October 27th, 2025
Garrett Park, Halloween.
October 18th, 2025
Mr UD, this morning, No Kings rally.

October 15th, 2025
Blue ain’t my garden color, but…

… you can’t argue with these containers.

On my morning walk through Garrett Park.

October 13th, 2025
Two of UD’s Garrett Park neighbors…

… chat in front of a labyrinth.

September 2nd, 2025
Dumb luck. Light, everything, turned out to be just right.
August 25th, 2025
Walking the meditation circle.
August 23rd, 2025
‘thesda Notes cont’d: “I’m getting more pissed off the longer I stand here looking at this,” said Heidi Moskowitz, who walked by [John] Bolton’s house with her husband, David, while on a walk with their chihuahua, Peanut.”

My “affluent suburb … [an] idyllic hamlet … used to the trappings of Washington’s elite,” looses its chihuahuas on the FBI as the feds search John Bolton‘s house.

But… “bucolic“?

August 23rd, 2025
Zebra Grass Plumes, Lit Up…

… by early morning sunlight.

People like UD‘s gardens. UD likes UD‘s gardens. But it must be stated for the record that UD‘s zebra grass – eight feet tall and everywhere – is a mite more massive/spreading than she understood when she bought three plants from a little nursery near the Chesapeake Bay a few years ago.

August 22nd, 2025
Latest bull thing in my Ferdinand the Bull garden.

Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand, was the last owner of our house.

August 22nd, 2025
‘thesda Notes

One of UD‘s neighbors is suddenly being visited by lots of friends in armored SUVs. Hm.

August 14th, 2025
Terminix guy explains to Mr UD…

… that the very active paper wasp nest just outside the living room is now gone, after chemical warfare was initiated.

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

UD‘s sister discovered the thing.

August 10th, 2025
One of several homages to Munro Leaf, who lived and died in our house.

He wrote The Story of Ferdinand.

August 1st, 2025
House with matching…

… millipede. As I walked around the garden this morning.

July 30th, 2025
Now is the panicle season…
Sing it.


Now is the panicle season
Humidity is hell
We're sweating well beyond reason
O hell now sing o hell



July 22nd, 2025
Funny, one’s moments of communion with the dead.

Took a Picture This shot of a tall something growing out of one of my pots on the deck, and the name came back HAIRY ASTER.

UD said it aloud and started giggling. And giggling.

She said it aloud, slowly, to Mr UD, who laughed about it for exactly one second and then said to UD, who was still giggling, “It’s not that funny.”

“Herb Rapp lives,” said UD. “If my father were alive, he’d be laughing twice as long as I’m laughing.”

She meant to say, you know, that she got her sense of humor from her father.

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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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