Today is our wedding day.

Well, my exams are done for the semester as of 4:50. Lincoln still has one tomorrow, and I still have to enter grades, but starting now, I basically go into wedding gear. :)

Incidentally, the wedding is one week from today.

I’ve spent the last couple days planning for the honeymoon. I’ve had the hotel reservations and tickets for several months, but I wanted to arrange everything into a comprehensive itinerary. When traveling, nothing should be left to chance.

I found a useful website called TripIt. You can forward confirmation e-mails to TripIt, and it automatically extracts the important information into an itinerary. You can also add other plans, notes, documents, and maps and directions from Google Maps. TripIt mixes in weather forecasts too.

I’ve done most of the planning myself, but Abby has edited parts of it. If I were planning a trip with many people, TripIt’s collaboration features would be very useful. You can share itineraries so that everyone can see what’s planned.

Below you can see our itinerary for the honeymoon . . . [Read more »]

This is my desk in Reveal 216.

As far as desks go, it’s not the greatest: what little space it has can hardly be reached, and it’s confined between a dresser and a bunk. But I like my desk, because it’s the place where I’ve done almost all my graduate work. I like the shelves right above the desk, where I can see the most important books all the time. On the bottom left I keep all my reference books: textbooks my dictionaries, two Greek lexicons, and Turabian. On the bottom right I keep all the books I am or should be reading now: textbooks and books for papers and projects. On the top shelf I keep the books I am reading or will read whenever I can: the Durants’ The Story of Civilization, Morison’s Oxford History of the American People, and Schama’s A History of Britain. Also on the top shelf are my parents; Abby is just out of sight to the left.

It’s not much of a desk, but I become attached to the places where I work—first the debate room, then the Vintage office, next my carrel in the library, and now my desk in R216. I wonder which work place is next.

A friend and fellow historian-in-training asked me to suggest some books to read this summer. I drew up this admittedly eclectic list, which you can also download as a PDF. (I think my own summer reading will focus on American religious history, particularly the history of Fundamentalism and Puritanism.)  I suggested that she pick the field that interested her most, read the three books, and then move on to the next field. [Read more »]

My master’s work is at an end. I’ve written the last paper, attended the last class, and received my cap, hood, and master’s gown. The faculty have accepted my thesis; it needs only their signatures. Just three final exams and convocation remain.

I’m anticipating the master’s degree less eagerly than I did my bachelor’s degree. [Read more »]

If I had the technical skill—and the venture capital—I would create a website that aggregated book reviews. Many websites have book reviews, including newspapers, academic journals, Google Books, WorldCat, Amazon, ABE Books, and just about any other book retailer. Someone looking for a review of a book could go to the website, search for the book, and get all the reviews in one place.

The basic feature set would include the following: [Read more »]

Last night I went to the downtown branch of the Greenville County Library, where I saw a wonderful exhibit. The exhibit displayed photographs of one hundred fifty of America’s best buildings, as selected by the American Institute of Architects. The photographs were very large and well displayed. You can see the photographs in an online exhibit.

I found the exhibit particularly fascinating—a ten-minute trip turned into an hour’s visit—because I’ve read recently about City Beautiful, an architectural and city-planning movement from 1893 to about 1911. Many of the buildings featured were created because of City Beautiful, especially the union stations and the city halls. I recognized Daniel Burnham, Cass Gilbert, and Charles McKim among the architects, and I learned that the main branch of the Boston Public Library was designed by McKim in 1895.

There was also a corresponding exhibit of the top ninety-nine building in Greenville County, and visitors could vote for the hundredth building. I was surprised that no buildings from BJU made the cut, since the university’s buildings are examples of a very distinct, if uncommon, architectural style. BJU is very conservative, but its buildings are modern—even modernist.