Music at Mary Mag's

Dear Friends,

Ever thinking of you, I took this picture of St. Mary Mag's. Yesterday we had a lovely service followed by a pot-luck at the vicarage.

--St. Mary Magdalen's--



I've really been enjoying St. Mary Mag's. I wish we had singing at home like they have at here. We sing the Lord's Prayer the “Wash me with hyssop” text every Sunday. And for the responsive readings the choir sings the text and we reply with a sung Alleluia. The tune for the Alleluia varies. Last month we had Tone vi. And just as we had all learned it and loved it, they switched to Tone iv. We like Tone iv by now, but we still sing Tone vi amongst ourselves for fun.

Generation trees and Compline

--A random street near the Philosophy Faculty Library--




Last time I shared some OE facts with you, so this time I'd like to tell you a bit about logic class. The problem is, I'm not sure how to do this without violating the “of general interest” rule. Hmm.

We talked about linear proofs vs. proof trees and generation sequences vs. generation trees, what it is for a logical language to be adequate expressive, the differences between propositional and predicate logic—but I don't know that I'm really able to explain those.

Oh, here's something. I learned that axiom systems, in my lecturer's words, are “nightmarish”. This is because the only inference rule you can use is Modus Ponens, so you have to have all the other rules of inference as axioms in your system. This makes all axiom systems very bulky and very unlike the way we reason normally. We tend to reason in a linear fashion, although Dr. Blamey (our lecturer) says that a linear proof is merely a generation tree “squeezed” up and that some of the structural information gets lost in the transition.

Well, I'm afraid that that was not “expressively adequate” (to equivocate on the phrase). I'll stop boring you and go do my schoolwork, but first I'll give you a little human-interest report to compensate for the presumably not very enlightening one on logic.

Today was sunny and I enjoyed my logic classes and life was jolly. In the evening I went to the film night at the vicarage and to Compline at Hertford college, so that was jolly too. Things are very jolly, as you may have gathered, but I find this problematic at times—there are so many options that I find it difficult to know what to do. Should I go look at the books in the Bodleian, or the artwork in the Ashmolean? Should I talk to these interesting people or those? Should I wander around looking at the city, or should I go up to my room and actually study?

--Hertford College--
(Sorry I don't have a picture of the chapel)

Costume Party--

Last night we (all the SCIO students) had a sort of pseudo-Halloween costume party. At the Howells' house we (Josh, Amy, and myself) had invited Joanna to the festivities. She came and appeared to have a good time. So that was nice.

It's impressive how many creative costumes people can put together. We had everything from French existential philosophers, to parodied SCIO leaders.

--Friends in costume--

(Joanna, as a Scot; Susan, as a swan; Amy, as Wm. Wallace)

Dinner with the Howells and Old English trivia--

Hello dear forsaken readers,

I am alive. I am also extremely busy. Attending tutorials and lectures, preparing for lectures and tutorials--all this takes time. I'm afraid this will be a short post, but surely this will be better than nothing.

Here's a picture from last night. The Howells had the Westmont contingent over for dinner. We had a jolly time. They have the daughter of a family friend visiting them from Scotland. Her name was Joanna and she was pretty cool. We hope to see her again tomorrow.

--At the Howells--


(Josh, Joanna, me, Amy, Dr. Howell)


Okay, that it is simply too short a post. What else can I tell you? Oh, well, here's a What Did You Learn Today from my Old English lecture:

In Old and Middle English “chill” was a common contraction for “I will” because their word for “I” was “ic” (pronounced “ich”as in “which”). This contraction (as well as “chould” for “I would”) were still in use in Shakespeare's time, though by then it was considered rustic or backwards. A good example of this is in King Lear (act iv. Scene 6). Edgar uses “chill” when he is pretending to be a peasant.

Which reminds me of another interesting fact. (It wouldn't be a real What Did You Learn Today if I didn't slip in a second point, would it?) We tend to think of “thou” as a more formal term and “you”as a more familiar one. But actually if anything the reverse was true. “Thou” (“Þu” to be precise) was the OE equivalent of “you”. So during the transition period the OE was again associated with the rustic or lower classes. Thus in the Lear passage, Oswald addresses Edgar (who he thinks is a peasant) as “thou” while Edgar addresses Oswald more respectfully as “you”.

Interestingly, (note that we are now on a third point) this tendency to associate OE with the lower classes seems to true even today. According to an article in the Sunday Times, a recent study showed that “[h]igher up the socio-economic scale you notice significant growth in the number of Latin and French-rooted words that are used in conversation and a fall in words with Anglo-Saxon roots”. The study showed that manual labourers had the highest percentage of Anglo-Saxon words, and politicians the lowest.

Okay, I really need to go study. Here are three last pictures though. One is of Merton, just because. One is of Oriel, because I have a lecture there. The last is a pile of wet yellow leaves, because that is what the fall looks like over here. Oxford is beautiful. I feel very lucky to be here.


--Merton--



--Oriel--



--Wet leaves--

Yesterday I dined with Lauren Whitnah at St. Cross College. The food was good, her friends debated British politics, we sat around in the quad afterwards talking about books—yes, I think I could manage another visit or so of the same kind.

--Lauren in St. Cross quad--

My dear readers,
I apologize for being the most hideous of correspondents. I'm afraid the break flew by quickly--and now term has started in good earnest.

Today I bought some of the books on my reading list and I borrowed some others from the library. There are quite a few more still to get.


--Today's aquisitions--


What else have I done today? I went on some errands. I visited the “iron monger's,” that is, a hardware store, where I bought some bolts so my bicycle lights won't keep falling off. I bought some postage for a letter. I went to the store to buy peanut butter, but they were all out. I went to those aforementioned libraries and bookstores and bought or borrowed the aforementioned books. I forgot to buy milk, but that was all for the best, since I had a terrible time hauling just the books up Headington Hill.

I spent most of the afternoon at home trying to plan my weekly schedule. This is proving tricky as many of the lectures I want to attend conflict either with other lectures I want to attend or with mandatory events like our Wednesday seminars. Also, there is the problem of travel—can I attend one lecture at the Maths Institute and one at Oriel if they are only 10 minutes apart but the travel could take 15?

So far Tuesday seems like it will be the busy day. I will have three lectures, two tutorials, tea at Frewin Court, and a movie night followed by Compline at my church. Oi vey! But at least the rest of the week will give me have time to recover from it.


This hasn't been the most interesting of posts, so I'll give you a couple old pictures.


--Plane at the Imperial War Museum--


This is from our trip to the Imperial War Museum. That was the Thursday just before break.


--Westmont at Oxford--


This is from last weekend when Westmont friends Nathan and Andrew came up to visit. In the picture from left to right we have Nathan, Amy, yours truly, Josh, and Andrew.