sautee nacoochee

final cover design --- wheeeee!!!
 

proofing coochee

page proofs for coochee are in!  wheeeee!

19 august update: review complete and comments returned!!! 

reading list update, jan -- jun

as i watch the continued degradation of our republic by a rogue supreme court, i've done a little reading, some of it oddly reassuring --- the first one was particularly apropos --- now working through Brands' Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics

***Dennis C. Rasmussen, Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders (2021)

**Roger Crowley, Spice: The 16^th Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World (2024)

Ramin Setoodeh, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass (2024)

*Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (2005)

***Dennis Romano, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City (2024)

Derek Wilson, Charlemagne (2006) [poorly written]

Michelle P Brown, Bede and the Theory of Everything (2023)

***Irene Vallejo, Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (2022)

Hamish Coghill, Lost Edinburgh (2008)

*Michael Fry, Wild Scots: Four  Hundred Years of Highland History (2005)

**Michael Fry, Edinburgh: A History of the City (2009)

Ian Mortimer, Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter (2024)

Paul Stephenson, New Rome: The Empire in the East (2021)

Ernle Bradford, The Great Betrayal: The Great Siege of Constantinople (2014)--reread

Robin Waterfield, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (2023)

James R. Gaines, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (2005)

Karen Armstrong, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts (2019)

Rowland J. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (1988)

*Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839)

*Jürgen Osterhammel,  Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter With Asia (2018)

Victorino Matus, Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America (2014)

***Hershel Shanks, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: From Solomon to the Golden Dome (2007)

**Olivia Williams, Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London (2014)

coochee

the copyedit phase of the project is done! two hard weeks on my part, significantly improved by the end --- the stupid thing has had a couple of serious edits before this --- all have made it better --- i won't see it again until the proofs or whatever --- publication late this year or early 2025 

i'm still a little impressed with the universe that it threw me this bone to enjoy in my dotage, even if i gave the copyright away and won't make anything off it --- i fkn loved doing it --- to be published by an academic press was something that crossed my mind a time or two, but i don't have a phd and what not, and so, like the rest of my life, serendipty brought me to it

 

wordses

great opening lines:

 ·         In the beginning, and what not.

 ·         . . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.

 ·         I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

 ·         On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

rocking along

 

twelfth day of xmas

the crazy juggler has been gone for most of three weeks    now, but he's coming back monday, if he doesn't get     stranded in chile or wherever --- i thought kenneth was gonna die tonight when mary troy (one of his besties) was over here --- i'm sure the neighbors thought i was killing the dog, what with all the baying for joy and what not --- he might really die of joy when he sees the juggler again --- me, too