Monday, December 19, 2011
Chapel Choir Carol
Here's an experiment to see if I can put up a song from one of the the Trinity Hall carol services. Sadly, I goofed and didn't record the service where the choir sang lots of pretty anthems, but rather the one where the whole congregation sang along. Still, you can hear some harmony in there.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
"Letters and Memorials"
To the extent that I've done any work in the past few weeks, I've been collecting evidence of Tennyson's contact with two men he knew at Cambridge, and the general circulation of ideas among his Cambridge friends. All that history, combined with being at such a longstanding institution like Cambridge, made me start thinking about certain continuities across the ages. This is what C.S. Lewis called the Doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart -- and he was (I think rightly) wary of reading literature with an eye only for what never changes about humanity. Obviously, we're also products of the times in which we live -- but some things never change. Everyone in the history of humanity has said something stupid or cruel, resented their parents, felt inadequate, fallen in love unrequitedly, etc., etc., etc. I list the bad things because it really is comforting to realize that any issues I could ever possibly have are part of the wonderful mess of being alive, and they've all been had before.
Caveats: 1) Many people face serious problems like starvation and genocide, I don't want to class those as part of a 'wonderful' anything.
2) I realize that this means that nothing has changed in ages, in a way that some people find depressing.
The other thing that comes forward when reading Tennyson-related letters is the fact that people used to be able to control their legacies to a greater extent. Tennyson's son collected lots of letters and recollections from the poet's friends, and he put them together into one of the authoritative sources of information about him. He literally cut and pasted the material into a draft scrapbook. Then he burned whatever didn't fit the narrative of a great Poet Laureate. This is horrifying for us, but then again, Tennyson himself hated the celebrity worship that led people to strip his front-lawn tree bare because they wanted souvenirs. Here's how one acquaintance explained it:
"He said...that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare's or Jane Austen's..."
I can see how, from his point of view, it's none of our business what he wrote to friends. But it's sort of staggering how people could actually somewhat control what posterity would know about them. These thoughts bubble to the surface almost every time I write in my own diary. I'm not a famous anything, nor am I likely to be. So who is the audience, the potential reader, of my emotional unloading? Well, I primarily write for my own benefit -- to think through things and to remember details of day-to-day life years later. But by definition, writing is for transmitting ideas -- to whom? I often imagine some future historian using my rather banal diaries as material for reconstructing life at Stanford/Cambridge in the early 21st century. Then I wonder how amusing or annoying it will be for them to slog through the parts about boys or family or whatever bothers me from time to time. Oh well, it's not my job to adapt to a person who may not exist.
Caveats: 1) Many people face serious problems like starvation and genocide, I don't want to class those as part of a 'wonderful' anything.
2) I realize that this means that nothing has changed in ages, in a way that some people find depressing.
The other thing that comes forward when reading Tennyson-related letters is the fact that people used to be able to control their legacies to a greater extent. Tennyson's son collected lots of letters and recollections from the poet's friends, and he put them together into one of the authoritative sources of information about him. He literally cut and pasted the material into a draft scrapbook. Then he burned whatever didn't fit the narrative of a great Poet Laureate. This is horrifying for us, but then again, Tennyson himself hated the celebrity worship that led people to strip his front-lawn tree bare because they wanted souvenirs. Here's how one acquaintance explained it:
"He said...that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare's or Jane Austen's..."
I can see how, from his point of view, it's none of our business what he wrote to friends. But it's sort of staggering how people could actually somewhat control what posterity would know about them. These thoughts bubble to the surface almost every time I write in my own diary. I'm not a famous anything, nor am I likely to be. So who is the audience, the potential reader, of my emotional unloading? Well, I primarily write for my own benefit -- to think through things and to remember details of day-to-day life years later. But by definition, writing is for transmitting ideas -- to whom? I often imagine some future historian using my rather banal diaries as material for reconstructing life at Stanford/Cambridge in the early 21st century. Then I wonder how amusing or annoying it will be for them to slog through the parts about boys or family or whatever bothers me from time to time. Oh well, it's not my job to adapt to a person who may not exist.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
My lecture on "Tennyson's Cambridge"
Last week, I gave one of the weekly McMenemy Seminars at Trinity Hall. This is a chance for grad students to talk about their research to their peers. I wanted to make sure it was engaging for the crowd, though -- and to make sure there was a crowd at all -- so I talked about the context of Tennyson and his friends at Cambridge. Thanks to a borrowed digital recorder, I have the speech and have paired it with my slideshow. Sorry it sounds so rushed -- I went a bit over time! And maybe one day I'll get a better resolution video up, but the limitations of size are, well, limiting.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Conferencing and coming "home"
As you all know, I'm prone to signing myself up for "too many" activities. It's usually possible to do them all, but the running around doing them often leaves little time or energy for studying. This has never been truer than this term, during which I have done essentially no research, unless you count writing various conference papers. Why? Because of the following:
At least the last one might sort of produce material toward my PhD. Meanwhile, I took a trip to the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) annual conference. Although it was in Nashville, I first stopped to get my Disney World fix and then visited friends and my brother's family in Greensboro, NC. My little nephew is turning into quite the little man; he grabs you by the finger and walks you all around the house, or up and down the street, on a mission to find anything that might remotely be called a "choo-choo" -- i.e. anything with an engine, a toy thereof, or any screen that will show him a video of such a thing.
and a walk around autumnal Vanderbilt:
- Rowing
- Chapel choir
- Trinity Hall Boat Club co-women's lower boats' captain [scheduling novices]
- Supervising (teaching) a student on Old English
- Classes: Latin, Old English, Old English literature, Old English informal reading group
- Job(s): conference assistant, proofreading, soon to be library invigilating
- Writing conference papers
At least the last one might sort of produce material toward my PhD. Meanwhile, I took a trip to the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) annual conference. Although it was in Nashville, I first stopped to get my Disney World fix and then visited friends and my brother's family in Greensboro, NC. My little nephew is turning into quite the little man; he grabs you by the finger and walks you all around the house, or up and down the street, on a mission to find anything that might remotely be called a "choo-choo" -- i.e. anything with an engine, a toy thereof, or any screen that will show him a video of such a thing.
The conference itself was fun (so many people to meet!), though I wish I'd had a chance to go out into Nashville proper. As it was, my excursions were restricted to a reception in the Parthenon reconstruction, with this gaudy-awful Athena statue:
and a walk around autumnal Vanderbilt:
It was a good trip, but I was also glad to arrive back home in Cambridge.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Drowning in email & admin
Well, this is a less romantic post than many, for the same reason that it is rather delayed; I've simply been drowning in the amount of email and organization I have to handle every day. Because the new year has started! I'm officially a second-year PhD student, no longer probationary.
So far academically, I've been attending classes on Latin, Old English, and Old English literature. The latter two are especially motivated by the fact that I've gotten my first opportunity to supervise (teach) an undergraduate! Supervision can be hard to acquire here as teaching is arranged through each college separately, and you often have to know someone/leverage your supervisor's networking. However, there aren't many people who are able to teach Old English within the English faculty. Most serious scholars of that stuff are over in the ASNC department (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic). Win for me. :D I've met with my student a couple times, and she's delightful. I worry that I don't know all the minutiae of the language or vocabulary, but the exam for which I'm prepping her is more focused on the literary angle, so I just keep telling myself that I know how to do that. Plus, having asked a few undergrads about good supervision techniques, I gather that I'm doing better than some...
I'm also co-captain of the novice rowers, which involves a fair amount of scheduling and such. Oh, and acting as 'external ents' [entertainments] officer for the MCR. You can see why my inbox has been clogged for a couple weeks.
