The Prized Treasures

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  “Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? . . . .   The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.” Jerome K. Jerome, “T...

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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