Well, after over 1,000 posts and three+ years, I'm putting this blog to pasture. I feel like it has served its purpose, and I'm proud of some of the things it allowed me to wrestle with. For now, however, I have run out of things to talk about. I'm done talking about politics, I'm not a good "this is what's going on in my life"-style poster, my theological thoughts are pretty boring, and I can't seem to write about art in a way that makes anybody want to respond. I'm sure I'll start up again somewhere else eventually, but for now, I'm done.

Thanks to everyone who put up with my writing, and more to those who interacted with me. As a vehicle for learning, blogging is one of the best mediums out there. I think I'll be able to leave the blog up for anyone interested in going through the archives (why you would want to do that, I cannot say).

Anyways, happy trails.

I haven't read through the whole thing, but this quote, from the Forward was cause for despair:

With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt.

Translation: we aren't going to touch Medicare, Social Security, or Defense.

Great. Somebody wake me up when they're serious.

"The Acts of the Apostles"

The second time the flesh was harder to put on
and there was no womb to shape and soften it,
unless it were Joseph's tomb in the cut rock
that shaped, perhaps, but more misshaped to a kept
mask, as a wet shoe is hardened as it dries
to a foot shape and the print of a step, but not
to the moving muscle and bone that walking was.
What wonder then that Mary, who loved his life,
mistook him for the gardener, and humbled by love,
asked only where they had lain him that took him away.

The men, too, were uncertain they saw at first.
Thomas doubted and thrust his hand in the wounds.
There must have been some subtle difference gone
from the flesh they loved, or a difference newly come
to make a change in it. Say the change was death
that had wrought hard with it; or say the fact
this flesh appeared and disappeared without
their knowing bewildered them. They did rejoice,
but only as though their hope had stretched too far.
And Peter went back to cast his nets on the sea.

Some grief is stronger than any joy before
or after it, and life survives. It feeds
within itself on grief, not nourished then
by other food, as winter trees survive
because they do not feed. Their mouths refused,
almost, the taste of the brief return; grief seared,
they could not savor it. The time did come—
but it was afterwards, that a new joy
leafed over their grief as a tree is leafed.
It was the tree of grief that grew these leaves.

We share the movement that young birds learn
when clumsy with size, they grow to empty air
and fall, and find the empty air sustains.
So we are lofted in our downward course by the wide
void of loss through which we fall to loss
and lose again, until we too are lost
in a heavier element—the earth or sea.
We grow in stature: grief is real and loss
is for life, as long as life. Long flight,
soar freely, spiral and glide in the empty air.

- William Bronk

- I've settled in nicely to my new apartment. I have my own room and bathroom, and a pretty nice little set up. I've become rather domestic. I cook more than my other roommates, and I've been hosting more. I spent the last two years in dorm rooms that few people ever saw, so it's kind of nice to live in a place that can handle company.

- I'm unemployed right now. I'm looking, but I'm discouraged. On the upside, I haven't had any trouble with schoolwork. I have more free time than I know what to do with. That's nice.

- I've decided on a thesis topic. For the next three semesters, most of my energy will be devoted to the researching and writing about the motif of suicide in Southern American literature. I haven't hashed out the finer details, but I'm planning tentatively to focus on four novels (Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, O'Connor's Wise Blood, and Percy's The Second Coming). In all, I'll be writing somewhere around a hundred pages on the subject. Upon completion, I'll be given a nice bound copy, and more writing samples than I know what to do with. I won't bore the wider world with the details, but if anybody's interested in hearing me talk about it more, feel free to ask me. Obviously, it's interesting to me.

- Classes are going well. Lots of reading and writing, but it looks doable. This semester is the first that has me heavily in my major. I only have two non-major classes (Latin and Biblical Heritage). It's not going to be an easy semester, but it could be worse.

- My birthday is in six days. I'll be spending it in Dallas with my family. The weekend looks busier than I'm comfortable with, but I'll be happy to see everyone again. And, of course, like every good Roberts, I love birthdays, especially my own.

