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| Peter Millican (1958-), Hertford College, Oxford |
Of Oxford plagues, and even older tears.
The sweep of his tragedies makes me a fan.
I can’t tell you this tale of woes. But Millican.
Showing posts with label #Oxford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Oxford. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2020
Peter Millican's Thousand Years of Oxford Plagues
Saturday, December 26, 2020
88th Annual NYC Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner (Virtual), Today 2 PM EST
Today, Sunday, 2 pm, Eastern Standard Time. Zoom link below.
The 88th Annual | ||||||||||||||
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JOIN: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/79455328883?pwd=Z0tlMEFrUGxCMEFXUy9uQitJL1Y3dz09 | ||||||||||||||
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While we cannot meet in person this year, we invite you to join us virtually for our 88th consecutive annual celebration of Oxford and Cambridge scholarship, sport, and camaraderie. | ||||||||||||||
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Thursday, December 10, 2020
OXBRIDGE MUSIC | Advent and Christmas Choruses
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| Broad Street, Oxford |
Christmas Choruses Kings, Cambridge (much-awaited Christmas Eve service). Preview ("Once in David's Royal City," from the 100th Anniversary chorus in 2018) 👍 Oxford Advent
Cambridge Advent
Oxford University Press book |
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE | New Master, Baroness Amos
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Photo: SOAS Baroness Valerie Amos |
An alum of Univ, Sean Denniston of the Washington, D.C. branch of the Oxford University Society, tells me that the latest exciting development at the college is the expansion of its North Oxford space. The previous Master of Univ, Sir Ivor Crewe, says this is the largest expansion of the college since the 17th century. It is being built with attention to sustainability, biodiversity, and relationship to the local community in North Oxford.
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
CORONATION | Elizabeth I, November 17, 1558
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| Elizabeth I (regnat 1558-1603) |
Elizabeth 2 was a year older than Elizabeth I when she became Queen in 1952. (I was in England then and vividly remember watching the coronation on a tiny television.) Elizabeth II has stayed in the throne for 68 years, the only British monarch to have lived this long and to have held the crown for this long.
The Crown went to Elizabeth I at a time when England was debt-ridden because of Henry VIII’s spending, despite his having seized and sold so many monastic lands.
The country was deeply divided because of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and then Mary I's attempt to restore Catholicism. A new problem was emerging with a dissenters disagreeing with the doctrines and example of both the Catholic Church and the Church of England. It would be 62 years from Elizabeth I’s ascension to the throne, and in the reign of James I of England (also titled James VI of Scotland), that the Pilgrims gave up on both England and Holland and set off to create the Plymouth colony in the New World. (Spoiler: The new regime in Massachusetts got to look a lot like the theocracy they left behind.)
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| Elizabeth I coat of arms |
She inspired her subjects with walking tours and encouraged portraits of herself in gorgeous regal attire and flattering songs about her. She started England's empire by chartering companies like the East India Company to colonize areas around the world. She was the first monarch to allow theaters to operate legally, opening up careers for dramatic writers of whom we are most grateful for William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Compared with James I and the ill-fated Charles I, who provoked Parliament with the doctrine of the Monarch’s Divine Right to Rule (until dissenters in Parliament raised an army, chased Charles down in Oxford University, and made clear how much they disagreed with this idea...), Elizabeth I was wise and tolerant. She was the head of the Church of England, but she gave Catholics freedom to worship. She was not a war hawk, but when she learned that Spain had sent an Armada of warships to England, she rode out to rally the troops and England prevailed.
Thursday, May 7, 2020
OXFORD | Covid-19 Tracker
May 7, 2020—If you aren't subscribing to the Oxford Covid-19 tracker, you are missing out on a user-friendly set of daily updated information on the progress of the Civid-19 disease and what governments are doing about it. It is a great contribution to global understanding of the disease by Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government.
