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I’ll probably be posting infrequently between now and next Monday: poor me, I’m languishing in Bermuda while New York is in the depths of winter. (At least it was when I left yesterday morning.)

I’m at the sixth biennial conference of the Society of Early Americanists, which is being held here this year to mark the 400th anniversary of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture, an English ship on its way to Jamestown. A few survivors of the wreck stayed here, making it the second oldest permanent English settlement in the New World.

The Sea Venture has nothing to do with New York history or literature, of course — although there are other shipwrecks in Bermuda’s history that originated in New York. Which is to say that as we were descending into the airport I couldn’t help but think the whole place looked a little like the Others’ colony on Lost — done up in pastels.