Useful words

There are plenty of lists out there of British vs. American terms for things, and I don't intend to duplicate them.  While I haven't bothered to pick up a fake accent, when in my second home I do say 'queue' instead of 'line' and 'cycling' rather than 'biking', and even 'fancy dress' for 'costume'.  Not to mention that I'll probably be really confused if I ever try to row in my native land, because I hear the terminology is different in that arena, too.  But in any case, there are also some very useful words I've learned in the UK that don't seem to have exact equivalents in American English.  They're so useful, I keep employing them when home, to the mild confusion and amusement of those around me.

Faff

This is the most useful word effver.  It means general fuss and effort that is kind of necessary but annoyingly holds you up in trying to do what you actually want to do.  For example, when you just want to get rowing and someone spends ages taking off their shoes, stuffing their jacket in the dry bin, and adjusting their seat -- that's faff.

Banter

Yes, we sort of have this in the U.S., but we use it more narrowly, for lighthearted back-and-forth talking.  Amongst my Cambridge friends, it means this too, but more generally, having good banter also means having good chat; being a pleasant and interesting companion for an evening, especially an alcoholic evening.

Lurgy

According to the OED, 'Usu. in phr. the dreaded lurgy . A fictitious, highly infectious disease.'  This was apparently coined by a radio program in the 1950s, but I've heard it used to remark on one's general malaise and feeling icky.

Kit
Athletic clothing, especially if decorated with your team's name (aka stash).  I have acquired an increasing amount of black and white rowing kit, and a fair amount of Trinity Hall or other Cambridge stash.

Keen
Yes, Americans know what this means, but it's in abundant use for eager/interested/enthusiastic/supportive/involved.

Now if only I could conjure more useful words to go into the conference paper I'm writing.  Ages and ages ago, I submitted a proposal to talk on a panel about W.S. Gilbert (as in Gilbert & Sullivan); the first time, my paper was accepted but the panel didn't make it into the conference.  A year later, the panel was guaranteed to happen, but I had to re-submit my proposal in case someone else had come up with a better idea in the meantime.  After acceptance #2, I've had six months to anticipate speaking at the MLA, the biggest conference in the humanities.  Here I am in the program:

It's an amazing opportunity.  And I truly have nothing original to say on the topic I proposed.  Seriously, it has all been covered.  Heh.  Well, with any luck, few people will come to the panel, and the other papers will get all the questions, and I'll escape with a nice line on my CV.  But I have a knack for getting a lot of questions...  I've found a perfect, hidden cubicle in the basement of the Stanford music library, and it's dead silent (finals just finished) and lacking all distractions.  If ever I could work anywhere, this should be it.  Wish me luck!

Michaelmas term 2012

I'm so sorry that I've neglected this blog for the entire term.  To be honest, it wasn't a good eight weeks, though there were bright spots along the way.  Rowing proved extremely frustrating as people dropped out or wouldn't commit to the training, and I spent so much time trying to hold it together that I did essentially no work on my PhD.  But let's move on to the good stuff:

Talking at the 19th Century Seminar

The English faculty has a guest speaker every other week, and occasionally they fill the spot with a third-year grad student.  I gave a paper that was basically the best of everything I've done so far, combined into a 45-minute talk.  I got a lot of questions, and while I didn't answer them especially well, people were clearly interested in the topic, so yay.  Here's me listed in the course bulletin:

Christmas grad hall dinner

Cam-mas/Bridgemas

The joking term for the Christmas that happens in Cambridge about a month too early.  The chapel choir sang its two carol services, the MCR had its annual Christmas dinner, and things were generally festive.  You know how people have those miniature Christmas villages they put on tables as decoration?  I want a miniature Cambridge, but it doesn't seem to exist according to my Google searching.  This could be my big money-making scheme...  Anyone good at ceramics?

Boat Club Dinner

After a crummy term, I wasn't necessarily looking forward to BCD, but it turned out to be one of the best evenings I had.  Being captain finally paid off as I got to sit at the fun table with some favorite alumni, give a speech, read fines, and generally feel loved and appreciated.

Me and my co-captain

Trip to Warsaw

My rowing friend Marta, who did her MPhil last year, emailed in November to say that there were cheap flights to Warsaw at the end of term, and would I like to come visit?  So I said yes!  Another boatie and I hopped over for a few days to gorge ourselves on potato-based foods and enjoy the Christmas lights.  Sadly, I've managed to leave my camera cable behind, so I'll have to share pictures later.

...And now I'm back home, pushing my way through a cold that is in no way surprising after weeks of not enough sleep and a lot of stress.  The only wonder is that it took so long to strike.  I'm trying to wipe the mental slate clean so I can start next term refreshed and cheerful like the Sarah of old.

