Spring! (sort of)

Last week's weather went something like this:

Monday -- a welcome day of sunshine, albeit chilly.  Someone cracked a window or two in the English faculty library and created sweet-smelling breezes.  Yum!

Tuesday/Wednesay -- clouded over again

Thursday/Friday -- frigid; I pulled out my down coat and picked a seat in the college library next to the heating vent.

Saturday -- gorgeous and cloudless, warm enough for a thin layer over a t-shirt.  Just right for the BBQ a friend had planned.  Students were out on the back lawn of Tit Hall (allowed this time of year), and the river was clogged with punters.  Be-a-utiful.

So spring is slowly creeping in, two steps forward and one step back.  I'll never see a daffodil again without thinking of Cambridge; they're everywhere!

I took the opportunity Saturday to check out something I cycle past nearly every day.  I live up Cambridge's only hill, Castle Hill.  There is a pub about halfway between me and town called The Castle Inn.  Behind it, there is a grassy mound, which I've always suspected might be the remains of, well, a castle.  Here it is:

It turns out that there has been some type of fortification there for 2,000 years: Iron Age folks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, William the Conquerer, and Cromwell all built things there.  Apparently this is the highest point on the River Cam that you can get a ship before it really becomes marshy fen, and it's the last good place to build a bridge for the same reason.  Bonus fact: the county's administration is still based on the site, in a modern building about 50 yards away.

Anyway, there's not much to see, but you can climb the hill and look down at Cambridge.  Here's a shot of me with King's College Chapel in the distance.

I now have two days to finish the books I'd rather not schlep home, and then I'm California-bound!  Verdict on Lent term: off to a slow start, middle weeks of feeling lost and sad, last month filled with friends, fun, and victory on several scores.  Hurray!

An Ash Wednesday reflection

A pause in the usually vivacious nature of my entries.  As Cambridge's Lent term draws near its close, actual Lent begins tonight.  I attended a small Ash Wednesday ceremony in Trinity Hall's tiny chapel, and I was struck, as I often am, by the confessional line, "We have not forgiven others as we have been forgiven."

Maybe it's especially because in the last year I dealt regularly with someone who was emotionally borderline abusive and thus one of the very few people in the world whom I actually, truly hate(d).  I was taught as a child not to use that word casually because of the strength and viciousness of what it implied; I use it intentionally and with full force here.  In any case, I find myself once again wondering what exactly forgiveness is -- how it looks, how it feels, how you do it.  Here are some aspects of that pondering, still unresolved.  I remember Pastor Greg at UniChu gave a good sermon on this once, but I don't think he gave a firm solution, either.

• I'm naturally a person who doesn't hold a grudge for very long, at least in terms of how I spend my mental energy day-to-day.  But I can and do become re-angered when recalling certain offending events.  With time, eventually even the ability to re-conjure anger fades.  But this seems to me not to be real forgiveness.  It's just letting time heal wounds.  And what if someone naturally finds it harder to let go, or it takes way longer (or never) for that fading of anger to happen?  I think part of the answer is to keep yourself from indulging in the satisfaction of going over and over your reasons for resentment.
• Alternatively, you can try to perform a moment of forgiveness.  I generally think of this as resolving in your head and stating to the universe, "I forgive so-and-so."  But if you have to encounter that person again, you may quickly find that you haven't wiped your mental slate clean.  Does the offense have to be over before you can forgive it, or do you have to sustain forgiveness as a process as long as you encounter the offense?
• Do you really have to do/say something face-to-face?  Because much of the time it's inappropriate to say explicitly, "You are in the wrong, but I forgive you."  There may be power dynamics involved (e.g. at work), or you could just come across as condescending and make matters worse if the other person doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.

I suspect this is one of those questions that no one will ever have a neat answer for.  And it's worth mentioning that I'm aware and grateful for the fact that I have little cause for resentment in my life.  I have the love of family and friends, health and intelligence, the opportunity to put them to use, and the humility (I hope) to appreciate these things.  For these very reasons, I don't want to be lazy and get away with not knowing how to forgive just because it doesn't come up very often.  A good contemplation for Lent.

Bumps results and general rejoicing

Well, it was an incredible bumps for Trinity Hall Boat Club (THBC).  Out of the five crews, racing four days each, no one got bumped at all -- the first time in nearly 40 years!  (Here's a shot of us rowing home afterward.  I'm at the end.)

