Pixies with Robert Plant

This was an odd double bill as most of the crowd was unaware of who the Pixies are, even though they probably had as much influence on modern rock music as Led Zeppelin did.

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Plant was good. He re-imagined the Zeppelin songs which is admirable. I give him credit for still turning out new music and not turning into a parody of his old self like the Rolling Stones.

My new Toy

I got a FitBit Surge as a Father's Day present, which I am really enjoying. It tracks all activity throughout the day, but I especially like using it as I run. I was never much into monitoring my pace during a run so don't use it for that. But I like looking when I am finished.  It  records the route with its GPS so I can look at  all of the data points below at specific points in the route.

Merle Haggard

He missed some of my favorites like I Take a Lot of Pride in What I am, Always Wanting You and I am a Lonesome Fugitive. Still a very good show by an artist on my list of people I needed to see before they die.

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What a relief!

Done and submitted. 35 total pages. Probably half of that if I stripped out the quotes. It was a few days late but thankfully, I had a very understanding professor.

The request to change grade from IN to A for student  for course 56:512:698:01(IND STUDY HISTORY), Spring 2015, has been approved.

My Bank of the United States Collection

24 Titles so far: Bank of the United States Collection

AHHHH!

What a chore this project has been! Reading through 400 pages of congressional testimony from 1811 and trying to extract the essence of the arguments is very challenging. I have been spending most of my non-working hours trying to complete it with only sleep and meal breaks. (A little bit of TV too: Wolf Hall, Veep and Silicon Valley when I need respite.)  My goal is done by May 18th.

Researching digitally

I feel a little lazy but I am doing much of my research for a project on the Bank of the United States by searching digitized libraries like the Hathi Trust and America's Historical Newspapers. It is amazing that I can see a book referenced and just search Hathi Trust to find a copy from a university library, which Google has digitized. My advisor says there is a disadvantage to doing a key word in a newspapers database in that you miss the historical context you'd get by paging through a bound volume or scrolling on microfilm. That is true I think that you can also find material you might have missed otherwise as you are casting the net wider than you would by sitting in the library stacks. Also, you can still read the rest of the newspaper for the context if you find something of interest by a key word search.