Rowing and freshers

The new academic year is upon us.  I've been completely MIA to my family and non-Cambridge friends as I first spent a week rowing twice a day (see blistered hands, left and right) then a week welcoming all the new grads to Trinity Hall and trying to recruit freshers of every level to try rowing.  Practical results:

• Drank a bit much on Saturday (MCR welcome drinks), Wednesday (boat club cocktails followed by MCR fun), Saturday (MCR cocktail night), and Sunday (first evensong of the year, yay choir friends!)
• Didn't sleep nearly enough
• Hundreds of emails sent and received
• Did ZERO work
• At least three fits of exhausted sobbing, mostly over organizing boat club stuff
• Now have a sore throat

But the thing is, it's all completely worth it.  I admit, it's becoming more difficult to work up the enthusiasm for new people since they come and go so quickly, and I'm realizing that the ones worth knowing will continue to be around; a blitzkrieg of friend-making probably isn't necessary.  Nonetheless, a week of sociality is never a bad thing.  And the weather has been glorious for the most part.

Being women's captain has proved every bit as stressful as I'd feared, but I'm fortunate to be surrounded by people with better strategizing skills who loyally help me.  Adding to my discomfort (both emotional and physical), I have switched to rowing stroke side (blade on my right, not my left).  This feels odd, but it was necessary, and it's becoming more natural.  But the best thing about rowing lately is that we were honored by a visit from Tom James, who was an undergrad at Tit Hall not so long ago and just won his second gold medal in rowing.  See here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/18911517 (he's sitting at the 3 seat with the cap and sunglasses).  He brought both medals and passed them around, and he hung out for the afternoon chatting with everyone.  AWESOME.  He also gave a little speech, and I was struck by the fact that when he rowed for Cambridge, he lost three out of four boat races against Oxford.  It just goes to show that a) results don't tell the whole story, and b) rowing is truly a team sport.  No individual can win a race for everyone else.

Tables and graphs about words, oh my!

Good news first: I seem to have found much more evidence than I expected to show that Tennyson was influenced by Old English and old words.  My goal for the five weeks leading up to term was to write 10,000 words, and I'm 80% there with a week to go.  My slight concern is that my paper is filling up with tables, a graph, and calculations of percentages that I fear will bore my reader to tears.  But as requested (thanks, Adelaide!), here is a sampling.

Example #1
Let's show that Tennyson had an ear for the way Old English poetry sounded.  OE poetry had four stressed beats in a line.  The words that fell on these stresses alliterated (started with the same sound) in a certain pattern: the same sound in stress #1 or #2 (or both), plus stress #3.  And oh yeah, all vowels alliterate with each other.  Tennyson also liked four-stress lines, conveniently enough.  Here are some examples within the poem "Mariana" where he follows the old pattern:

	Stressed syllable
	1	2	3	4
Either at morn or eventide (16)	X		X
After the flitting of the bats (17)	X		X
She drew her casement-curtain by (19)		X	X
And glanced athwart the glooming flats (20)	X		X
The cock sung out an hour ere light (27)		X	X
The clustered marish-mosses crept (40)		X	X
All day within the dreamy house (61)	X		X
Which to the wooing wind aloof (75)		X	X

After that I talk about close-but-no-cigar lines that sound about the same to an amateur (i.e. Tennyson) but actually break the rules by including the fourth stress...

Example #2
It's a graph!  Heavens to Betsy.  "The Lotos-Eaters" is a fabulous poem that riffs on part of the Odyssey.  Go read it!  I'll wait. ...  I'm exploring the fact that a surprisingly high percentage of the poem's vocabulary is Germanic or Norse, not French/Latin.  In fact, it only averages 1-2 Romance words per line, with some sections having none at all.  How do I know this?  Because I counted.  I checked every word with the OED and made a pretty ugly graph.  In case it's not clear, the numbers on the y-axis are the lines of the poem.

As I was discussing this process with a friend, it became clear that someone with more linguistics and computer skills could probably make a project out of doing this kind of analysis on Tennyson's entire corpus (all 1,800 pages of it).  But it ain't gonna be me.

So there you have it, a humanities gal getting her hands dirty with organized information.  Really it's just a product of the fact that I find it much easier to grasp patterns when I see them visually displayed like this.  I read the rules for Old English alliteration many times, but as soon as I drew it out, it clicked.  Plus, I really didn't want to have pages and pages of text along the lines of, "And here's another example of where he does this."  I hope my supervisor finds it useful, too.

Meanwhile, I'm preparing to get rowing started again next week.  I got on an erg (rowing machine) last night for the first time in weeks, and it wasn't promising.  :P  I'm looking forward to getting on the water, but it looks like I will have to switch sides for now, and I know that will both feel weird and reduce my quality of rowing since I haven't done it much.  But to cheer myself up I watch this video of four of us at a regatta in August.  I'm sitting on the far right, nearest the cox.  We reconfigured the boat so that I could sit in that position and set the pace for everyone -- which made me nervous, but was kind of fun in the end.  Forgive the weird deformations as YouTube tries to eliminate camera movement...

