Blog Title Announcement
Sharon December 11th, 2009
And the Winnah is….KM. I really liked all the titles people suggested. I almost went with “Dorothea’s Model Cottage” except I couldn’t quite get past the fact that Dorothea always kind of annoyed me. She’s so bloodless. I liked a lot of the other suggestions, but I think I’ve decided to go with KM’s “Chatelaine” suggestion, and call it “The Chatelaine’s Keys.” Of course, that’s redundant, but hey!
KM, email me at [email protected] with your address, which book you want and how you want me to sign it!
Now I just have to figure out how to change the title in WordPress. Anybody know?
Sharon
- Uncategorized
- Comments(15)
Assuming a recent version of WP, log into /wp-admin & click on the ‘Settings’ tab on the left. ‘Blog Title’ is the first option.
link?
To what, Aimee? The new blog name is for here. If you are looking for my new blog it is at http://www.scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook
Sharon
Sharon: “The Chatelaine Keys”???. Please reconsider and at least list the top 10 ideas and ask for a national non binding reader poll. You would of course have final say but this choice seems to raise obfuscation to the level of an art form,
HA! Dorothea always drove me nuts, too! I have always just wanted to reach in, grab her by the collar, and shake her! My enduring favorite of the oeuvre is Daniel Deronda, hands down. Major warm fuzzies for Silas Marner, too.
Gotta say, “Chatelaine’s Keys” evokes de Sade and Story of O more than anything else, but maybe that’s just me . . .
What does Chatelaine’s Keys mean? (might not be apparent to your international readers).
Ummmm, it was always my impression that the chatelaine *carried* the keys, originally. In her role as keeper of the house. it was only later that “chatelaine” became the name of the belt-thingie that the keys were carried on.
Or do I have that backwards?
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I rather like it.
Literary and historic reference to what we are all trying to do — keep our houses. Clean, well stocked, people and livestock fed, etc. Makes sense to me. I always was a little odd, though….
Believe you me, your collective of international fans will get the intended meaning, no problemo!!
I don’t know how you would feel about it, Sharon, and the origin of the word Chatelaine is, you guessed it, French! What’s up with that, you ask? It’s just what it is, and you would honor that word source if you were to add an accent — un accent grave — yes, a grave accent as it relates to a required deeper first syllable pronunciation of Châtelaine, and figuratively as well, I suppose, in regards to the serious matters at hand.
No biggie, however, as we say in the biggie business!!
I hope it’s been an especially good week for you.
Shalom,
Madame Bovary
No big deal at all, but that’s a circumflex accent.
Having been a science major, I never got Casaubon’s Book in the first place. At least Sharon explained her take on the chatelaine and her key awhile back in this blog.
Don’t matter none to me what you call it. I’ll read it anyway.
You are so right, but P.J., it is absolutely a big deal!! So much for trying to (circon)flex(e) one’s cultural mental muscles!!
Soupir!
Thank you for your correction.
Blushing and departing.
(1) Sharon, your blog name is good. A “chatelaine” is in strict etymology the keeper of the castle, i.e., of the chateau, and so your title “Chatelaine’s keys” is in strict etymology FREE of redundancy.
(2) It is good to see that you are publishing in a science-blogs space and that your astrophysicist spouse may in future be contributing. The more you can do to defend scientific values the better. Those values have taken a beating this past month, with significant spin published about “climategate”, as you point out in your new blog. - When I refer to science here, I do not mean to refer to its current perversions at the hands of corporations and the military but rather to its pure roots, as we may half-glimpse those roots in _Astrophysical Journal_ or in Spivak’s calculus books, or again in such historical figures as Faraday and Einstein. I am referring here to a regulative ideal, approximated in messy and imperfect ways by the various human institutions which strive, with their varying degrees of success, to analyze problems scientifically. A key component in the regulative ideal is respect for truth, as something outside us and above us and beyond us, (a) to which the theories in the textbooks approximate in inexact and forever-provisional ways, and (b) which is capable of indicating to its human investigators, provided they are creatively diligent in their lab work, that one theory is a better approximation than another.
I like it! Fits in well with the shameless hussy theme, too. ;}
I tried to read Middlemarch and could not get through it. I see that one of these days I’m going to have to finish the damn thing, just to be properly literate. Loved Silas Marner.
Also, in response to Toomas, yes, too few Americans seem to actually understand science these days, and it’s wonderful to have Sharon offering her essays on so many science issues.
I admit I had to find a definition for “chatelaine” The “Wise Geek” has one that ended with the line:
“Today, a chatelaine is usually reserved for wearing with Renaissance Faire garb. If going to the faire as a high-born lady rather than a woman of the lower serving classes, a chatelaine is a good mark of one’s class.”
If the key fits wear it…