Today I'm using Explorer to blog while I wait for the hard copy of "The Builder: The Patient Newspaper at Central State Hospital, 1934-1978" to print. Look for it in a forthcoming edition of America's favorite historical quarterly about Georgia: the Georgia Historical Quarterly.At any rate, I'm hoping that the job I'm doing will be satisfactory. This pseudo-editing has occupied most of my time an effort in graduate school so far. Part of this stems from having only one class so far, but this afternoon and evening I'll be in class from 3:30 to 8:15, the heaviest day of the week, and the only day that Historical Methods and Interpretations meets, which will be made up mostly (I expect) of my fellow new entrants to the History program.
So far I haven't discovered Milledgeville's hidden charms. It is true that I have not looked very hard. I get up in the morning, eat breakfast or lunch (whichever seems appropriate), work on what the assistantship demands for the moment, and then wait for class. After class I walk home, go get dinner somewhere, come home, and listen to Peach State Public Radio until I'm asleep. Rinse, Lather, Repeat.
Last night was the first class of the Archival Theory and Methods class, which consisted of "I'm sorry that the books aren't in yet, we will work something out" "Why doesn't everybody around the table introduce themselves and say why they're in the class?" and several speeches concerning why archives might appeal more than other history-oriented professions, which mainly boiled down to the giddy awe the professor holds for having had interaction with the late Senator Coverdell as the process of his papers being donated to and processed by GC&SU. In addition, there is the possesive joy that comes from the fact that items in archives are usually by definition unique and thus exclusive to the archive in which they are situated. Hence worldwide patronage of the GC&SU special collections because there aren't any other Flannery O'Connorses out there, and so on. I wonder what will come next in the world of archives.Looking forward to the winter break (already): I have enough USAirways brand frequent flyer points to cash in a trip anywhere in the USAirways brand forty-eight contiguous states. I'm thinking that the Bay Area would possibly be the best use of this ticket. Charlotte's just too short a drive....more later.
posted by David Hill 8/22/2000 11:43:02 AM
Apparently the computers of GC&SU are synonymous with deleting blogs inadvertently. This is the third time I've tried to blog from Baldwin Co., the second time I've had to rewrite immediately afterwards.
At any rate, I'm at my second stop of the day regarding my assistantship: a computer lab. No office for me yet, but my advisor is working on getting me a computer and office that I can at least split time in. Meanwhile, I'll be retyping an edited copy of an article on a newspaper published by the inmates of Central State at some point from the computer lab. Spent a few hours in the library reading But for the Grace of God the history of Central State written by a psychologist who worked there in the 1950s, until he was able to resign through a special arrangement between Herman Talmadge and the superintendent of the hospital. Shady business, running a city of 20,000 passing for an asylum.
None of my concern now, as I'm just correcting the on-disk manuscript from a hard copy, or rather procrastinating from doing so by blogging.See y'all later.
posted by David Hill 8/21/2000 10:27:46 AM
Today is the day. I had a nice time Friday evening, eating at the taqueria near the stripper-clothes place. I had enchiladas and far too many chips at the right hand of Ingalls, which is a fine place to be, I expect.
Saturday I ended up staying in Athens again, with one more night of mindless computer game playing and television watching. I was happy to see that HBO's current season of "Oz" is coming to a close in two more episodes, so I will be able to cancel that part of a cable bill that is going to be unused.This morning I met with Dr. Anne Bailey, who is in charge of me as a graduate assistant. The first task is to retype an article about a newspaper published by the inmates of Central State Hospital. Unfortunately, the office with a computer that I might have been able to use has been allocated to some temporary facutly members. So right now I'm in the computer lab, but there is a chance that I'll be able to share some office time, or even better be among the first people working in the White House of Milledgeville, which is destined to become the home of the Center for Georgia Studies.
Sad to say that none of this is going to be accomplished by blogging, however. See y'all later.
posted by David Hill 8/21/2000 10:22:30 AM
I could be clever and think of obscure and random links to spice up the last few days of the Summer of Fun, but now it is the Autumn of Matriculation (effective 11 A.M. Monday morning when I begin my assistantship). There is also the fact that I did do so, before resizing the screen and apparently eliminating what I had written, which is a first for me, thought pretty common amongst Year2000dom, I am led to believe.At any rate, the highlight of my final fortnight in Athens was the visit of David "Thatch" Horton from the Bay Area. We spent a brief evening on the town, inverted in that Thatch is now on the wagon, but we still had some good time playing pinball, even if I was personally floored when I finally remembered where I recognized the bartender at the Taco Stand from, and when. It was the anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's death. And so on.
Saturday was, of course, the AAMBL championship game. The Desperados won 2-1, in a pitching duel between John Parkman of the Comanches and Jeremy Bloodworth of the 'sprados (or was it Mike Humphries). Those who are looking for any bit of acid to sour those .45s brand grapes up will be happy to know that Pete's team name was too long to actually fit on the scoreboard. mooo-ha ha ha! Sheesh. I had a nice time in the press box. It was air-conditioned, there were stale potato chips, and the guy running the scoreboard amused himself before the game watching documentaries about felony bigamists on the inhouse tv screen. I sang in the seventh inning, gave a shout out to the .45s (and every other team in the league, but only to one team with love), and on the whole had a good time. Wait'll next year fotayfi.But a moment to focus on this year, the academic version (available to faculty staff and students only and must be rung up in the computer store), which begins more or less today. My dad and I headed out of Athens around 10 or so, and had me moved into 250 S. Liberty #3 by 12:45 or so. The rooms with aircon are pretty pleasant, and I don't have to spend time in the other ones. I think that this term will be pleasant, and part of the reason is that I have more or less emancipated myself from high-bandwidth electronic entertainment. I have cable, but no TV, I left the game-infested windows machine at Baldwin Square and have the Painter/PageMaker infested Macintosh here in Baldwin County. I have a radio, but other than that I'm back in make your own fun territory, seemingly for the first time in a while. (Spiraling Shapes by TMBG seems like it might fit here).