Meanwhile, I have one week in which to get my paper in shape for the annual NAVSA conference (North American Victorian Studies Association). It's a big-ass conference, and I really want to do well at it; so of course I proposed to talk about a confusing, slippery poem that will easily turn you around until you can't sort out what your argument is. Fun times. :-/ But it will come together somehow or other.
For wading through all that, how about a picture? Here's the view from my bedroom window. Tree!
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Kemble's insults
I know, you're probably tired of hearing about John Mitchell Kemble. But I had so much fun running across his various insults that I thought I would compile them for your (ok, my) amusement. He didn't pull any punches, as you'll see.
On 18th-century attempts to get rid of strong verbs:
These truly original and groundforms of the language having been called irregular, a logical fallacy suggested to the purists that what was irregular must be wrong…the wind blew and the cock crew no longer, -- they now blowed and crowed. In short, these masters and doctors, though grammarians and lexicographers, knowed a thing or two less than they ought.
[Footnote in unpublished review of Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, p. 38]
On interpreting Old English based on Old Norse:
I beg once and for all to say that Norse forms have nothing whatever to do with Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. It was by trusting to Norse forms that Thorkelin misread every line and mistranslated nearly every word of Beowulf. It is by trusting to Norse forms that Dr. Repp has plunged himself into his ludicrous Christ-basin, and that Finn Magnusen has recorded his own rashness throughout 105 of the most adventurous pages I ever remember to have read.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 56]
On other scholars' work on the Ruthwell Cross:
It is enough to say, that no such language ever existed as they find on this stone...[Magnusen invents] a new language, in which he says the inscription is written, and a people, by whom he says the language was spoken.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 41, 47]
On a former student who published something from his collection without his permission:
I had the pleasure of seeing my views travestied, my collections ill-used, and the whole subject on which I have long been working most groundedly and seriously, taken out of my hands, and miserably ill-treated in a flippant, superficial, wretched style, by a man who has not a thought on the subject but what he has picked up from me…He is a literary pirate, and as ignorant as he is impudent.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 112, 152]
On the Antiquarian Society's new committee:
Rather amusing that, is it not? A Saxon committee of which not one single member understands a word of Saxon.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 191]
On scholars clinging to old-fashioned and unnecessary Gothic typefaces:
It will be some time before the bibliomaniacal foppery of using these types ceases.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 393]
On the most commonly-used Anglo-Saxon dictionary:
If ever a book was calculated to do harm, to retard the progress of study, to perplex and fill with trouble the mind of the learner, Lye’s Dictionary is assuredly that book.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica p. 392]
On an anticipated new dictionary:
It will be a pitiful performance, for the man is as devoid of philology, as an ox of milk.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 57]
On the origin of Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English):
To suppose the Anglo-Saxon derived from a mixture of Old Saxon and Danish, is at once to stamp oneself ignorant both of Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Anglo-Saxon, and to declare one's incompetency to pass a judgment on the subject.
[Preface to Beowulf, p. xxii]
On the British Anglo-Saxonist establishment:
We could mention, were we so inclined, Doctors, yea, Professors of Anglo-Saxon, whose doings in the way of false concords, false etymology, and ignorance of declension, conjugation and syntax, would, if perpetrated by a boy in the second form of a public school, have richly merited and been duly repaid by a liberal application of ferula or direr birch.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica]
The Oxford men have been railing at me, and at you too worse than the frogs at Latona: you will say as I do [Greek] which in plain English is, they may kiss mine A.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 90]
On the author of nasty letters to the editor about Kemble:
I know not whether he has filled, does fill, or means to fill the Saxon Chair in [Oxford]; but from the specimen of his ability which he has supplied in these letters, I can assure him that he is worthy to take his place in the long list of illustrious obscures who have already enjoyed that cheap dignity.
[Letter on Oxford Professors of Anglo-Saxon, p. 605]
On 18th-century attempts to get rid of strong verbs:
These truly original and groundforms of the language having been called irregular, a logical fallacy suggested to the purists that what was irregular must be wrong…the wind blew and the cock crew no longer, -- they now blowed and crowed. In short, these masters and doctors, though grammarians and lexicographers, knowed a thing or two less than they ought.
[Footnote in unpublished review of Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, p. 38]
On interpreting Old English based on Old Norse:
I beg once and for all to say that Norse forms have nothing whatever to do with Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. It was by trusting to Norse forms that Thorkelin misread every line and mistranslated nearly every word of Beowulf. It is by trusting to Norse forms that Dr. Repp has plunged himself into his ludicrous Christ-basin, and that Finn Magnusen has recorded his own rashness throughout 105 of the most adventurous pages I ever remember to have read.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 56]
On other scholars' work on the Ruthwell Cross:
It is enough to say, that no such language ever existed as they find on this stone...[Magnusen invents] a new language, in which he says the inscription is written, and a people, by whom he says the language was spoken.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 41, 47]
On a former student who published something from his collection without his permission:
I had the pleasure of seeing my views travestied, my collections ill-used, and the whole subject on which I have long been working most groundedly and seriously, taken out of my hands, and miserably ill-treated in a flippant, superficial, wretched style, by a man who has not a thought on the subject but what he has picked up from me…He is a literary pirate, and as ignorant as he is impudent.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 112, 152]
On the Antiquarian Society's new committee:
Rather amusing that, is it not? A Saxon committee of which not one single member understands a word of Saxon.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 191]
On scholars clinging to old-fashioned and unnecessary Gothic typefaces:
It will be some time before the bibliomaniacal foppery of using these types ceases.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 393]
On the most commonly-used Anglo-Saxon dictionary:
If ever a book was calculated to do harm, to retard the progress of study, to perplex and fill with trouble the mind of the learner, Lye’s Dictionary is assuredly that book.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica p. 392]
On an anticipated new dictionary:
It will be a pitiful performance, for the man is as devoid of philology, as an ox of milk.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 57]
On the origin of Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English):
To suppose the Anglo-Saxon derived from a mixture of Old Saxon and Danish, is at once to stamp oneself ignorant both of Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Anglo-Saxon, and to declare one's incompetency to pass a judgment on the subject.
[Preface to Beowulf, p. xxii]
On the British Anglo-Saxonist establishment:
We could mention, were we so inclined, Doctors, yea, Professors of Anglo-Saxon, whose doings in the way of false concords, false etymology, and ignorance of declension, conjugation and syntax, would, if perpetrated by a boy in the second form of a public school, have richly merited and been duly repaid by a liberal application of ferula or direr birch.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica]
The Oxford men have been railing at me, and at you too worse than the frogs at Latona: you will say as I do [Greek] which in plain English is, they may kiss mine A.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 90]
On the author of nasty letters to the editor about Kemble:
I know not whether he has filled, does fill, or means to fill the Saxon Chair in [Oxford]; but from the specimen of his ability which he has supplied in these letters, I can assure him that he is worthy to take his place in the long list of illustrious obscures who have already enjoyed that cheap dignity.
[Letter on Oxford Professors of Anglo-Saxon, p. 605]
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A weekend jaunt
After my last post, I met my friend Heather for lunch and hopped on a train to Exeter, about 2 1/2 hours from London, in the southwest of England. I had enough daylight left to wander around town and see the old city wall (you can see the bottom stones laid by Romans!) and the outside of the old Norman castle (William the Conqueror was here!). History nerdiness spiked, let me tell you. The next morning, I reported to my conference -- which turned out to be pretty small and mostly made up of grad students. The upside of this was that everyone got a chance to meet each other over the two days, and we all heard everyone's papers.
I gave my paper in the last session, so Heather was able to come and hear it. I'm delighted to say that I was very pleased with the paper I finally gave, though I'd been tinkering with it until the night before. By necessity, it didn't include everything I learned about Kemble over the summer, but I think I told a neat, clean story. And since, as I'd guessed, hardly anyone had even heard of him, I was safe as the Kemble expert of that particular conference.
