October 26th, 2024
You weren’t expecting UD to do this meditation garden thing all by herself, were you?

Xavier the Savior and his crew are prepping the soil, getting rid of stumps and bricks, finishing the path around the garden, and taking down some dead trees. Tomorrow, lots of red blooming spring bulbs go in, etc.

October 23rd, 2024
What’s left over after…

… an owl’s attack on a rabbit in UD‘s backyard. Or a cat’s attack

on a bird. Many predators visit UD’s land.

October 20th, 2024
La Kid…

… goes to Poland this week.

October 19th, 2024
First visit of the day to UD’s meditation garden.

Garden, currently being guarded, is in the background.

October 17th, 2024
UD makes a meditation garden.

Stage One: Clear a biggish circular area at the very top of our property. Decades of twigs, vines, trash trees, and odd elements (some previous owner lay down a small square outlined in bricks) had to be raked and lopped through, leaving a well-established vinca/English ivy ground cover. A rough circular dirt path already sort of exists; parts of it also need to be cleared.

Happy Soldier Mr UD carries a red rake full of leaves away from the garden (on the left).

Dog poses in the garden-to-be, amid stumps and bricks.

This stage will continue for awhile. In line with the garden’s purpose, I listen to Life Wisdom (Alan Watts, Carl Jung, the Stoics, others) while I work. One immediate problem: They mainly disagree with each other.

I’m thinking a lot about elements. A fountain definitely appeals. A fire pit. Solar lamps. Aromatic plants. Grasses for motion… Yet the place is pretty shady, closely circled by very big old trees…

October 14th, 2024
Katydid on my Screen.
October 10th, 2024
UD’s Metal Pumpkins

Taken at six AM this morning in my front yard.

October 7th, 2024
Lepiota?

Anyway, after all the rain, a bunch of them

are growing in one of my containers.

October 3rd, 2024
Overlapping Magisteria

Witch, pumpkin, and ghost, all in one. On our afternoon walk.

September 25th, 2024
Nobody does front yard spider webs like UD.

I mean, it’s natural. A spider (see it in the middle at the top?) somehow fashioned a web — from my nearby dogwood? from the electrical wires? — seemingly in midair.

September 21st, 2024
La Kid Turns 34
September 14th, 2024
UD lives in the thirteenth richest place in the second richest state in America.

It’s all right here.

And yet SOOOO rich is the United States – there’s so much incredible (often unconscionable, IMHO) wealth in private hands – that the numbers somehow, amazingly, fail to impress.

***********

UD thanks her sister.

September 11th, 2024
Taylor Swift endorses…

… Whoops — that’s La Kid.

September 8th, 2024
La Kid, chic as usual…

… in Takoma Park, Md., on this absolutely beautiful day.

August 24th, 2024
Great Gray Slug

On UD’s driveway this morning.

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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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