Monastic life (mostly)

With the hustle and bustle of Olympics over -- at least the Olympics for which I had tickets -- I have no choice but to return to the library.  But don't feel too sorry for me.  At this point, even most of the grads and summer-research undergrads who were around for the summer have gone home, either because they finished their master's dissertations or just for a visit home.  This means I live a sort of monastic life of semi-solitude.  My day generally looks something like this:

9:30 -- Either just getting up or going sculling with a friend

11:30 -- Settle into my study nest in the Tit Hall library, write a little

1:00pm -- Lunch in the MCR or the lawn

2:00-5:00pm -- Write on my latest chapter until I reach 500 words

5:00 -- Coach people on rowing

6:30 -- Dinner in the MCR

7:00 -- Read

That looks very impressive and studious, but keep a couple things in mind: 1) I waste a lot of time doing other things (blargh, internet); 2) when term starts, I will have very little time for work thanks to being a rowing captain.  So I have to get stuff done now.

Pre-play entertainment at the Globe

But there have been some fun distractions.  One was a trip to the Globe Theatre in London -- you know, the one where Shakespeare worked.  Obviously it's a reconstruction, but I'm not complaining.  I was a "groundling," standing in front of the stage, under the open sky as it faded from blue to dusky purple.  The guy who played Henry V was fantastic, and they even managed to make the wooing scene believable, which I didn't think was possible.

Another diversion was a few days at a retreat/conference on "Life Beyond the PhD."  The English faculty had a bunch of money to send people and were practically flinging it at us, so I joined some thirteen compatriots and a load from other universities at the gorgeous Cumberland Lodge.  Honestly, I was most excited about spending a few days in a swanky country house, and it did not disappoint.  To the left is a picture of part of my room.  Best of all, the bathroom had an actual bath in it!  I used it every night.  :)

My room at Cumberland Lodge

On a walk in Windsor Great Park

Of course, there were also many opportunities to meet other PhD students from around the country, doing many different topics -- in fact, one whole day consisted of giving 10-minute presentations on our research.  It was a friendly crowd, and I even got to know some other Cantabrigians better when we took a long walk one afternoon.  The lodge is in the same park as Windsor Castle, so when the sun peeped out between gusts of chilly wind, it was a lovely place to stroll around.

Now that I'm back in the library, I'm pressing on through the molasses of taking my theories about philology's influence on Tennyson and showing them in his most famous poems.  At the moment, that means looking up every word of "The Lotos-Eaters" in the online Oxford English Dictionary to see what proportion of words he used were of Germanic vs. French/Latin origin.  I may even make a graph before I'm done -- how strange for an arts student!

The Olympics!

I've been AWOL for a while now, my apologies.  Toward the end of my month at home, I got temp hired by the academic publisher I worked for briefly in 2008.  Wooo, much-needed money!!!  But it was earned by helping create a book index under extreme time pressure, so my last week was pretty much entirely spent in a cramped office entering code into LaTeX (pronounced lah-teck) and tracking down tiny differences that made five different entries for one thing.  Sort of interesting, but only because it was SHORT-TERM.

Once back in England, I was able to fulfill a dream I've had since 1992 and watch the Olympics live.  In 1992 the Olympics were in Barcelona, I was nine years old, and I fell in love with them.  Ever since, I've wanted to be there in person, and luckily for me, they came to within striking distance of a place I was actually living.  The online ticketing system was truly horrendous and made me despair of seeing much of anything: there was an initial lottery, then 6am releases of tickets during which the servers would crash, then miscellaneous releases as the weeks went past.  I got most of my tickets through this last method, though the website more often than not would show a session available, let you request them, then say there were no tickets.  Repeat ad frustratum.  In the end, here's what I saw, in order:

Road Cycling
This involved a very early morning to get from Cambridge to London, then across the city, then out on another train to Box Hill to line the road.  The course looped around the hill nine times, so we got to see changes in the groups.  The cyclists were really close to us bystanders, and you could feel the whoosh of wind off them.  Very exciting.  It was disappointing for GB fans that they didn't win anything -- especially since their team featured Bradley Wiggins, who had just become the first Brit to win the Tour de France.  Still, it was a festive atmosphere and a fun day out.

Here are Team GB leading the peloton, which is the main group that is behind the breakaway group that has sprinted ahead.  GB are in dark blue with white helmets.

Volleyball
Dominican Republic vs. Russia
USA vs. Brazil

This was dumb luck based on the bracket, but it was fantastic.  This pair of teams were in the gold medal match last year, so it was quality stuff.  Plus, there were two Stanford players on the court, one of whom (Logan Tom) made the winning spike.  Sweet!  Here she is serving.





