Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

Can't Believe It

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Whelp, in three days I will submit a draft of one chapter of my dissertation to my professor. To date, I am approximately 2/3 through writing this one chapter. With Christmas practice, concerts, work, and other end-of-semester activities, it's becoming a wild ride. The chapter being written is actually Chapter 2, which covers precedent research on my topic. In other words, I am merely telling the story of the research I've done so far. In short, I am suffering from information overload and not enough time in the day.  But it's getting done.

The difficult part of all this is that, at this point, everything is a draft, so I'll be living in revision-land for the next couple of years. Each consecutive course adds another chapter into my dissertation, and so the revisions will just grow and grow! But that's part of the process. And I'm loving it.

Here's something I'm watching listening to while writing. Please enjoy this! 

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