For example, the tracker includes a Stringency Index showing what countries have done to prevent spread of the disease. The United States is about 70 out of 100, which is low compared with other countries, even though many Americans are expressing their frustration with the stringency. A scan of the Global Comparisons map shows that most countries are more stringent than the United States, with ratings above 80 out of 100.
However, the U.S. number of cases is soaring above a million whereas other countries after 100 days have stopped increasing. The stringency index, shown in red changing over time in the six-country response chart, can be seen to affecting the growth rates in every country. How early the stringency is applied is crucial, as we see with South Korea's success. However, Italy had to ramp up its stringency much higher to slow the spread of the virus. China did not have to be so stringent to flatten its curve. Both the United States and the U.K. were late in applying stringency. The size of the country is less important than being speedy about stringency, as we can see by comparing China or South Korea with the United States. China flattened out at about 100,000 cases even though its stringency was no higher than that of the United States.
We can continue to look for clues in other charts that Oxford is making freely available, provided sources are always clearly identified. European countries acted faster than the United States. China was slow to get started but it ramped up its stringency more steeply than other countries. Some epidemiologists (e.g., at the Los Alamos Labs) fear that the dominant variety of the coronavirus in the United States has mutated from the Chinese version.
Putting stringency and number of cases together on the same chart, the United States is at the far end of the number of cases, an outlier to the right. However, in terms of stringency it is in a minority of countries below the 80/100 threshold. It raises the question whether policies to to open up the United States and relax disease prevention measures are wise at this point.
Or as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just tweeted after his daily briefing about the coronavirus: "Stay the course. If you are going through hell, keep going."
For example, the tracker includes a Stringency Index showing what countries have done to prevent spread of the disease. The United States is about 70 out of 100, which is low compared with other countries, even though many Americans are expressing their frustration with the stringency. A scan of the Global Comparisons map shows that most countries are more stringent than the United States, with ratings above 80 out of 100.
However, the U.S. number of cases is soaring above a million whereas other countries after 100 days have stopped increasing. The stringency index, shown in red changing over time in the six-country response chart, can be seen to affecting the growth rates in every country. How early the stringency is applied is crucial, as we see with South Korea's success. However, Italy had to ramp up its stringency much higher to slow the spread of the virus. China did not have to be so stringent to flatten its curve. Both the United States and the U.K. were late in applying stringency. The size of the country is less important than being speedy about stringency, as we can see by comparing China or South Korea with the United States. China flattened out at about 100,000 cases even though its stringency was no higher than that of the United States.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
OXONIAN | Mayor Pete Buttigieg
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| Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Harvard '04, Oxonian |
On Friday, President Trump compared the young man, Harvard '04 and Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College (where fellow Hoosier Richard Lugar resided), to the freckled mascot of Mad Magazine.
"Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States," Trump said.
I’ll be honest. I had to Google that. I guess it’s just a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference... I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal.
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| Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman gives President Trump a poke in the eye. |
Meanwhile, his high tariffs on Chinese imports are being paid by American consumers and have met with retaliation from China that is interfering with American exports.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE ARMS: Martlets
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| L to R: Your blogger (Trinity, Oxon.) and Cheryl-Lisa Hearne- McGuiness, Hon. Sec. of the Oxford University Society's London Branch. Photo by branding expert Paul C. Walton (BNC, Oxon.). |
On Monday I spoke there to 70 members of the Oxford University Society, London Branch, about the 38 coats of arms of the Oxford colleges and the six coats of the Permanent Private Halls.
On Tuesday I was speaker at a "Discussion Supper" of the Oxford and Cambridge Club and I added in most of the 31 Cambridge colleges.
My objective was to make the college coats of arms more accessible to students, alumni, tourists and anyone else curious about Oxford and Cambridge.
Dropping the usual baggage of lists of tinctures, furs, metals, ordinaries, subordinaries and so forth, I also skipped past explanation of the history of coats of arms, how they were brought over by the Normans with William the Conqueror and became widespread through the growth of tournaments among the knights in the 12th century, etc.