- That's all.

'Mythopoeia' by J.R.R. Tolkien:

To one [C.S. Lewis] who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'.

Philomythus to Misomythus

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, tifi those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

Since I've been home from England, I've been asked a lot about whether I miss it, whether I wish I was still there, etc. To answer: I miss England very much. I do not wish I was still there, because I have things to attend to here, but I do wish I could have stayed longer (if that makes any sense at all). It's a strange thing to return home after visiting another country. And America is, and always will be, home. No matter how much I fall in love with another place, one thing that going always teaches me is that I am American to the bone. I don't know how to say that without sounding strange, but it is what I mean. I am not patriotic in the sense that I am not a believer in the unqualified cultural supremacy of the United States, or in the idea that there are not a great many things wrong with America. I'm only a very timid believer in American exceptionalism, and there are plenty of things I wish were different about my country. But it is my country, and it always will be. If I have any patriotic feeling, it is that. The few times I've left home, that is the thing I have learned most about myself.

I've already gotten too serious for a post that was meant to be lighthearted.

Things I Miss About England:

- The countryside. There are plenty of prettier places, I'm sure, but I couldn't get over how beautiful the English countryside was. Especially in the north, as we neared Scotland, the land was so lush and green, and I couldn't help but love it all. I can't describe it without gushing, and I won't try to do it here. It's like no place else. If you ever make the journey, do yourself a favor and get out of the cities and into the country. Even if it's just the lake district, you will not regret it.

- The people. I can't really sum up the people adequately in this space, but I do miss them. There is something unique about the people that goes much deeper than the speech. They are a frustrating, brash, arrogant, and beautiful people. You will hear a thousand different accents and a million different stories just walking the streets.

- The stubborn cultural conservatism. Whatever the political situation, in Britain, there is a cultural conservatism that just doesn't exist over here. A large part of it has to do with the fact that their history stretches back much further than ours. The people just hold onto things. While all our most prestigious universities have been thoroughly secularized, Oxford and Cambridge still maintain, on the surface, a deep allegiance to the Anglican Church. It isn't that the people are more spiritual than we are - the opposite is true. But they wouldn't think of letting the old ties go. The same idea permeates so much of British life. I loved it, and I wish America had it.

- The respect paid to poets. I wrote about this earlier, but I just love how the English (the Irish, Welsh, and Scots, too) venerate their men and women of letters. They have the richest literary history on earth, and I hate that we don't love our writers the same way. We should, but we don't.

- The music. Street performers were all over the place, and at night the pubs would light up with singing. Arguably, we have the more illustrious pop tradition, but they really do have a better sense of it. Pop music is for the people, and that's never been clearer to me than when I was in England.

- The weather. It frequently tips over 100 degrees in the summer here. It barely passed 80 while I was in England. Enough said.

Things I Don't Miss About England:

- The lack of air conditioning. I know they don't think they need it, but they do.

- Public transportation. It's because I'm not used to it, but I could do without ever getting on a double-decker bus again.

- London. I hated this city. I don't want to go back ever again.

- No free refills. Doesn't make any sense to me.

- Customer service. Rarely was a server at all interested in giving you a pleasant experience. I hear it's worse in France, but I wish they would at least pretend you were important.

That's all I can think of for now. And yes, I want to go back.

With all the attention being paid to the whole Ground Zero Mosque thing, it's been sad to see that news of the floods in Pakistan has been mostly burried under the pile. They started in July, and have affected over 20 million people, caused incredible damage to infrastructure, crops, and livestock, and have already killed several thousand people. The death toll doesn't hold a candle to the 2004 tsunami or the earthquakes in Haiti, but the floods are affecting nearly one-fifth of Pakistan's land mass, a larger total affected area than both the previous disasters combined. And, any way you look at it, many more people are going to die.