The next day, we set out on a weekend tour of southwestern England. First up was Dartmoor National Park; I wanted to go since it was so close to Exeter. Sadly, without a car and without bus services that only run on weekends, the best we could do was go to Okehampton (on the northwest border) and rent bicycles to go along the edge. Still, we took a little hike at one point just to see some wilder-looking countryside.
On Day 2 of our excursion, we headed east to Dorchester, the town on which Thomas Hardy based Casterbridge (see The Mayor of Casterbridge). This was because Heather is a Hardy fan and writing a chapter of her dissertation on his architecture. Therefore, we absolutely had to visit the house he designed and lived in. (Did you know he originally trained as an architect? I didn't.) We also stopped by the cottage where he was born and grew up.
On our last day, we hit two ancient sites. First, and most giggle-inducing, was the Cerne Abbas Giant. (Pronounce that "Sern Abbas.") It's a figure drawn in a hillside just a bit north of Dorchester, just by scraping off the grass to reveal the chalk underneath -- and it's, well, anatomically correct. Read more about it here. We took a short hike up and around the field he's in, but (understandably) he's fenced off, so we couldn't get a good look at the drawing up close, just a sideways view of some squiggly lines.
Last stop was Stonehenge. I had heard that it's fairly disappointing and all fenced off, but it's really not, at least if you've paid admission. In fact, the path gets quite close in certain spots. There was also a handy audio tour to explain the different sets of construction that happened over a few thousand years (what a timescale!). Of course, it was a bit hard to concentrate on some of it, because we got drenched in a little downpour. We were actually pretty lucky that we didn't get rained on until this point in the trip, and it was over pretty quickly. Plus, it gave us dramatic skies to make Stonehenge look even more mysterious.
We wrapped up by catching the tail end of evensong in Salisbury cathedral (love boys'/men's choirs!) and treating ourselves to a hearty and delicious meal at The Haunch of Venison, a restaurant that dates to at least 1320, when it was serving construction workers for the cathedral. That's crazy! All in all, a perfect weekend that went much, much more smoothly than our last outing.
I gave my paper in the last session, so Heather was able to come and hear it. I'm delighted to say that I was very pleased with the paper I finally gave, though I'd been tinkering with it until the night before. By necessity, it didn't include everything I learned about Kemble over the summer, but I think I told a neat, clean story. And since, as I'd guessed, hardly anyone had even heard of him, I was safe as the Kemble expert of that particular conference.
The next day, we set out on a weekend tour of southwestern England. First up was Dartmoor National Park; I wanted to go since it was so close to Exeter. Sadly, without a car and without bus services that only run on weekends, the best we could do was go to Okehampton (on the northwest border) and rent bicycles to go along the edge. Still, we took a little hike at one point just to see some wilder-looking countryside.On Day 2 of our excursion, we headed east to Dorchester, the town on which Thomas Hardy based Casterbridge (see The Mayor of Casterbridge). This was because Heather is a Hardy fan and writing a chapter of her dissertation on his architecture. Therefore, we absolutely had to visit the house he designed and lived in. (Did you know he originally trained as an architect? I didn't.) We also stopped by the cottage where he was born and grew up.
On our last day, we hit two ancient sites. First, and most giggle-inducing, was the Cerne Abbas Giant. (Pronounce that "Sern Abbas.") It's a figure drawn in a hillside just a bit north of Dorchester, just by scraping off the grass to reveal the chalk underneath -- and it's, well, anatomically correct. Read more about it here. We took a short hike up and around the field he's in, but (understandably) he's fenced off, so we couldn't get a good look at the drawing up close, just a sideways view of some squiggly lines.
Last stop was Stonehenge. I had heard that it's fairly disappointing and all fenced off, but it's really not, at least if you've paid admission. In fact, the path gets quite close in certain spots. There was also a handy audio tour to explain the different sets of construction that happened over a few thousand years (what a timescale!). Of course, it was a bit hard to concentrate on some of it, because we got drenched in a little downpour. We were actually pretty lucky that we didn't get rained on until this point in the trip, and it was over pretty quickly. Plus, it gave us dramatic skies to make Stonehenge look even more mysterious.
We wrapped up by catching the tail end of evensong in Salisbury cathedral (love boys'/men's choirs!) and treating ourselves to a hearty and delicious meal at The Haunch of Venison, a restaurant that dates to at least 1320, when it was serving construction workers for the cathedral. That's crazy! All in all, a perfect weekend that went much, much more smoothly than our last outing.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Back in the UK
Hello again everyone, this time from England.
Yes, those two weeks have elapsed, somehow. Hmm, how did I spend them? I picked up my new raincoat, which Marmot kindly replaced for me since my old one was losing its lining and therefore its waterproof nature. It's awesome that they provide that level of service, but I have to admit that part of me was sad to lose the jacket I wore nearly every day of my first year at Cambridge. I finished (or at least gave up on) my Kemble paper. I ate out at favorite restaurants and got in one day of quilting, which I haven't done in a year. And let's not forget watching Stanford's football team mop the floor with San Jose State, 57-3. That was a good last day in town.
On Sunday, I had a flawless travel day, which it's important to remember does happen sometimes. My flight from San Jose to Chicago was early leaving and had a tailwind, giving me plenty of time to mosey down to the next gate, and then we were nearly an hour early getting into London! Oh, and FYI: on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, a small airport like SJC has no one in it. There was literally no one behind me in the security line the entire time. When I arrived in London, I made my way to a hostel I like and met up with a couple friends for dinner. Then I managed to stay awake until a decent hour before crashing.
It's now morning, and I'm sitting in the hostel lounge looking out at the rain, wondering whether I should make an effort to go see/do something before taking a train to Exeter. I gotta say, the weather is not helping soften the blow of leaving home... Hopefully, a good week of conference and travel will cheer me up.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Many worlds
It may be a small world, but it never ceases to amaze me how many incredibly different and distinct worlds it contains. I just got back from nine days in Fiji, where the schedule most days looked like this:
7:00am -- Wake up
8:00 -- Breakfast as a group
9:30 -- Children's/family snorkel trip
10:30 -- Adult snorkel trip (sometimes only one of these trips)
11:30 -- Shower off
noon -- Lunch as a group
afternoon -- Private group snorkel, scuba dive, or lounging by the pool
3:30 -- Tea time by the pool, check email on iPod
6:15 -- presentation by the marine biologist
7:00 -- Dinner as a group
9:00 -- Bedtime
Granted, this was at a resort and therefore isn't most people's normal life. However, there exists a place on this planet where people wake up every day under thatched roofs to tropical weather and could walk right out into an ocean filled with colorful fish. Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, people are looking out the office window at the leafy trees of suburbia and calculating the traffic on the roads, possibly looking up what classic movie is showing at the Stanford Theatre that night. At the same time, students in Cambridge might be fighting through the tourist crowds, zipping past 700-year-old buildings on their bikes. I'm not even mentioning the even more extreme versions of life that people experience in a given day -- my personal experience is enough to make me shake my head in wonder.
Now that I've returned to the U.S., I'm starting to write my conference paper on good old J.M. Kemble. I haven't read everything I intended to, but I already find that I'm going to have too much material for a 20-minute talk. I'll have to force myself to tell a focused story rather than try to spew all the juicy quotes I collected.
