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.