The Whiteboard Where Big Things Live

TL/DR: When life feels overwhelmingly large, progress comes through small, humane, and imperfect efforts — not through heroic productivity.

So I have a whiteboard in my bedroom. It’s where anxious projects live, the ones that are <insert big scary voice> Coming Due Soon. <Close big voice, return to regular timbre.>

And there’s a lot up there. Grading (hello, mid-semester assessments). Article permissions (Why, oh why, did I want to use images? Current me wants a serious word with past me. WHAT were you thinking?). Plant the garden. Take trash to the dump. Write the thing. Research the other thing. And on and on and on.

The reality is, we are all over-busy, and we all have too many balls in the air. Juggling tasks is the preeminent 21^st-century skill. And boring. So boring. What did you do today? It’s about commiseration, not about the list itself.

But there are some reminders that I have found helpful as we’ve gone through this first part of the year. I share them here in case they help.

Put priorities first. That includes social priorities. Thank a colleague. Snuggle your husband. Pet the cat. Living a person-first lifestyle happens through an act of will. I may sometimes put these on my whiteboard, because actually, fitting them in matters a lot.

Consider the big things. I’m getting ready for a major backpacking trip, a conference paper, and a trip to Europe. I’m two months out to the start of that giddy mess, so it was time to drop orders for a few things that will make the trips easier. It was a nice thing to do over coffee, and now I’ll spend my day in anticipation of the fun, not just the mire of the day-to-day.

Productive avoidance. Unwilling to start on the heavy lift? It’s okay to do three lesser tasks as long as the heavy task gets its hour sometime before dinner. Task shifting got that article review done before its deadline, and I’ll still comfortably make the grant deadline, because an hour a day makes progress even if it isn’t one fell swoop. Sometimes I frame this as a strength: I’m really good at task-shifting. I’d even call it a trademark skill!

Bit by bit may really be better. The rosebush trying to colonize the driveway is history, thanks to a series of one-hour sunshine breaks. I got to get outside and enjoy the fresh air (bundled up, of course, what a spring!); every day saw progress. The entirety of the rosebush eventually succumbed to the repeated time-on-task. And my hands will recover sometime soon, I’m sure.

Multitask with the fun stuff. Writing is a concentrated activity, and I’m not a music-while-writing person; I spend too much time listening and not enough writing. But I *can* listen while I’m doing chores, and often do. I found that setting up a playlist before tackling the aforementioned rosebush was a two-for-one: I got to choose class repertoire for my freshmen while still getting through the farm chores. Was it perfect, analytic-prep listening? No, of course not. But it set out the shape of my mental maps for lecture, and the analytical listening came as I put the slidedecks together.

Do or do not, as Yoda says. Wednesdays are largely off the table. Tuesdays (with three lectures and the week’s prep) are over-long energy drains. Wednesdays are for the frivolous. My goal with Wednesdays is: do something. Walk, garden, fold the laundry. Eat cooked food. Go to bed early. Wednesdays have become my do-nothing days. Weekends, then, can be for writing and depth and focus and read-read-read for the Next Big Project. But I’ve had a mental break by then, so it feels okay to double down on the material *I* want to be working on.

Write it down. The things that scare me more than what’s on my whiteboard? The things I haven’t gotten down out of my head. Those are the ones that wake me up at 3:17 worried that they might not get done. Write them down. Put them in your notebook, list them on the whiteboard, make a 3x5 card. Don’t let them sit around taking up mental energy. “Oh, I’ll remember to do that” means that you have to spend all day remembering. Who has time? Write it down.

And the great thing is that the things we write down, we get to cross off the list.

And that’s a good feeling in life.

May your day be fruitful, your whiteboard be a help, and your list diminish over time.

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Sooner or Later It All Gets Done: How History Emerges from Small Details

One of the recurring themes in my scholarly life is “lots of little details.” That’s true of many things in life, of course, but this morning I’m struck with its scholarly application. I’m prone to taking account of a lot of bits-of-evidence, the small details that by themselves are trivial but in the big picture add up to something significant. Assuming I’m lucky, of course.