It's strange to think that in exactly two weeks I will be back in England... I find that when I'm in one place, I feel completely, naturally at home, and the other feels a bit like a dream. I'm also anticipating a blistering pace for the month of September. Once I finish this conference, I'll take another little weekend trip with my sister-in-law's sister (let's just say friend), then I'll have to read like crazy for another talk on the 24th, meanwhile expanding my Kemble report for an essay competition whose deadline is the 30th. These are all things I'm excited to do, I just wish I had double the time for each of them. Once we hit October, a new strangeness will occur: new incoming students to meet and make friends with. Some of my friends from last year will still be around, and some will not. The MCR seemed like a fairly cohesive group, so it's hard to picture the same thing happening again, but I'm sure it does every year. Meanwhile, back to the grindstone!
7:00am -- Wake up8:00 -- Breakfast as a group
9:30 -- Children's/family snorkel trip
10:30 -- Adult snorkel trip (sometimes only one of these trips)
11:30 -- Shower off
noon -- Lunch as a group
afternoon -- Private group snorkel, scuba dive, or lounging by the pool
3:30 -- Tea time by the pool, check email on iPod
6:15 -- presentation by the marine biologist
7:00 -- Dinner as a group
9:00 -- Bedtime
Granted, this was at a resort and therefore isn't most people's normal life. However, there exists a place on this planet where people wake up every day under thatched roofs to tropical weather and could walk right out into an ocean filled with colorful fish. Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, people are looking out the office window at the leafy trees of suburbia and calculating the traffic on the roads, possibly looking up what classic movie is showing at the Stanford Theatre that night. At the same time, students in Cambridge might be fighting through the tourist crowds, zipping past 700-year-old buildings on their bikes. I'm not even mentioning the even more extreme versions of life that people experience in a given day -- my personal experience is enough to make me shake my head in wonder.
Now that I've returned to the U.S., I'm starting to write my conference paper on good old J.M. Kemble. I haven't read everything I intended to, but I already find that I'm going to have too much material for a 20-minute talk. I'll have to force myself to tell a focused story rather than try to spew all the juicy quotes I collected.
It's strange to think that in exactly two weeks I will be back in England... I find that when I'm in one place, I feel completely, naturally at home, and the other feels a bit like a dream. I'm also anticipating a blistering pace for the month of September. Once I finish this conference, I'll take another little weekend trip with my sister-in-law's sister (let's just say friend), then I'll have to read like crazy for another talk on the 24th, meanwhile expanding my Kemble report for an essay competition whose deadline is the 30th. These are all things I'm excited to do, I just wish I had double the time for each of them. Once we hit October, a new strangeness will occur: new incoming students to meet and make friends with. Some of my friends from last year will still be around, and some will not. The MCR seemed like a fairly cohesive group, so it's hard to picture the same thing happening again, but I'm sure it does every year. Meanwhile, back to the grindstone!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Summer update
I started this blog primarily to give those who were curious a glimpse of my life abroad -- a response to the impossible, flustering question, "How's Cambridge?!" I also like that I'm writing down the medium-sized picture of what's going on every week or so, because while I keep a diary, it's mostly ramblings about how I'm feeling, not information that I'll want to remember later. In any case, though, I don't feel comfortable just leaving the blog alone while I'm at home, so here's a little update on how I passed July.
As you know, I've been reading up on my new buddy J.M. Kemble (see previous post). This involves cycling out to the Stanford library a few times a week and reading in the Lane Reading Room.
It's funny, but when I walked in for the first time this summer, I was staggered -- almost offended -- by how much empty, open space there is between all the furniture in there. I hadn't thought about this before, but the Cambridge libraries pretty much all cram books and bookcases as tightly as possible into the space they have. Stanford's space felt like luxury indeed.
Dear, quick-tempered Kemble continues to amuse and enlighten. I get the sense that he would have been a fun guy to invite to dinner. No doubt I'm just indulging a fantasy, but it's fun to get to know someone from the past to whom few people really pay attention. I feel like we're buddies in a way that, I suspect, I will never feel about Tennyson. Maybe that's because T. could be grouchy and arrogant, but I think also because he's such common property that I can't get a sense of intimacy.
I've also started a bit of reading for a different presentation, which I learned recently I'll be giving at the end of September. This one is just an interdisciplinary colloquium within Cambridge, so I'm less nervous about it. The topic was so precisely on something I could talk about that I was pretty confident I'd get it, but it's always a great ego boost to get accepted. Plus, it gives me the chance to essentially do a book report on something I have to read for my dissertation anyway. I'll bore you with details another time.
The other big time sink has been learning to scuba dive. I'm taking a trip to Fiji in less than a week, and I was informed by good authorities that I simply could not go without scuba diving. So twice a week I've reported to the local dive shop, where paper tests and pool sessions prepared me for the ocean dives this last weekend. Said dives took place in Monterey Bay, in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean. I was fairly nervous, but my instructor was a real pro, and there were only three students, so everything was very calm and controlled. And having been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium many, many times, noodling around underwater was just like being inside the aquarium. What's scary about that?
So now I am a certified scuba diver -- hurray! I've been so distracted with that process and with reading that the trip itself has snuck up on me. Only a few more days before I leave, so it's time to start packing!
As you know, I've been reading up on my new buddy J.M. Kemble (see previous post). This involves cycling out to the Stanford library a few times a week and reading in the Lane Reading Room.
It's funny, but when I walked in for the first time this summer, I was staggered -- almost offended -- by how much empty, open space there is between all the furniture in there. I hadn't thought about this before, but the Cambridge libraries pretty much all cram books and bookcases as tightly as possible into the space they have. Stanford's space felt like luxury indeed.Dear, quick-tempered Kemble continues to amuse and enlighten. I get the sense that he would have been a fun guy to invite to dinner. No doubt I'm just indulging a fantasy, but it's fun to get to know someone from the past to whom few people really pay attention. I feel like we're buddies in a way that, I suspect, I will never feel about Tennyson. Maybe that's because T. could be grouchy and arrogant, but I think also because he's such common property that I can't get a sense of intimacy.
I've also started a bit of reading for a different presentation, which I learned recently I'll be giving at the end of September. This one is just an interdisciplinary colloquium within Cambridge, so I'm less nervous about it. The topic was so precisely on something I could talk about that I was pretty confident I'd get it, but it's always a great ego boost to get accepted. Plus, it gives me the chance to essentially do a book report on something I have to read for my dissertation anyway. I'll bore you with details another time.
The other big time sink has been learning to scuba dive. I'm taking a trip to Fiji in less than a week, and I was informed by good authorities that I simply could not go without scuba diving. So twice a week I've reported to the local dive shop, where paper tests and pool sessions prepared me for the ocean dives this last weekend. Said dives took place in Monterey Bay, in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean. I was fairly nervous, but my instructor was a real pro, and there were only three students, so everything was very calm and controlled. And having been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium many, many times, noodling around underwater was just like being inside the aquarium. What's scary about that?
So now I am a certified scuba diver -- hurray! I've been so distracted with that process and with reading that the trip itself has snuck up on me. Only a few more days before I leave, so it's time to start packing!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Summer Research
Cambridge friends might be under the impression that I'm whiling away the lazy summer days in Californian sunshine, feasting on succulent strawberries as I lounge in the garden. Well, there is sunshine, but cold breezes have temporarily banished my shorts. And I am feasting on the finest berries that Whole Foods can provide (mostly blackberries) -- but my summer is hardly lazy.
This is because I (perhaps foolishly) submitted a proposal for a conference paper on a person I didn't know much about. It was accepted -- hurray! But now I have to learn all about this guy, mostly reading everything he ever wrote. I'm actually enjoying it a great deal, but time is of the essence in digesting a lot of material so that I can form some kind of argument or summary.
Meet John Mitchell Kemble.