This isn't about making people feel guilty or dirty. I only learned about the floods last week. It just makes me weary. Our news cycle is being dominated right now by something that shouldn't even be a national issue, and hardly anyone is talking about this disaster. I understand that the mosque is more entertaining, but is it really worth it?

God, politics are horrible.

Libertarian/conservative journalist Conor Friedersdorf, who was recently named Senior Editor of Andrew Sullivan's blog, has taken over The Daily Dish for a few weeks while Sullivan goes on his yearly sabatical. I like Friedersdorf more than Sullivan, but check The Daily Dish more often than I get to read Conor, so this is something like the best of both worlds.

Today, he wrote an encouraging post in defense of Talk Radio listeners. This is interesting because Friedersdorf is often on the receiving end of Mark Levin's Facebook rants (consider the opening line to his May 12 screed: "Conor Friedersdorf is a very sick young man and a liar to boot."). Here's an excerpt:

Go here to see one representative exchange, just posted online, with a Mark Levin Facebook fan. I wrote her after she called me an idiot. She offered some civil criticism. We had an enjoyable back and forth, a productive debate, and by the end of the exchange, she was writing Mr. Levin a rather critical letter... and being insulted herself on his Facebook page for dissenting. I've included our unabridged correspondence except for her name (though I'm confident that any reader of our exchange will come away thinking she is a very reasonable person indeed).

I've heard some harsh assessments of talk radio listeners, and I don't mean to suggest that how they respond to me is what matters, but I do think the exchange I link above, and others like it, demonstrate that those who listen to the less defensible stuff on talk radio shows and conclude that the kind of people who listen to them cannot be engaged are wrong. I'd say half of the Mark Levin listeners I've contacted responded positively -- and remember, these aren't random fans, I've particularly selected the folks who responded favorably to a Levin attacks, often against me. (Most of the rest haven't responded, and a few have stood by their initial remarks, though a bit more politely.)

I've had a lot of positive exchanges like that in my life, dating back to my days covering the immigration debate, a subject rumored to be intractable, though I don't think that's right. I never cease to be amazed by how open even initially hostile people are to being engaged and even persuaded, so long as you reciprocate.

Most of the political discourse these days is pretty callow. Everybody is reduced to a caricature, when we all know that people aren't that simple. I guess it just made me smile a little to read Conor's post. It's somewhat sentimental, but true.

If anyone's interested, Mark Levin was quick to respond in a post called "Conor Friedersdork":

We are under constant scrutiny by bloggers, like Friedersdork, who run nothing, are responsible for nothing, and contribute nothing to the advancement of liberty. If you google his name, you will see what a menace he has become, who he likes, and who he dislikes. He is obsessed with me, this site, and will now try to make nice with some of the posters here.


Take a good look at his "work" if you care. I have no idea why he listens to my radio show, contacts people on this site, and generally spends his days looking for any post with my name on it. But I find him truly pathetic. He fits the definition of a stalker, and he is now contacting some of you folks directly. Just be careful. He's very strange.

I just realized that the last post was #1000. Since it's about 3 years to the day since I started this blog, that makes a little under a post a day. Anyways, to celebrate:



And yes, I'm back in the U.S.

Following a link I've since lost (internet has been out for three days here), I found this 2006 article by David Foster Wallace (yes, that David Foster Wallace) on the dominance of Roger Federer. It was linked as one of the best articles of all time or something, and it's a really, really fascinating read. It's written by someone who obviously knows tennis, and reading it made me want to know a lot more about tennis. Here's an excerpt:

There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.

The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan, who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.

