Up 7. Breakfast.
Went to E77 before 9. Read 15 p. of convention book.
Worked about 3 hrs. on Williams. A couple paragraphs; slow going.
A few groceries.
Took a break for a couple hours. Learned that Greg Tate died. From an ’87 review of Michael Jackson’s Bad:
“The intermingling of working-class origins and middle-class acculturation are too mixed up in black’s music evolution to allow for simpleminded purist demands for a black music free of European influence, or of the black desire for a higher standard of living and more cultural mobility.”
Spent late afternoon/early evening on the convention book (partly b/c I had time and haven’t been reading much of anything in a sustained way lately). Plain, unsexy style, befitting the author’s meat-and-potatoes (but not wholly unselfcritical) liberalism. Interesting sections on quarantines/public health and acequia associations (a system of portioning out access to water in New Mexico that I’d never heard of). This is a decent expression of the book’s guiding content (somewhat related to David Lewis’ analysis, which I depend on a bit in my book).
“A convention is like a well-worn path that I choose to follow in the woods. I know that many hikers in the past have used it to get from point A to point B. If I do not know the woods and follow the path for the first time, I may not even know of the existence of point B. I assume, however, that the path will take me somewhere — to the other side of the woods or a place worth visiting. A convention is like that. We assume that it makes sense because other people have used it. Like the origin of a path, a convention may seem an arbitrary or random choice. There are, after all, a number of possible paths from point A to point B. Still we take the well-worn path because it offers advantages. We don’t have to clear a way; we assume the path has some purpose; and well-worn paths, more often than not, get us where we want to go.” (24)
Anyway, I read up to p. 100. Watched 2 episodes of DCI Banks, another British procedural, don’t think I’ll continue. Lights out midnight.