He was part of the same secret society as Tennyson at Trinity College, Cambridge. He's considered the first modern scholar of Old English, and he did a lot to bring good practices to translation and interpretation. (First scholarly translation of Beowulf, and only the second one ever in England!) He also didn't mince words when he thought other scholars had blundered. This makes for some moments of pretty amusing reading. For example:
"I beg once and for all to say that Norse forms have nothing whatever to do with Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. It was by trusting to Norse forms that Thorkelin misread every line and mistranslated nearly every word of Beowulf. It is by trusting to Norse forms that Dr. Repp has plunged himself into his ludicrous Christ-basin, and that Finn Magnusen has recorded his own rashness throughout 105 of the most adventurous pages I ever remember to have read."
Other times, he's pretty dry. The other day I scrolled through a chapter that meticulously compared sources to figure out how big an Anglo-Saxon acre was compared to a modern one. Zzzzzz...
Anyway, I'm going to talk about him at a conference on how people have looked back at the Middle Ages for their own purposes. I expected Kemble to be much more nationalistic, but he's kind of all over the map. He wants to get his fellow Englishmen interested in their own national treasures and emulate the good parts of the past, but here's what he thinks of the Anglo-Saxons' sense of humor:
They were an extremely dull, calm, sober, common-sense people, and as for satire, God help them! they had not an atom.
So I continue reading, and eventually I'll put something together to talk about. It might just be a list of how he was a nexus of conflicting interpretations of medieval England. But I'll bet that very few in the audience will know as much as I do already about Kemble, so I'm not too nervous. But maybe that's just his arrogance rubbing off on me... :)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
All good things must come to a (temporary) end
Well, I'm back home again after two last weeks of insanity and fun and sad goodbyes. Since I left you hanging with May Bumps, I'll finish that story. First, a picture of us with our first-day victory greenery:
The last two days of bumps, we had to row over twice a day, first to stay at the head of our division, then to try to claw our way into the next-higher division (unsuccessfully). It was exhausting and fairly frustrating to keep falling short, especially since we thought that if we had been fresh, we could have caught that upper division... In any case, the end result was a total of moving up four spaces (3 the first day, 1 the second) and never getting bumped by anyone else. This makes you eligible for "discretionary blades." But wait, what are blades, you ask?
Blades are the coveted award for bumps -- but they're often a matter of luck as well as skill, so they're hard to win. Physically, it means you get an oar painted with the names of the crew members, like this. To win them unequivocally, you have to have gone up at least four spots and have bumped at every opportunity (i.e., at least once a day). However, if you go up four and never get bumped, your boat club captain can choose to award you blades. And ours did! What a very Cantabrigian thing I will have on my wall forever and ever! :D Here's a celebratory picture with the flag, which represents winning blades.
After bumps, all the rowers celebrated with Boat Club Dinner, a convivial (read: drunken) event, as always. Then after a short night's sleep, I headed into my first Suicide Sunday. It's a day that consists of a series of garden parties -- men in blazers whose colors indicate the sports they play, women in summer dresses, everyone drinking bellinis and other cocktails. Why is it called "Suicide Sunday"? I've heard two theories: 1) It's so booze-soaked that you wreck yourself; 2) It's your last chance to kill yourself before exam results come out. Cheery, huh? In point of fact, it's fairly civilized: a chance to relax on the grass in the sun.
The week following was May Week, during which people attend various college balls. The only actual balls I attended were Queens' May Ball and Trinity Hall June Event (same idea but more casual and doesn't last all night). However, the week filled up with many other activities, as well. And then it was time for people to start dribbling away, some for good. It seemed like nearly every day there were sorrowful leave-takings. Eventually, I managed to scrape together some boxes in which to store my things and bid farewell (temporarily) to Cambridge myself. I'm so grateful for the amazing year I had, and I look forward to another great one. Meanwhile, time to do some research for my first "real" conference talk, first thing in September...
The last two days of bumps, we had to row over twice a day, first to stay at the head of our division, then to try to claw our way into the next-higher division (unsuccessfully). It was exhausting and fairly frustrating to keep falling short, especially since we thought that if we had been fresh, we could have caught that upper division... In any case, the end result was a total of moving up four spaces (3 the first day, 1 the second) and never getting bumped by anyone else. This makes you eligible for "discretionary blades." But wait, what are blades, you ask?
Blades are the coveted award for bumps -- but they're often a matter of luck as well as skill, so they're hard to win. Physically, it means you get an oar painted with the names of the crew members, like this. To win them unequivocally, you have to have gone up at least four spots and have bumped at every opportunity (i.e., at least once a day). However, if you go up four and never get bumped, your boat club captain can choose to award you blades. And ours did! What a very Cantabrigian thing I will have on my wall forever and ever! :D Here's a celebratory picture with the flag, which represents winning blades.
After bumps, all the rowers celebrated with Boat Club Dinner, a convivial (read: drunken) event, as always. Then after a short night's sleep, I headed into my first Suicide Sunday. It's a day that consists of a series of garden parties -- men in blazers whose colors indicate the sports they play, women in summer dresses, everyone drinking bellinis and other cocktails. Why is it called "Suicide Sunday"? I've heard two theories: 1) It's so booze-soaked that you wreck yourself; 2) It's your last chance to kill yourself before exam results come out. Cheery, huh? In point of fact, it's fairly civilized: a chance to relax on the grass in the sun.
The week following was May Week, during which people attend various college balls. The only actual balls I attended were Queens' May Ball and Trinity Hall June Event (same idea but more casual and doesn't last all night). However, the week filled up with many other activities, as well. And then it was time for people to start dribbling away, some for good. It seemed like nearly every day there were sorrowful leave-takings. Eventually, I managed to scrape together some boxes in which to store my things and bid farewell (temporarily) to Cambridge myself. I'm so grateful for the amazing year I had, and I look forward to another great one. Meanwhile, time to do some research for my first "real" conference talk, first thing in September...
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Things I love about Palo Alto
Inspired by the blog of an impossibly-hip former tour client, and to ease my pain as I approach my (temporary) departure from Cambridge, I thought I'd make a list of things/places I love about my home town.
- The Stanford Theater. I always think this should be on the tourist route in addition to the university campus -- except I don't want it cheapened. I love that a theater that rarely shows any films made after the 1960s is a vital part of the community in the heart of Silicon Valley.
- The Peninsula Creamery. Probably the same as any number of 1950s diners around the country (though it was founded in 1923!). Still, it's an institution -- my dad even used to take his engineering textbooks and study here during college. Mmm, extra-thick milkshakes.
- You never know who might secretly be a m(/b)illionaire or other impressive person. When Steve Jobs gave my class's Stanford graduation speech, he wore an honorary gown...with shorts and sandals underneath. This epitomizes what I'm saying. If your everyday fashion tends toward the casual, it does not imply anything about your abilities or talents. Actually, I'd say it's the same at Cambridge -- it's just that here we have a fair number of events for which you specifically go black tie. [It's a great speech, by the way. Read it here or watch it here.]
- The view from the Dish. In the words of my alma mater's school hymn, Palo Alto lies "where the rolling foothills rise up toward mountains higher, where at eve the Coast Range lies in the sunset fire." Take a little hike and the reward is incredible.
- San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Okay, it's not in Palo Alto, but you're never going to be disappointed with these guys, especially (in my case) if they've gotten hold of some Russian music. If flights of angels sing me to my rest, I'd like to request Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, please. Failing that, I'd accept the SFSC performing the same duty. And did you know that something like 70% of them are volunteers? They are Grammy-winning pros and yet most don't get paid at all for giving up their time to be so good. [Pop quiz: what's the literary reference in this bullet point?]
- University Church. Tight-knit yet welcoming, supportive in everything, and incredibly active in making the world a better place in a hands-on way.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
May Bumps 2011, Days 1 & 2
For those who need a little reminder of how bumps works, see my old post here, or the explanation by one of the boat clubs here.
