Not much new

I have things flitting about in my head, but in an attempt to stay focused on diss writing instead of blogging, I'm going to spout them as a list rather than make an effort to put together a coherent post:

1. It's difficult not to look at the Catholic Church and not see a long regressive decline beginning in, I don't know, 1300? 500 years ago, it was indulgences, simony, and nepotism; now it's the utter moral bankruptcy revealed by case after case of sexual abuse and decades of cover-ups. I'm as skeptical as the next grad-traind historian of great progressive or regressive narratives, but I suspect that in the next 30 years there will be an upswing in Catholic history that attempts to explain the present state of the Roman Church.*

2. It's spring, which means it's still cold and rainy. Or at least this week it's cold and rainy. Sunday it was in the 70s and I put away all my winter stuff. This week I haven't spent a day in my office w/o a jacket, long sleeves, sweater and scarf.

3. An advantage to cold and rainy is that it means snow in Tahoe ( which is where L and I snuck away to for a romantical 27 hr hit and run ski trip).

4. I like weddings. Not necessarily the wedding = prom thing, or the sometimes really bad music you get stuck listening to, or the Chicken Dance (shudder), but actually bearing witness to two people who love each other dearly promising to do so in front of their friends and family. A good friend let me be part of her very intimate wedding this past weekend and I found my face shaking b/c I was smiling so much. What can I say, I'm a sucker for love and the fools crazy enough to decide to throw in with one person for the long haul.

*One of which will be fabulous work my a colleague here, although her research is more on nuns and Special Friends - in the homosocial and fully consensual sort of way.