tongue and pen and hands

I've had no time -- I mean really very little time -- to get to my own work in the last two years. I know that I've said this before, but there's nothing like beating a dead horse with work-related sorrow. Instead of shaping my dissertation (finger down the throat) into a publishable monograph, I've been diligently serving the institution. When I first took this job, I had hoped that the time away from my dissertation would make me pine for it. It hasn't. But it has provided endless opportunities to hone my guilt about turning away from that project, one that just feels so massively messed up, so narrow, so timid, so hopeless problematic. So unsexy.

But occasionally, like yesterday afternoon when my archival skimming malaise had reached heights heretofore unseen, I come upon a little nugget, a gem, something, dare I say it, almost precious. The above is a scrap from a M. Carey Thomas commencement address at Bryn Mawr in 1912. She introduces Jane Addams as the "tongue and pen and hands" of a "great social movement" (social justice, I presume). I know it's a silly little bit, but I just love that formulation of Jane Addams, as the tongue and pen and hands.

If only we could be hear the story that she begs permission to tell....