Day 1
Our first day was absolutely epic and possibly the most pain I've ever experienced from exercising. Thanks to the brother of one of our rowers, you can watch a video of one of the crucial moments here. We come into view rounding the corner about 35 seconds in, wearing white t-shirts. You can see the two boats in front of us bump and move aside, and we take a very wide course around the corner in order to avoid them.
We were something like 6 boat lengths behind the boat we now had to chase; we and everyone on the bank thought we were destined for a rowover (just finishing out the course). But the coaches kept yelling at us to try for the overbump, telling us that we were now only 4 lengths behind, then two (for a long time), then 1.5...And right at the very end of a 2K course, we actually bumped them! I was in so much pain trying to breathe, it was not remotely funny. We've all developed "rower's cough" -- which sounds like we've got tuberculosis or something.
Day 1
Our first day was absolutely epic and possibly the most pain I've ever experienced from exercising. Thanks to the brother of one of our rowers, you can watch a video of one of the crucial moments here. We come into view rounding the corner about 35 seconds in, wearing white t-shirts. You can see the two boats in front of us bump and move aside, and we take a very wide course around the corner in order to avoid them.
We were something like 6 boat lengths behind the boat we now had to chase; we and everyone on the bank thought we were destined for a rowover (just finishing out the course). But the coaches kept yelling at us to try for the overbump, telling us that we were now only 4 lengths behind, then two (for a long time), then 1.5...And right at the very end of a 2K course, we actually bumped them! I was in so much pain trying to breathe, it was not remotely funny. We've all developed "rower's cough" -- which sounds like we've got tuberculosis or something.
Day 2
We came into today feeling fairly confident. Thanks to moving up three places with our overbump, we were starting at #2 in our division. It was a close one, though. The boat behind us was inching closer to us as we inched up on our prey...We were actually overlapping them for quite a while, but at that point in the course, you have to physically touch to earn a bump, and they were taking evasive action. Eventually, though, they hit a corner and had to turn, bringing themselves nicely into contact with our bow.
Then the hard part came. Having reached the head of our division (yay!), we became the "sandwich boat" -- i.e., we were now also the bottom rung of the next division up. We had a 45-minute break, and then we had to try again. We came out swinging, but our coaches soon told us to back off and save our energy. So we slowly finished out the course (no one chasing, since we were the bottom). It was somewhat disappointing, because it means we have to do the same thing tomorrow -- and potentially the next day, too. But on we go!
In the Stanford Band, we have a saying: "If every week were Big Game Week, we'd all be dead." I think the same applies to Bumps. But by golly, I want to win blades!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
A whimsical journey
[Useless rambling about the title. Skip ahead for info about my weekend trip.]
In my graduating class, in the Stanford band, there was a guy named Tom Hennessey. For years, he proposed a field show that would tell the story of the black plague from the point of view of the rat, ending with him arriving in England and having tea with the Queen. This show never got voted in because, well, no one thought it was that funny. What was funny was Tom's persistence in presenting this show, inevitably with the loud proclamation, "IT'S A WHIMSICAL JOURNEY!" It seems appropriate for the random-ass trip I took with my sister-ish-in-law...
I won't bore you with the details of all the transportation connections we messed up, but we always got where we were going, even if it meant sampling the local cider in a pub while waiting for a taxi (how rough). Here's the short version.
STOP #1: Tintern Abbey (just inside Wales)
William Wordsworth wrote a famous poem "written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" after a visit in 1789. It's one of my favorites -- go Google it and read. The actual Abbey is remarkably well preserved considering it was founded in the 12th century. And for an extra bonus, they were having morris dancers perform that day -- as far as I could tell, this means hopping around with bells on your legs and waving handkerchiefs. We had a lovely couple hours in the sun between rain showers.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
In my graduating class, in the Stanford band, there was a guy named Tom Hennessey. For years, he proposed a field show that would tell the story of the black plague from the point of view of the rat, ending with him arriving in England and having tea with the Queen. This show never got voted in because, well, no one thought it was that funny. What was funny was Tom's persistence in presenting this show, inevitably with the loud proclamation, "IT'S A WHIMSICAL JOURNEY!" It seems appropriate for the random-ass trip I took with my sister-ish-in-law...
I won't bore you with the details of all the transportation connections we messed up, but we always got where we were going, even if it meant sampling the local cider in a pub while waiting for a taxi (how rough). Here's the short version.
STOP #1: Tintern Abbey (just inside Wales)
William Wordsworth wrote a famous poem "written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" after a visit in 1789. It's one of my favorites -- go Google it and read. The actual Abbey is remarkably well preserved considering it was founded in the 12th century. And for an extra bonus, they were having morris dancers perform that day -- as far as I could tell, this means hopping around with bells on your legs and waving handkerchiefs. We had a lovely couple hours in the sun between rain showers.
STOP #2: Clevedon (Somerset)
This little coastal town used to be a modest Victorian resort. There's a restored pier from that period, and we even saw a day-cruise ship dock as we ate dinner on a pub balcony:
It was a gorgeous evening, as you can see. That night, and all the next day, it rained without ceasing. Nonetheless, we walked down to a little church for the real reason we'd come: the grave of Arthur Hallam. Hallam was Tennyson's bosom friend from the time they met at Cambridge and was engaged to Tennyson's sister. He died very suddenly of a stroke at age 22, which devastated the poet. During the ensuing years, Tennyson wrote a bunch of poems and pieced them together into his masterpiece, In Memoriam A.H.H. The plaque to Hallam is inside the big window on the right of this picture. His actual grave is somewhere nearby, possibly under the floor.
The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
STOP #3: Chew Magna
Never heard of Chew Magna? You're not alone. It's a one-horse town, but it holds something special for my sister-in-law's family, the Miners. Their ancestor Thomas left Chew Magna in the 1600s to make his way to America. When some Miners from America wanted to put up a plaque in the church in the 1970s, they discovered that the herald they'd been told they had by a shady genealogist in the 1700s was complete BS. We wanted to see whether the plaque ever went up. It did! But without the heraldry. I'll spare you that picture and leave you with me on the main street:
In short, it was a very quirky tour -- a whimsical journey, if you will. It appeared that we were the only tourists in Clevedon and Chew Magna, and on one memorable occasion, we entered a pub and everyone turned and looked at us, perplexed. That's how you know you've gotten off the beaten track! But as long as there's cider in the pub, it's a good place to be.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
As Easter term rushes toward its end...
A few things to update you on as the term starts winding down.
First, I submitted all the paperwork for my first-year registration! The big thing was a writing sample, which I felt was ultimately less complete than I would have liked. Still, it showcases what I'd like to write about for the next couple years. Here's the funny thing, though: after I had printed out everything, including statements of what I've been doing and attending all year, I signed the cover form and suddenly found myself stumped by the following: "The title of my proposed dissertation is ___________." My topic has changed a fair amount from my admissions proposal, and I genuinely haven't thought about what to call it. So 15 minutes before this thing was due, I sat in the library staring at this little bit of white space, trying to come up with something clever. I didn't. Placeholder it is: Tennyson and the New Philology.
Now I wait for the department to contact me about an in-person chat with two faculty members who are not my supervisor. But do you think I'm relaxing? Not a bit of it! For one thing, I've been working on a proofreading project for quite some time now, sorely neglecting it the past couple weeks. For the sake of professionalism, I really have to finish it up pronto -- hence my return to the library.
