Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 12
October 29, 2011
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-30
Just finished watching pilot episode of "Once Upon a Time." Very entertaining. What can I say, I'm a sucker for backstory. #
Just killed a massive cockroach with the Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Thanks, Penguin Classics. #
Will be interesting to see if this takes off: Coming Soon! – WAE Network : http://t.co/uRP7XF0K @WAENET #
Heading out to school the horses at dawn. Which would be more picturesque if it weren't quite so pitch black. #
Frost warnings!!! #
Have picked about twenty pounds of basil out of the fall garden to save it from the frost; making lots and lots and lots of pesto tonight. #
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Strong teeth, those.
Polishing up a couple of early chapters in Volume 3 of the History of the World, I ran across one of my favorite minor historical characters. You can't get much more colorfully off-the-wall than Fulk the Black–the patriarch of the future Plantaganet line of English kings, no less.
Western Francia, like Germany, was a fragment of Charlemagne's defunct eighth-century empire; unlike Germany, which had begun its journey towards a national identity under the guidance of Henry the Fowler in 919, Western Francia was a patchwork. Only the ring of territories right around Paris was known as France; the rest of Western Francia was governed by local noblemen, held loosely together by personal oaths of loyalty to the Capetian king.
The Count of Anjou was one of these noblemen: loyal in theory to the French throne, but a king in his own lands in all but name. He had inherited a massive estate that bordered Henry I's Norman lands on one side, and the King of France's royal holdings on the other. His power was largely due to the efforts of his great-grandfather Fulk the Black, a psychotically warlike aristocrat who had burned his wife, in her wedding dress, at the stake for adultery; fought a vicious war against his own son and then forced the defeated youth to put on a bridle and saddle and crawl on the ground in humiliation; and pillaged and robbed the surrounding lands at will. Fearing a justly-deserved hell, he had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in his old age, where he was rumored to have bitten off a piece of stone from the Holy Sepulchre with his own teeth so that he would have a relic to bring home.
Ow.
October 27, 2011
Also, we're looking for students who can spell
Interesting piece here from a Harvard dean about what elite colleges are looking for.
I only have one question…
College counselors and admissions directors crowded a hotel conference room on Thursday afternoon, many sitting on the floor for want of enough chairs, as William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, joined in a discussion on "The Ideal High School Graduate"…
Mr. Fitzsimmons called successful applicants to Harvard "good all-arounders – academically, extracirricularly and personally," and he stressed the importance of demonstrating humanity and three-dimensionality in one's college application. "I want to know, what is it this person does beside chew gum and produce good grades or scores?"
Was it Mr. Fitzsimmons or the New York Times that couldn't spell "extracurricular"?
October 22, 2011
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-23
This morning, making plans to rescue a couple of almost-historic farm buildings before they crumble into the woods: roof, paint, shore up. #
Stuck on the very last paragraph of a book review. The right words are evading me. (Maybe they're hiding in this tweet.) #
Just finished eleventh-birthday party. Many small girls. Much shrieking. Cupcake-decorating. Frosting. So, so much frosting. #
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October 15, 2011
October 8, 2011
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-09
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September 17, 2011
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-09-18
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September 11, 2011
Time for a creativity break…
Gentle Readers, if there is ever going to be a finished History of the Renaissance World, I need to concentrate on history and nothing else…at least long enough to get a feel for the sweep of the whole thing. Thirty days might not be quite enough, but it will help. So I'm taking a blog/Twitter/Facebook/Google+ break until October 12. Check back in then…and see how far I've gotten!
September 10, 2011
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-09-11
Day Twelve w/out power at Peace Hill Press office: Dominion threw everything they had at the Irene emergency, but follow-up is lousy. #
Our road survived Irene, but the deluge last night almost took it out; thought it would collapse this morning when I drove across it. #
Took Son #1 to see Contagion last night. A very sedate and restrained apocalypse. #
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September 4, 2011
Entertainment from Amazon.com
Whatever you think of Amazon (it's saving the midlist novel and destroying the independent bookseller…making the bookstore irrelevant and rescuing book-deprived buyers in rural America…bringing on the apocalypse and allowing readers to find obscure books that would otherwise die), it certainly provides food for thought for us writers.
Here's the most recent "whoa!" moment, provided to me by Amazon…when I signed on, I got one of those "recommendation" pages. And here it is. Look at the Story of the World, Volume 2…and the other titles viewed along with it.
Either people are using Volume 2 of the Story of the World for a slightly older audience than I'd intended…or there's a subtext I'm not aware of.
Hmmm….
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