Although the application process kept me from writing my blog, it certainly didn’t keep me from writing: statements of purpose, diversity statements, candidate statements, writing samples, requests for recommendations, emails to professors, etc., etc., etc. And now, running full tilt toward the oncoming freight train that is graduate school, I can see this blog’s founding intention receding in the distance behind me.
I find myself, however, with the burning desire to continue writing, but a lack of time to devote to my original project, given my impending coursework. To quote the great Eric Idle as Frank the Hermit: “And there’s me with half a wall wattled, I mean what’ll I do?” I’ll tell you wattle do: recast my blog. Not a relaunch – how can a blog with almost no readers and no web presence justify (or even need) a relaunch?
A more accurate word would be reinterpretation. Consider the blog’s name and tag line: Cabinet Views: History from Certain Points of View. At launch, the blog was firmly focused on the political meaning of the word Cabinet – the group of the heads of government departments that determines and carries out government policies. Now, I choose to fall back on an older meaning of the word – a small private room or chamber where the king’s councilors met.
Obviously, I am not the minister of a king, nor do I consort with the ministers of kings – although I did once briefly meet Stockwell Day, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada (it was in a hallway in the basement of the West Block of Parliament Hill while he was waiting for an elevator, which definitely doesn’t qualify as a private chamber) – so I’ll have to stretch the definition a bit. In this recasting, the cabinet will be the room in which I read and research. The views will be my own and those of the authors and scholars I am engaging with as I strive to identify and refine with my thesis.
So, hello again, and welcome to Cabinet Views: History from Certain Points of View.