Meanwhile, rowing has ramped up in preparation for the May Bumps next week. It took nearly all term to settle on a crew for W2 (women's second boat), so now we're trying to come together as a unit quickly. To be honest, I've found it a frustrating term for rowing, because it feels like I'm getting worse rather than better. I don't think that's actually true, but my half of the boat (and me particularly) are certainly getting a lot more commentary from the coach and the cox. And the more they call out in piercing tones that convey annoyance that we're doing something wrong, just as I was focusing on fixing the last thing, the angrier I get. It's not pretty inside my head at those times. Then today, for extra fun, I had so much trouble breathing during a sprint that I was actually worried about my health, and so was the coach, based on my facial expressions. I've never in my entire life had asthma, so this was both frightening and embarrassing. Here's hoping it was a fluke panic attack or something.
Looking ahead: my friend/sister-in-law's sister and I are taking a weekend trip to some off-the-beaten-track villages on the border of Wales. Bumps follows, after which will be the gloriously booze-soaked, sleep-deprived experience that is May Week in Cambridge. So I should have lots to report in the coming weeks!
First, I submitted all the paperwork for my first-year registration! The big thing was a writing sample, which I felt was ultimately less complete than I would have liked. Still, it showcases what I'd like to write about for the next couple years. Here's the funny thing, though: after I had printed out everything, including statements of what I've been doing and attending all year, I signed the cover form and suddenly found myself stumped by the following: "The title of my proposed dissertation is ___________." My topic has changed a fair amount from my admissions proposal, and I genuinely haven't thought about what to call it. So 15 minutes before this thing was due, I sat in the library staring at this little bit of white space, trying to come up with something clever. I didn't. Placeholder it is: Tennyson and the New Philology.
Now I wait for the department to contact me about an in-person chat with two faculty members who are not my supervisor. But do you think I'm relaxing? Not a bit of it! For one thing, I've been working on a proofreading project for quite some time now, sorely neglecting it the past couple weeks. For the sake of professionalism, I really have to finish it up pronto -- hence my return to the library.
Meanwhile, rowing has ramped up in preparation for the May Bumps next week. It took nearly all term to settle on a crew for W2 (women's second boat), so now we're trying to come together as a unit quickly. To be honest, I've found it a frustrating term for rowing, because it feels like I'm getting worse rather than better. I don't think that's actually true, but my half of the boat (and me particularly) are certainly getting a lot more commentary from the coach and the cox. And the more they call out in piercing tones that convey annoyance that we're doing something wrong, just as I was focusing on fixing the last thing, the angrier I get. It's not pretty inside my head at those times. Then today, for extra fun, I had so much trouble breathing during a sprint that I was actually worried about my health, and so was the coach, based on my facial expressions. I've never in my entire life had asthma, so this was both frightening and embarrassing. Here's hoping it was a fluke panic attack or something.
Looking ahead: my friend/sister-in-law's sister and I are taking a weekend trip to some off-the-beaten-track villages on the border of Wales. Bumps follows, after which will be the gloriously booze-soaked, sleep-deprived experience that is May Week in Cambridge. So I should have lots to report in the coming weeks!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
What I've been doing
I always find it interesting when I sit down at a study desk to guess what the previous occupant is cramming for / researching, based on titles of the books stacked there. As I put together my bibliography for the year's reading, it seems like a good way to show you what I've been doing all this time. Keep in mind that many of these are articles or book chapters, not whole books, and a large chunk of them relate to a project I'm no longer doing. Still, I'm pretty impressed with myself.
Anglo-Saxonism (aka what I'm not doing anymore)
‘J.M. Kemble and Sir Frederic Madden: “Conceit and Too Much Germanism”?’,
Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800
‘The Elstobs and the End of the Saxon Revival’
Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity
Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries
‘Received Wisdom: The Reception History of Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care’
‘The Anglo-Saxon Grammars of George Hickes and Elizabeth Elstob’
‘Antiquary to Academic: The Progress of Anglo-Saxon Scholarship’
‘The Elstobs, Scholars of Old English and Anglican Apologists’
‘The Rediscovery of Old English Poetry in the English Literary Tradition’
‘Crushing the Convent and the Dread Bastille: The Anglo-Saxons, Revolution and Gender in Women’s Plays of the 1790s’
Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century
‘Anglo-Saxon Attitudes?: Alfred the Great and the Romantic National Epic’
‘Historical Novels to Teach Anglo-Saxonism’
‘The Anglo-Saxons: Fact and Fiction’
Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Medievalism
Reinventing King Arthur : The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture
A Dream of Order; the Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature
Romantic Medievalism: History and the Romantic Literary Ideal
Culture and language politics
Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture : Discourse and Ideology
Philology
The Study of Language in England, 1780-1860
‘The Uses of Philology in Victorian England’
The Rise of English Studies; an Account of the Study of the English Language and Literature from Its Origins to the Making of the Oxford English School
The Tenth Muse: Victorian Philology and the Genesis of the Poetic Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hardy’s Literary Language and Victorian Philology
‘Nationalism and the Reception of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik by English-Speaking Audiences’
Tennyson and His Circle
The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years
The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University’s Élite Intellectual Secret Society
Guessing at Truth: The Life of Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855)
John Mitchell Kemble and Jakob Grimm; a Correspondence 1832-1852
‘Middlemarch and Julius Charles Hare’
The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart
Theological Essays (by F.D. Maurice)
Notes on the Parables of Our Lord (by R.C. Trench)
Tennyson’s Poetry
‘Tennyson’s “The Princess”: A Definition of Love’
‘The Argument of “The Ancient Sage”: Tennyson and the Christian Intellectual Tradition’
Tennyson’s Language
‘Soul and Spirit in “In Memoriam”’
‘The Anti-Feminist Ideology of Tennyson’s “The Princess”’
The Spirit of God in the Old Testament.
Language and Structure in Tennyson’s Poetry
‘“Flowering in a Lonely Word”: Tennyson and the Victorian Study of Language’
Tennyson and the Reviewers; a Study of His Literary Reputation and of the Influence of the Critics Upon His Poetry, 1827-1851
The Language of Tennyson’s In Memoriam
‘“Knowledge of Their Own Supremacy”: “Œnone” and the Standardization of Tennyson’s Diction’
‘Tennyson and the Nineteenth-Century Language Debate’
‘Tennyson and Persian Poetry’
Friday, June 3, 2011
On the straightaway
Well, the race is nearly over, and the finish line lies straight before me. I have three more days in which to polish up my end-of-year essay and write some blurbs about what I've done so far and what I'll do next. Meanwhile, the weather is warm and sunny, and I gave a tour to a delightful family this afternoon, during which I got to deviate from the standard route and take them to lunch at Trinity Hall. I'm delighted to report that they seemed convinced that it's the best college -- yay! :DAnd we're not entirely without fun, even in exam term. A couple weeks ago, the MCR had its Annual Dinner, which was 1920s themed, so everyone looked fantastic. Thanks to a helpful video from YouTube and a lot of bobby pins, I managed to transform my long hair into the appearance of a wavy period bob (see photo). We also got to have pre-dinner champagne in the fellows' garden behind the master's lodge -- quite swanky. Incidentally, I've now worn three of my four bridesmaid dresses in Cambridge, and I'm sure the last one will make an appearance before the year is out. I think this speaks to a) brides I have known having fairly good taste, and b) Cambridge providing lots of black-tie events.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Are we there yet?
Preface:
There are so many people in Cambridge right now who have been studying like mad for weeks and who are staring down (or already suffered through) massive exams that determine an ungodly percentage of their degree results. Compared to that, I'm having a walk in the park. But still...
It's a bit of a stressful week. The three big things I needed to write for this term were: a conference paper, an undergraduate lecture, and my first-year review piece. Now, I actually had about the right number of words for all of these a week or so ago. But somehow, the closer the conference got (it was a couple days ago), the more time I found myself spending on trying to get that paper in shape, neglecting the other two...This was capped by a last-minute paper exchange with a fellow student whose opinion I really respect, resulting in a flurry of editing before heading to London.
