wayman - Profile (original) (raw)
Northampton, Massachusetts, United States
It's Autumn 2007. That much, I'm certain of. Except that it's more like Late Summer right now, and by the time I finally think of something to write here, it may be Early Winter. Somewhere in there, it will be (or will have been) (or is) Autumn 2007.
It's been over four years since I wrote the below, and it's feeling a bit stale, but it's still about as truthful as it ever was...
What does one do with a linguistics degree from Swarthmore? Somehow, there was never time to think about that while I was a student, especially since I only officially became a linguistics major in mid-April of my senior year.
Grad school's a popular option. Those who also know some computer science often work in machine translation or language recognition. Lots of folks get a totally unrelated job.
Me? I've tried 'em all. I worked in academic linguistics research; I've held various and sundry programming and webmastering positions; I've instructed an undergraduate linguistics course and will be attending grad school in the fall; I've even been a piano mover, among other odd jobs.
But nothing beats my primary job: sunrises.
Once a year, we meet just before when the calendars all say dawn will be. The calendar makers claim to have deduced this time using mathematical formulae; based on the sunrise times over the past years, they claim they can predict this time with to-the-second accuracy.
Morris dancers know otherwise: unless we dance the sun up each May Day morn, it won't rise.
Once a year, we renew the solar contract for the city of Philadelphia, just as morris dancers around the world renew the contracts for their regions; thanks to our efforts, the sun rises on May Day morning. And so each morning for another year, eastern Pennsylvania is bathed in sunlight, just like the calendar makers predicted.
What would happen if we didn't dance? I'm not really sure. But I can live with a little uncertainty: the calendar makers pay us millions to ensure they never have to find out.
alton brown, ancient greek, arcangelo corelli, archiving, artifice, bledington, board games, british isles, calligraphy, cartography, cat psychology, cedar park, choreography, cinematography, classical mythology, computers, cryptography, dancing, douglas adams, ducklington, english country dancing, etymology, fantasy, fieldtown, folk dancing, folk music, folklore, gay rights, geography, geometry, george gershwin, good eats, groningen, harry potter, hikaru no go, historical linguistics, iconography, j.r.r. tolkien, jethro tull, johannes kepler, jonathan larson, josquin des prez, kingsessing, la vie boheme, languages, lexicography, linguistics, lithography, longsword dancing, medieval history, miles vorkosigan, monty python, morris, morris dancing, moxy fruvous, muppets, norse mythology, npr, phonography, photography, pi, post-structuralism, queerness, rapper sword dancing, rent, role-playing, science fiction, scottish country dancing, sensible shoes, settlers of catan, sherborne, singing, snufkin, staying up too late, steganography, stenography, structuralism, tea, the 2nd avenue subway, the moon, topography, topology, trigonometry, trolleys, typography