An anniversary

One month ago today I officially contracted Type A Influenza with Executive Option Package. And I still haven't completely overcome it, due partly to my own foolishness. I should have just crawled into bed for the first week of March, but, no, I had to be the hero professor. With a Tuesday-Thursday teaching schedule this semester, I felt I could not afford to cancel more than one day of classes, lest my students, particularly in rhetoric, fall too far behind. (The advanced writing classes can run on autopilot for a little bit longer, but they too require guidance.) So I kept stumbling in, feverish and croaking. What a mistake. And each weekend I would think, "This weekend I will sleep it off," and I'd feel a little better, but not really cured.

Cloudy and snowy weather has not helped either, even while M. and I both hoped for a few days of "false spring" to bake us in the sun.

One piece of good news—my paper, "Flying Ointments and the Discourse of Secrecy in Contemporary Wicca" was accepted for the first Pagan Studies session ever at the American Academy of Religion meeting next November. From the proposal, in which I attempt to channel a proper academic voice:

My proposed paper will examine various uses to which discourse about Witchcraft, both historical and contemporary Pagan varieties, uses the topic of psychotropic "flying ointment" as rhetorical trope, as evidence for claims of ethnic shamanism, and most importantly, as an ingredient in a discourse of secrecy.

My history-of-American Paganism book continues its own Journey to the (Editorial) Underworld at AltaMira Press. Evidently Persephone isn't finished with it yet. Perhaps that is just as well; I have not had the energy to deal with anyway.