Consequently, everyone was in a jubilant, festive mood for Boat Club Dinner on Saturday night.  This was a black-tie dinner in hall with the master in attendance -- which didn't prevent group rounds of foul-languaged drinking songs!  I was awarded most improved of the lower-division women and had the time of my life that night.

After dinner, the MCR (grad student community) was having its every-other-week cocktail night, which was naturally jammed with boaties, as well as many people I just generally like to be around.  We proceeded to viva, the "undergrad" every-other-week party, where dancing and bar-chilling filled up the hours.  While not wasted, I was "somewhat the worse or the better for wine" (quiz: what movie is that from?), and thus I was quite chatty and prone to hugging people.

The only gaps in my memory are about how conversations got started that I remember being in the middle of.  Which is really funny to think back on.  Why exactly was I telling the MCR president to have more self-esteem because power is an aphrodisiac?  Why was I recollecting the DisneyWorld episode of Full House with a fellow student?  And why did someone tell me to pick up and twirl a 6-foot-plus rower when I was in heels?  Good times.

Lent Bumps 2011

Happy Friday to everyone, the close of a week that has flown by, mostly with rowing.  But first, let's back up a bit.

Several weeks ago, I set myself a deadline of this last Monday for sending my supervisor an essay comparing two Tennyson poems.  The first half was fairly easy; I've already told you what I was basically arguing about his most famous poem, In Memoriam.  The second half, about one of his lesser poems (The Princess, which I'm starting to think was intentionally funny), was harder to make a statement about.  Still, I finally managed to send the essay off late Monday night, thus freeing myself to enjoy this week.  I meet my supervisor Tuesday, and I hope it will be productive.  Here's an illustration from an American edition of The Princess, which was later adapted into the G&S show Princess Ida.

Now, on to Lent Bumps.  This is a series of races, nearly one a day.  It's kind of like a simultaneous playoff series: 17 boats line up, equally spaced apart.  The order is established by some combination of how good your qualifying time was and where your boat ranked last year, if you had one at all.

Your goal is to "bump" the boat in front -- either with physical contact or drawing up alongside until their coxswain concedes.  Then those two boats move off to the side and the ones behind keep going.  In theory, the next boat can row past the two who are off to the side and bump the one that was ahead of both of them -- this is called overbumping.  When it's all over, they shift the order accordingly and the next day you do it again.

As you can imagine, this causes a great deal of chaos and is an imperfect test of proper ranking.  But it's kind of fun anyway.  Tuesday and Wednesday we bumped the boat ahead of us almost instantly.  As signs of victory, we got to row home with ivy wreaths in our hair, gleaned from trees on the bank (see photo).  Today the boats ahead of us weren't very good and bumped each other out before we could get to them.  This left a looong distance between us and anyone we could possibly bump.  So we just finished out the course and will remain stationary in the order for tomorrow.  This is called "rowing over."

But check it out, there's video of me rowing!  Our boat appears at 2:18 and goes out of frame for a bit before they turn the camera.  I'm in the bow -- i.e., nearest the camera, with white sleeves.  It looks like we're just having a leisurely day out, but it was so hard to breathe!

With that, I wish you all a good weekend.

A little piece of university history

So today I was sitting in the English faculty library, pecking away at an essay I'm writing for my supervisor.  It's a soggy day, and I spent the morning rowing in the rain.  I'm feeling a bit stressed about how many things I'm not getting done this week as we prep for a race on Friday.

As part of my argument, I thought it might be useful to look at Paley's Evidences of Christianity, a book that used to be required reading for exam regurgitation at Cambridge, and which Tennyson and his friends thought to be a prime example of pedantic theology that totally missed the point.  Happily, they have a copy here in this library, so no need to go outside...

Most of the books in this building are fairly modern, but this one was published in 1884, and the editor's preface says it was organized to be a study book for the Cambridge exam.  It also has an inscription inked on the first page:
J.C. Collins
The Knoll
Harrow
31.3.89


Then in pencil, in different handwriting, underneath:
J.C.C.
Jesus College
Cambridge

I love that this is the physical object that some Victorian student used as part of getting his degree.  And one thing I love about universities in general is that they are forever youthful.  Newton and Byron and many many other giants have been part of this place, but we are their equals because they were once students just like us, and we have the advantage of being the current generation of students, which is the primary concern of any university.

So even on a less-than-pefect day here, there's nothing else I would rather be doing than this.

Writing on a rainy day

Greetings to all from my window view of a rather rainy tree.  It makes me miss my old apartment, with a view over the pool, but otherwise rainy days always make me want to write, anyway.  Either that or quilt.

