me in to stories from the news that I might otherwise have missed. (It’s produced by PRI and WGBH Boston, the [...]
The semester has shifted into full swing, even though I have yet to attend a class. I’ve been doing so much reading though, and already have so many dog-eared pages and underlined sentences and bracketed paragraphs, I can tell it’s going to be a theme here for awhile: the public and history, the relationship, the [...]
Today we had our warmest day in awhile in old Atlanta, and the snow by my house is slowly but surely melting away. I am not tired of the winter, in fact I am enjoying it a lot. I soak up the cold season while we have it, because the summer heat is enough to [...]
I took an extra long walk today, walking cautiously along the sidewalks where I encountered some civilization in the form of other bundled-up walkers. But the bulk of my walk was alone, through the woods between my apartment complex and the downtown area of Vinings. The train tracks that pass right by my home hold [...]
Atlanta got about five inches of snow last night, and in a city with very little equipment for clearing the roads and a populace that doesn’t often drive in snow, it means the entire city pretty much took a snow day. The free day allowed me time to finish up some projects around the apartment, [...]