On 12/18/2013 1:32 AM, Willow Arune wrote:
Well, Francis, it has been a while...

I have just finished my first semester towards an M.A. in History at the University of
Northern British Columbia. We have a nice campus on a hill overlooking PG. Not large,
about 5,000 students. As is usual these days, the sciences take the lion's share of $$
so the History Department is small and the courses rather limited. Still, we are rated
as the second highest small campus in Canada and the profs are wonderful!

I returned to university in January, 2012. While enrolled in a B.A program to give my
classes sums purpose, I needed a third BA like a hole in the head. In all events, a prof
suggested I go the Masters route and I was accepted into the program - one of three. I
just finished the first semester, course work, and managed to retain my A's.

We have one prof who is a medievalist. I took her course in Medieval History, then Spanish
Medieval History. Both ere fascinating. I have also had her for Historiography - 500 and
now 700. A course on Child Birth and Women's Bodies 1500 to 2000 turned out to be a wonderful
course as well. After the Season, Witches in Medieval Times. I am currently debating several
thesis topics, limited by my inability to travel. Happily we do have Barkerville (the gold
rush town of the 1858 - 1875 days) close to us and a few topics in PG seem interesting.
Unfetter by travel, I would b e off to Europe but age and the need to avoid travel does so
limit one.

Heading back to university at 65 (+2 now) has been wonderful. Being an Old Bat amidst all
these younger types is a delight. The changes are amazing - no more index cards in wooden
trays is only one. Computers are everywhere, impossible to be without one. That led to a
change from PCs to Macs. The ability to find research papers from decades ago not only quick
but possible at any time at home - I link the to university computer - is such an improvement.

Books? As before, the local scene is very limited - hypermodern mostly, some modern, nothing
old. I did develop a taste for Louis Auchincloss and had a good hunt on the Internet. While
mysteries remain a major focus, the reading in a Masters program tends to take up many hours.
In addition to Witches, next semester will include a course on Annales, in Historiography.
Yes, the history of the Med in five volumes and more. I did the indexing for my prof's new
book during the summer - the legal cases arising in Barcelona when wives sued to recover their
dowries in the 1500s. Very interesting - and thankfully I did not have to do the translating
from Medieval Latin!

Hope all is well with you...

Willow


Hi Willow,

I did find the post after all. I failed to remember that you posted it
to rec.collecting.books.

On women's history, I have been putting together a small collection of
my own, including:

Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel
Bonnie Anderson, A History of their Own
A History of Women (5 vols), Belknap Press Harvard

In Fraser's book, I think it was, I recalled one girl in medieval times
having been widowed three times by the time she was age eleven. Such
was a female an object of trade for family advancement.

All is well. I started listing books on ABE - just a few so far. And I
have sold one - for $100 - Georgette Heyer, The Corinthian, Dutton 1966,
first reissue in America under that name.

I am doing a lot of reading in psychoanalysis and in the history of
religion, sometimes in both at once. Right now I am deep into Robert
Wright, The Evolution of God (Little Brown 2009). Fascinating to me,
but not a book that a religious person would like at all. I recently
finished Andre Lacocque and Pierre-Emmanual Lacocque, The Jonah Complex,
a psychoanalytic/theological treatise of 150 pages on the 2 1/2 pages of
the text. Actually, very well done.


Francis A. Miniter