Historians often inherit sources shaped by earlier editors’ priorities, so part of my work has been learning how to ask new questions of familiar materials. Many of our sources with “lots of details” come from the nineteenth century -- Ludwig Rapp and his mastery of parish clerical details in Topographisch-historische Beschreibung is one of my current faves! Wow, what a collector of detail! So truly, local archives and chronicle accounts were edited by folks excited for what the data can show – about war, about politics, about economics. Their questions, however, did not always extend to other kinds of questions, like those about relationships, and households, and famine, and fear.

Thus, even in a place like Bregenz, where the surviving sources were so negatively impacted by war, and invasion, and the predations of time, I love that there are still questions I can ask, and answers in the little details that come from careful consideration of the sources with new questions in mind. I’ve turned up “new” sources on Thalbach, for instance, not by finding actual new documents, but by reading the extant documents for details that didn’t matter to the indexers of past times – payments to and charity for the devout women of the town. Sometimes the clue is as small as a repeated instruction to light a candle at a grave — something no nineteenth-century editor thought worth indexing, but wonderfully delicious for my argument.

And now, I’m plowing my way through prayerbooks, looking for ways in which spirituality is manifest not as treatise but as practice. We have given preference to the authorial voice, particularly those by named authors and/or those approved by the church, for instance. But what is interesting to me is how those sermon-shaped ideas became fixed in these women’s lives – not so much what they *heard* but what they *did* with that spiritual guidance provided to them.

So yes, I’m reading 15^th century prayerbooks for fun and enlightenment. I think these sources can tell us something important – not so much about what these women actually believed, but about what they did as a matter of practice. Actions speak louder than words; prayers, repeated, and copied, and collected, and shared, tell us a lot about how belief became present as part of daily life.

That’s an awful lot of words, of course. Words words words. Oodles and scads of words. 397 folios of words in one case. 120 pages of words in another.

But little by little by little, and sooner or later it all gets done.

Or, as we also say, “every day a little progress.”

That, in the end, is often how historical knowledge grows: not from dramatic discoveries, but from patient attention to what earlier readers overlooked. And spreadsheets. But that’s another post.

WORKS CITED

Image from Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek, Hs 17: a late 16th-century Thalbach prayerbook, fol. 216, "O junckfrow maria ain künigin der himel," marked with a tab in its left-hand margin.

Ludwig Rapp, Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, 5 vols (Brixen: Weger, 1894-1924). I especially love volumes 2 & 3, the Bregenz volumes.

Threefold Illumination: A Nun’s Prayer After Communion

The spiritual quest for three-fold illumination -- knowledge of self; knowledge of God’s love; and knowledge of (and surrender to) God’s will -- is mapped out in the most ornate of the Thalbach Prayerbooks, ÖNB Cod. 11750, at the very end of a long mass prayer cycle. This prayer is seated firmly within a Franciscan orbit with its characteristic affective spirituality, reflective of late 16th-century habits of thought. The text is staunchly Catholic in perspective, for it assumes a very concrete Eucharistic theology: grace is mediated through the sacrament itself (durch krafft dis Sacraments), not just through prayer. Here we see a Catholic woman at the conclusion of a Catholic liturgy, participating in deeply rooted and very specifically Catholic devotional practices.We are anchored here to faith.

The prayer starts with a kind of self-abasement which may read as uncomfortable to modern eyes. The abnegations pile up: wickedness, vileness, worthlessness, ingratitude, insult, shame: through such self-knowledge (!) she asks to come to humility, repentance, and sorrow for my sins. Seeing the bad in order to correct her faults is strategic, a spiritual confession that moves toward the relief of forgiveness. This is classic penitential piety shaping belief and practice in practical, implementable ways. Yet for our modern eyes, the absence of positive self-knowledge is a gap here; this first illumination only tangentially touches on love and forgiveness, making it harder for the passage to resonate with in a more self-affirming age.

The second illumination focuses on love (liebe), used five times in as many lines, matching it with her heart, which must be enlightened, wounded, filled, and then come to thirst. Thus, God’s love toward “us” becomes her love towards God, loved “at all times, in all things, and above all things.” This is lyricism at its finest, repetitiveness deployed as a metaphor of spiritual growth on a properly chosen model. Very Franciscan, and with echoes of Thomas à Kempis or pseudo-Bonaventure in its patternings:

O God, my Lord, I beg you once again through your tender mercy, enlighten my heart to recognize and love your goodness and love for us. I beg you, wound my heart with the purest, most faithful, and fervent love towards us, O sweet Jesus, fill my heart with your most perfect, fervent, and unquenchable love, so that I may always thirst for you with all my heart, and that I may love you at all times, in all things, and above all things.

