Towards the end of last week, The Guardian published this gorgeous series of pictures by Barbados artist Annalee Davis, who is currently participating in the re:rural exhibition at Haarlem Artspace, in Derbyshire, UK. Since Derbyshire is shockingly expensive and difficult for me to get to at the best of times, let alone in a pandemic, […]
Annalee Davis and West Indian plants Read More »
I was determined to get my MA dissertation off this week. At 7:00 on Tuesday morning, I became conscious of a genuine, sincere hatred towards my reference list. At 7:50, I submitted the dissertation. It’s a week early. At 8:00, I told my family never to mention the word ‘MA’ in conjunction with the word
I think this counts as week 0 – 27 Sep 2020 Read More »
It’s been a strange week, in which I’ve been torn between the desire to do fun, PhD-related things and the obligation to do tedious finish-work on the MA dissertation. As the week wore on, the amount of MA work that got done slowed to a grinding snail’s pace. I have about five references left to
Dragging myself round the corner – 20 Sep 2020 Read More »
In the first year of my MA studies, one of our lecturers on the topic of ‘Reading for graduate students’ told us to keep a log or journal of everything we read. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Even if we decided it was utterly useless. I didn’t think he was wrong necessarily, but I did think it was impractical.
How to keep a reading log for PhD students Read More »
It’s been a rough week on a personal level, with death, natural(-ish) disaster, and disintegration affecting my circle of family and friends. Meanwhile, COVID19 cases are rising again in the UK, so it looks as if our brief illusion of relative freedom may be over for a while longer. Sometimes stress shuts me down on
The end of the tunnel – 12 Sep 2020 Read More »
Almost unbelievably in this strange year, I set off on Saturday to go somewhere other my house, namely the Lake District for a week’s family holiday. I took my laptop with me, in case I was suddenly possessed of an overwhelming desire to organise my list of primary sources, or something like that. That part
… or getting it out of my system, possibly. I was just sliding some comments on Fúnmi Olúbọ̀dé-Sàwẹ̀’s ‘Strategies of Composition in Yoruba Plant Nomenclature’ into my dissertation, so of course I had to skim through it again. It’s impossible to avoid noticing that Yoruba plant-names give the impression that their inventors were interested in
It might be coincidence. Or it might be that an algorithm somewhere now believes that I’m especially interested in orchids. At any rate, the internet presented me with this: ‘Imagine using liquid water’: why people water their house plants with ice cubes – Often touted as an easy solution to overwatering, the practice of placing
No sooner than you start looking… Read More »
As an appropriate start, I’m pretty excited that the earliest orchid ever discovered so far comes from the West Indies. It’s called Meliorchis caribea, which is a pretty name, and effectively means Caribbean Stingless Bee Orchid. Actually, only the pollen of the orchid was discovered, on a bee which got trapped in amber some 15
A First West Indian Orchid Read More »
My theoretical model for starting a PhD was as follows: having written a proposal and secured an offer and funding, I would wrap up my MA dissertation by April 2020, spend several pleasant months wandering around the planet, and begin in a refreshed and excited state in October. In practice, I probably bit off more
So I’m about to start a PhD, I think – 27 Aug 2020 Read More »