Women's football (soccer)
Great Britain vs. Brazil
This may have been my favorite event, even though my understanding of soccer is limited to "They get the ball in the goal.  This doesn't happen very often."  Mainly, it was because the atmosphere in Wembley Stadium, which usually hosts professional teams, was absolutely electric; people were excited and cheering and doing the wave...  It's more than you get at most Stanford football games, that's for sure.  And GB scored the only goal of the match right in front of our seats, within the first two minutes!  Here's the view approaching the stadium and from my seat.

Canoe/kayak sprint
This was a bit of a dud, to be honest.  In addition to being somewhat boring to watch, the action was described by the two least informed commentators possible.  They clearly knew nothing at all about the sport, so the man basically said, "This is close!  Ohh!" over and over, without even informing us who had won, while the woman clearly had a fact sheet of which teams had won which recent competitions and just read them out.  Here's an actual exchange they had:

MAN: "That's a false start in lane 2.  What are the rules for a false start?"
WOMAN: [Looooong pause.]  "I don't actually know, to be honest.  I assume they'll restart."

Wow.

The most exciting thing about this event was that it was held at Eton Dorney, where all the amazing rowing had taken place earlier in the week -- GB kicking ass, including a Trinity Hall alumnus (Tom James) getting gold in the men's four.  Sitting right at 500m from the end, though, meant that a bunch of starts happened right in front of me.  Here's an example.

Women's wrestling
Medal matches for both weight classes
Yes, I wanted to see this since I wrestled in high school.  The matches went by really quickly, but it was again a loud, supportive atmosphere -- especially for the gold-medal winner, a Japanese woman who has won the gold now all three times that women's wrestling has been in the Olympics.  But I have to say, I was not impressed by the fact that tied periods are settled by picking a ball out of a bag, which gives one person a massive advantage such that she's almost guaranteed to win the period.  Sports should not depend on something so arbitrary.  Anyway, here's a shot of an American (in red) who eventually got bronze.

Sailing

So this one was quite far away.  So much so that by the time we got there, we caught the end of a semifinal, and then there was a delay because the wind died...And then they moved to a location farther away, which would have been fine except that they had no feed for the giant screen anymore because the BBC had packed up and left.  Boo.  But a gorgeous day at the seaside!

And so ended my firsthand experience of the Olympics.  London did a fantastic job of organizing travel such that everything went very smoothly.  I have yet to see the Olympic park, though, because none of my venues were inside it, and you had to have a ticket just to go in.  Oh well, it's not going anywhere, I guess.  I'm just so grateful to have gotten to see the things I did.

Cleaning

There are any number of reflections, spiced with various levels of humor, on the amount of stuff in our lives.  (This assumes "we" are those lucky enough to afford possessions and have a dwelling in which to house them.)  Just look up a clip of George Carlin's stand-up bit about stuff for a good example.  I have no interest in covering that ground in detail yet again, but the fact is that I have been confronted by my stuff collection on a number of fronts recently, so it's on my mind.

Now, first, I'm not going to self-flaggelate much.  I don't think the amount of things I have makes me a bad person, especially since much of it was gifts or books bought for school or t-shirts that went along with activities I did.  I'm not drowning in my diamonds, in other words.  But I have become increasingly aware that I have stuff that fills a room in Cambridge, a closet and dresser at my parents' house (plus some storage rooms), and a room, kitchen, and store room at my apartment in Palo Alto.  Many of these items have made it through dozens of previous cleaning projects, but I'm pleased to report that eventually a time comes when I realize that I'm more sick of seeing a certain item than I feel sentimental about it.  When that happens, I can say, "Honestly, I'm never going to use this.  It can go away."  But there are challenges, of course.  My big stumbling blocks are:

• Books.  Most are college books I've read and either want to display out of pride or think I might one day want to look something up in.  One shelf is yet-to-read.  One bookcase is childhood books that are sentimental and/or classics that it would be wrong to get rid of (all the Little House books, for example).
• Magazines.  Why do I feel the need to read them cover to cover?  Because you learn unexpected and interesting things that way.  I'm just now eliminating a stack of magazines that dated as far back as 2008.  Three to go!
• Clothes.  I'm not a stereotypical clotheshorse.  I don't yearn to go shopping, and I don't really like spending money on clothes, because it always seems like a lot for a single item.  However, I suffer from the "it's still good, it would be wasteful to throw it away" syndrome, combined with sentimentality when it comes to t-shirts.  While I think this is the ethical position to take, it also means you end up with, say, a number of oversized, faded (unflattering!) t-shirts from various Girl Scout events, or from national parks you visited with your family when you were about 12.

In short, it's always a matter of trying to assess how realistic it is that you might one day wish you still had that thing you got rid of.  I'm getting better at this, but one must persistently chip away.  With one week to go before I return to England, the pressure is on.

Living the good life

I can't believe I let a whole month go by, but it was a fantastic -- and fantastically tiring -- one.  I chose that word carefully, because the end of the year at Cambridge is more like a fantasy than reality.  To start things off, I had a positively glowing second-year review with my supervisor and another professor who also reviewed me last year.  We strategized about what I should do next and what I should expand, but they found my piece really interesting and somewhat novel.  Whee!  This is what helped assuage my guilt for not doing any work the following two weeks.  We won't dwell on the fact that my supervisor has said several times now (from the safety of now-I'm-on-track), "I was quite worried about you last year."  Yeesh!