The enlightened heart, then, comes to fulfill the third illumination: self-denial and self-surrender, a self-rededication to the monastic calling from which she prays. She wants strengthened the scope of her devotion to encompass “all the actions and powers” of both body and soul. By moving from abnegation through love to action, she is transforming herself here at this moment, repurposing her spirit to accomplish God’s ends.

The sacrament, then, has accomplished its function. It does not merely forgive sin; it illuminates the mind, reshapes the affections, and reorders the will toward God’s action, serving as an agent of interior transformation. In this brief prayer we see how sacramental devotion worked in practice: not as a single moment of absolution, but as an ongoing process of spiritual formation rooted in Franciscan ideals of humility, love, and surrender.

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“O Ewiger liebhabender barmhertziger Gott erleucht mein hertz,” Thalbach Prayerbook, ÖNB Cod. 11750, fol. 47v-48v, Transcription and Translation CC-BY-NC Cynthia J. Cyrus

Du magſt auch bitten vmb dreifaltige erleichtung/ dz dir ſolche / durch krafft dis Sacraments mitgetailt werde.

[3-line initial] O Ewiger liebhabender barmhertziger Gott erleucht mein hertz/ Dz ich meīn aigne bossheit ſchnödigkeit nichtigkeith vnnd vndanckbarkeit moͤg erkennen/ also dz ich ab ſolchem ein geburenden mÿsfallenn hab • Laß mich erkennen. O Guettiger Jeſu wie ich ſo gar nichts bin noch kan, vnd dz ich mich ſelbs veracht. Gib mir aüch, dz ich von hertzen von der Welt beger uerarcht zu werdenn, dz ich wünsch diemüettig zu sein: vnd vnbild vnd schmach zu leiden mich erfrewe. Eya du mein guettigſter herr Jhesu, geůſin mich ware erkantnus meiner ſelbſt auch volkomne demůott, rew vnd laid v̈ber meine begangne Sünnd.

O Gott mein herr ich bitte dich abermals durch dem Jimierliche barmhertzigkeit erleüchte mein hertz dem guettigkeit vnnd liebe gegen vns zu erkennen vnd zu lieben Jch bitte verwunde mein hertz mit keuschister getrewester vnd inbrünstiger liebe gegen vns O ſueſſer Jeſu, erfulle mein hertz mit deiner volkomesten, inbrünstigen vnd vnauſloͤſchkichen liebe / damit mich allzeit vongantzem hertzenn nach dür dürste, vnd dz ich dich ieder zeit in allem vnd vber alles liebe /

O Guettigster Jhesu, mein Gott vnnd alles in allem / Ich bitte dich / erleicht mein hertz/ deinen wolgefallen zu erkennen, zu lieben vnd volbrüngen. Gib mir vollkomesten erlaugnüng vnd aufergebüng meiner ſelbſt / darmit ich mich, selbs aüff Alle weiSS uerlaSS / aus mir gehe / vnd mich auffer gebe zuallem deinē wolgefallenn, Gib mir / dz ich mich ganz vnd gar deiner für ſehüng vertrawe / alle ding von deiner Hannd mit dancksagung annemmen vnd in allem dich lob vnd benedeÿe. Verschaffe O guettiger Gott/dz ich all mein leben alle zeit alles thunvnnd krefften meiner leibs vnd meiner Seelen und alles wz ich bin vnd vermag zu deinem lob Lieb vnd wolgefallen darraiche vnnd dargebe, Amen.

You may also ask for threefold illumination, that this may be imparted to you through the power of this sacrament.

O eternal, loving, merciful God, enlighten my heart, that I may recognize my own wickedness, vileness, worthlessness, and ingratitude, so that I may have a proper displeasure at it. Let me recognize, O good Jesus, how completely I am nothing and can do nothing, and that I may hold myself in contempt. Grant me also that I may wholeheartedly desire to be despised by the world, that I may wish to be humble, and that I may rejoice in suffering insult and shame. O my most gracious Lord Jesus, grant me true knowledge of myself, also perfect humility, repentance, and sorrow for my sins.

