Lesser Feasts

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...

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...

  Very cheap bookshelves groaning under the weight of unfinished projects Some of my Facebook friends report that they read impressive numbers of really serious books and were otherwise insanely productive in 2020. Others are lamenting that they read hardly anything besides annoying news, dominated by unpleasant electioneering and COVID disasters, and accomplished next to nothing. I am closer to the second category. I read a bit -- Susan Howatch's Starbridge novels, some fluff, some theology -- but the list (if I kept a list, which I don't, because that would be work, which, as I believe we've established, I'm not doing much of) wouldn't be impressive in either length or seriousness. I got some scholarly writing done, but I won't have anything with a publication year of 2020. And I'm beginning the year by missing a deadline. But I'm not missing the deadline by much, and I'm really not lamenting about my "lost" 2020, because, all things cons...

I honestly had not known until a few days ago that Edinburgh, like so many other cities, is traditionally said to be built on seven hills. Thanks to this video , I learned that I had already walked up four of them. One walks up Castle Rock in the normal course of touristy things. I've been on Calton Hill any number of times, most memorably after the early-morning Easter Vigil at Old St Paul's a few years ago, when I joined the choir for their traditional singing of the Hallelujah Chorus on the National Monument (albeit in C, because who has those notes at that hour?). I've posted here about my occasional outings to Arthur's Seat. And this past weekend I went up Craiglockhart Hill. Having put in a particularly good day of work yesterday -- though honestly I still don't know whether my brilliant set piece about sins ex certa malitia  in Aquinas and Scotus is actually any good, or just one of those cases of my typing outrunning my thinking -- I decided that this after...

This was a productive week, though of the unspectacular sort of productivity that involves writing replies to referee reports, writings one's own referee reports, correcting copyedited manuscript, and finally acceding to the relentless insistence of the Stanford Encyclopedia   of Philosophy  that one's article be updated every five minutes. Still, productive, so that I dropped my plan to head in to the office today and instead decided to take a proper day off. There must be nice walks somewhere within easy day-trip range, I thought, and a quick visit to my new favorite website  turned up Linlithgow, an easy twenty-minute train ride away, with a ruined palace and a loch and the whole shebang. When I arrived in Linlithgow it was raining pretty hard. Not an auspicious start, but maybe I can wait it out. I need to get lunch anyway. But it's noon, and since the pubs and restaurants are all closed, the few cafés that are open are either booked solid or packed. I end up at ...

If you want to be persnickety about it, I've never actually made it all the way to the very tippy-top of Arthur's Seat. There's a point very near the top where the path becomes quite narrow and exposed, and I get that out-on-a-ledge feeling, and my fear of heights tells me not to go any farther. But if I make it that far, I count it as attaining the summit: I've managed physically to reach the highest point that's possible for me psychologically. The last time I attained the summit was in the spring of 2016, before the Late Unpleasantness occurred. It was pretty taxing for me: more so, no doubt, because I was carrying an extra twenty or thirty pounds. Even a few months of walking around hilly Edinburgh doesn't quite prepare me to spring up Arthur's Seat without pausing for breath, I find. When I was back for the Festival in August of last year, I gave it a shot again. I didn't get terribly far up before I had to call it quits. I was still too weak from m...

Saturday, 3 October 2020 I'm barely even sore from yesterday. Weird. All the more reason to go ahead with my even more ambitious plans for today. After an even more severely edited Scottish breakfast -- I got the quantities right this time -- I get ready for my walk. It's cold and rainy, and the forecast is for rain all day, but fortunately I have waterproof everything. I even remembered to pack my contact lenses, which I pretty much never wear, to avoid the annoyance of rain on my glasses. So I am very much ready to go. Except I forgot the cardinal rule: "Be bold, start cold." I have put on everything, and as I venture out into the rain and the cold I think I need it all. But a couple of miles in, I am miserably sweaty, and consequently cold. I take off a layer and then think, no, I don't think it's a great idea to risk another nine miles when I've already botched my thermal regulation so badly; that feels like a good way to get sick. So I head back, some...

Friday, 2 October 2020 I edit down the full Scottish breakfast to what I think will be a manageable amount of food. It's still too much, but what I can eat of it is delicious, and I will certainly be well-fortified for my morning walk. I've decided to limber up with something easy, so I head over to the Gynack Mill Trail , which is basically flat. This will help me break in my walking boots and test the Viewranger app on my phone. The boots, which I have miraculously remembered how to lace properly, turn out to be a perfect fit. The app takes a bit of getting used to, but it's easier than trying to navigate with map and compass whenever the waymarking is inadequate and the path ambiguous. Which is often. So I don't exactly manage to follow the trail, but I do have a lovely hour's walk. The sun is out. It's warm for October in the Highlands. The sound of rushing water is the only thing I hear. I'm definitely ready for a serious walk after lunch. *************...

 (This is basically a long journal entry in multiple parts, written mostly for myself, though maybe someone else will find it interesting.) Wednesday, 30 September If I'm really going to do some serious walking in the Highlands -- and isn't that the whole point of my trip tomorrow? -- I need proper gear. A priest friend from way back in my Iowa days has told me what I need. Waterproof everything, basically. And midge repellant. I head to the Cotswold Outdoor store on Rose Street in the New Town. I go in, take a look around, feel overwhelmed, and leave. I am easily intimidated by unfamiliar things. I head back to my flat and book an appointment with someone who will help me get "kitted out." It's for the next morning. You know, the morning before my afternoon departure. Thursday, 1 October CJ is fabulous. Somehow she manages to appreciate my complete ignorance and advise me without ever being condescending or making me feel like an idiot. I mean, I have to learn ho...