I have sometimes mentioned the Gnu’s Room here, a non-profit arts/bookstore/coffeeshop that is the epicenter of much that is worthwhile in Auburn.  The Philosophy Department series, Philosophy at the Gnu’s Room, takes place there and has for the last three years or more.  Now the Gnu’s Room, despite all its good works, is having financial trouble.  If you have a connection to the place and would like to see it continue to exist, go to Kickstarter and pledge something, even if just a couple of dollars.  You can also find out more about the Gnu’s Room, its current predicament, and its future plans on the site.

A Poetry session at the Gnu’s Room. I am lurking in the back, insofar as someone as big as a barn can ever be said to ‘lurk’.

I have been trying to keep the blog’s heart beating even while my attention has been focused elsewhere.  I am currently trying to finish drafting a new essay on Sellars (and Husserl) on perceptual consciousness; I am prepping to write an invited essay on the Frege chapter of A. W. Moore’s massive The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, and I am putting finishing touches on talks I am due to give in France starting in a few days (on Emerson/Montaigne and on Wittgenstein).  Expect things to be very slow here for most of May, since I will be in France and likely too busy to keep up the blog.  Once I return, and after I give the Sellars paper late in May, things should smooth out, and I hope to return the blog to more focused discussions of the sort that characterized it in its early days.  –As always, thanks to everyone who stops by–and especially to all those who comment!  I consider you my teachers.

I have been laboring under a number of projects and deadlines, with no real let-up in sight until December (no joke; I have to learn to say No).  I hope to begin to post a bit more regularly soon, likely by posting bits and pieces of the projects currently preoccupying me.

I appreciate folks sticking around through the holidays and my long absence–near absence–from the blog.  I have just about gotten the writing projects I had looming into manageable shape, and so I hope to get back to more usual posting sometime early in January.  I imagine my pace will still be slow:  among other things, I will be teaching a phenomenology seminar and that is likely to be a serious drain on my time and energy.  Still, I will be able perhaps to do some writing that will be fitting both for here and for class.

I’ve been lucky to have had the community of other bloggers and commentators I have had.  I have learnt a lot from all of you and, as I have often said, I am getting the better of this bargain.  I hope we can continue discussion into the new year; I wish all of you the best!

The blog has had 40,000 views since I started it.  I have no idea if that is comparatively an impressive number.  But it certainly impresses me, especially when I think back to the day in Ohio when I first thought to start a blog, and wondered if I would have anything to say on it, really, and whether anyone would find it useful in any way.

I grew tired of the old look of the site and have been tinkering with a new one.  I believe that I have settled on this one.  I hope folks haven’t been too disoriented by the changes.

It seems I can’t catch up.  Summer teaching, travel, writing, now Fall teaching and more writing.  But, wounded, Quantum Est is not dead.  Bear with me, please.

Having now finished my travels, outlasted food poisoning and faced the Auburn weather version of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace (“It was an awful moment for the three young men. Nobody likes to be burned alive.” (from The Bible Story)), I am now back to work.  Currently, I am writing a new talk on Merleau-Ponty and proofing an article for the book, Turning East:  Contemporary Philosophers and the Ancient Christian Faith.  I hope tomorrow to get back to work here on philosophical questions.  I may also post some bits from the new MMP talk.