O God, my Lord, I beg you once again through your tender mercy, enlighten my heart to recognize and love your goodness and love for us. I beg you, wound my heart with the purest, most faithful, and fervent love towards us, O sweet Jesus, fill my heart with your most perfect, fervent, and unquenchable love, so that I may always thirst for you with all my heart, and that I may love you at all times, in all things, and above all things.

O most gracious Jesus, my God and all in all, I beg you, enlighten my heart to recognize, love, and carry out your good pleasure. Grant me perfect self-denial and self-surrender, so that I may completely abandon myself in every way, go out of myself, and surrender myself to all your good pleasure. Grant me that I may completely trust in your providence, receiving all things from your Hand; Receive all things from your hand with thanksgiving, and praise and bless you in all things. Grant, O gracious God, that all my life, at all times, I may dedicate and offer all the actions and powers of my body and soul, and all that I am and can do, to your praise, honor, and good pleasure. Amen.

Practicing Death: The “Seven Last Words” at Thalbach

The back-end of the Thalbach prayerbook (ÖNB Cod. 11750, 56v-60r) provides an early modern devotional adaptation of the “Seven Last Words” (Sieben Worte Christi am Kreuz), transformed into a death-bed meditation cycle. This is a localized, pastoralized, and affectively expanded version of a common text-type, rather than a “standard” translation of a single printed source. They all start from the biblical sequence (Luke, John, Matthew) but are freely paraphrased and expanded.

The tradition itself was extremely widespread. As a genre, the Seven Last Words meditation typos predates the Reformation and survives confessionalization pretty well intact, growing and adapting to local belief and its needs. The genre draws on at least three major late medieval/early modern currents. Like much of the Passion meditation literature in general, it promotes imaginative participation in a visually re-enacted passion scene, along with the attached emotional identification and afirst-person response that sees oneself as part of that broader narrative. It fits in too with other ars moriendi texts, in that it emphasizes a readiness for death along with a renunciation of “zeitliche” things. The penitent soul submits to God will, echoing--through an act of will--the Passion as a model (“into your hands I commend myself”). And, it fits with its late 16^th century ethos, a time when structured death prayers and affective piety intermingled as a way of coaching the devout toward a particular kind of religiosity.

The Thalbach version—copied as an addition to the manuscript in a dubious scribal hand and bearing several signs of amateur copying (from letter forms to transcription errors)—is interesting for several reasons. (I give a provisional transcription of the Seventh Word at the end of this post for those interested.)

BIBLICAL ALLUSION: It is typical of post-1500 vernacular adaptations of this sort, in that it boasts a kind of biblical in-fill with a number of loose biblical quotations shaping its language and approach. For instance, the text integrates not just passion narrative, but scriptural allusion. For example, the end of the fifth word brings in the deer of Psalm 42:

• darumb durstet mein Seel nach dir, dem Leben: unnd Gleich wie ein Zürsche eilet, Zu den Wasser brunen, Also Blomiget mein Seel nach dir, das du sie trenkhe mit dem siirssen kranckh de mer ewigen khlarheit, vnd sie behrtest vor dem hellischen durß in Ewigkheit, Amen

• therefore my soul thirsts for you, the living word, and just as a deer hastens to the water springs, so my soul longs for you, that you may quench its thirst with the sweet drink of your eternal clarity, and preserve it from the hellish thirst in eternity. Amen.

• (Psalm 42, NIV: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”)

This text lives in a world shaped by the Psalm’s echo, a strong framing for affective contemplation. Such biblical saturation suggests a deeply grounded reader, someone who could “get” the allusions without citation or further prompting. To my eye, that speaks to Thalbach educational practices; sisters of whatever level were expected to know their psalter intimately.

FIRST PERSON FRAMING ON THE DEATHBED: The text, divided into seven parts, with each part on its own page-or-two, serves as a bit of a how-to guide to walk you through the final hours of life. That process demands a kind of penitential self-examination, common to early modern Catholicism. There is a strong first-person presence in this version of the Seven Last Words, and that is shaped around the actual act of dying, not just a meditation-on-death.

Death is a consistent presence: “meines Todts… Sterben… mein Leiden… meiner Seele… bereit zu sterben” (my death... dying... my suffering... my soul... ready to die). In case the text itself wasn’t a good enough pointer (and it clearly is), the rubric tells us so: den Sterbenden mensch Trostlich (Comforting the dying person). This is devotional literature aimed at actual dying, not general piety.