This thing about the ball cooperatively hanging there, slowing down, as if susceptible to the Swiss’s will — there’s real metaphysical truth here. And in the following anecdote. After a July 7 semifinal in which Federer destroyed Jonas Bjorkman — not just beat him, destroyed him — and just before a requisite post-match news conference in which Bjorkman, who’s friendly with Federer, says he was pleased to “have the best seat in the house” to watch the Swiss “play the nearest to perfection you can play tennis,” Federer and Bjorkman are chatting and joking around, and Bjorkman asks him just how unnaturally big the ball was looking to him out there, and Federer confirms that it was “like a bowling ball or basketball.” He means it just as a bantery, modest way to make Bjorkman feel better, to confirm that he’s surprised by how unusually well he played today; but he’s also revealing something about what tennis is like for him. Imagine that you’re a person with preternaturally good reflexes and coordination and speed, and that you’re playing high-level tennis. Your experience, in play, will not be that you possess phenomenal reflexes and speed; rather, it will seem to you that the tennis ball is quite large and slow-moving, and that you always have plenty of time to hit it. That is, you won’t experience anything like the (empirically real) quickness and skill that the live audience, watching tennis balls move so fast they hiss and blur, will attribute to you.

I'm a casual tennis fan, but any time Federer is playing, I will sit down to watch. I don't feel any real allegiance to him, or to any tennis player for that matter, but there really is something poetic about watching him play.

Anyways, if you do make it to the article, I hope you enjoy it.

The internet has been out in Oxford for the past forty eight hours. Because of that, I wasn't able to wish my little sister a happy birthday.

Bethany turned 17 years old yesterday. I remember the day she was born, and I remember the first time I held her. She's turned into one of the funniest people I know, and I'm constantly impressed by her resillience and drive. She is growing into a beautiful young woman, and I'm excited for the years to come.

She's always been a good little sister to me, and it's sad that I couldn't be home for her birthday. It won't be all that long, though.

Anyways, happy birthday sister! May it be the best you've ever had.

(Except instead of Scott McKenzie's falsetto, it was a bunch of drunk Englishmen who only knew the first verse):

Unlike France and Italy, England is not really known for its cuisine. If anyone talks about it at all, it is in negative terms. I've been in England for close to three weeks now, and I thought I'd give my impressions of the food here, as well as advice for anyone who ends up coming here. I'll try to be brief.

The bad reputation English food gets is somewhat deserved. There is not a very strong culinary culture here, and most pubs will have only a handful of dishes to choose from (mostly sausages, potatoes, and various pies). If you go to England for the food, you're an idiot. Wine aficionados might be justified traveling to Burgundy or Tuscany, but no one has ever gone to Yorkshire to check out all the various methods of mashing potatoes.

With that in mind, if you are going to England, do eat the food! Go to pubs and get traditional English dishes. In any of the big cities, you will see plenty of American, Italian, and French restaurants, and one might easily avoid eating any real English food at all. This is a mistake. For one thing, most any place that serves food in England will color all its food with a distinctly English flavor. Mayonnaise and cheeses, less flavor and, if you're in London, higher prices. It's possible to get food sans Englishness, but it limits your choices a great deal.

For another thing, the food here is actually pretty good. It will be easiest if I just list some bright spots:

- Breakfast. If you like eggs, rolls, and sausages, then traditional breakfasts here are hard to beat. There isn't a lot of variety, but you shouldn't really want it.

- Breads. Plenty of places do bread better than England, but that doesn't mean England is bad at it. I love bread very much, and being here has only bolstered my affection for wheat and flour. There is bread everywhere, and you should eat it as often as possible.

- Desserts. Since coming here, I've actually found that all the ice cream I've had has been wonderful. Besides that, the English do a lot of good things with pastries and honey and jam and syrup and all that good stuff. It's worth the extra course.

- Sausage. The English make great sausage. Bangers n' mash is actually one of the best meals I've ever had. It's so simple, and so beautiful.

- Street vendors. It's a city thing, but I've seen it a lot more over here. Almost all of them make great food for cheap. It's not unique to England, but, in my opinion, the street chefs here have proven themselves just as worthy as anyone else.

- Sandwiches. This goes with bread, but the sandwich shops are everywhere, and most of them make a pretty good little meal. It's also the fastest meal you can get here.

All this to say, English cuisine may not be the best, but it isn't the worst either. There's nothing to be afraid of.

