Icon was as close as I could get.

You know you're sick when you're willing to head to the grocery store at 2 PM on a Friday afternoon, the day before snow is called for*, over a route which requires negotiating a giant clusterfrak of a road closure, all in order to get kleenex.

*

I remembered today why I really like working at the scholarly journal I help edit. We're currently reading through the first round of proofs, and I got to read a fabulous article about the "secular faith" in fictional worlds and narratives of history in Braudel, Auerbach, and Tolkien. On some level, this is basically what I always end up writing about in my own scholarship, from the thesis to the Millay paper of late. (Well, it helps that Braudel's ideas and postcolonial theory are fairly incestuous, and...apparently I've fallen by default into postcolonial scholarship. Don't look at me; I just wanted to write about Irish stuff, and that's where I've landed.)

Anyway, I almost certainly would never have read this on my own, but I'm glad I've read it (and fixed its typos and formatting errors). :)


* For those not from the south, any time snow is forecast, everyone down here--and I do mean everyone--rushes out to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk. It's a ritual akin in ubiquity to, I dunno, high school graduation or something, despite the fact that being truly snowbound around here happens maybe once every couple decades.