It's a very rare day (it may be the first) that I have no activity planned until 11:00pm, so for once I have the luxury of sustained writing.  This is a good thing because my supervisor told me in no uncertain terms to produce something hands-on rather than just a summary of my reading.

My muddled mess right now is basically arguing that in his poem In Memoriam, Tennyson used words in such a way that you have to keep all their meanings in your head at once to grasp the full truth of what he's saying.  This reflects his attitude toward faith, which was essentially that specific, fixed doctrine was too narrow to give the truth of God/the spiritual.  Would you buy that?  After all,

Our little systems have their day;
     They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
     And thou, O Lord, art more than they.


Other than that, I've been running around with my typically-overpacked schedule: guest speakers, classes (I should stop choosing to go to so many), yoga, rowing, etc. etc. etc.  Oh, and way back in January my hallmates and I celebrated my birthday with pizza and cake.  Here's a picture, with an unfortunate lighting effect on my nose: 

Spring break travel plans are being pondered, too -- but I don't want to think that Lent term could be over so soon!  So much yet to do!

A soggy taxonomy

WARNING: MAJOR GEEK-FEST AHEAD!

The wind has really been roaring around Cambridge the last two days, which reminds me of a conversation I had recently, trying to figure out the difference between a bog, marsh, fen, moor, etc.  Think about it: can you really tell me the distinguishing features?  So here goes, courtesy of the OED:

Fen
1a. Low land covered wholly or partially with shallow water, or subject to frequent inundations; a tract of such land, a marsh.
b. esp. the fen (obs.), the fens: certain low-lying districts in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and some adjoining counties.


Cambridge, I've heard repeatedly, is in a fen.  People usually say this by way of vaguely complaining/making fun of it for being flat land with less-than-perfect weather.  Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's best friend, referred to it as "this college-studded marsh."  Which brings us to...

Marsh
Low-lying land, often flooded in wet weather and usually more or less waterlogged throughout the year; a tract or area of such land.

So, much the same thing but more consistently water-filled "throughout the year."

Moor
1. Originally: a marsh; marshland, fen (obs.). Now: any of the flat, low-lying areas of Somerset, England, which were formerly marshland.
2. A piece of unenclosed waste ground; (now usually, esp. in Brit.) uncultivated ground covered with heather; a heath. Also: a tract of ground strictly preserved for shooting.

The first one suggests that all these terms used to be basically interchangeable.  Based on my many readings of the classic children's book The Secret Garden, I'm going to go with definition #2, uncultivated & covered with heather.

Bog
A piece of wet spongy ground, consisting chiefly of decayed or decaying moss and other vegetable matter, too soft to bear the weight of any heavy body upon its surface; a morass or moss.


At last, a distinct definition!


Morass
A wet swampy tract, a bog, a marsh; an area of very wet or muddy ground; (as a mass noun) boggy land.
Now we're just repeating ourselves.  But another one that's often metaphorical is...

Mire

An area of swampy ground; a boggy place, esp. one in which a person may be engulfed or become stuck fast.

Interesting how this one is mostly defined by its effect.

Slough

A piece of soft, miry, or muddy ground.

Swamp
A tract of low-lying ground in which water collects; a piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog. Orig. and in early use only in the N. American colonies, where it denoted a tract of rich soil having a growth of trees and other vegetation, but too moist for cultivation


Who knew that swamps are only American?  Speaking of which, here's one the OED labels as only a U.S. word:


Everglade
A marshy tract of land mostly under water and covered in places with tall grass; chiefly in pl. as the name of a large swampy region of South Florida.


The best part of this entry is that they have no idea where the word came from:
Etymology:  ? < ever adv. + glade n.¹
The formation is irregular, and the intended etymological sense uncertain; perhaps ever was used to mean ‘interminable’.



And let's not forget...
Bayou
The name given (chiefly in the southern States of N. America) to the marshy off-shoots and overflowings of lakes and rivers.


Bonus fact: it's from Choctaw (by way of American French).


So it turns out that, except for the decaying-moss specificity of "bog," and the American-only nature of a few, these words have always been more or less interchangeable.  In fact, Beowulf uses them right next to each other:


"Se þe moras heold, fen ond fæsten"
[Something like, "he who holds the moors, in fen and stronghold"]


In short, this waterlogged taxonomy has shown that there isn't much difference at all.  Hurray. =P