Even babies started small.

Me: My baby, who is hanging out on the floor next to me, just enacted a tiny proto-tragedy. She was happily gnawing on her hands. Gnaw gnaw gnaw.

Ben: Sounds good.

Me: She was delighting in this activity, full of joy - and then, suddenly, the very drool prompted to flow by her joyful gnawing had got up her nose, causing her to choke and her eyes to water. She was dismayed! betrayed!

Ben: Tragic!

Me: It was.

Ben: How did the drool end up in her nose?

Me: When you are a baby, your nose is very close to your mouth. And she is lying on her back, as she is too young to maintain another position.

Ben: Ah.

Me: Anyway, she's over it now. But at the moment, it was really quite poignant.

Ben: When one is young pleasure and pain are fleeting.

Me: Verily.

Ben: Werner Herzog narrates the life of Jane Cassandra.

Me: Yay! I wish he would. Not, I think, for too long at a stretch, though.

Ben: Maybe he's available for parties. He goes around collecting information from guests, then narrates their lives for five minutes or so.

Me: I would think that would be very popular.

Don't you?

+

To continue our discussion of academic dress, I have recently been informed that Finnish and Swedish doctorates come with a doctoral hat. Almost every word of the Wikipedia entry about this hat—which, by the way, is a special sort of silk top hat that lives in an equally special wooden box and apparently will run you five hundred euros—is fantastic.

"The hat is awarded in a solemn graduation ceremony." I'm sure it is! "A doctoral hat is personal and is usually not lent to others." No doubt! 

As M observed, "This entry: written by a doctoral hat maker."

Comments

[adriana]

I gather that you invested in "faculty-quality regalia"? I went with standard but was pleased that it included the three chevrons on the sleeves. In black velvet! By the way, you looked stunning in your doctoral garb!

[The Modesto Kid]

Wouldn't you rather have a doctoral sword, though? Getting your doctorate in Finland seems a small price to pay.

[Mum]

Yes, the Finnish one...I long for a crimson tohtorinhattu (this resembles a word in one of those made-up languages invented by your grandfather) and also the sword and magic box to go with. Although the somber Swedish black ones are very impressive.