Thomas's Compleinte

Today's reading for English class was My Compleinte by Thomas Hoccleve, an English Civil servant who lived from 1367-1426. In this work, Thomas talks about his personal experience of recovering from insanity. What drives Thomas's distress is that none of his friends believe his wits have returned. Here's a passage in the original middle English:

"Thus spake manie oone and seide by me:
'Although from him his sicknesse savage
Withdrawen and passed as for a time be,
Resorte it wole, namely in suche age
As he is of,' and thanne my visage
Bigan to glowe for the woo and fere.
Tho wordis, hem vnwar, cam to myn eere."

That is to say:

Thus spoke many people and said about me:
'Although from him his wild sickness
Withdrawn and passed is for a time,
Return it will, especially in such age
As he is now,' and then my face
Began to glow for grief and fear.
Those words, without their knowledge, came to my ear.

How to Mount Plant Specimens

Once a specimen has been pressed and dried and served its time in the -20°C freezer, it's time to go to the mounting board.

1. Place specimen on mounting paper and determine which side should face up. The anatomy of any flowers should be visible, and both sides of the plant's leaves should be shown.

2. Apply glue. Depending on the plant, this can be done directly from the bottle or with a paintbrush. Glue under leaves, stems, and flowers so that the specimen is secure. Put small weights on top of glued spots while glue dries. No glue should be visible in the final product.

3. Stamp the mounting paper and attach labels and a fragment envelope if necessary.

4. Cover the specimen with wax paper and place previously used small weights on top. After 24 hours of waiting, the mounting process will be officially complete.

How to Job

I've gotten a contract to write a story for a game where the protagonist is a clown and his sidekick is an adorable dog. Now, I don't particularly like clowns or dogs, or even have much knowledge of them but a job is a job.

The solution? As always with these writing projects, pretend that I know what I'm doing and just forge ahead.

The Perfect Storm

It's been an interesting week-- the academic stars aligned, as they often do, so that multiple tests, projects, and papers were due in the space of five days.

These weeks are important because, when it gets to the point where there are simply not enough hours in the day for everything, priorities come to the surface and real decisions need to be made about what to give time to. Additionally, time management skills need to be kicked up a notch as every available hour is filled with classes, homework, other work, and precious periods of relaxation.

All in all, then, I'd be happy to have another such week. A very long time from now.

Anglo-Saxon Blogging

Cold clapped the computer keys;
The work-doer still awake,
His eyes ringed and red
Mica he was called; the son of Staffan.
The blog-poster in the pale night,
Feet feeling felt floors,
Lamp-light in the late watches.
His computer was the word-storer;
Eadward was its name, for it had never bluescreened.
Its essays had never been corrupted,
Neither had its hard-drive been cast down.

More Philosophy

In my philosophy class, we've just moved from the Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, et al.) to Descartes, and thank goodness for that. After Aristotle's talk of forms and actualities, Descartes' approach is like a drink of cool water in a pretentious desert.

Descartes' first meditation on philosophy starts with the admittance that all he knows of the outside world is through his senses and that they are not completely accurate. He says, "it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived."

He goes on to admit that it is possible that he is simply dreaming as he writes his philosophy. I should say that I've only gotten a few paragraphs into the reading and may disagree with Descartes later, but I certainly appreciate the disclaimers at the beginning.

Plant-Mounting Haiku

A dry flower rests
Forceps holding twig and leaf
Thin lines of white glue