On Zeitgeist

Dear Readers,

I think that the best way to describe what it is that I do is that I coagulate zeitgeist into a linguistically digestible form. We take raw data, we translate it, and then we squeeze it for meaning until we can say something about the era that it came from.

Or until we can say too much.

But one way or the other, what we are really trying to get at is the idea of what it felt like to live in the society of interest. Part of this is to really feel th text, to become part of its gestalt, and to completely immerse yourself within it. Another part is to completely immerse yourself in people. That's what zeitgeist really is; "crowdsourced" personality, and to study it we have to do something like collecting little snippets of everything and then trying to stitch them together.

I say all of this because in my quest to relate the experience of our department, I realise I've made a major ommission. We live our lives reading stories and understanding them. Reading my letters may get across what I am like, or some part of the feeling of my profession. Reading my stories, and the stories I translate, will give you the real experience. Expect to see more of them.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople