Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these:

we lost to christ church. it was a very sad race. our boat fell apart less than ten strokes in--grant and i both lost our seats. we were in an alternate boat, an aged wooden thing, since on wednesday the b team crashed our usual boat, the pelican. and i'm afraid cobwebbed roy of the rowers let us down. despite our technical collapse, we stayed pretty tight with the other boat, but with two men rowing seatless we couldn't pull it off. it was frustrating. i have a very sore bottom.

on the bright side, this means i have all of tomorrow to get research paper number one of three going. and we're still gonna party tomorrow. oh, the corpus girls won their race, though, so they'll be continuing to tomorrow's octafinals. go corpus!

We all know what today is

one of my Blogging Principles (one i forgot to list) was that my blog would not become a journal. i have a journal for that, after all, so there's no point in parading everything out here. but today i am going to do a very journal-ish thing, and list some of the things for which i am thankful. it's late, so the list won't be very comprehensive. that would make for an awful long list, anyhow.

• dinner. in particular, mrs. bing, mabrookah the turkey queen, david lewis who knew where my stuffing ingredients were, and i can't name everybody, so the first three i thought of luck out. lots of hard workers today, and an awe-inspiring spread to show for it.
• one tutorial paper to go. two weeks until home. and today's paper actually went over pretty well.
• in the list of email addresses in julian's inspirational post-race party-planning email, he gave the whole crew nick-names. these include rick "where's my seat" slettenhaar, adam "dude" skinner, jeremias "crazy ivan" prassl, and, since you were going to ask anyway, jeff "no, this is his room-mate" russell. the reason for that is i was late to practice once, and they called the room, and J.D. answered with that expression. the brits found this very funny, since british students don't have roommates. i'm thankful for the crew and for nick-names in general.
• instant messenger. it's very nice to have the luxury of occasional chats with home-people (by which i mean stanfordians as well as bellinghamsters).
• home-people.
• oxford-people; corpus, the choir, the stanford house. i'm in a good place.
• evensong and eucharist.
• being loved, being safe, being free.
• the corpus christi library, because it has everything.
• no class on friday, and the general enlightenment of the Programme.
• cardenal! (my residence upon my return to stanford.)
• sleeeeeep.

Yes

corpus men's first boat has won its first race, by about a quarter-length, despite rick's seat coming completely off its track halfway in. rick never stopped rowing, and he is now officially the Man. and we are all Winners. next race is friday. that is all.

[correction: i am informed by a reliable source that we actually won by at least half a length. apparently that's a decent margin in this sport, though i wouldn't know.]

[addendum:

that's us kicking ass in the middle, with our well-intentioned competition just above. at the bottom is some random crew getting ready for another race.]

Busy Busy

took a swim test tonight for crew. it was fun. i hadn't been swimming since...since catalina i guess, back in june. it wasn't hard, though i did get a little breathless: swim a couple lengths, dive for a brick, tread a little water, and we're done. our first race is tomorrow, and we'd better win it. half the eight has conflicts with the repechage time tomorrow, so if we lose we'll probably have to forfeit our next race as well, and that will be it. but we're going to win it, so that should be all right. also, the river's up to blue flag again, which means our fearless cox jeremias can't cox for the race tomorrow. so we need to win (and the river needs to go down) so jeremias can cox on friday or saturday.

in other news, thursday is thanksgiving. and the stanford house yanks are gonna celebrate it, dadgum, national holiday or no national holiday. there will still be tutorials and classes roughly as normal, but in the thick of things we'll be whipping up a feast to put the pilgrims to shame. yeehaw.

in addition, the fact that i have other classes besides my tutorial is beginning to loom darkly. as in, i actually have to start doing research and stuff. so the next couple of weeks promise to keep me hopping. oh, and the choir has a carol service coming up, too. so i'm gonna be accelerating right to the finish line. time flies when you're having funne. that's british for "fun". really. ok, not really. i'm donne now.

Observations

• there are no storm drains in oxford.
• the corpus dining hall serves far more elaborate breakfasts than any other meal.
• i have only two more tutorial papers to write
• matt chwierut makes some real mean pizza dough.
• being at the eastern edge of a time zone means that it gets dark earlier. so does being at the 51st and a half parallel. it's dark a lot.
• you don't have to be able to see to row.
• the lower the quality of the work, the longer it takes to do.
• the english don't take any days off for armistice day. nor for thanksgiving. on the other hand, oxford winter and spring breaks are both over a month long.

All Eight, From Halfs, Feather Blades

The first thing you should understand is that rowing is a lot more technically challenging than you might think. You don't just sit eight guys in a boat with a coxswain and start pulling on oars. If you did that, then the first thing that would happen is the boat would tip over to one side or the other, half the oars would get stuck in the water, and the boat would lamely wobble amidst much cursing and splashing while the cox's shouts get increasingly patronizing.

