Lesser Feasts

 The first day of school requires a new outfit. Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 30 August. It takes me a little while to realize that something quite strange is happening. I look out and see books open. Texts are highlighted, underlined, marked up with Post-It notes. The students aren't just smart. They're prepared. I'm going to have to up my game. The only downside is that Georgetown is still requiring masks during class (except for instructors, as long as we stay six feet away from our students). Learning names is going to be difficult. After the first three class meetings I will know the names of the handful of students with distinctive hair, and that's about it. I absolutely hate  not knowing names. Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 31 August. This outfit  has started a new project that I don't quite understand -- something about videos to accompany a sort of great books curriculum for college students -- and they interview me for two different videos. There's a morning...

  Yesterday I decided to buy a new suit to celebrate the new job. I quite like it, but let's face it: the socks are the best part. Medieval Ethics was graciously canceled because of low enrollment, so this semester it's just Intro to Philosophy. I have thirty students, whose names I'm going to struggle to learn because Georgetown is still requiring masking in class -- though nowhere else, which is super-science-y -- and so I have fewer cues to go by. But good heavens, they read the heck out of Plato's Euthyphro . Oddly, several people thanked me after class. Does that mean I did a good job? No idea. Maybe Georgetown students are just incredibly nice. One guy asked if he could put his pastor in touch with me so I could do an adult formation thing for his parish (a Lutheran church near Capitol Hill). Sure, why not? Another thanked me for being "reasonable": "I'm an atheist, so I was worried about this, but I like the way you took other views seriously....

Content warning: nekkid dudes in a weird painting. ***** I did a rough calculation: there were about 300 papers at this conference. Apart from the plenary talks, there were eleven sessions running concurrently at any given time. That's a lot of medieval philosophy -- more than I have an appetite for. But I missed more sessions than I would have liked, because my jet lag was absolutely brutal this time. ***** When I wasn't listening to papers or sleeping, I was out walking. I love long walks in cities. Paris was having a warm spell, and I made the (in retrospect obviously stupid) decision to walk all the way from my hotel to Sacré Cœur, a solid two miles away, on the hottest and sunniest day. Thanks to a timely rest and a liter of water, I was fine. My heart quailed when I reached the foot of the steps. Maybe I should take the funicular. No. Don't be ridiculous. You've climbed the Seven Hills of Edinburgh. You've walked in the Highlands. It's just steps. Turns ou...

The view from my balcony at the Hôtel D'Orsay  Normally I prepare for travel abroad. In the whirlwind of new faculty orientation and settling into my apartment and my new office, I just didn't this time around. I even managed to schedule an "onboarding" (I hate that word) call for my website redesign for Saturday morning, when I should have been getting properly ready. My packing consists of shoving back into my suitcase whatever I had taken out of it over the previous three days. (Conveniently, settling into my apartment did not include unpacking.) As soon as the call is over, I head for the airport. At some point I get a message from the place I'm supposed to be staying. If my French serves me correctly, they are telling me that for health reasons, they are no longer supplying bath towels. Google Translate informs me that my French is indeed serving me correctly. I'm not quite sure how you can advertise a place as "tout équipé" and then take away t...

The view for Morning Prayer (Antiphon for the Venite : "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness") After Morning Prayer I headed down to Manchester, where my sister is building a house. It was great to spend some time with her and my younger niece, who turned 18 last month and is heading off to college at Western Kentucky University next month. The house is really lovely, and thanks to my sister's handling of the finances, they're coming in well under budget. It's all quite impressive. Then back up the mountain for registration. How wonderful to see so many familiar faces (masked though they were) after a three-year hiatus! I caught up with our chaplain, the inimitable Barbara Crafton, who for health reasons is handing over the officiating and presiding to me, though she will continue to do all the preaching, thanks be to God. I'm always happy to preside, though chanting the liturgy at a conference of church musicians brings a certain amount of pressure with...

FCB Caddell, Head of a Young Man  (1934) My employment at the University of South Florida ended last week. I had a good run. They hired me with tenure, promoted me to full professor, paid me reasonably well, let me use up tons of sick leave when I was desperately ill, allowed me to go half-time for a couple of years just because I felt like it, and basically left me alone to do what I wanted to do. I'm not leaving angry. Far from it. But I am  leaving. Starting August 1 I will be the Isabelle A. and Henry D. Martin Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University. I am thrilled beyond words about this. I get to be in a department and at a university where my focus on the Christian intellectual tradition isn't a generously tolerated eccentricity, but essential to the institution's self-conception. I get to teach, by all accounts, really first-rate undergraduates. Yesterday I started cleaning out my office. I'm not going to go all Kon-Mari on it, but any book tha...

James McIntosh Patrick, The Striped Scarf  (1932) The image is, obviously, a painting of me just before my first conference session. The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy held its first-ever stand-alone conference this week. I am actually not much of a conference-goer, and I didn't have anything on the program myself, but this was a chance to see lots of people I haven't seen in a while. Plus, it was held at Notre Dame, where I did my graduate work, so there was a nice opportunity for some nostalgia as well. Dinner the first night was at an Irish pub with a couple of old friends. There was a larger gathering at an upscale bar two blocks away, and I protested feebly (and not altogether sincerely) that I really should get back to the hotel and get some sleep. OK, fine, I'll go for half an hour. "Are you Thomas Williams? Can I give you a hug?" That from a scholar I've interacted with in print and on email but never met before. Lots of lively convers...