Another wonderful weekend. I think I could get used to these ...

Emily, I enojyed your Collins post. What led you to his poetry in the first place? I'm glad you found him. Did you see Micah's blog post about the current laurate, Ted Kosher? And the poem Micah penned in his honor?

My update:

Friday
Submitted my paper on the Crystal Palace. The paper ended up being a survey of Victorian and contemporary explanations of the structure. The most interesting "reading" of it I found was by Marshall Berman in his monumental work on modernity/modernism called All That is Solid Melts Into Air (thanks for Katie for recommending this one. She read the book in a class on literature of the city at NYU). Berman points out the paradoxical relationship the palace has with nature. The other notable reading was by a Marxist critic who basically designated the building as a fetish object (i.e. a "magical object"). After some tasy pizza at Decent Pizza (my "spot" here in Tallahassee, Katie and I went contra dancing. I'm getting snappy at the swing move and did a waltz at the end.

Saturday
I presented my paper "Kantian Enlightenment and Critical Theory: For a Repoliticization" at the InterVarsity conference on Faith and Scholarship. I read the paper in about 20 minutes, then fielded about 40 minutes worth of questions. It was thrilling. I think some people may be finally seeing the value to reading Foucault. We'll see. I'm submitting an abstract of the paper for a conference coming in the Fall. Went running and grocery shopping with Katie. Got two miles in. Had a fabulous dinner with Katie of pasta with wine-cream sauce and chardonay. Ate strawberries with cream and port for dessert. To everybody back at Royal St.: I think I may be eating as well as you all now!

Sunday
Early service at St. Peter's. Katie made amazing walnut-banana waffles for breakfast. Went to the park study. Went to a Foucault reading group led by Dr. Faulk - my Victorian Lit. prof. and head of my critical theory certificate program. Had a fruitful time discussing some of the Foucault Qs I had to field yesterday. Garrett and his dad brough back a U-Haul of stuff from the recently-deceased grandaddy. We have new couches, TV, DVD player, Breakfast nook table and stools, Harmon organ, Entertainment center, and I have a stereo amp in my room finally!

On the docket for this week:
- grade 24 freshmen papers
- read Isben, Lacan, Foucault, Gogol, stuff for avant-garde course, etc.
- get my car's alignment straightened out
- and of course the most important things :-D

Darcy, any news?

Have a wonderful week everybody.

Much love,

Travis