INTERIORITY: Almost every section moves quickly into a confessional self-assessment: As a sinner, a poor sinner, I recognize my sins, she posits repeated. This is commission, the things she has done that are wrong, but also omission: “ich … wenig guets gethan, darumb ich billich ewige Straffe (I have done little good, therefore I deserve eternal punishment.)

We are seeing here an individualistic interiorization of the need for forgiveness, not a communal experience of death. There’s no collective voice, and no institutional framing. We don’t have the sisters coming to the sound of the clapper; this is death as an act of self identity through a direct encounter, God to soul. It has a lot of parallels with the shift in how Bregenz memoria were constructed, to be honest, but that’s for another (and extensive) bit of writing.

SOCIAL ETHICS OF DYING: She may be considering her interior spiritual needs, but those needs are also manifest as the things she has done to others while in the world. In the Second Word, for instance, she ask forgiveness:

die ich beleidige, zu sünden verursacht habe (whom I have offended, and caused to sin)

So death is framed as a moment of social repair, not only private salvation.

MY TAKE-AWAY:

For me, this modest, messy text is a reminder of why these prayerbooks matter so much. Its theology is not expressed in polished argument, but in repetition, hesitation, and emotional insistence. It shows how the sisters were taught to inhabit their own deaths in advance—through scripture, through penitence, through acts of reconciliation. Read alongside Thalbach’s commemorative practices and memorial networks, it suggests that preparation for death was not only something done for others, but something carefully cultivated within the self. This small addition thus opens a window onto the inner work of memoria: the quiet, disciplined labor of learning how to die well.

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DAS SIBENT WORT / THE SEVENTH WORD:

What follows is a provisional transcription and translation of the Seventh Word, offered to illustrate the tone and structure of the text rather than as a definitive edition. I have lightly normalized the German: vnnd = und, dir außgangen = dir ausgegangen; schopffung = Schöpfung, and so on.

60r das sibent wort Herr Gott vnnd Vatter, Ich bin von die außgangen, durch die schopf: fung in dise welt, Nun aber muß in alles was zeitlich ist, Er lasse vnnd widr zu die komen in dem ewigs reich, denn es nachet die Stundt, vnd ist kost auß mit meinem ellenden vergenkhlich Leben, Doch bin vnuerzogt, den mene seeligkheit stehet in deiner handt, darein ich dir auch mein Armen seel treulich wil be- folchen haben Vnd bin berait zu Sterben, Darumb Laß mich dir aller Liebster vatter, Zu aller Zeit beuolchen sein, vnd wie ich dir utrån, er weckh nich wid om Inngste, tag, mit denen Ausser wollen dich ewigkhlich zu Loben

The Seventh Word Lord God and Father, I have come forth from you through creation into this world. Now, however, I must leave behind everything that is temporal and return to you in the eternal kingdom. For the hour draws near, and my wretched, perishable life is soon at an end. Yet I am not afraid, for my salvation rests in your hand, into which I faithfully commend my poor soul. And I am ready to die. Therefore, let me, most beloved Father, remain entrusted to you at all times. And just as I place my trust in you, do not raise me up again on the Last Day among those who are rejected, but among those who are chosen to praise you eternally.

Your desert island symphony

In my Western Art Music seminar (a writing seminar, might I add), we started the term with the early symphony – a little Sammartini, a little Stamitz, some Martinez, a bit of Haydn. The focus was on social history. But to bring it forward in time, I’ve done three things, and it’s really paying off!

First, as an in-class short-writing exercise, I gave them a 3x5 card, and asked them what *later* symphony they’d take with them as their only music for three years on a desert island, and why. Then I let them add a second piece that they thought would impress their studio instructor or other faculty mentor. (This is how I take class roll; it’s also how I get them thinking about how things apply to their broader musical lives.)

The next day, I put them in small groups and reminded them of some of the “desert island” pieces they chose, then ask their groups to create a chronological timeline of TEN post-Haydn symphony composers, without computers and without phones. There was a good bit of laughter. Now who came before that? Who was that composer they played last semester? Did such-and-so count as a symphony? We put those lists on the board, and looked at commonalities across all the lists, and who was missing. It was interesting fodder for the “who decides” discussion:

We had read the Donne UK report (scroll past the proms report; the one on symphony repertoire is down below: Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire, 2023/2024 Season) – so they’re definitely starting to see patterns in their world. So that discussion got rich and interesting.

