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The Ariel Thread

I woke up with O Bid Your Faithful Ariel Fly singing in my head. As I got ready to leave for campus, I tried singing a bit of it, but I find it pretty unsingable (listen to the YouTube I just linked to and you’ll see why).

Thinking about Thomas Linley, its composer, always depresses me a bit – he was only twenty-two when he died, in a boating accident.

Admittedly this happened over two hundred years ago, but it still saddens me as I try to sing the thing. As I try to sing the thing, I tell myself that I should really try hard to sing it, I shouldn’t stop singing when the notes go hurling themselves into the ether, because Linley deserves it, it’s an homage to him, a remembrance… But I really cannot sing this song.

This afternoon, on campus, I joined my daughter outside for a chat; and as I approached her, I saw that she was reading The Tempest, which struck me as an odd coincidence, since I’d been thinking about – and singing about – Ariel on and off all day.

Did I eerily intuit what La Kid would be reading? Did I foresee Ariel?

Then I remembered that the last email I read before I went to bed last night was from Ariel Feldman, a student in my American Poetry course. It was Feldman, not Soltan, who’d played with my head, threading Ariels through my subconscious until when morning broke I was singing Linley.

Margaret Soltan, April 19, 2012 6:18PM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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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

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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

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Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

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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

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Money Law

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Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

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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.
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
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