I re-read John Updike's September 11 reflection today, and was reminded both of that day and of how incredible John Updike could be. An excerpt:

The nightmare is still on. The bodies are beneath the rubble, the last-minute cell-phone calls—remarkably calm and loving, many of them—are still being reported, the sound of an airplane overhead still bears an unfamiliar menace, the thought of boarding an airplane with our old blasé blitheness keeps receding into the past. Determined men who have transposed their own lives to a martyr's afterlife can still inflict an amount of destruction that defies belief. War is conducted with a fury that requires abstraction—that turns a planeful of peaceful passengers, children included, into a missile the faceless enemy deserves. The other side has the abstractions; we have only the mundane duties of survivors—to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to take more precautions, to go on living.

American freedom of motion, one of our prides, has taken a hit. Can we afford the openness that lets future kamikaze pilots, say, enroll in Florida flying schools? A Florida neighbor of one of the suspects remembers him saying he didn't like the United States: "He said it was too lax. He said, 'I can go anywhere I want to, and they can't stop me.' " It is a weird complaint, a begging perhaps to be stopped. Weird, too, the silence of the heavens these days, as flying has ceased across America. But fly again we must; risk is a price of freedom, and walking around Brooklyn Heights that afternoon, as ash drifted in the air and cars were few and open-air lunches continued as usual on Montague Street, renewed the impression that, with all its failings, this is a country worth fighting for. Freedom, reflected in the street's diversity and daily ease, felt palpable. It is mankind's elixir, even if a few turn it to poison.

The next morning, I went back to the open vantage from which we had watched the tower so dreadfully slip from sight. The fresh sun shone on the eastward façades, a few boats tentatively moved in the river, the ruins were still sending out smoke, but New York looked glorious.

To me, this essay transcended simple patriotism or national pride. Updike captured something about humanity - the part I tend to believe reaches toward God, however blindly - that goes far beyond America. The struggle for good - for beauty - even in the midst of chaos and catastrophe is what makes life worth living.

I've been in Oxford for a little over a week now, and I am loving it. It's nice to actually settle in somewhere, and feel kind of local. Christ Church, and the whole string of Oxford campuses are stunning. I wish I could stay, and live in this town that sleeps often and well. I do miss the states, though. I miss my family and some friends. Oddly, I miss Baylor, though I'm nowhere near prepared to go back to it. My goal for the next 17 days is to enjoy this time. I don't know if or when I'll be able to come back, but I'm here now. I'd love to slow down.

Several people have asked me how the classes are. To answer: they're great. When the weather is right, we have been meeting in a private garden. The classes are low-key and discussion based. I've written a few short papers, but I haven't been overwhelmed by any of it.

We read Tolkien, and I was reminded, as I often am, of what an incredible man he must have been. Traveling by train across the English countryside, with its lush, rolling hills and sun yellow fields, I felt like I was looking at the Shire. Hearing passages from Return of the King read aloud reminded me of how lyrical Tolkien could be. His work needs to be read that way, surrounded by nature. That an Englishman, a veteran of the First World War, and a man who was, by all accounts, stoic and dignified in person could write so beautifully about friendship and love will never cease to astound me.

My new friend Alyssa and I found a dance club a few days ago, and we spent two long evenings dancing our cares away. Anyone who knows me at all knows how excited I am about dancing, so I won't bore you with that tangent here.

Sorry for the grapeshot style post, but I'm surprisingly tired for 2 in the afternoon. I'll post on English food later.

41 years ago today, man walked on the moon.

If you want to laugh, cry, and genuinely be moved, go read this book.

Note: The content in this book is pretty PG-13. It isn't gratuitous, but some are more equipped to deal with it than others.

My dad posted this story the other day on Thinklings.

