Trouble Is Everywhere

I was checking a date on Wikipedia and discovered that - shocking! - there is wrong information on Wikipedia about the foundation of the CNIB. And then I realised that in all my reading I hadn't actually seen anything official about the relationship between Halifax and the foundation of the CNIB. And then I realised I really want to write a paper on the foundation of the CNIB. (I mean, seriously - the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online has a good bio of Fraser but somehow fails to mention that he basically pulled a lot of strings on the CNIB, as the initial Board of 13 members had 7 alumni from the Halifax Asylum for the Blind. The letters... Oh, internets, the letters I have to and from Fraser are just goldmines that apparently no one else has looked at since they were sorted, and that is both a crime and a golden opportunity for me!)

Of course, I really want to do it because Wikipedia is RONG RONG RONG and I want to fix it, and I can't do that with unpublished sources at the Nova Scotia Archives. I must, obviously, write and publish something. The sooner the better.

(As I said on twitter earlier - right thing to do! wrong reasons to do it! Ah well, whatever gets words on pages, right?)

I still also need to get my sweet self out to Fredericton, NB, because the official description of the Deaf fonds out there is not terrible illuminating and merely hints at more Dire Things having gone on when The Principal Formerly Known As Principal 2 (Woodbridge) left the Halifax Institution and went there to start a school.

In 1883 the Institution was destroyed by fire, but the next year a new structure was built on the old site, which, in turn, fell victim to the flames in 1897. For the next five years, the school was located in Old Government House. A commission, headed by Jeremiah H. Barry, was established in 1902 to investigate the finances and administrative practices of the school. The commission reported that Principal Woodbridge had mixed his own finances with those of the school and that the Institution's debts were nearly double its assets. In addition, students testified before the commission that they had been physically and emotionally abused by teachers and administrators. In December 1902 Principal A. F. Woodbridge resigned his post, and soon after government officials closed the school's doors.

For example, this somehow fails to mention that the fire was allegedly set by either Woodbridge or one of the rival schools in New Brunswick (there was a thing), and also fails to mention someone in the New Brunswick Legislature fiercely defending Woodbridge from allegations so heinous as to not be mentionable in the Legislature, while assuring everyone that the girl in question was probably lying and anyway she left. Nothing suspicious there at all.

Anyway, the latest draft of my SSHRC has been sent off to Dr. T & Dr. B., so hopefully they will work their editing magic it on it. (Or, even better, it will not need editing magic! But that is unlikely.)

So I'm pretty much at the point of complete and utter dysfunction regarding my sleep schedule, my eating habits, my internet time-wasters, and my thesis, but hey! I called my mother and we had a good chat, and then my father wrote the NDP a sternly worded email about web accessibility that he cc:ed to me and I almost fell out of my chair. So while the rest of my life is falling apart, the family thing is going well.

(I may actually see my brother sometime this calendar year too, which will be the first time since 2003. Or maybe before. Please remember that I forgot to tell my parents I was moving to China until about a week beforehand because it slipped my mind to tell them. My family & I haven't had some falling out or anything, we're just... not that sort of close. It's very strange, especially since generally my family is really awesome and I like talking to them, but it just never seems to occur to me to do so.)

I have no idea what's going on in anyone else's life, but I've sorted my Facesock's farm on Farmville to my satisfaction, gotten terribly bored of Tumblr (except for the Sailor Moon stuff), apparently made enough passive-aggressive tweets about my university being irritating about accessibility & disability issues that the student newspaper contacted me to ask if I wanted to write a column (no, because then I'd have to read the student newspaper, which proudly published an article last year about how Roman Polanski was an innocent woobie who was just framed by the system because if the 13 year old girl he raped didn't want to be raped then she shouldn't have let herself be raped), and have written exactly 0 words of my thesis since last I reported the number of words I'd written on my thesis, but HEY. My imaginary pixel trees are all nicely in order now.

I think I may have finally gotten to the point where whatever procrastination is left in my soul is just bored of procrastination, because the big things I'm looking forward to today are having tea with Ginny & Ysa (and some guys that are married to various people at this tea party but they're not as important) and then actually sitting down and writing rather than... well, anything else, actually. (Well, and Karate, but I scheduled myself to be in three places at once today so I threw everything that wasn't Ginny & Ysa and tea to the wolves.) I feel kinda bad about it because I don't want to ignore my friends, but my thesis smells like freesia really is quite nifty and it would be better if I actually wrote it so I could share it with the world.

( Oh internet, let me tell you about this part of my thesis because it's really fascinating to me )

Arg, so tired. I had more thoughts on this. I guess I'll just have to write my thesis, huh?

In order to get back on track I need to have two chapters written in the next 6 days. This may actually be doable, if I buckle down and do nothing else. Which, conveniently, I can (after tea).

♥