Then there was the run-up to May Bumps.  I was in the second boat -- disappointing when I first found out, but it was a fun and talented group.  In fact, we came together such that, in pretty short order, we became the most balanced boat I think I've been in.  (Translation for non-rowers: we weren't tipping side to side all the time, which is both annoying and slows you down as your oars drag on the water.  Balance is hard to achieve, even with good rowers.)

We started off as the "sandwich boat" between divisions, just where my crew left it last year.  The first day we rowed over head of one division but didn't bump our way into the next one up.  The second day, we nearly managed to row over head again but got caught in the last stretch of the Reach (long straight part of the course).  So close, and yet so far.  The next two days, Cambridge's infamously gusty winds were our undoing, because while we were technically pretty rowers, we were also lightweights and were being chased by...substantial women.  But here we are, working hard:

You see me there sitting at seat 7, part of stroke pair.  This was a strange new experience for me; usually, because I'm so light and relatively unpowerful, I sit in at the bow end (front end, far right in this picture).  So I'm accustomed to seeing everyone in front of me and following along.  Sitting at 7 meant that people were following me, and I had to take it on faith that everyone else was back there behind me.  It was kind of flattering to be a semi-leader, though.  I'll need that next year, because I'll be the women's captain!!  I resisted running for weeks, because I was concerned about the time and stress it will involve, but eventually I realized (with much peer pressure...) that if I didn't do it, I would be sad for the lost opportunity.  So I will soon have embellishments for my new boat club blazer (see photo).  Fun fact: did you know that the word "blazer" was coined in Cambridge?

My black-tie partying actually started during Bumps (shhhh....), and it was an intense week-plus.  First there was the chapel choir's annual dinner, at which the tradition of "fining" ran wonderfully rampant.  Fining consists of mild-to-moderate embarrassment in the form of a central figure standing and announcing "I would like to fine the person who _____."  The person or people who fit the description then stand and take a sip of their drinks to acknowledge whatever trait or past behavior has just been named.  In a group that fundamentally likes and trusts each other, it's all fair in loving war to air the dirty laundry.

The following days included the MCR's farewell dinner, the termly Boat Club Dinner to celebrate the end of Bumps, Clare College May Ball, Trinity Hall June Event, and somehow throwing together the Gilbert & Sullivan Society's May Week show of "The Sorcerer," in which I had a small part.  After one of the worst springs on record, the weather was relatively good for Bumps and May Week, until the day of the show.  We stared down the prospect of performing in the rain in our garden theatre, until a miracle got us the ADC Theatre, one of the prime locations in Cambridge.  A good-sized audience turned up, and all came together for no good reason except perhaps good karma.

Then my body collapsed into a cold after 10 days of not enough sleep, I packed my room into storage, enjoyed the MCR garden party, and flew home.  Sunshine at last.

Second-Year Springtime

Slogging through Tennyson can mean reading a lot of less-than-stimulating verse (in my humble opinion).  But then there are moments when you run across a gorgeous line or a sweet moment, and they make it worth while.  Bonus points for Cambridge references.  For example, here's a bit from a sonnet he wrote for a college friend who had died when they were both old men:

How oft we two have heard St Mary's chimes!     [The university church]
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,          [Cantab = Cambridge]
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,    [path to the back entry of Trinity College]
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well!  Now both are gone to rest.
.................................................
                              dream of a shadow, go --
God bless you.  I shall join you in a day.

It's still not the most amazing stuff he ever wrote, but it's poignant.  I'm only halfway through his collected poems, but that hasn't stopped me from writing my second-year review piece.  It's nearly 20,000 words long, which is 1/3 of the minimum length for the complete dissertation.  It's a big stack of paper.  That big stack of paper is sitting at my left elbow as I write this, with notes from my supervisor sprinkled throughout it.  We had a good meeting last week, and basically she thinks it's an interesting subject and good material, but I need to make it clear what my claims are and why I'm using particular poems.

It's really exciting to hear confirmation that I'm on a path that will actually lead to a PhD.  I can see how much I still need to do -- discuss the work of other critics, for example -- but that's now in the context of filling out a shape I have in mind.

Meanwhile, spring/summer has suddenly blazed forth in Cambridge.  It's positively humid, and everyone has dug out their shorts and sandals from whatever cupboard they were buried in.  I have mounted to the top of the college library and have a gorgeous view of the sunset light on the spires of King's College chapel.  The sound of happy student chatter drifts up from Latham Lawn and through the windows that have been cranked open for the breeze.  It was only a few days ago that it was hard to believe we'd ever get clear sky and warmth again, and now winter seems aeons ago.  Here is a recording of the sounds from earlier this evening, the chapel bell at King's calling people to evensong:

Can't deal with that right now

That has more or less been my mental state for the last three weeks, which is why you haven't heard from me in a while.  The pace of Cambridge life is slightly slower during Easter (spring) term, but there has been rowing training six days a week and a symposium to organize.  Each of these brought their own reasons to be stressed and occasionally frustrated.

