shaky town

i'm glad i voted for, and got to work with amanda, and i'm especially glad that we're past politics now. not to say that there's no more politics, but we discuss politics merely because it's what we do, so it comes up, amongst other things. it's not why we talk, though. we talk because we are friends.

i'm all done with the habsburgs and ottomans for now, which will allow me to stop feeling guilty about reading books other than dominic lieven's empire. this course has been a good reintroduction to macrohistory for me. we did 500 years of the ottoman empire in two weeks. after so many case studies of sointula and wallhachin, i thought i'd lost my taste for the overarching narrative, but after a natural adjustment period i found it quite exciting. the desnity of the texts was difficult, but i synthesize points and arguments well, and had little trouble. i'd be happy to take another course, perhaps a 300-level russian history, with ilya again; with a smaller class, i imagine he'd be quite a joy to learn from. this fits well with my continuing interest in the central asian republics. in the news: uzbekistan has evicted the united states from a key air base. it's not unlike nanoose bay, but there's a lot more at stake, and islam karimov is no glen clark. dominic lieven makes the important point that the soviet union collapsed a mere 14 years ago. 14 years from the fall of the habsburg dynasty, the world was still six years away from understanding the consequences of an eatern european power vacuum. it took until the 1990s for the very worst nation-building impulses of the post-ottoman balkan states to manifest themselves. in other words, it is far too soon to tell what patterns will play out following the soviet union's collapse.

while reading empire on monday, i listened to
joe jackson, big world (1986)
morrissey, viva hate (1988)
pat metheny and lyle mays, as falls wichita, so falls wichita falls (1981)
stina nordenstam, and she closed her eyes (1994)
steely dan, countdown to ecstasy (1973)
damon and naomi, playback singers (1998)
tanya donelly, beautysleep (2002)

i pulled out my vinyl last night, and have listened to
martha and the muffins, this is the ice age (1983)
john barry, the great movie sounds of... (1960something)
neil young, everybody knows this is nowhere (1967)
jackson browne, running on empty (1977)
suzanne vega, days of open hand (1990)

if you know and/or care about any of these records, it's always good to let me know.

listening to the suzanne vega is quite a trip; it was one of my very favourite albums from 1997-1999 or so. checking her website now, though, it seems that she continues to tour europe every summer, with the occasional american festival date, with not a new song to be found. maybe the luka royalties finally hit a critical mass, and she can get along on investments for the rest of her days. otherwise, i'd be very happy to have a new album.

i'll be reading alice munro's the progress of love now, and will have to decide soon whether to go for novels or political autobiographies until september begins. last august i read don delillo's underworld, and it made my summer. the first section, pafko at the wall, made me so ecstatic that i was afraid to read the rest for several weeks, for fear that it wouldn't measure up to such a grand stage-setting. it didn't measure up, but then nothing could have. i'm fighting the impulse to read it again. i'll probably reread white noise instead, because they'll be filming it soon, and i read it a long time ago, before i had made my peace with pop culture. i bet my perspective will change.