Instead, I dove right in to the Oxford (and Cambridge) coats of arms by selecting two or more college shields at a time that have a device in common, such as a form of cross or a species of bird (big or small), and focusing on the meaning of the device and of significant differences.
I used each set of shields as a prompt to tell stories about how the devices relate to the history of the colleges, and inevitably the history of England. Along the way I slipped in a few comments about relevant heraldic conventions.
To illustrate my approach, consider a little footless bird on the arms of three colleges and one permanent private hall – three of them at Oxford and one at Cambridge.
The bird is the MARTLET, which is important in heraldry because it is a brisure, a mark of cadency on a coat of arms indicating that it is being carried by a fourth son of the owner of the arms. The discussion below is amplified, and a few references added, from my remarks yesterday.
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The perfect venue was the Oxford and Cambridge
Club room named after Queen Victoria's grand-
daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-
Holstein, Germany's northernmost state.
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St Benet’s Hall seems to have more claim to the arms of Edward the Confessor than Univ because the Hall is a foundation of Ampleforth College [full disclosure: I was a pupil there in 1952-55], which was created by the same English Benedictines who occupied Westminster Abbey at its inception. When Edward the Confessor built the original Benedictine Abbey and Church, he decided that English monarchs should be crowned there [all but two subsequent monarchs have been]. The other half of the top of the shield (the chief) shows the imputed coat of arms of St Peter, to whom Westminster Abbey is dedicated; the bottom of the shield is from the original Abbey. Henry III built the Gothic Abbey Church in honor of Edward, who by then had been canonized.
Pembroke College, Cambridge is the owner of the third shield. The five red (gules) martlets look dissimilar from the martlets in the previous two shields, but they are meant to be the same bird, in that they have no feet. Pembroke was founded by Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a man of importance in the reigns of Edwards I and II. The left side (dexter to the bearer) of the shield is half of his arms, which are split (impaled or dimidiated) with his wife Mary de St Pol, who came from Brittany.
Worcester College, represented by the fourth shield, has two chevrons and six martlets, which are blazoned as black (sable) or sometimes red (gules). The coat of arms is that of Sir Thomas Cookes [someone at the meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club said it should be Crookes, but he was being funny, I think], a Worcestershire baronet, whose bequest of £10,000 back in 1698, when a pound sterling was really worth something, founded the college. The Worcester College shield is almost always shown, as here, with black (sable) martlets, but the blazon often calls for red (gules) as in the Pembroke arms. [Sir Thomas also founded Bromsgrove School, which uses the arms with red (gules) martlets, corresponding to its blazon.]
MEANING: So what does the martlet signify? All sources I have consulted agree that the lack of feet means that they can't land, so they are always aloft. This suggests that the martlets are always searching and is a good symbol for the search for knowledge. A lovely idea – although when you think about it, it makes the intellectual life sound tiring. (Tiring, but surely not as discouraging as the fates of Sisyphus or Tantalus.)
Another interpretation is that the martlet is a symbol of the self-made man, someone without foundation. But to impute such arms to a King like Edward the Confessor would hardly be appropriate with that interpretation, unless one was imputing modesty.
Links to Further Reading: Use of Star-Like Devices in the Oxford Colleges . Creation of Arms in the Newer Colleges at Oxford (Oxford Today, Michaelmas 2015)
Set of 46 Newly Design Coats of Arms: Oxford City and Oxford University coats of arms, 38 colleges, and six Permanent Private Halls. Below is a low-resolution version of an original set of shields drawn for me by heraldic artist Lee Lumbley. I plan to be at the 2018 BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New York City, May 31-June 2 and will be looking for appointments to talk with publishers at this event. My email address is teppermarlin at aol dot com.
MEANING: So what does the martlet signify? All sources I have consulted agree that the lack of feet means that they can't land, so they are always aloft. This suggests that the martlets are always searching and is a good symbol for the search for knowledge. A lovely idea – although when you think about it, it makes the intellectual life sound tiring. (Tiring, but surely not as discouraging as the fates of Sisyphus or Tantalus.)
