recommendations and quiet

Thanks to everyone who responded to my call for film recommendations. We now have a lovely "must see" list thanks to your suggestions!

Speaking of suggestions, I cannot recommend highly enough the French independent music label Prikosnovenie, which produces "fair and heavenly voices, medieval music, world-tribal and ethnica sounds." If you love the Gothic and/or fantastic, you must listen to some of the Prikosnovenie artists. My personal favorite is the Russian band Caprice, whose albums Elvenmusic, Elvenmusic II: The Evening of Iluvatar's Children, and Elvenmusic III are unique and haunting interpretations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Other bands focus on ancient, medieval, dark, and fantastical sounds.

My classes begin tomorrow. I am teaching three courses.

Two sections of
( First-Year Seminar: Knowing Today By Imagining Tomorrow )

And one section of the upper-division class
( The Trail of Tears )

(Note: The latter will work in harmony with the completion of my forthcoming book The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal for Greenwood Press.)

If I am quiet in the near future, it is simply because classes are getting started, and I'm wrapping up this book manuscript.

I'm wishing everyone a great day...


Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
Leonard Cohen