Every year (well, for three years now), the MCR puts on a half-day symposium for its members and the fellows of the college; there are talks, a keynote, a discussion panel, and humorous debates.  This year, it was my honor to organize it.  Many aspects were easier than I anticipated -- getting volunteers to talk and debate, for example -- but other things slipped through the cracks (inviting the master more than three days in advance...).  And would you believe it took me something like four hours to design the program?  Here's the front of it.  I like the picture because next to Marshall McLuhan's left elbow is a Trinity Hall-crested tobacco pot.  For those who don't know, McLuhan was a big-time commentator on the media from the 1960s onward and coined the phrases "global village" and "the media is the message."  In Woody Allen's movie "Annie Hall," he miraculously appears to tell off a pretentious guy in a movie theater (see here).  He was also a Tit Hall alum.  The symposium itself went really well -- but very few people turned up to it.  This was extremely disappointing, not only because I had worked so hard, but because it was a sharp drop-off from last year.

As for rowing, the weather has not been cooperating to make this term as lovely a time as usual to be on the water.  In fact, when I first got back it rained for two weeks straight; even when not actually raining, the sky was so dark that it was simply depressing.  It is less consistently awful now, but the sun is still a rare sight.  To cap things off, I didn't quite make it into the first boat for May Bumps (barring an injury or similar problem).  I'm not exactly shocked, because two women have returned after rowing for the university (they're really good!), but it did grate that a couple of other women waltzed in after not being around all year.  My pride can swallow moving down a boat, but it's frustrating to move from a crew that is really technically strong to one that is -- shall we say -- pretty wobbly at the moment.  I have also grown accustomed to our very demanding first-boat coach, who expects you to work really hard and be really good, so you do and you are.  I'm not convinced that everyone in W2 has had that mindset drilled into them yet.  But it's not all bad; it's less stress...and I'll get that crescent on my blazer next year.

Calling springtime...

I'm back in Cambridge, and while that fact alone is always pleasant -- especially during a week of rowing and playing cricket with few other commitments -- I am a bit sad.  Why?  Because I had this idea that spring had bloomed during my visit home and I would return to mown grass and sunny skies.  Instead, it's chilly and drizzly.  Blah.  I was supposed to learn to scull (row a one-person boat) this morning, but it was too windy.  Double blah.

At least the run-up to my return was good.  I got everything packed and drove down to Six Flags Magic Mountain, where a forecast of rain (and its being a Wednesday) had scared away all the roller coaster enthusiasts who usually clog the park.  Goliath is my personal favorite, and the line is usually an hour.  Here's how it looked last week.  I literally could have ridden it all day without getting in line.  I didn't, though.

The next day, with an early-morning start, I flew from Los Angeles to New York.  There were no problems except that I got to LAX too late to check my bag, thereby depriving friends of the California wine I wanted to bring them.  I spent my weekend in the Big Apple attending the NVSA conference, with a bonus of visiting with friends.  My paper went off well -- didn't get many questions, but people said they enjoyed it.  Someone told me that the public library had an exhibit of materials relating to the Shelleys (as in the poet Percy and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein).  So on my last afternoon, I made my way to this iconic building:

The exhibit was in a very modest room -- maybe 15 feet by 20 -- but I spent over an hour inside.  There wasn't too much that I wasn't familiar with, but it was exciting to have real handwritten things there.  In fact, most of why I took so long was that I took time to decipher the letters myself.  The really moving items were a lock of hair from the daughter of Mary's step-sister and Lord Byron (she died very young), and charred bits of Percy's skull that his friend took after the impromptu beach cremation (he had drowned).  Also the fact that Percy died at age 29, which is my age.  All the lifetime he ever had, I have covered.  If I were he, I'd be done now, which is spooky to consider.

Anyway, I'm now back and spending the week in sporting endeavors, which combine with the jet lag to make one tired Sarah.  Onward!

Spring break

I have a new appreciation for people who came from far away to study at Stanford and only had a week-long spring break to go home or take some kind of vacation.  I will have had three weeks by the time I leave California, and it has gone by so quickly that I do not feel prepared to start up another term yet.  Part of that is due to the fact that I had to spend a lot of time and mental energy on the process of finding a new roommate for my apartment (which worked out very well, I'm happy to report).  The upside of that whole process is that I've been motivated to do a lot of cleaning, organizing, and (moderate) purging.  This makes me feel very efficient and has the benefit of showing tangible progress: that surface was cluttered; now it's clear.

