December 31st, 2025
At his room in Ai Cherubini in Venice…

Mr UD practices reading the poem UD wrote for Peter Galbraith’s birthday party tonight.

December 31st, 2024
Cat sunning outside UD’s kitchen window, Venice
December 30th, 2024
La Kid, Venice, Day One
December 30th, 2024
Mr UD and Sarah’s delight overseen by one of five thousand servers last night at Wisteria, Venice.

A dinner-as-marathon joint where zillions of never before imagined dishes/drinks are whisked about you.

December 27th, 2024
UD’s supposed to have dinner…

...here day after tomorrow. Will blog about it.

**********************

Also in the ordine del giorno – A second round of warhorses at La Fenice. Far as UD can tell, it’s exactly the same concert we went to in Venice last year: First half, rousing orchestral warhorses. Second, rousing vocal. Loved all of it – the best part was watching the local audience loving it.

We all rise for Libiamo at the end. SUPER rousing. This year, I’ll remember to bring the lyrics, so I can sing along.

January 1st, 2024
Is UD eating well in Venice?

Yes.

January 1st, 2024
Firemen disembark in front of UD’s apartment…

… to prepare for New Year’s fireworks.

December 31st, 2023
Mr UD, last night, at …

La Fenice, for a thrilling New Year concert featuring all the beloved Italian operatic standards belted out to a very emotional local audience. Of course we ended with Libiamo. Tonight we dangle our feet over one of the canals and watch fireworks.

December 29th, 2023
On UD’s flight to Venice…

… a brilliant view of the Alps.

December 31st, 2022
New Year’s, Venice.
La Kid recorded this, with her feet dangling from a bridge over the Grand Canal.
December 29th, 2022
Mr UD enters Venice.

That’s his bald head. Video taken by La Kid. UD stayed home with bronchitis.

October 31st, 2022
UD will be in Venice – Italy – in a few weeks…

… and she will be sure to bring rain boots.

More pix here.

UD REVIEWED

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

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