As of last night, I’m back at UNM again for another semester. Though I’m long, long overdue for graduation ceremonies, I’m still chugging along while I maintain my full time position as an embroidery digitizer/designer, backup graphic artist, IT guy, Web master, web designer, and ‘e-commerce wizard’ over at Black Duck. On the heathen front, or at the very least on the Germanic studies front, I’ve managed to seat myself next to my beloved Celeste in a medieval archeology course that should prove to entertain my humanities-based approach as well as attend to her anthropological needs. Seeing that 2 of the 3 texts consist of The Goths, and The Franks, I feel pretty well assured of getting my early medieval Germanic culture fix. The professor is a good-humored and well read individual who seems rather inspired and taken by the material, though with a somewhat distracting effect on his lectures. Never before have I seen a professor gawk and marvel at a good book like I do, let alone during a lecture. Here’s hoping this helps to kick me into gear for more research and writing in the coming months.

Podictionary.com host Charles Hodgson may not have the best Old English pronunciation in the world, but for a few minutes a day his podcast will take you through the etymology of an English word, exploring interesting twists and turns of linguistic causality that lead us to the frequently mistunderstood usages of the present day. Frequent references from the OED provide the scholarly meat of the podcast meal, but the personal commentary and literary references ranging from Shakespeare and Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary to UrbanDictionary.com will provide plenty enough fun and fluff for a diction-enhancing dessert.

While paging through Olof Sundqvist’s Freyr’s Offspring, I came upon his method for validating historiographic and sagaic sources that describe possible practices and views of the ancient Svea society. Seeing as Ásatrú is constantly deciding exactly how much credence to lend to sources in “the Lore” the method he applies struck me as something worthy of discussion, especially as this led me to some observations about modern heathens and our search for validity.
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