There's Coffee in the Pot

To the tune of Whiskey in the Jar

As my dreams were roaming over
The mountains of the morning
I heard something wake me and
It was a toddler crying

So I outs of my warm bed
For to see what's the matter
And I said lets get going
For you are an early riser

And it wack for the daddy oh (3x)
There's Coffee in the Pot

Is that the new three or the old three?

During the blog hiatus I was working on chapter two of five, which had a serious logical problem in it. The first half was tight, well argued, and compelling. It told an important story and came to a resounding finish. On about page 35. The second half was no good at all.

So, I took the metaphorical cleaver to chapter two of five, and suddenly found that I had completed chapter two of six, and that chapter three of six now needed work. That new chapter then got expanded and rearranged, and then sent to my advisor earlier this month.

He does not like it - it has some clever ideas but the transitions need to exist and I need to explain what I am doing before I go off to be clever. So, I am working on a precis of the chapter, boiling about 55 pages down into about six paragraphs (intro, conclusion, 4 body paragraphs for the 4 sections of the argument.)

Not surprising, it takes a lot of thinking. And, not surprisingly, I find myself doing almost anything rather than do that hard work. I am not yet at the point of polishing the copper cookware as a way to avoid writing. I don't think I will get that far. But I do need to figure out my plans. More below the line.

Chapter 3 of six has four major sections. There is a discussion of religious groups in the two decades after 1800; a discussion of Thomas Jefferson, The Danbury Baptists, and Jefferson's invocation of geography instead of Providence; the story of the sabbath mails controversy of 1810-1817; and a look at James Madison, the midwestern constitutions written between 1810 and 1819, and James Monroe's Burkean civil religion where he invoked the founders and the Constitution to fight sectional splintering during and after the Missouri crisis.

The challenge is to make sure that I have a clear argument for each section, and then to tie the four sub-arguments together into a single argument about the changing nature of American civil religion between 1801 and 1820.

And so to think.

When it rains it pours

When it rains, it pours.

I just got a phone interview for a small college in the rural midwest. It is worth looking into - if they can find J a job within commuting distance we would probably move there. I am just amused because one of their preferred dates for phone interviews is my start date for the high school design gig.

And back to writing. See next (above) post where I will hash out what I am trying to do.

New Gig

Well, I am a mite happy.

I interviewed yesterday and walked out with a gig working on ( hmm, how to say this without violating any confidences ) teaching materials for high school students. I have 2 weeks that should turn into 6 weeks and will then likely become a full year of interesting, annoying, work that will set me up for the alternate career path.

And so to walk the dog on a bitter cold day. Well, bitter cold for Joisey. There are places where 25 dgress f and windy would be considered time to take out the lawn chairs.

Toddler Blues

With apologies to the Rolling Stones

You can't always get what you want
No you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You just might find
You get what you asked for

We're Back

We are back.

I got MT 3.2 installed and then got a very odd posting bug resolved.

Now I have to get back into the habit of posting everyday. I also have to figure out why the comment spammers were creating error logs that were filling my (expensive and limited) web space.

But that is a later debugging session.

EDIT - main index is STILL not building correctly.

Did this fix it?
YES

Now I just have to write new comment templates.

Not Dead Yet

Just a quick note to say that while this has not been updated in a while, the delay is because I have not made the time to reinstall a clean version of MT, with a different arrangement for handling comments.