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#GTDNovember

If you’re a writer, there might be a hashtag guiding your work in November. Quite a lot of people participate in #NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, an exercise that pushes writers to hunker down and produce a draft of their novel in just 30 days. I know many participants in #AcWriMo, or Academic Writing…
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Weekly Wanderings: Not a Kid Anymore Edition

▪ I turned 34 in the middle of October, meaning that I’m now in the last year of ever qualifying for any “____ under 35” lists. Getting older doesn’t, in and of itself, bother me, although I have been having a few more “Whoa, [incredibly successful person] is only X years old, what have I…
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Weekly Wanderings: Nittany Lions Edition

▪ I spent last Tuesday and Wednesday visiting Penn State, where history professors David Atwill and Kate Merkel-Hess (a fellow UCI History graduate) had invited me to talk with their grad students about getting a PhD and then going into a non-academic career. I also gave a presentation on the Zhang Leping biography that I’ve…
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Weekly Wanderings: Failure and Success Edition

I’ve made the executive decision (because it’s my blog and therefore I’m the executive) to abandon the pretense that these “Weekly Wanderings” posts are always going to be published on Fridays, because the past month has shown me I can only manage that 50% of the time. So now my goal is to get them…
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Weekly Wanderings: Delayed October 7 Edition

Delayed because I spent the majority of last week moping around with the worst cold I can remember having in years (I’m mostly better now), and because the first item was supposed to be its own blog post but the damn thing just didn’t sound right and yesterday I finally had to admit that the…
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Bookshelf: The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright
Publishers like it when a book falls into a clearly defined category, especially if that category is a popular one that might rate a table display at a bookstore. A biography of George Washington, obviously, gets shelved with those of other Founding Fathers, and they are all, unquestionably, grouped under the larger heading of “American…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 30, 2016

▪ As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge Ghostbusters fan; were it not for the condo regulations in my development, I’d definitely have a 13-foot-high inflatable Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man on my front lawn for the next month. My brother assures me that my still furniture-free living room is large enough to accommodate him, but I…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 23 [er, 25], 2016
![Weekly Wanderings: September 23 [er, 25], 2016](https://mauracunningham.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_6179.jpg?w=1024)
With points deducted for lateness … ▪ I’m in Philadelphia for the weekend, here for a quick visit and a 90th birthday party for one of my grandmothers. I decided to fly on Spirit for the first time, which I know has a terrible reputation for customer service, but made this trip possible by selling…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 16, 2016

▪ There’s a crisp bite to the air in the mornings here now and the trees across from my house are beginning to acquire a rust-color tinge. This can only mean one thing: FALL IS COMING. Woot woot woot. I’m especially excited this year because Michigan is known for its apple cider mills, and there’s…
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Detroit Field Trip #1
Thanks to those on Twitter who sent me additional titles for my Detroit reading list—I now have several more books on reserve at the library. After reading so many hundreds of pages about the city, I was itching to get there and see it in person. The Saturday of Labor Day weekend provided the perfect…