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It's been an incredibly busy month; even last week's spring break was spent just trying (unsuccessfully) to catch up on work. I did ...

Today was fairly warm, up to the upper 60s (really the calm before the storm, since they're predicting 6" of snow for Friday). So t...

Well, they're not "new," per se. But I did get new copies of them--and for pretty good prices. Politics of Difference in Taiwa...

In lieu of telling you how my writing plan is going (badly), I'll tell you that I just received a new/old book: Maritime Taiwan: Histori...

Classes start tomorrow--I have to go in for one in-person class that I'm teaching. This time I'm taking the commuter rail instead of...

This year I resolve to use fewer ellipses and to have fewer parenthetical comments in my writing. (I've decided to go for the low-hangin...

Don't think this will change by the end of the day: I was amused (or is it bemused?) to see that the most-visited posting on this blog f...

When news of the death of China historian Jonathan Spence reached me yesterday, I immediately thought of the acknowledgements section of hi...

Came across this seven-year-old talk by Mary Louise Pratt on "The Rough Guide to Geopolitics," about travel as relationship of peo...

It's the end of the semester (grades were submitted yesterday), and I am thinking about how I'm going to teach my first-year writing...

The semester's not over yet, but it has been a tough one. One of the challenges has been teaching in-person again for the first time sin...

My son and I had some time this morning while my wife was teaching in Quincy, and I had seen something about the Granite Railway Incline Pla...

My brother sent me Gary Blankenburg's obituary this evening. Dr. Blankenburg, who died last year, was a poet and high school creative w...

Trying to decide if I should submit something to this. Due date: Oct. 20: The University of Washington Taiwan Studies Program (UW-TSP) will ...

I got curious about Robert Sheeks because of some correspondence he had with George H. Kerr over some materials he was helping Kerr transfer...

I'm listening to workmen playing Steely Dan and tearing out some rotten wood from the soffit. ("Soffit" is a word I just learn...

How do you write about the cool things you've found in the archives without making your paper sound like it should be titled, "Cool...

We had a virtual English Department meeting today. After we got off Zoom, we all ran into each other on the way to the restroom.

The summer is over, so I'm getting ready for the semester that starts next Wednesday. (Yikes!) I came across this video on YouTube and w...

I finished my grading this week for the summer class just in time to start getting ready for the fall semester that starts September 8. In t...