And then the storm hit, and we’ve been out of classes for a week. So rather than have them go off and do something on Machaut with no context, no background, and no guiding framework, I canceled our Machaut assignment and moved them back to our desert island:

Okay, here we are in the world. Take 45 - 60 - 90 minutes and listen to one of those symphonies you mentioned as brilliant, desert-island, must-engage works. Voxer me with the three things that gave you shivers (or annoyed you) the most. Focus on the longer works: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, etcetera. How does your chosen work draw on things we saw with our "early symphony" exemplars? How does it take the basic symphonic ideas we saw in Sammartini, Haydn, and Martinez, and turn them into something bigger, stranger, or more intense?

The report-outs have been lovely. Several went for Tchaikovsky symphonies (which I think is weird, but I’m only the instructor), and most of them have spoken to the satisfaction of really listening to something they’ve wanted to get to know or to re-encounter. And the world is a better place when we stop and remind ourselves of what we love and what we came to do.

For me, that’s been the real gift of this little experiment: not the lists or the timelines, but watching students slow down long enough to hear why a piece mattered to them in the first place. In a semester full of deadlines and disruptions, that kind of listening feels quietly radical. Music makes our lives better; it’s nice to see them remember that.

So go and listen to whatever first drew you to music once upon a time. May it bring you comfort now.

Cadfael’s Lepers on World Leprosy Day

The leper house sits at the edge of the village – more accurately, beyond it. It’s a ramshackle structure, visibly outside the rhythms of ordinary life. The camera makes sure we understand this geography before we understand anything else: illness is spatialized. Care happens “elsewhere,” out of bounds for regular village life. (It’s like the Sondersiechen, the medieval leper home in Bregenz – away from town, in a field, in a location that distances illness in thought, space, and structure.)

In this episode of Cadfael (Season 1 ep. 3), we start our story by following one of the lepers as he approaches. The leper carries a cowbell mounted on a pole, its ground-thumps clanging in keeping with his stride. He regularly and perhaps automatically shakes his other hand to sound a wooden clacker, a percussion instrument not to entertain but to announce his presence. Sound arrives before the body. Warning precedes encounter. As he passes by, we see his wrapped arm – a stump? – across a colleague’s shoulder; his weakened body needs support. And he has entered the yard of a place where such care happens.

Another leper emerges from the house, his face fully covered by a cloth mask pierced only for the eyes, his clothing ragged but carefully concealing all exposed skin. Lepers should not be seen. When we do see something of the disease itself, it is his hand: deformed, with nodules, and missing two and a half fingers. Damage is real, irreversible, unromantic. Lazarus has been profoundly altered by his illness.

Bran, by contrast, is younger. His body has responded to the lotions Cadfael supplies. The monks, Cadfael and Brother Mark, speculate cautiously about whether he might someday return to the world. “There’s always hope,” Cadfael says; “By God's grace and man's efforts we may yet send him back whole into the world.” It’s a small line, but it matters. Miraculous recovery is plausible; medical care is feasible. We do not have to sit by and do nothing.

Medicine opens a door. Society decides whether it stays open. Donors, we soon realize, could make a difference.

The first potential donor is a man on horseback, well-armed, well-accompanied. When the request comes – “coin for a leper, my lord?” – his response is immediate, and violent. He raises his cudgel and snaps, “Out of my way, vermin. Take thy contagion out of my sight.” He follows this with his chosen epithet, “Filthy lepers.” They are not individuals; they are a polluted class, to his mind unworthy. And yet his three followers each toss a few coins as they pass. Fear does not erase obligation entirely, and the open prejudice looks shameful in the face of the generosity of his juniors. We should judge a man by his actions; he has failed a basic test of empathy.

The second donor is a lady on horseback, her aunt riding behind in a carriage. “A little something, my lady?” She willingly tosses her coins, and a generous assortment at that. Her aunt immediately objects: “You should not waste your coins on lepers.” The one thinks charity necessary; the other deems it imprudent expenditure. Are lepers worthy poor? Medieval opinion appears divided.