I'm happy to report that the conference was a fun though long day, showcasing people from incredibly different time periods and interests. My talk was right at the end, but it seemed to go well. Yay! Now back in Cambridge, I have a few days to finish the other monster pieces. [Quiz: who caught the reference to Sesame Street's "Monsterpiece Theater"? If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and watch the related videos.]
I've actually felt rather productive today -- but after most of a "productive" day, I've slogged through editing and adding to six pages. Out of 20. Oy vey. Must must must make it all the way through the first-year thing today, then finish lecture tomorrow. So it's the Mac and me and the Jerwood makes three tonight. (Imagine that to swing music.)
There are so many people in Cambridge right now who have been studying like mad for weeks and who are staring down (or already suffered through) massive exams that determine an ungodly percentage of their degree results. Compared to that, I'm having a walk in the park. But still...
It's a bit of a stressful week. The three big things I needed to write for this term were: a conference paper, an undergraduate lecture, and my first-year review piece. Now, I actually had about the right number of words for all of these a week or so ago. But somehow, the closer the conference got (it was a couple days ago), the more time I found myself spending on trying to get that paper in shape, neglecting the other two...This was capped by a last-minute paper exchange with a fellow student whose opinion I really respect, resulting in a flurry of editing before heading to London.
I'm happy to report that the conference was a fun though long day, showcasing people from incredibly different time periods and interests. My talk was right at the end, but it seemed to go well. Yay! Now back in Cambridge, I have a few days to finish the other monster pieces. [Quiz: who caught the reference to Sesame Street's "Monsterpiece Theater"? If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and watch the related videos.]
I've actually felt rather productive today -- but after most of a "productive" day, I've slogged through editing and adding to six pages. Out of 20. Oy vey. Must must must make it all the way through the first-year thing today, then finish lecture tomorrow. So it's the Mac and me and the Jerwood makes three tonight. (Imagine that to swing music.)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Cricket explained for Americans
So in case you haven't been tracking my facebook status, I've actually gotten to play in a couple matches with the Cambridge University Women's Cricket Club. This causes my friends to boast that "Sarah plays cricket for the university" -- which is not untrue, but somewhat deceptive in terms of how good it implies I am. Still, for a cheap thrill, check out my player profile on the team webpage:
http://www.cucc.
Now, cricket has this terrible reputation for being impossible to understand. Aaron Sorkin certainly seems to think so; there's a whole episode of Sports Night in which the cast and crew are trying to understand some incredible game so that they can talk about it on the show, and in an episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet quips, "Now, I am an educated man, Charlie, but when someone tries to explain cricket to me, all I want to do is hit him in the head with a teapot."
http://www.cucc.
Now, cricket has this terrible reputation for being impossible to understand. Aaron Sorkin certainly seems to think so; there's a whole episode of Sports Night in which the cast and crew are trying to understand some incredible game so that they can talk about it on the show, and in an episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet quips, "Now, I am an educated man, Charlie, but when someone tries to explain cricket to me, all I want to do is hit him in the head with a teapot."
I'm here to insist that it's really, truly not that difficult to understand! Especially if you already know the basics of baseball. Part of the problem, I think, is the terminology -- so here it is, the basics of cricket explained using baseball terminology (forgive me, cricket fans).
Like baseball, you win by scoring more runs than the other team. But instead of a diamond of four bases to run around, there are two bases that you run back and forth between, and the outfield is 360 degrees all around.
Like baseball, there's a batter who hits a ball in order to be able to run. There's also an extra batter who runs back and forth. They alternate who actually receives the pitch. Here's a picture from our last match, which was against Oxford (click to enlarge). On the left-hand side, next to the umpire in black trousers, you can see the pitcher ("bowler") about to throw the ball. A bit to the right is the extra batter standing ready to run, and on the far right is the active batter with bat raised.
Like baseball, the batter is out if one of a few things happen:- the fielders catch a fly ball
- the fielders get the ball back to one of the bases before the one of the batters gets there
- the pitch gets past the batter and hits the wicket (3 sticks in the ground where a baseball catcher would be). [Note: there's no penalty for swinging and missing as long as the ball doesn't hit the wicket.]
- the pitch hits the batter in the leg and that leg was directly in front of the wicket. (Without this rule, the batter could just stand completely in front of the wicket and make it impossible to get out that way.)
Like baseball, after a certain number of outs, the inning is over. In cricket, it's 10 outs. If 10 outs don't happen, the inning ends after a fixed number of pitches.
The big difference: instead of alternating batting and fielding throughout the game, one team does all their batting first, then you have a tea/lunch break, then the other team does all their batting. To be honest, I'm not a fan of this part, because it means that the team that bats first is playing in a vacuum and doesn't know how many runs they'll really need in order to win, whereas the second team simply has to get one more than their opponents.
So there you go! Not so bad, right? If you want to know more, Wikipedia's entry is pretty handy. It only remains to say that it's really fun to watch people's reactions to an American girl playing cricket. For one thing, it's not a super-common sport for women just yet, but more to the point Americans just don't know anything about it. Generally, people are surprised, amused, and impressed, in roughly that order.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Study nooks and rambling
As you saw in my last post, I have a few things that require me and my computer to be joined at the hip for the next couple weeks. Over the course of the year, I've definitely found the spots where I work well, so allow me to take you on a tour.
Number one with a bullet is in the English faculty library. The library has a number of large tables out in the open on the ground floor, but I feel on display there, and there's too much to look around at. However, the "first" (American second) floor only partially covers the ground floor, and there's a little wall along the edge. Along this wall and next to the bookcases are individual desks, and if I can snag one of these, I'm good to go. They're bathed in natural light from the large windows, and you get a sense of people around you, but it also manages to feel fairly private. Here's a view from about halfway down the line of desks:
What's that on my computer screen? Glad you asked. It's a section of my first-year review piece titled Richard Chenevix Trench and Popularizing Philology. This Trench guy was a major influence in making the basics of language scholarship accessible and interesting for the general population. There are about five books of his that I want to read over the summer. He says great things like, "Language is fossil poetry...many a single word is itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and imagery laid in it." But moving on...
Happy place #2: Jerwood Library in Trinity Hall, mezzanine level, looking out at the lawn and King's College Chapel spires.
If this spot is occupied, I walk to the other side of the room and face across the public bridge (charmingly known as "orgasm bridge" because it's so steep that it's an effort to cycle up) and over the river to a little field.
In other news, by this time next week I'll have given my first-ever conference talk. Check out the program (my session is at 3:00pm) by clicking here.
Number one with a bullet is in the English faculty library. The library has a number of large tables out in the open on the ground floor, but I feel on display there, and there's too much to look around at. However, the "first" (American second) floor only partially covers the ground floor, and there's a little wall along the edge. Along this wall and next to the bookcases are individual desks, and if I can snag one of these, I'm good to go. They're bathed in natural light from the large windows, and you get a sense of people around you, but it also manages to feel fairly private. Here's a view from about halfway down the line of desks:
What's that on my computer screen? Glad you asked. It's a section of my first-year review piece titled Richard Chenevix Trench and Popularizing Philology. This Trench guy was a major influence in making the basics of language scholarship accessible and interesting for the general population. There are about five books of his that I want to read over the summer. He says great things like, "Language is fossil poetry...many a single word is itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and imagery laid in it." But moving on...
Happy place #2: Jerwood Library in Trinity Hall, mezzanine level, looking out at the lawn and King's College Chapel spires.If this spot is occupied, I walk to the other side of the room and face across the public bridge (charmingly known as "orgasm bridge" because it's so steep that it's an effort to cycle up) and over the river to a little field.
In other news, by this time next week I'll have given my first-ever conference talk. Check out the program (my session is at 3:00pm) by clicking here.
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