As such, the Lake Sinclair Chapter of the Athenshistory.net Association might have something to offer within the month.
The flip side of all of this is that I'm going to be back in Athens tomorrow evening for Mr. Lusk's visit and the first Phi Kappa meeting of the semester. Until then, stay tuned to the blogs.
posted by David Hill 8/16/2000 11:26:41 AM
This afternoon was a close call. I hadn't received a modified bill from Georgia College since I got the assistantship with the Historical Quarterly. Today I finally called down there to see what the situation was, and it was that they were about to "drop me" (which doesn't sound good), so I quickly went further into debt to further my education. One of the first times that has actually happened to lucky ol' me.Tonight I am carless. I drove out to Winder this morning, and had to leave it at the dealership overnight. If it were a xAL 9000 series automobile, it would probably be having nightmares about tire treads coming off on the first day of school.
Without a car, the house of fun is a bit less accessible, though walking there would certainly be consistent with the August of Fitness, so that might happen. There is also the fact that tomorrow will be the first Thursday in a while that there is no AAMBL game, so I might see if Phi Kappa is having a summer meeting tomorrow.
The other bit of good news was in the form of a USAir Dividend Miles statment, which informed me that I now am eligible for one roundtrip coach ticket anywhere in the Contintental United States, as endorsed by the Continental Congress, I might expect. I'm thinking SFO, myself. All the cool kids love the Bay. When I made my first visit to Alameda county, I often mentioned to my hosts that the only reason I didn't want to move out there was that I felt that there were too many people there already, so my civic duty as a Californian was not to be one. This has got to be somehow related to my perpetually single status, but it certainly wasn't at the time.
I brought up the House of Fun to mention that I am also enjoying the exciting conclusion of West Wing Week on the National BC. So back to the fantasy Executive Mansion, where Ford's Theatre never shows Our American Cousin.
posted by David Hill 8/9/2000 7:37:58 PM
Most of the usual people I would call in a time and state like this are "unavailble" (does Bonnie have an agent?), so I suppose it's time to blog.
The .45s did not win, but they went out in a blaze of glory. At least Rich got to play "Sister Christian" (re: Chip's dreams about Paul Trudeau). We all had fun later. I should think that the casual spectacle-goer would be ill-advised to miss the AAMBL championship game all the same. Say no more, I know nothing, long live the American Party (not that last bit sincerely).It also appears that Mr. "Thatch" Horton and Mr. "Matthew" Lusk are both going to be in town by the coming week-end. Those who are me will realize what a wonderful occurance that this is promising to be.
I saw a man there, he kissed his wife, Chicago, my home town!!!!. Molasses is made into rum which is sold in Africa for ? (5 points)
posted by David Hill 8/7/2000 12:03:21 AM
Today I've gotten up as late as possible without getting up after noon (if you measure time only in fifteen minute blocks), which is not so bad.
While I am all for getting shit together, I am hopin that sof2k doesn't end too quickly, as my fall will be an autumn of matriculation. I plan on enjoying at least some aspects of graduate school, but Amy will be the first to assert that graduate school is no fun. But I have an apartment to get in order, a Board of Regents security questionnaire to fill out, and moving to prepare for, et cetera. If only I had a swimming pool...Part of the reason I didn't get to sleep last night is the non-cd, non-internet nature of my high school textbooks. The last bit of TV that I watched was CNN's Millenium, Ted Turner's guide to the last thousand years. I only saw about ten minutes of the epidsode, which described the the fourteenth cenutry (the onset of the "little ice age", which lasted until the 1850s and which was the last period of global cooling).
This put me in a more acute history mood, and so I spent the next hour reading about the Dark and High Middle Ages in the textbook I used for European History in high school. History of the Modern World put a better spin on the fourteenth century than did Millenium, mainly because the book pointed out that by this point towns and trade had been re-established in Europe, as well as the first Universities. But that hardly makes for good television.Now I suppose that there will be ex-young'ns fifteen years from now curling up with whatever the laptop evolves into late at night on their old high school cds....
posted by David Hill 7/31/2000 9:18:07 AM
If I cant get this kind of crap out of my head, it is going to be a very long night
posted by David Hill 7/29/2000 11:24:30 PM
The Summer of Fun's Week of microFlu and Hibernation has offically drawn to a close here at Baldwin Square. Tonight's scheduled game night turned into grillout night and watch townie feud at the Caledonia, where the .45s were pretty much dead in the water, though Black Jack Jamie Ivester did know that getting married is the decision most often regretted in life by 100 Americans.
Alex is apparently in love with the ride, the Azure Steed. A trip to the Guidestones is in the offing. Signup Sheets on the Bulletin Board in the sunroom.I also posted a letter to Sally Honeycutt in Gabon, which is something that I've been needing to do for a while. Odd midmorning dreams cause folks to do strange things. Gotta go to sleep shortly, as I need to be at the ballpark in a little over twelve hours for the AAMBL season finale doubleheader. Hope to see y'all there.
posted by David Hill 7/29/2000 11:14:38 PM