Blogged Down

I'm a bit bogged down now--too many committee meetings, not much work on the project.

I have time every morning, and I'm going to start trying to spend some time on this project in the morning before I get to the office. I'd like to sit in my easychair and work on it, but my laptop is just TOO BIG. Silly me, I wanted the big screen Dell, and its a great computer, but not portable enough to comfortably use on my lap.

I might go to E-bay and see if I can find a used NEO, a portable word processor that runs on AA batteries. It's very portable, cheap, and has a great keyboard.

I also added a link to Malissa's blog today.

Nocturns

Nocturns is the name for the canonical hours devoted to nighttime prayer. While the evolution of the canonical hours is a bit confusing, it appears that Nocturns, or nighttime prayer was practiced primarily in monasteries, and so was joined with the more established Matins (or Lauds)—morning prayer—which was practiced throughout Christendom. Today, the term refers to the four prayers said in the night: Vespers, or evening prayer; Compline, or the prayer before sleep; Midnight Office, which in modern practice occurs just before Matins, was generally a private practice, which often consisted of reciting Psalm 118. A completely different Nocturn is the Vigil, which has come to refer to an entire night spent in prayer—a special event, often preceding a feast day. Traditionally, the division of Matins into three nocturns was seen as replicating the three nighttime watches, or vigils, of the guards who stood watch as the early Christians met at night to avoid persecution.

In practice, what I am talking about then as the start of the day, is the remnant of that Midnight Office. It is an invitatory meditation, a preparation for the day which will follow. It is a meditation marked by penitence and hope.

While this Invitatory Prayer varies among the various Orthodox and Catholic practices, and varies according to the day of the week and the special feast days. In its simplest, weekday form, the office consists of reading Psalm 118, the longest Psalm in the Vulgate, and the chanting of the Troparia of the Bridegroom, or the Bridegroom’s Prayer, derived from Matthew 25:6 (KJV):
"And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."

Remembering Bobby

Today I learned of the death of Bobby Fischer, arguably the greatest chess player who ever lived. When I was in my teens, in the 1970s, Fischer was a hero of mine. This young man, who took the world by storm when he earned the title of International Grandmaster in 1958, at the age of 15, was the first Western player to seriously challenge the hegemony of the Soviet (now Russian) Chess machine has dominated the game since World War II. His victory over Boris Spaasky in their 1972 World Championship match made him a hero in the eyes of many Americans, and was seen by many as an American victory over its Cold-War opponent.

Later, Fischer seemed to go astray. He never defended his world championship. His paranoia about the Soviet chess machine became an obsession, and that obsession spread to distrust of the world chess federation and eventually the US chess federation and even the American government. He left the US, played a match against Spaasky in Yugoslavia in violation of a US embargo against the Milosevic regime, and seemed to burn his bridges to America with anti-American comments. He lived in Japan for several years, and occasionally would call into a Phillipine's radio program in which he would make outrageous anti-American and anti-Semitic comments. After his US Passport was revoked, he was jailed in Japan until Iceland granted him citizenship.

A sad ending for such a brilliant young man.

Chess fans didn't even realize he was sick before they learned of his death.

Blogging for Research: Redux

Back to the blog. I can't believe it's been November since I last blogged, the end of the Business Writing class.

This semester, I'm back to teaching the Research Methods class. Many of my students will be keeping research notebooks on their research subject, but some will choose to use a blog.

I will be researching alongside my students, on a subject I'm interested in--learning about medieval monastic books, commonly called "A Book of Hours." That will be th subject of this blog.