My other ongoing project has been writing a paper for a conference at Columbia, which will be a several-day stop on my way back to England.  The title is Victorian Philology and the Problem of “long familiar use” in the English Language.  My friend and fellow Victorianist's reaction to that title was, "Oooh.  I don't know what that means, but it sounds great!"  I'll take that.  :)  It's about Richard Chenevix Trench, the focus of one of my chapters.  Basically, he said that we should pay attention to the ordinary, everyday words we use.  If we do, we will discover vibrant metaphors and enlightening histories in single words.  In short:

As the sun can image itself alike in a tiny dewdrop or in the mighty ocean,...so the spirit of poetry can dwell in and glorify alike a word and an Iliad...On every side we are beset with poetry.

Nicely said, I think.  During my first-year review, one of the reviewers rather unexpectedly asked me why I found philology interesting, personally.  I had focused on selling them on its importance in Victorian culture...  What I said was that I like the idea that we are all speaking compact metaphors all the time.  And trust me, teachers of Old English still love to explain what you're "really" saying when you use certain parts of the vocabulary.

That's my spring break in a nutshell.  For the moment, I'm playing tour guide to a Cambridge acquaintance who is visiting Stanford as a potential PhD student.  A bit strange mixing my contexts, but I'm proud that my hometown and university have done their usual job of impressing with their beauty.

Sports and philosophy go hand in hand

I've always found sound bites from athletes rather trite, but I found last week that you seriously do get a lot of life lessons out of doing sports.  I have to admit, part of me feels like philosophy is just the refuge of the disappointed, at least in athletic endeavors.  But there's also a lot to be proud of from last week's efforts.

In terms of the bumps results, we did almost as badly as you can do: we got bumped every day, earning the ignominious award of "spoons" (the opposite of blades).  However, I was rowing in the first boat, of which I'm very proud.  On at least one day, I felt I found depths of shoving power that I had never exerted before, and I'm very proud of that.

Our coach, Martin (see photo), is quite a character, and people tend to love him or hate him.  This year marks 40 years of his being the Trinity Hall boatman, making him the longest-serving one on the Cam and a legend.  Though he has his faults (a snap temper and unpredictability, for example), I so admire that he does exactly what he loves to do and has mentored so many students.  Anyway, he has a knack for putting things hilariously and yet making a real point with them.  Here's how he compared the pain of racing to life:

Think about how you come into this world.  Your mother shoves you out, and the first thing that happens to you, someone slaps you.  And you start thinking, "I'm not sure I want to be here."  But you [just have to] think, "Hey ho, that's life," and you get on with it.

The day after bumps was (were?) over, we caught an early-morning train to London and the Tube across town, where we found the trailer that had hauled our boat to the bank of the Thames.  We reassembled it and waded in...because we were participating in WeHoRR (Women's Head of the River Race).

I found it a great pick-me-up after the frustration of bumps.  For one thing, the Thames is WIDE!  The Cam is incredibly narrow -- which is why we have bumps instead of proper races in the first place.  For another thing, when we passed under Hammersmith bridge, it was choked with people watching, and the city was just generally a very different surrounding.

And finally, it was a huge ego boost to me to know that I could row 7.5 kilometers, which I'm not sure I would have believed without doing it.  I've gotten so much better this year both in terms of skill and fitness.  When I was having lunch with a friend from uni a couple weeks ago, she said, "You're such a jock [type]" -- but I never actually was in terms of physical effort.  It feels great to be in the best shape of my life.  So once again, we return to philosophy: it's really never too late to kick yourself into gear.

Lent bumps approaches

Maybe it's wrong for me to admit this, but I'm terrified of racing.  I've always found this about the few sports I've played: I enjoy training, but the actual competitions make me all kinds of nervous.  Well, for better or for worse, lent bumps has come 'round again: they start tomorrow.  It has been a hot-and-cold term in the women's first boat; the crew has been in flux for much of it, and while some outings were great, others seemed to forecast an embarrassing performance.

Fortunately, we had a good little practice today drilling the start.  But as our coach has said repeatedly, bumps is designed to freak you out: a cannon goes off with four minutes to go, then one minute, then to start the race.  By then, your adrenaline is flowing so much that you react strongly when you hit the rough water caused by all the boats ahead of you...  If we can keep from panicking, though, I believe our boat has the strength in our training to perform well.  Now about that not panicking thing...

In other news, I've been writing a massive chapter-chunk for my supervisor for the past month, and I'm hoping to send it to her tomorrow so that it's considerably less awkward when she comes over to formal dinner at college on Wednesday night.  Trinity Hall generously offers to pay for your supervisor to come over once a year, and I thought it would be nice to host Heather for a purely social occasion.  Of course, what we're going to talk about for all that time is somewhat unclear, especially since I don't really want to emphasize how much time rowing and choir take out of my schedule.  Heh.  But we get along well, so I'm sure it will be a pleasant evening.

