← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

UD Under Curfew

A quiet city comes to life ten floors down from my room at the Hotel Monaco. My early morning view’s a mad swirl of architectural style and history: domed and steepled churches, repurposed factories, red brick row houses, skyscrapers.

Very quiet down there. A few buses. A few people. No need for helicopters to buzz a sleeping city.

Our wedding party was a little late breaking up; by the time an army attorney defending the 9/11 plotters dropped her at her hotel (did UD remember they were at Guantanamo awaiting a perennially delayed trial? she did not.), it was 10:30 (curfew’s at ten). UD crossed the threshold to her hotel without incident.

Baltimore’s unfazed, far as I can tell, by recent events. The restaurant where we had post-ceremony drinks, toasts, and insane amounts of food (standout dish: a dessert plank – a narrow piece of wood, practically the length of the table, on which perched a massive array of sweets – marmalade upside down cake, maple pudding, pecan pie) was packed.

I sat next to the instaminister (apparently you fill out a simple online form) who officiated at the event – a politician of local renown named Maggie McIntosh. She and her wife, whose Baltimore house is just down the street from John Waters’ place, invited UD to their Lewes house – a renovated church (having checked it out online before the wedding, UD spent some time last night attempting to wangle just such an invitation).

And what of UD‘s plans for today? I need to get back to DC pretty soon – but it occurs to me that this is probably just the morning to see – finally – the National Aquarium (half-price admission!)

Margaret Soltan, May 1, 2015 6:12AM
Posted in: snapshots from home

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=48289

Comment on this Entry

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

Archives

Categories