Another interpretation is that the martlet is a symbol of the self-made man, someone without foundation. But to impute such arms to a King like Edward the Confessor would hardly be appropriate with that interpretation, unless one was imputing modesty.
Links to Further Reading: Use of Star-Like Devices in the Oxford Colleges . Creation of Arms in the Newer Colleges at Oxford (Oxford Today, Michaelmas 2015)
Set of 46 Newly Design Coats of Arms: Oxford City and Oxford University coats of arms, 38 colleges, and six Permanent Private Halls. Below is a low-resolution version of an original set of shields drawn for me by heraldic artist Lee Lumbley. I plan to be at the 2018 BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New York City, May 31-June 2 and will be looking for appointments to talk with publishers at this event. My email address is teppermarlin at aol dot com.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
NEWARK BOYS CHORUS | Will Sing on April 5
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| Newark Boys Chorus, 2018 |
Here is a YouTube sample of their singing back in 2009. The Chorus is trained at its School (NBCS).
The tradition of starting a Boat Race Dinner with the American and British national anthems was begun at the Washington, D.C. dinner (the only one that competes in size with that of the New York City dinner), and is now a fixture.
The NBC team will sing one other song besides the two anthems.
More details on the dinner, including a link to registration, are here.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
VIEWS: 220K. Top 10 Most-Read Posts
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| Keep calm and read my blog. |
As of June 25, 2017 it has had more than 220,000 page views (two million views for all my blogs).
More than 10% of the Oxford blog views were directed at one post, which seeks answers to the question: "Why Didn't Hitler Bomb Oxford?"
The subjects of the other nine posts were: boat races, heraldry, biographies/obits and Oxford colleges in fiction. Please keep reading and send comments to john@cityeconomist.com.
| 1 HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (23K Views, Jun... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments |
| 2 OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016 |
| 3 SUMMER EIGHTS: May 19-27, 2017 Jan 31, 2017 |
| 4 HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Feb. 24, 2017) Nov 21, 2014, 2 comments |
| 5 BOAT RACE: Dinners 2015 Mar 1, 2015 |
| 6 THERESA MAY: Time at Oxford (Updated Oct. 29, 2016... Jul 27, 2016 |
| 7 R.I.P.: July 11–Oxonian John Brademas, NYU Preside... Jul 25, 2016 |
| 8 BRITISH PMs: Universities Attended (Updated Aug. 1... Jul 14, 2016 |
| 9 HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray, de Vere (Updated Mar 24,... Nov 23, 2014, 2 comments |
| 10 R.I.P.: Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Poet Jul 2, 2016 |
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
VIEWS: 210K. Top Ten Posts in April
April 25, 2017—This blog's page views have passed the 210K mark. The monthly count is about 10,000. Thank you for reading.
Here are the top posts during the last month, April 2017.
| WW2: Why Wasn't Oxford Bombed? (22K Views, Mar 201... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments |
| OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016 |
| SUMMER EIGHTS: May 19-27, 2017 Jan 31, 2017 |
| R.I.P.: July 11–Oxonian John Brademas, NYU Preside... Jul 25, 2016 |
| THERESA MAY: Time at Oxford (Updated Oct. 29, 2016... Jul 27, 2016 |
| BRITISH PMs: Universities Attended Jul 14, 2016 |
| HEAD OF THE CHARLES: Alumni Tent Oct 17, 2016 |
| BOAT RACES 2017: Oxford Win Men's, Cambridge Women... Feb 3, 2017, 1 comment |
| R.I.P.: Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Poet Jul 2, 2016 |
| BLOG VIEWS: Sep 10, 2016–140K Views |
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
BLOG VIEWS: Oct. 26, 150K Views, Top Posts
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Cantabridgia Fools the Waves. Cambridge women's blue
boat appears to sinking under water. What seems to be a periscope behind the cox is actually a movie camera. |
Thank you for reading.
Comments are welcomed.
See 2016 Men's Race and Women's Race tapes here.