And just because I feel this blog should have more pictures, here's the fireplace in the Robin Hayes Room, which is usually only for fancy faculty/staff meetings.  However, a couple weeks ago, the MCR writing group (run by moi) got put in there instead of our regular room.  Soooo cozy and Oxbridge-y!  Even if the fire was gas-fueled.

Major, major geekout

Earlier this week, I had two great conversations and had the most serious geekout near-plotz ever.  The first conversation was with a guy giving some lectures on German philosophy in 19th-century England, which is an important aspect of my research.  I asked a question after the previous lecture, and this time we followed lecture with lunch -- for an hour and a half.  It turns out he's not long out of his PhD, and we have some similar research interests.  He's now on my list of people who have volunteered to read my writing.

The next day, I met with a professor who is a one-man fan club and conservator of my buddy J.M. Kemble.  I had seen this prof. thanked in a footnote, and when I googled him, I discovered that he's at Trinity College, a five-minute walk up the road from Trinity Hall!

Before I proceed, a quick dramatis personae:

• Alfred Tennyson
• Most popular poet of his day (which was most of the 19th century)
• Attended but never got a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge
• Most famous poem: In Memoriam, about the tragic early death of...
• Arthur Henry Hallam
• Tennyson's best friend, also at Trinity
• Died suddenly at the age of 22
• John Mitchell Kemble
• A mutual friend of both the above at Trinity
• Pioneering, arrogant, and spirited Anglo-Saxon scholar

So on Tuesday, I rang the bell of Prof. Keynes's office (which, by the way, was in the building just behind Trinity's famous clock).  Upon entry, I followed him through a narrow bookcase-lined hallway to the main sitting room, which was in a proper state of academic dishevelment.  First, he "introduced me" to a marble bust of Kemble, which he had pulled out of a basement storeroom at Trinity in the '60s and claimed for his office.  Then, to amuse me while he made the tea, he gave me a binder with various original Kemble items in them -- holy cow, did the guy have tiny, precise writing!  When he came back, my host said, 'Here, I think you'll like this.'  He pulled out of its sleeve a copy of one of Kemble's pamphlets, On English Præterites, which I've read before.  'Look at the inscription.'  And here's what was inked on the cover:

Arthur H. Hallam

from his affectionate friend

JMKem

I could not believe my eyes.  This was Arthur Hallam's personal copy from Kemble.  I was completely gobsmacked.  What's even more nuts is that Simon (the professor) said that he'd gotten it from his old supervisor, and he's pretty sure she didn't know who Arthur Hallam was; she probably just picked this up somewhere.  WOW.  That's some incredible dumb luck.

After I was done having a fit, we talked for about an hour and a half about all the Kemble stuff that's out there (way more than I was aware of) and how he's really a project waiting to happen (PhD, book). I told him that it's my dream project post-PhD.  Who knows, maybe I can stick around Cambridge for a while working on that.  In any case, it was such a fun meeting.  This is the kind of thing you go to a place like Cambridge for.

Brrrrr...

So you know how I mentioned wearing my college scarf when it's chilly?  Well, it's downright freezing this week.  Correction -- it has been below freezing every day.  The river actually freezes over at night, and fairly convincingly: this morning the broken chunks were a good centimeter thick, and I saw a seagull standing in the middle of the river.

Then tonight, during the course of a concert I attended, the city was transformed into a winter wonderland by a good three inches of snow (by my estimation) -- and it was still coming down as I shoved my bike home through it.  All the familiar paths and roads (flagstones here, cobblstones there, bump in pavement at this curve) were suddenly hidden under the kind of perfect fluffy powder that I'd love to ski on.

Things are old in Cambridge

Wow, what an insightful statement, I know.  But just when you start to get used to so much of Cambridge having medieval roots, something will make you realize yet again how staggeringly long a tradition this place has.  For me, Trinity Hall's age was brought home again at a recent dinner that the MCR (grad student) committee had in the Master's Lodge.

At this dinner, the water cups were silver tumblers that looked vaguely like buckets.  I made a comment to the Master's wife, who was sitting next to me, and she explained that they were replicas of one of the college's most prized possessions.  The Founder's Cup (see picture) was given to Bishop Bateman by the Pope in the 1340s, before the bishop founded Trinity Hall in 1350.  And we still have this cup!  It comes out once a year for the Bateman Feast, which is when the Fellows invite eminent people in their field to come to the college.

That such a thing physically exists from that long ago and is in any way connected to me blows my mind.  I admit, I've been to the Cluny museum in Paris and looked at lots of medieval art, but it helps to have a personal tie.  Here's a picture of the inside bottom of the cup.  See the coat of arms?  It's still the college symbol.  It's on the scarf I wear when it's chilly out, and the crescent is on the uniform for the rowers of the first boats.  And some medieval silversmith worked it into this cup while living in a world that (as far as he knew) was populated by invisible beings, a world that sat in the center of singing spheres of heavenly bodies.  Amazing.