Katie is a 21 year old young woman living in Uganda as the adopted mother of fourteen little girls. She runs a non-profit organization called Amazima that provides free education, school supplies, food, and medical care, as well as love, fellowship and shelter. You can read her blog here. She has been updating since she left for Uganda in 2007, and the archives are filled with stories, pictures, and reflections that are simultaneously humbling and inspiring, heartbreaking and brimming with joy.

Even if you are not a Christian - even if you don't believe in any sort of God - this story is amazing. It's not about Katie - though she is very impressive - but it's about love being given to those who have known nothing but death and poverty and sorrow.

I read through a great deal of her blog today, and I couldn't help but feel inadequate and spoiled. It's not guilt. I didn't choose where I was born, or the family I was born into. But I'm sitting in a dorm at the most prestigious university in the world, getting a wonderful education, and I haven't really done anything to make the world a better place. I've argued about politics, books, music and history, but it's been so long since I did anything that was at all selfless.

It's not guilt. It's sobering.

I'm sitting in Oxford right now with a free afternoon, and I thought it was about time to make good on my promise to give occasional UK updates. So, here you go.

International flights are, as a rule, nightmarish, and the trip from Dallas to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Dublin wasn't much different. Lots of delays, holding patterns, alternate routes, screaming babies, turbulence, sleep deprivation... you get it. But we arrived safely, with all our baggage, and in relatively good spirits.

Dublin was absolutely wonderful. I don't like cities generally. I don't like tall buildings, crowds, or traffic, and am perfectly content to do without the unique urban culture that goes with pretty much any metroplex you visit. But I really enjoyed Dublin, and I hate that I only had three days there.

What struck me the most about Dublin was the preservation of the culture. The entire city was seemingly built around commemorating the Easter Rebellion in 1916 and the subsequent achievement of independence. The outward reverence the Irish have for their revolutionaries, their saints, their writers, and their artists is astounding to me. Virtually every street contained a statue of an Irish hero. How much of this is in the consciousness of an average Dubliner, I can't say, but at least externally, the city was draped in quiet gratitude.

Most of our time in Dublin was spent doing whatever we wanted. I probably walked the length of Dublin three or four times (it really isn't that big). At night, groups would go to pubs or shops, or just simply wander the streets looking for something to do. And there was always something to do. I'll list off a the highlights:

- We saw Riverdance, which was making the final stop on its 25 year world tour. I never saw the show anywhere else, so it's hard to tell, but I got the feeling that the Dublin shows were really special, to both the audience and the performers. The Celtic music and step dancing are, as far as I know, uniquely Irish, and there was a sense of pride covering the whole show. The performers and the audience had a lot of fun with each other. Someone in the audience would give a yelp during a dance, and one of the performers would yawp back. On the occasional number where the musicians would take center stage, they would stamp their feet until the audience began to clap along. It was playful and beautiful, and I had a blast. I loved the music, of course, but more than that I just had fun. I had fun watching the performers have fun and watching the people next to me have fun. I'm sad that I'll never get to see it again.

- One night, four of us went to see Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia. One of my friends here is a theater fanatic, and this happens to be her favorite play. It was fairly spontaneous. I decided to go about two hours before the show started. It was a truly fantastic play. I thought it was even better than Stoppard's early masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Like that play, this one had a great sense of humor and also delves into some very interesting philosophical questions. It's about love and jealousy, obsession and genius, chaos and order, determinism and freedom. I was very taken in by all of it. Go see it, if you can, or get your hands on a copy and read it.

- I went to the Writer's Museum with my friend Brittany. They had a very thorough and interesting history of literature in Ireland, with an audio tour. I was especially delighted by the exhibits dedicated to Oscar Wilde, Yeats, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett. After we made our way through the museum, Brittany and I sat down and talked for a while, which is always a pleasure. After about an hour, we went our seperate ways, and I went to the James Joyce museum by myself, which was great. I love paying my respects to writers!

Sunday morning, we rode to the airport and flew to London. Once we arrived in London, we took a bus to Imperial College and got set up in the dorms there. I wasn't too crazy about London. It's so big and so crowded, and so stressful to try and get around. Everything we did was interesting, but it was just too much.

