Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 294.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2018-12-24 12:32:34+00:00
        From: Marinella Testori 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.284: Yuletide & solstitial celebrations and gratitude

Dear Willard,
Many compliments to you and people at King's Lab for bringing 'Humanist' to
a new life this year.
To you, them and all the readers of the List, my best wishes for a Merry
Christmas and a prosperous 2019.

Kind regards,
Marinella

-----------------------
Marinella Testori, Ph.D., AKC.
Data Analyst and Linguistic Annotator for Latin

Il giorno venerì 21 dicembre 2018, Humanist  ha
scritto:
>                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 284.
>             Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                    Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                        www.dhhumanist.org
>                 Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>         Date: 2018-12-21 10:03:51+00:00
>         From: Willard McCarty 
>         Subject: Yuletide & solstitial celebrations and gratitude
>
> An old and very close friend of mine, a medical doctor in Friesland,
> recently retired for the second time, marked the occasion with a
> lecture to the younger doctors he was tutoring. His title: "Boatcoach:
> Waarom iedere dokter een boot zou moeten bouwen" ("Why every doctor
> should build a boat"). The Powerpoint slides he sent along to amuse me
> show he meant exactly what he said -- photos of him in his
> boat-builder's workshop are there to demonstrate that he knows what he's
> talking about. I knew already, having spent time under his tutelage
> helping him finish off a boat he now regularly sails in. He was a
> talented doctor by all accounts, deeply compassionate, highly skilled
> and practical. Strolling with him around Leeuwarden we have met many
> former patients who are now friends.
>
> There are, of course, good reasons for a medical doctor electing to do
> something else beyond a certain age. The professional metamorphosis of
> an academic in the human sciences, if not most of the others, is less
> dramatic, more of a shedding off of institutional duties to take on a
> larger proportion of devotions to scholarship -- and their associated
> duties. For me, tending to Humanist is one passion among others that
> bridge the ante- and post-retirement eras. It is a continuing
> exploration or enactment of something the significance of which I
> learned from Jerry McGann: that this work of ours is all about the
> conversation, probing, sometimes upsetting, sometimes outrageous, ever
> more challenging -- all about reaching for that "hem of a quantum
> garment". Humanist serves other purposes as well, of course. But it's
> the intellectual conversations and provocations that are its reason for
> being.
>
> As nearly everyone here will know, I do this sort of meandering musing
> every year at this time. This year is particularly special, for were it
> not for the quick, effective and crucial help of the King's Digital Lab
> (KDL), its Director, James Smithies, and his colleagues Brian Maher and
> Tim Watts, Humanist might well never have recovered from the
> catastrophic failure of its server earlier this year. To James, Brian
> and Tim we all owe a great debt. Others jumped in with offers of help,
> for which I'm very grateful, but KDL not only had all the skills and
> facilities ready to go but also, given my long association with King's
> College London, it seemed most fitting. Now, in its day to day
> operations, Humanist runs as smoothly as (choose your metaphor). Not
> only smoothly but elegantly as well.
>
> Given the culturally, linguistically and geographically wide
> distribution of Humanist's membership, the Christmas-Winter Solsticial
> associations that I cannot escape (nor wish to) pose an insuperable
> challenge to formulating a suitably idiomatic greeting to everyone. So
> -- forgive me, translation required -- Happy Christmas to everyone.
>
> Yours,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
> Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
London;
> Adjunct Professor, Western Sydney University; Editor, Interdisciplinary
> Science Reviews (www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist
> (www.dhhumanist.org)



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