Notanda

Research Groups

Albert Louis Zambone — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:15:11 +0000

I never liked small groups as a high school student. For one thing, I didn’t like being in such groups because I preferred to be alone and take responsibility for my own actions. I also was rather lazy and cynical, a terrible combination which meant I hated the organized ersatz quality of small-group study and didn’t want to do the work.

So it’s with some trepidation that I’m using small groups this semester. I’m always trying to actively remember my feelings and thoughts as a student…professors often seem to only remember as far back as the first year of grad school. In this case I’ve decided that my reactions in high school were too flawed and twisted to rely upon. I’m taking steps to ensure that those who don’t hold up their end of the bargain are appropriately marked down. And I’m studying some of the lit on using small group methods as a way to overcome the impersonality of large classes (all of mine are from 30 to 50 due to this fall’s greatly increased state college enrollment in Indiana). I’ll be reporting back from time to time in the next few months.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Johnson

Albert Louis Zambone — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:21:20 +0000

I don’t have words eloquent enough to say just what I think of Samuel Johnson, born three hundred years ago today. Instead I will let him speak, in a passage from one of his Rambler essays which spoke to his own profound experience of life, and which is the best possible epigraph for my year thus far:

We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for calamities of life, like necessities of nature, are calls to labour and diligence. When we feel pressure of distress, we are not to conclude that we can only languish under it, any more than when we perceive the pain of thirst, we are to imagine that water is prohibited.

Is it strange, when someone has not walked the earth for 270 years, to nevertheless feel gratitude to them? If it was, I would not be a historian.

The Samuel Johnson tricentennial roundup is not as good as I might hope. A&L Daily, which you might think would have hoovered up a number of articles related to the great man, is without an entry. The closest thing I can find to an appreciation is this review in the Daily Telegraph of David Nokes’ new biography of Johnson…which, I must say, sounds rather disappointing.

The Blog That Goes Bang

Albert Louis Zambone — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:24:22 +0000

First. Ever. CannonBlog.

That I should live to see this wonderful day…

Time Machine Photograph

Albert Louis Zambone — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:53:26 +0000

Has the time-space continuum been breached? Is this a picture of 1776 Philadelphia?

As for the first, I don’t know, but I doubt it; as for the second, here’s the answer.

A definition to start

Albert Louis Zambone — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:22:33 +0000

Notandum. Also pl. notanda. An entry or jotting of something to be specially noted; a memorandum, observation, note.

1715 M. DAVIES Athen. Brit. I. 242 The interludes are composed of divers notanda.