On the other hand, there were some bright spots:

- Seeing Henry IV: Part I at the Globe. I didn't know anything about Henry IV other than it's Shakespeare and that it is considered one of his best histories by Shakespeare fanatics. It was a brilliant performance. It was amazing how well-preserved the Globe is. Much of it has been redone, and I doubt there is much original left, but the performance itself was very faithful to the way Shakespeare's plays were originally performed. Other than electric lighting, there was no technology aiding the performance. The seats were crude wooden benches (though I purchased a cushion for a pound). The play had an opening act - an absurdly filthy little scene done by actors in wild masks. Scene changes were done by actors in the open and often covered by an actor singing a short song. At times, the play was bawdy and lewd, and the actors reveled in it, knowing that those lines would get the most enthusiastic responses from the crowd. There was a great deal of interplay between the audience and the performers, as there would have been in Elizabethan England. One thing that's interesting about the Globe, and about Shakespeare is how they were meant for the more common elements of London. Shakespeare certainly had a following with the nobility, but he wasn't a snob. In his time, Shakespeare was something of a populist, and that spirit is preserved to this day.

Anyways, the play itself was wonderful. Very, very funny, which I wasn't expecting. If I had to pick one thing to do in London, I would go see a Shakespeare play at the Globe.

- Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey was the place I wanted most to see in London. It didn't disappoint. I love how the English truly venerate their poets. The fact that authors' memorials and graves are in the same place as kings and queens is astounding to me, and it's as it should be. We don't do that in America. I mean, can you imagine Robert Frost having a memorial in the Washington Mall? The closest we get to the kind of noble respect we generally reserve for Presidents may be with old baseball players (I'm thinking Ruth, Dimaggio, Gehrig) and a select few musicians (Elvis and Dylan come to mind). Maybe it hasn't been long enough. For some reason, though, England loves its poets in a way America never will.

- Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is a work of art. It may be the single greatest feat of architecture I've ever seen. I attended a short evening service there. It was a beautiful service.

- Leicester Square. This was maybe the only place in London where I felt the city was alive. It was the only place where I felt like I was in London. I went there at night with a few friends. It was vibrant and loud and very bright, and I was enthralled. Go there, if you can.

- The Prince Albert Monument. It's a beautiful monument right outside the Royal Albert Hall. In addition to being a memorial to Victoria's beloved husband, it is a statement of purpose for the British Empire. It's large and gaudy, but at the same time pristine. Absolutely fascinating.

After five days in London, we finally drove to Oxford. The University is beautiful, of course. The town is wonderful. I can't get enough of this place. I will blog about Oxford more later. I'm trying to let it sink in.

Anyways, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments!

NY Magazine has a very interesting, very thorough profile of David Brooks. An excerpt:

"Every column is a failure,” says Brooks. “I always wish I did something different.” Part of the problem is the format. There’s only so much you can do with 800 words. “I’m a 3,000-word person,” he says.

Deadline days end with fourteen piles of paper stacked around his office—printouts, notes, index cards, photocopies—one for each paragraph of the story. If the column doesn’t come together, he resorts to the laundry list, beginning each paragraph with “First,” “Second,” etc. “Usually when I do that, I’ve written another version of the column and it sucked,” he says, “so those are usually acts of sheer desperation.”

Plus Brooks just isn’t that opinionated. “I look at Andrew Sullivan or Jonathan Chait, churning out opinions,” he says. “I don’t have that many.” Brooks’s goal isn’t to change minds, he says. “Do I expect someone with View X on a policy, and I argue View Anti-X, that somehow they’re gonna totally change their mind? I don’t think I’ve ever had that effect on anybody.” He can “strengthen and highlight certain feelings,” he says. But that’s about it.

I'm one of those nutty conservatives who not only still likes David Brooks, but also thinks he's one of the best conservative minds around. The profile is worth the read.