1. My first school year is almost done; just one more day of classes, then field day and a few odds and ends. It was certainly a learning experience, and I’m glad to have at last found a job that I feel I could make an actual career out of. The big test, of course, will be doing it full-time next year.

2. There is a common trope in recent years of a woman being the true genius behind some creation for which a man gets credit. She’s the one who invented the breakthrough, built the company, etc. while the man gets credit for it despite having done nothing of consequence.

This feels to me very much like a wish-fulfillment fantasy rather than anything that is common in real life. I’m sure you could find an instance here or there, but to be honest, I’ve never heard of a clear-cut one. Anybody know of any cases like this is real life, where a man gets credit for work that was actually done by a woman?

3. Those who sneer at the idea of the ‘good old days’ tend to be the ones who want to keep us trapped in the present.

4. There are certain works that I find myself drifting back to time and again and, when I do, I am almost compelled to at least skim through them. They aren’t necessarily the one’s you’d think either; not the ones I’d declare my all-time favorites, but ones that are just sort of comfortable and satisfying.

One of these is Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers’s final Lord Peter Whimsey Novel, which sees that noble sleuth on his long-awaited honeymoon with mystery writer Harriet Vane at a quaint old farm house in the country, where they encounter a series of disasters, the most serious of which is the port wine being shaken about by an ignorant country woman, but a close second being the discovery of a dead body in the cellar. Every so often I find myself going back to it for the delightfully romantic and cozy opening chapters in which domestic disaster after disaster heralds the reality of married life, and then I can’t stop myself from reading on for the interesting cast of characters (e.g. the police inspector, who reads the classics on the side but maintains his rural tone as he quotes them back and forth with Lord Peter) and the delightfully clever murder. Ray Chandler (if I remember right) was scathingly critical of it, but I think it works perfectly well on the rules of detective fiction.

5. As I say, it’s a ‘cozy’ book; one of those that makes you feel comfortable and at home, because a large part of it is about being comfortable at home. The domestic give-and-take of every day interactions and problems makes for much more interesting reading than one might think, at least when done with flare and good humor.

6. Last night the Northern Lights were out where I live. Fitting, since I’ll be leaving the north soon, and I’d never seen them. The dome of the sky pools over with red and green, as if God had let drops of ink mix in with the blackness. They ripple like lines of colored frost, then slowly spread out to color whole sections of the night sky, while directly overhead is a soft swirl of color. A great, slow, ponderous pageant of dyes and rays.

I honestly hadn’t expected them to be so enormous, so all-encompassing across the sky. I am thankful for the sight with the gentle, humble gratitude one feels in the face of the artistry of nature.

7. Obviously, I missed last night. I chipped away at this post all day, and by the end was too tired to have anything much to say. So, this ends up as a Saturday post.