“Gotta go inside, back where it started…”

Once, this blog flourished. Now it languishes, but I’d rather think of it as fallow, resting and regenerating before eventual re-sowing. It’s ready when a project comes along.

Readers, when I had them (cue the folk music: “gone to Substack, everyone…”), told me that I never revealed much personal information on this blog. That won’t change, but I will say this: The writing goes ever on and on. I have a monograph coming out soon: a peer-reviewed annotated translation of a medieval poem. I’m also finishing a draft translation of a second medieval work. A decade ago, I pushed both of these projects into my mental root cellar as my interests changed, but I’ve hauled them back out as a way of bidding adieu, perhaps, to the Middle Ages.

These days I’m focused on the local: To honor a late friend, I’m writing a second book about African American history here in my rural corner of Maryland. I have poems in the works, too, including a short translation from Russian. Meanwhile, 250 pages of notes about American medievalism cry out to become a book. There’s probably still time.

In recent years, I’ve pulled my nose out of books more often than I once did. I help coordinate a food pantry, and I’m on the boards of a startup art center and two local history nonprofits. These three organizations include historic cemeteries, two of which are still active burial sites, and I help make decisions about their maintenance and preservation. It seems I’m meant to have a ground-level relationship with the dead. Literature and history prepared me well.

And what about you? If, by chance, you still stop by to see if this blog is ever updated: How are you?