Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Today is the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston. An appropriate day, then, on which to finally submit my much-laboured-on essay on Mules and Men, the account she wrote of her research trips collecting folklore in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana in the late 1920s that never ceases to amaze me with its ingenuity, observation and humour.

This pile of books can now return to the shelves. Or, more precisely, to the boxes that will soon be taking over the living room as I begin packing.