Victor who now?

I have never been a particularly patient reader of history; anything less than the most engaging narrative arc and I completely wilt. And of course, historians would probably argue I should be wary of getting drawn in by such compelling stories, keeping in mind their authors.

But I want to be knowledgeable about history. What I manage to consume and retain always fascinates me, and the human details often surprise me.

So I was quite pleased to find (via Language Log) this Languagehat notice of an upcoming text by one of their commenters called The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Central Europe: 19th and 20th Centuries. From the table of contents and the excerpts Languagehat presents, this seems like an ideal source for me to pick up the recent, fairly complicated, political history of Slovakia and its neighbors by relating it to a field I'm much better with.

Of course, it's a college textbook, so it runs about $175 on Amazon on sale, so I'll have to settle for the 60 page excerpt available online. And, bringing this to my attention has earned Languagehat an overdue place on my RSS subscriptions. (If you'd care to purchase a copy of the book for me, I'd be happy to award you your own place on that list as well!)

An Old Testament scholar, a former bishop and Ben Franklin walk into a bar...

Dobrý deň!

So, Tuesday past I got the big news that I'm being offered a position teaching English at the Lyceum in Bratislava while Annie's doing her internship next academic year.  As Annie pointed out (to assuage my anxiety before the interview), I'd be going with her no matter what: one of the benefits of her Horizons internship.  So this is icing.  

While there is some inherent appeal to bumming around Slovakia for a year left to my own devices, I'm just not that footloose, particularly under the weight of American-level credit card debt.  Seriously, though, the financial benefits are secondary - this will be a great opportunity to get teaching experience and take advantage of a number of my interests, learn Slovak, talk with strangers and have a great adventure with my wife.  

It works nicely for ELCA Global Mission, too, who are getting a great BOGO deal.  Actually, that was a bit of a worry for me, that I might get the job out of convenience since I was tagging along anyway.  I think the whole interview / “mutual discernment” process Monday in Chicago allayed those concerns for all involved.  I left with a lot of practical advice from people who've served in this same role, feeling positive that I'd gotten the position and, most of all, very confident in my ability to succeed in it.  And with that, the sky opened and hell froze over.  Well, a late April snowstorm is close enough.  (I'm afraid my camera phone didn't actually pick up any snow in this shot, but you trust me, right?)

I'm leaving out the most important part of the story of Super Tuesday, if I may coin that phrase:  every Philadelphian's dream, dinner with Ben Franklin.  Tuesday night we had dinner with Anne's Old Testament professor and his wife, who are long friends of the family and in town just for the semester. Moments into dinner, and who should sit at the table next to ours but Rev. Mike Merkel, Anne's former boss at Bethesda Lutheran in New Haven, and his wife. Small world, right? Well, it was convocation day at the seminary, and we hadn't actually wandered that far off the path; McMenamin's Tavern, right across the street, is practically the official pub of LTSP.

And, as it turns out, a cozy and appropriate place to meet and share a meal with Ben Franklin, which was the Merkels' intention - to catch up with an old neighbor, who is a Franklin scholar and portrayer. Now, this isn't Philadelphia's perennial and pre-eminent Ben Franklin, Ralph Archibold; Bill Ochester is the young Elvis of Philly's Franklins. He portrayed middle-aged Ben for the tercentenary birthday celebration, and (I think) was the judge for Bobby Flay's cheesesteak throwdown. We talked a little Ben (I drew admirably on Philadelphia's genetic memory of the man) and he gave me his cool colonial printing-press style business card.

AM Renaissance?

I should be getting ahead in Greek so I can keep up with Annie... third day and I'm already pruning some of the homework exercises to get to bed at a reasonable hour. This is an intense course. I've managed to tackle some of the vagaries of typesetting ancient greek with the babel and teubner LaTeX packages, though.

Saw an interesting ad on a SEPTA bus the other day. It seems we've got a new alt. rock radio station: WHAT - Skin Radio. Basically trying to claim the mantle of WDRE, Philly's late, great alternative station. XPN, our college rock & singer/song-writer public station has been doing this lately, too, with their new Y-Rock programming. What's interesting about this newcomer, though, is their broadcast frequency: 1340 AM.

AM radio -- that's pretty alternative these days.

At first blush, this reminds me of when I was in high school and thought myself so frugal for blowing all my deli money on cassettes instead of cds. Sure, Philly's FM dial is pretty crowded, but is this really the best long-term strategy? Actually, WHAT's making a pretty smart gamble. AM can broadcast digital signals for HD radios, which, at a theoretical 36kb/s is supposedly equivalent to current FM quality. And if car manufacturers* pick up HD, adoption should be faster than the subscription-based satellite radio has been. I'm guessing we might even see some AM spectrum speculation if HD radio starts to gain momentum.

*Here I'm assuming that most radio consumption takes place in cars, where there's far less media competition than elsewhere. Annie and I almost always have NPR on at home, but even public radio, with its rabid fan-base, refers to their best pieces as “driveway moments,” acknowledging that their audience is captivated in more ways than one.