The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Fragano Ledgister:

It's so easy to foster greed and then blame those in whom you've fostered it while washing your hands of the whole affair. There's something fundamentally disgusting about the whole thing.

What abi said @#146!

The best advice I ever got on writing a dissertation was to do it chapter by chapter, and to do each chapter section by section. That is, to see each section of each chapter as a separate project rather than seeing the dissertation as one big project. Each chapter still took me three drafts; each draft shorter than its predecessor. I was lucky, in that I had a year's pre-doc writing fellowship to get the beast killed, and I did it, with days to spare (including the last period of field research, and at the tail end of writing, while looking for work).

Serge #133: It could have turned into a Martha Ray.

Serge #65: I once explained to a student that her essay on gay rights would have been much improved if she'd changed "pubic affairs" to "public affairs."

Diatryma #79: Oh, and when you're done, you will never have to format that thesis again. Never. No one can make you go back and reformat it.

I have a doctoral candidate right now who is going to share that feeling in spades when he is done.

Serge #105: That would be the serial in which he attacked the Klan's headquarters in East Point, Georgia?

SylvieG #7: My condolences, that's never an easy loss.

Dave Bell #60: Ah, perfect!

So often broken, scented with manure,
dark earth yields little without freight of pain;
not yellow tubers, nor yet tasty grain,
that does not speak of what we must endure.
This simple purpose is the only cure
beneath the moon, our inner voice says plain
for what ails most. But there is no great gain
nor ever hope that wisdom will come pure.
Here light may sting, and sun will leave a burn,
noon is not dark nor will we ever pine
for the lost sweetness of the rising sap;
no children dance with joy at sunreturn
nor old men feel the need for warming wine,
yet each must have the sense of a sprung trap.

Abi #938: Why not Responsio ad Magister?

Glad to see that things are improving.

Bruce Cohen (Speaker To Managers) #18:

I used to work for a newspaper that frequently made reference to marital arts films. These, you need to know, were generally made in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and known on the street (in Kingston) as "kickers."

Best of luck to him. I'm not the praying sort, but good thoughts are heading in his direction.

Serge #103: That they most certainly do, especially when he stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

TNH #10: Some may not figure it out.

Linkmeister #783: But what if your preferences are for viands that are more, ahem, Chewish?

Xopher, I hope you find the silver lining.

abi #727: You can find big box stores in Spain (Carrefour comes to mind). One of the differences between Europe (writ broadly) and the US, though, has been the survival (so far) of the high street in Europe, even in the face of the big box store and the mall. This seems to me a much more human experience than the American one.

I take your point about women being worried about being out after dark except in places that are well-lit.

Looking at Patrick's Milwaukee v. Almería sidelight, I'm struck by its basic soundness. It's something I've thought about, though the US city I live in is Atlanta, and the Spanish cities I contrast it with are not in the sunny south but the rainy northwest. They do put their cars in cramped (and I mean cramped) underground garages. Those can be very convenient, though; I've only ever walked the last few hundred metres of the camiño de Santiago (the last time just after the end of the Xacobeo, so the Porta Santa was closed) from the underground car park on Avenida Xoán XXIII to the Praza do Obradoiro.

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