Tourist Miscellany #1
Note to Readers
First of all, I’m sorry that the posts have been once a week for some weeks now. Didn’t really intend it that way, and it’s less than I have Promised My Subscribers. I sympathize with anyone who has canceled their paid subscription and I especially appreciate those who haven’t.
Now that the semester is upon me and I am forced to overcome the lassitude that struck me this summer, I will try to get back on the stick with twice-weekly or even thrice-weekly posts. But this means that what I send out will sometimes be a little more partial and piecemeal. (Sometimes in the Sunday posts I can hear myself trying to summarize and complete everything I’ve already said with some final orchestra-swelling sentence and I think “Ugh,” even if I agree with what I’m saying.) It’ll be more like I have a bunch of seedlings that I’ve planted in styrofoam cups and placed them near the window because it’s February and I can’t plant ‘em yet, and some of them are already sprouting, and that’s cool to watch, and here are the ones that are already starting to look like something.
So from here on, some installments of the newsletter will begin somewhere and end somewhere and complete a thought. Others—like this one—will be more like a magazine with briefer items and scattered thoughts.
Some possible futures for English departments
A guy started a potentially fun conversation on Twitter early this week by asking the following question: