ALTERNATIVE FACTS

DAMN, THIS PROGRAM ISN'T WORKING RIGHT.  I"VE BEEN TRYING TO GET THIS POST OUT FOR TWO DAYS AND I UNDERSTAND THE PICTURES DON'T COME THROUGH, NOR CAN I CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE TYPE.
TIME TO CALL THE COMPUTER HOSPITAL  -- I CAN NO LONGER TAKE IT IN BUT THEY MAKE HOUSE CALLS.
I GIVE UP.  RATHER THAN SPEND ANY MORE TIME ON THIS, I'LL JUST SKIP RIGHT TO THE POINT AND TELL YOU THAT THE TOPIC TO BE PRESENTED NEXT SEPTEMBER BY BILL HUTCHINGS IN BATH, ENGLAND CONCERNS ITSELF WITH

TRUTH AND FICTION: ALTERNATIVE FACTS IN JANE AUSTEN'S NORTHANGER ABBEY

and I finished the post off with a picture of Kellyann Conway, the originator of a phrase that's evidently made its way around the world at lightning speed.   Wikipedia tells me she first pronounced it fewer than four months ago.  Got to figure that invitation had to be printed in England, travel across the ocean, make its way to my house -- and it must have been some time earlier that Bill wrote the description of his talk, assuming even then that Brits reading it would recognize the phrase. 
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This morning's post brought a mailing from the Jane Austen Society, the original one, in England.  It includes an invitation to a scholarly gathering planned for late summer in Bath.  

   Nice picture of the Royal Crescent, incidentally.  Norm and I once spent a night in the hotel that you'd never guess is discretely located in the center of that Crescent -- no  obtrusive sign allowed. But I digress.

   This year marks the 200th anniversary of Jane's death.   Years ago I stood in the low-ceilinged room where she died -- yes, in Bath.  I don't believe one can visit it now-- sorry, digressing again. 

   So -- Austen scholars are concentrating, right now, on the two of her novels published that same year, 1817 -- Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. 


The list of speakers for this planned assemblage is impressive -- Bill Hutchings, for instance, is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, co-editor of The Cowper and Newton Journal, a National Teaching Fellow (whatever that is), and the author most recently of Living Poetry and Living Fiction. 

Here is the lecture you could hear him deliver, late morning next September 25




















and finally, here is the bit that brought me up short:

 

IT'S PASSED INTO THE LANGUAGE!
INTERNATIONALLY!
YOU CAN EVEN FIND IT IN WIKIPEDIA!