So our first lesson once we get in the boat is about balance. First we learn to sit the boat by resting our oar blades flat on the surface of the water. Even this simple task takes several rounds of relearning. Once we've mastered the knack of floating in one place without tipping over, a single pair is allowed to begin rowing, arms only, while the other six oars lay out like training wheels. After all the pairs begin to get the feel of it (and it's terrible at first, because even with six training wheels the awkward balancers let the boat rock enough that you're not quite sure if your oar will hit the water or come out again) then we move up to fours. Half of us rowing, half sitting the boat. That was as far as we got in the first couple of weeks.

The next thing to know is that rowing is not just about arms. Our seats slide in tracks forward and backward, with our feet anchored to plates in front of us. This way we can double ourselves up completely, reaching out between our knees, and lunge backward to full extension. Like a spring. Body length is a plus (Hooke's law). But even just springing out and curling up has technique to it, so your oar doesn't hit your knees and so you make the most of all the force you have to exert. Legs straight, back back, arms in. Arms out, back up, legs bent. Legs, back, arms; arms, back, legs. Until it's worked into your subconscious, that's the mantra.

But the dominating feature of rowing is the coordination. The ideal state is for all eight of us to match each others' movements exactly. Eight blades enter the water, push back with even pressure for the same distance at the same depth, pop out together, feather together, and return to position at the same height. When the eight of us are rowing and that perfect synchronization breaks down, the boat begins to wobble. And as it wobbles, someone's oar will catch too early, throwing the rhythm further off, until we end up rocking and splashing and frantically trying to catch up with the person in front of us. We've been doing a lot of that this week. Still got another week to go...

A rowing eight is a unit, a body. The boat has only one pair of eyes, the cox's. Jeremias is our fearless cox, a fresher as new to his job as we are to ours. The cox sits in the back and shouts in elaborate code. "Bow four, from backstops, half slide, feather blades, ready...go!" "Bow and three, take a tap; stroke, hold her up." "Stroke side, take the runoff." "Next stroke, easy there. Strokeside, back it down; bowside row on."--though Jeremias likes to call that last maneuver "Crazy Ivan". I think the jargony cox signals are my favorite part.

The Christ Church Regatta for novice rowers starts next Thursday, and Julian (an experienced rower for Corpus, and our coach) thinks we have a shot at winning it. At least, that's the only rationale I can think of for trying to get us on the water four times this week, with an additional two land-training sessions. And judging from the look of what's been floating out there, I think we have a good shot. We began seriously rowing all eight from Saturday before last, and it's beginning to feel somewhat less than terrifying. We're good at starts, and our in-place turn--totally unimportant for the actual races, but crucial for pre-race intimidation--is starting to look quite good. At any rate, I'm getting a much better workout than I'm used to, and having quite a lovely time--in spite of the 6am outings.

Stay tuned.

Coventry

[sorry, this is old. i wrote it and then forgot to post.]

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father forgive.

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father forgive.

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father forgive.

Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father forgive.

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father forgive.

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father forgive.

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father forgive.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

this text is the Coventry Cathedral Litany of Reconciliation. it's printed on a placard that stands at the foot of the cross in the chancel of the 14th century church. there is no glass in the windows behind it. there is no roof over it. the red stone walls are that sweep back around the nave rise to a jagged open space, weathered from age, and blackened in places by fire. a plaque, near the transcept entrance, reads: Coventry Cathedral. Built 14th Century. Destroyed 20th Century.

during november of 1940 coventry was the site of some of the most protracted air raids of world war ii. on the 14th, Coventry Cathedral was left filled with charred rubble.

rather than repair the old cathedral, a new one was built--a massive hangar-like structure adjacent to the original site, an immense awning covering the space between their entrances. people stand quietly in the old church, pray, and remember. but despite being marked by the memory of fire, the old cathedral stands together with the new as a symbol not of the war or of destruction, but of reconciliation: of the old and broken things made new and whole. it is the most overwhelming place i have been to in the british isles.

Coventry Cathedral is now the home of the Community of the Cross of Nails. the original cross of nails was made from three long roof spikes, two of them parallel as the cross-piece. the community is a world-wide association of christians committed to reconciliation--in israel, in northern ireland, in south africa, in the united states, and in many other places.

Coventry has a sister in germany. the Church of Our Lady in dresden was reduced to rubble during the allied firebombing of february, 1945. with the church, the gold orb and cross from its roof were destroyed. several years ago, british donors (private, public, and ecclesiastical) provided for the orb and cross's reconstruction, and the symbol was sent to dresden in 2000. in thanks, dresden sent a gift to Coventry Cathedral: from the destroyed rafters of the Church of Our Lady, a cross of nails.

i don't have any pictures, i'm afraid, but there are a couple good ones here.

By The Way

hey, look! it's a picture of jeff in oxford!

simps eoq is nov 22-23. mark your calendars.

(the building behind me is the radcliffe camera, mentioned in an earlier post. it's one of the multitudinous branches of the bodleian library.)