Some Strange 'n Wondrous Things About the Net ...
It's a strange ‘n wondrous thing that Cliopatria is Recommended in prime listings, just below the paid advertising, by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. Many thanks, Glenn. While I'm thinking about it, Cliopatria welcomes Margaret Soltan's University Diaries to our blogroll. Many of us have been reading Soltan's blog for a long time and it's time we made it a regular thing.
It's a strange ‘n wonderous thing that tenured historians are discovering bloggery, some of them long after their best graduate students did. Still, we can count the tenured ones on our fingers: Tim Burke, Mark Grimsley, KC Johnson, and Hugo Schwyzer, of course; but there's also David Beito, Juan Cole, Deborah Lipstadt, and Jon Wiener. That's not counting people like Victor Davis Hanson and Martin Kramer, who are at Think Tanks, and others, whose tenure status I don't know. But, soon, we won't be able to count them all. Eugene Volokh makes the case for blogging in"Fresh Produce in the Marketplace of Ideas" for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
It's a strange ‘n wondrous thing that ShermanDorn finds himself targeted by one of David Horowitz's drones, but it's a good thing that Dorn shares their e-mail exchanges with us. On that whole scene, follow the links from Wealth Bondage's"How to Write Like a Liberal Sack of Garbage," to Adam Kotsko's"A Request" at The Weblog, and Tim Burke's"Down in the Dumps" at Easily Distracted. I'm with Burke on this one. Now that we've established that I am a Liberal Sack of Garbage, Where Do We Go From Here?
It's a strange ‘n wondrous thing when Tom Bruscino's essay,"Cultures of War," gets prime facetime at the Claremont Review of Books, Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers, and Wren's Nest News: The Latest in Witch/Pagan and Mainstream Religious News. Nay-sayers may claim that the alliance of Victor Davis Hanson with America's witches and wizards is a natural one, but arguing with it is imprudent. Just go read the essay. And, if you haven't read it yet, have a look at David Ignatius's column for the Washington Post,"Managing a Mideast Revolution." Tom's mentor at Ohio University, Alonzo Hamby, has been touting the column on Richard Jensen's Conservativenet. Ignatius is a moderate Democrat and the son of Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of the Navy.
It's a strange ‘n wondrous thing when, two days before my 65th birthday, I discover that a) Hunter S. Thompson is my second cousin; and b) he's just blown his head off in Colorado. There is the internal family debate: are his drunkenness, drug addictions, love of guns, and suicide sources of shame? So far, I'm losing the debate. How do you tell a family of successful Rotarians and failed academics that here was a guy, one of us, who actually did something? How can you be so inside or under the box not to see it? My internal discussion is about why I didn't know him and whether there's some relationship between our human failures. I don't know the answers. But the birthday wishes from the Cliopatriarchs and Mr. Sun made it easier to think about the questions. Many thanks.