Journal for March

A very quiet month. The rains desisted for a couple weeks right in the middle of it, and an attack of faux printemps sent everyone outdoors for awhile. Bob Glück's 70th birthday party for Bruce was quite fun; I talked with people I seldom get a chance to see. Francesca and I enjoyed Alice in Wonderland at the Castro, but if memory serves, the first Disney version in 2-D was more fun, tho it may have been because I was still in grade school when it was released and thus more impressionable. I particularly disliked the dormouse in the new version, and the fact that Alice had meanwhile turned 19. I wondered if Disney wanted to avoid confronting the issue whether Lewis Carroll was a pedophile. Also, the undernourished March Hare looked uncomfortably deranged

Otherwise I've been blogging along and reading a lot of history books for grad seminar. People ask why the blog is white against black, like it's some kind of gimmick or something. The answer is simply that I run a lot of color pictures--it's one of the great pleasures of blog editing--and I think  they stand out better against a black background, compared with white or neutral colors. I do wish the type font could be slightly larger.

Reading report for March: Smash the Church, Smash the State! ed. T. Mecca; Becoming Roman, by Greg Woolf; How Societies Are Born, by Jan Vansina; Oedipus at Stalingrad, by G von Rezzori; Hegel, A Very Short Introduction, by Peter Singer; The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer; How to Write the History of the New World, by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra; plus many articles.