Stigma and care are not opposites here; they operate simultaneously, in plain view. The lepers are marked and masked, sonically announced, verbally dehumanized. They are feared as contagious, morally suspect, and socially dangerous. And yet they are housed, supplied with medicines, provisioned with care. They are expected to beg, their abjection an expectation or even a requirement of their existence. Yet they also receive alms – not every time, but more often than not in this clip. There is a system here, however inadequate or dehumanizing it may feel to modern viewers.

And that’s where this episode’s careful realism matters. Medieval society did not simply abandon people with terrifying illnesses, though it assuredly did not embrace them. Instead, it built an uneasy safety net at the margins: regulated begging, institutional housing, religious oversight, and just enough compassion to keep people alive without restoring them fully to community life. It is an existence on the fringe, a place of managed exclusion. But care also happens – sores are treated, hope articulated, and coins, however reluctantly given, still change hands.

On World Leprosy Day, that tension feels worth sitting with. Not just the cruelty, but also the infrastructure. Not just the fear, but the effort – partial, flawed, deeply hierarchical – to respond to suffering rather than erase it from sight.

This year’s theme is “Leprosy is curable, the real challenge is stigma.” There’s a real call-to-action there. Cadfael reminds us that cures matter, but that the harder work – then as now – lies in dismantling the habits of exclusion that make illness socially incurable.

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RESOURCES

• World Leprosy Day 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke3qEug2gAQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHFbA-UM9U0 or the YouTube short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q4DhFjLnJRQ
• Cadfael, The Leper of St Giles, complete episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4pecr5w_o
• An approachable summary of medieval leprosy in England can be found at the historic England website: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1050-1485/time-of-leprosy/
• My previous blog posts on leprosy:
• Documenting Lepers’ Lives: The House is Black (1962) (1/11/25)S
• Singing & Change on World Leprosy Day (1/26/25)

The Editing Horizon: Shaping the Argument First

The “write it perfectly” trap reached out and caught me yesterday. It’s hard to write when every sentence feels like it needs to be perfect. Yesterday wound up as a down day – a weekend, break, rest day, day at sea – and that was probably overdue anyway. Clearing mental space by dealing with the practical details of an impending snowpocalypse turned out to be the right match for my Friday. This morning I feel more refreshed.

To start back up, and to engage more productively with the happy intensity of editorial work <grin>, I have had to remind myself that this is the draft, not the final written word. The time to play with written rhythm and turn of phrase will come, but right now my horizon is narrower and more specific: the argument.

Note from the side-chorus: it is, truly, “happy intensity” once I get into my editorial zone, it’s just that sometimes it takes a long moment or two (or even hour or two) to get there. of writing is sitting with it until the writing actually happens. This is a separate problem from editing—but it often gets confused with it. See The Silence of Not Writing and What To Do About It or Starting From A Place of Blah for suggestions on handling the not-writing part of one’s writing practice.

That reminder matters, because “editing” often gets treated as a single, all-purpose activity. Sit down, fix everything, be done. But that’s not how writing (or revising or editing or making it better) actually works. Different kinds of editing ask for different kinds of attention, and trying to do them all at once is a reliable way to freeze. Tracking ideas across a chapter, noticing gaps or redundancies, and judging how a reader will encounter an argument require a different mental stance than choosing words or shaping sentences. Mixing those tasks usually means neither gets done well.

I think about it the way I think about practicing. You can play through a passage and tell yourself you’re working on everything at once. But real progress happens when you isolate each skill in turn, and give intonation, articulation, or pacing your focused attention. Tomorrow, it will be time to work on the same passage, but with the next skill in mind. Writing works that way too. You can “make it better” by flogging at it, but the best version will come by taking each task in turn.

So today I’m moving through the chapter segment by segment, and not in order. (I know enough about attention to avoid pretending it’s evenly distributed, and yeah, I should do section 7 while I’m fresh!) For each segment, I’ll ask the same series of questions. Does this make sense? Does it do for the argument the thing that needs doing? Might it better serve the chapter on reading, or does it belong here? When a section meets my standard for argument, I turn it green and move on. The polish can wait.

The goals for the weekend are simple: a lot of literal baking (is another “snowpocalypse” reference a cheat?), a lot of logic-checking (five sections today, five tomorrow), and some time with a few new readings that might reshape the argument itself.

That’s the lesson I wanted to share: set the right horizon for the work you’re doing today. When faced with editing, it's not failing if the draft isn’t elegant yet. You’re still drafting. Elegance comes later – after the argument knows what it’s trying to say.