
Diurnal reassurance, at once placid and thundering.
From our second floor balcony, 7:25 AM, Rehoboth Beach, DE.

Diurnal reassurance, at once placid and thundering.
From our second floor balcony, 7:25 AM, Rehoboth Beach, DE.
The main thing to convey is the silver blue of the sand; but all elements – all – shone with overwhelming clarity.
Words like pellucid, electrical. Gulls cut hard against the ultramarine. You could feel the sunlight on your back at four pm in November.
The unseasonable. The uncanny. The great calm of the ocean summoned a mirage of whales. The great sweep of beach and water.
And so your psyche sought the same level, the same evenness of temper; and the land and seascape was so overwhelming
That it wasn’t serenity but absence: The surrender of your turbulence to an airtight argument.

And UD’s little beachstone collection. Breakfast on the balcony – from the iconic Papillon! – as a thunderstorm readies itself.
Sun floods the room at six
Two steps to the balcony to watch
Tai chi social media bagpipe cigar
Distant gaze usual metaphysical confusion
Boardwalk stroll for latte and scone
Superhearty good mornings from fellow oldies
Translation: GRATEFUL LIKE HELL I'M HERE
Here meaning the world rather than
Whatever's behind the metaphysical curtain
Latte machine broken so cafe person
Climbs almost to the top of it while cafe people
On the ground make inadequate latte after latte
All apologize I'm fine take your time
Boardwalk stroll back to the balcony
More greetings from gratefuls
And now: Grateful metaphysical breakfast

A sign in Rehoboth Beach. Scathing Online Schoolmarm remains fascinated by the idiotic things people do with quotation marks.
Blogging continues.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte