You may remember me as the blogger whose Spring started with being stranded by a volcano.

I know there’s no excuse for not trashing Jeff Goldstein et al. on a regular basis, but since said volcano, my life has turned into a country song: my wife left me (on a two-month research trip to Italy); my apartment was nearly destroyed in a forest fire; and I was hospitalized overnight with what turned out to be something so painful look what it did to a man much more manly than I … all while being three weeks behind on my teaching.  As you’ll note, those are about the only three posts I’ve composed at my place this past month, so it’s not as if I’ve been neglecting you guys in particular—the entire internet has had to suffer my absence (inasmuch as it did) (which is not that much).  Why am I telling you this?

Because getting back on the horse is much more difficult than it seems.  There’s pressure to return with the perfect post.  To make people remember exactly why it is they might have had reason to miss you.  But as there’s no such thing as the perfect post, I thought I’d start with one full of excuses and hope that gets me over the hump.