My Desk Returns

Months ago my desk vanished under tottering towers of articles, unopened mail, and stuff-to-get-to-later. Tonight, as I was wondering what to do with my abrupt no-longer-studying-for-comps freedom, I found myself reclaiming my desk.

I think I'm going to like this post-comps life.

For the next few months I'll be writing a thesis about early British America itinerants. Studying for comps alerted me to some postcolonial and state-formation works I need to read soon.

My online focus will be shifting as well. I always thought of Patahistory as a very graduate-student-flavored blog, and now that I'm wrapping up my history grad student life, I'm also wrapping up Patahistory.

Doing research last spring about digital history, and web 2.0 stuff, inspired me to channel my internet attention to my community. The lightning bolt that struck me while doing that research was this -- the internet is a participation platform as much, or more than, it is a publication platform.

A year ago I started blogging about local eateries (on another page), and I've had a lot of fun doing it. Now I'm going to expand that page, and interest, to other local concerns.

What that means for this page is that there will be a lot more posts over the next few months, and then I'll move to a new address and new page.

The posts, however, will now be about all the stuff catching my attention, rather than just history/academia posts. In some ways this is morphing into what will become the main page on the Unnamed Tampa Blog Project.

non sequitur

Here are the ten songs that played while I wrote this post:

Rock This Town - Daniel Johnston

Fairies Wear Boots - Black Sabbath

Til the End of the Day - Big Star

Blue Day - Heartless Bastards

Summer Nights - John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John

Why Do Fools Fall in Love - The Four Seasons

The Darktown Poker Club - Phil Harris and his Orchestra

Stairway to Gilligan's Island - (Theme from Gilligan's Island set to the music of Stairway to Heaven) - Little Roger and the Goosebumps

Traces of Love - Classics IV

Devil in My Car - B52s