Most-Read Posts in October
Jun 8, 2013, 2 comments
COLLEGE ARMS: Oxford Shop (Updated Sept. 24, 2016)...
May 13, 2016, 1 comment
HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Sep 29, 2016)
Nov 21, 2014, 2 comments
OXFORD COLLEGES: Top Six Fictional Sites (Updated ...
Jul 2, 2016
HEAD OF THE CHARLES: Alumni Tent
Oct 17, 2016
R.I.P.: Oxonian Geoffrey Hill, Poet
Jul 2, 2016
RELIGION: Oxford v. Cambridge (Updated Dec. 6, 201...
Jun 24, 2014
BRITISH PMs: Universities Attended (Updated Aug. 1...
Jul 14, 2016
HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray, de Vere (Updated Sep. 16...
Nov 23, 2014, 2 comments
R.I.P.: July 11–Oxonian John Brademas, NYU Preside...
Jul 25, 2016, 1 comment
Friday, February 26, 2016
BOAT RACE DINNER: NYC 2016
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Friday, January 8, 2016
BIRTH: Christopher Morley 125 This Year
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| Christopher Morley (1890-1957) |
He was also a founding member of New York City's venerable private meeting place for writers, The Coffee House, still conveniently located across the street from the Harvard Club. A sampling of his famous quotes is here.
Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa. on May 5, 1890, and raised there and in Baltimore, Md. until he went to college, he returned from a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford in 1913 to a literary life in the United States that began as an editor at Doubleday, Page & Co.
He was a compulsive member of many off-beat clubs that he helped create, like The Three Hours for Lunch Club and the Baker Street Irregulars, a Sherlock Holmes literary club which like The Coffee House continues today.
His father, Frank Morley, was a mathematics professor at Haverford College. His mother, Lilian Janet Bird, was a violinist and poetry lover.
In 1906 Christopher entered Haverford College, where he began writing for and editing The Haverfordian. He provided scripts for and acted in the college's drama program. He played on the cricket and soccer teams and graduated in 1910 as valedictorian.
He then went to New College, Oxford, for three years on a Rhodes scholarship, studying "modern" history (the modern era at Oxford in the 1960s meant up to the creation of the United States and the Revolution in France; possibly in 1910 it ended even earlier). In Oxford a volume of his poems, The Eighth Sin (1912), was published.
In 1913 Morley moved to New York City, beginning his literary career at Doubleday as publicist and publisher's reader. He got his start as an editor for Ladies' Home Journal (1917-18), then as a newspaper reporter and newspaper columnist in Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, appeared in 1917. The protagonist, traveling bookseller Roger Mifflin, appeared again in his second novel, The Haunted Bookshop in 1919.
On June 14, 1914, he married Helen Booth Fairchild, with whom he would have four children. They first lived in Hempstead, and then in Queens Village. They then moved to Philadelphia, Pa.
In 1920 they moved back to New York, to a house they called "Green Escape", in Roslyn Estates, N.Y. He then began writing "The Bowling Green" column for the New York Evening Post.
He was one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. He wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus editions of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 1936. That year, he was appointed to revise and enlarge Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (11th ed., 1937; 12th ed., 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book of the Month Club, until the early 1950s. Morley is probably best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle, which became an Academy Award-winning movie. Another well-known work is Thunder on the Left (1925). In 1928-1930, Morley co-produced theater productions in Hoboken, N.J., which he had "deemed the last seacoast in Bohemia".
In 1951 Morley suffered a series of strokes, which greatly reduced his literary output. He died on March 28, 1957, and was buried in the Roslyn Cemetery in Nassau County, N.Y. After his death, two New York newspapers published his last message to his friends:
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.In 1961, a 98-acre park was named in his honor on Searingtown Road in Nassau County. This park preserves his studio built in 1936, the "Knothole", along with its furnishings.
Other Oxford Birthdays
Friday, December 25, 2015
BLOG READS: 100K, Dec. 2015–Top 16
Thank you for reading.We have passed the 100K page view mark.
Here are the top 16 posts in December:
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