Saturday, May 31, 2008

Move-Out, II

or, Gales Ferry

Readers of the Foreign Devil, apologies are owed. This post comes late, and we hate to think you may feel forgotten by the Foreign Devil almost as much as we hate to think you may have forgotten it. I have not been killed, been abducted, or eloped; but I've had the good fortune of entering a world without internet access, about which more later.



The pictures I posted on the 14th gave the impression that L-dub was already deserted. Of course I felt deserted, but this blog is not after all a place for me to go on about my feelings--plenty of people were still around and I myself had only moved across the court. By the end of the day a new crowd of women's rowers and band members had moved into entryway F (F11 became a laundry depot), and I'd moved fairly comfortably into B21. On reflection, it was a strange thing to feel comfortable there, but I was my teammates and it was, after all, a nicer room, so I can't blame myself. Nevertheless, it just wasn't right to be at Yale without the regular cast of characters.

Some people were still around, though, and staying in town gave me the opportunity to see off the last stragglers and to say hello to the first crowds moving in for the summer. On Sunday I ran to the heights of East Rock (named for its being to the west of West Rock). I cursed myself for not bringing a camera, and was consoled by one last dinner with Dr. Manutius, who had just finished a journalistic bacchanal of several weeks which this blog will not dignify by providing details. On Monday, however, the much anticipated return of Mr. Fang for the summer was the big news. Together with the Politician we made our way after dinner (which, thanks to Commencement, and to local restauranteurs' awareness of proud parents' willingness to pay, was considerably more expensive than usual) to the top of the great Tower of the building known to students as SSS, officially called who-knows-what, where, as is seen above, even a deserted Yale had not lost any of its appeal.




My next concern was to frantically pack for the Ferry, and I'm sure with all the things I had to do I was a less than satisfactory host to the eminent Mr. Fang. Regardless, it was great to be his roommate again, if only for a single night. To the left is proof of his visit--one of the rare photographs of that elusive gentleman. In the picture he's engaged in something complex and possibly illegal on his computer. I can never understand his projects but they all amaze me. To the right is my own computer, where a posting of our very own Foreign Devil can be seen. And the next morning after practice, amidst a flurry of bustling boxes and bags down stairs and rustling them onto buses, we left for the Ferry. I was not happy to have finally left Yale, but within a few hours Gales Ferry had become one of my favorite places.



Just upstream of New London on the Thames (and in New London the river's name is pronounced as it's spelt) are two large bridges across the river. A mile further upstream is the berth of the Nautilus. Continuing upstream, as the Yale boats will when they race Harvard here in June, one passes a large submarine base, and then Harvard's as-yet deserted camp at Red Top, and then, a mile farther on, Yale's ancient compound at the Ferry. Yale men have raced and trained here since 1878, but parts of the compound date back to before the Revolution. The boathouse itself, seen to the right, represents one of James Gamble Rogers' excursions from the Collegiate Gothic so familiar to Yale students, and houses not only the boats but all the freshman rowers, on the second floor.

Everywhere at the Ferry is the sense of tradition. Crews from more than a hundred years ago look down on us in the dining hall, and rituals like the after-dinner limericks have been going on as long as anyone can remember. A week or two ago I received a gift from one of my aunts, about the American scullers training for the 1984 Olympics, plenty of whom rowed for Yale at some point. In the book were places and institutions I've come to know, and the faces of these characters look down on me from photos around the Ferry. It's close to a religious experience, without the religious content. Relics are everywhere: over the entrance to my bedroom is an oar that propelled a Yale crew to Olympic gold and to a world record.

And in the midst of this, my normal life goes on. Practice, usually twice a day, meals and sleep constitute most of it. There isn't really much else to do. Technology is discouraged at the Ferry; I can only post this because I walked about a mile to a local library. We're even discouraged from using iPods and speakers. The only authorized music sources are an ancient and out-of-tune piano or an even older and more decrepit hand-cranked phonograph, bearing graffiti from the '50s but certainly older than that. The food deserves comment as well. It's amazingly good, and especially since we've all come from a few weeks of feeding ourselves, the quantities are incredible. I've managed to ingratiate myself with the kitchen, which has got me a few extra pieces of pie so far. The cook tells me I'm also a favorite among the neighborhood children who help in the kitchen, and I have to say I was pleased when a few of them called out to me from their car as I walked up to the library. The food, despite being made on an institutional scale, has definitely something home-cooked about it, which makes me long all the more for the real home-cooked food I began to miss a long time ago.

Friday, May 16, 2008

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, I

I cast type for the printer's trade;
Of tin and lead my type is made.
I keep proportions in alignment,
Designing forms with all refinement:
Both Roman and Italic faces
With Greek for extra-special places
And capitals and punctuation.
The press depends on my vocation.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Move-Out, I

or, Quomodo sedet sola Lanman-Wright.

In early December of 2007, Mr. Fang put together a virtual tour of our beloved L-dub entryway F. While moving out earlier today, I took some shots of the same rooms.













Friday, May 9, 2008

Study Break


As friends of the Foreign Devil may know, I've been feeling under the weather these past few days—a bit of bronchitis or something like that. It's nothing serious, just coughing and lethargy, but they tell me I need plenty of rest. Now finals week is never the best time to need rest, especially when one spent one's reading week with very little reading, but readers of this blog need not despair that Yalies will fail to overcome a little problem like the need to study. Perhaps in an attempt to add sloth to the list of vices she coddles among her students, Yale has given us the venerable institution of the Study Break. Ice cream, Chinese food, Mexican food, Korean food, Indian food both Subcontinental and American—for the past few weeks campus has become a free buffet almost every night, for those who know where to look.

Last night, however, there were as far as we knew no study breaks on offer, but where Yale would not provide a way, we would make one. To be fair I can't say I had been studying—I had been seized after dinner with a sudden urge for some extracurricular reading and had wolfed down Decline and Fall. (In retrospect, Waugh was probably among the most dangerous authors I could have chosen to read.) By the time I finished, the Russian Peasant had been bothering me for some time about going on a study break; now she reminded me that I had bought myself some peace by promising to go when I had finished the book. And for that matter I was a bit hungry, so we went through the by now familiar ordeal of rousing Mr. Fang from whatever numerical business he was engaged in, and set off.

Before we had even left the depths of Bass Library, an epic spiritual drama had begun. At first I would have been happy to grab some dirty and dirt-cheap noodles at the place down the street, but after another proposal was made (perhaps by me, far more likely by Evelyn Waugh), we found ourselves as if inevitably on the way to Samurai, over our better judgment and the Russian Peasant's protestations at every step that "We are not going sake-bombing!"

And before you, O discerning and perhaps parental reader, pass judgment on this story, know that our conversation at Samurai was mainly on Mr. Fang's religious crisis and temptations by Evangelical Ice-Cream, on our good memories of the past, and on the terrifyingly fast onrush of a future in which we will no longer be freshmen. And of course a good time was had by all.

Not so much of a good time, however, that we did not return to our books in the depths of Bass. Mr. Fang returned to his calculations, I drafted a few philosophical notes, and the Russian Peasant assured all gathered that the Study Break would not—would definitely not—cause her to do badly on the final exam that she's taking just as this post goes online.

(photo credit: YDN)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

办签证

Newspapers and journals, political pundits and economists, textbooks and in short everyone who wants to appear informed about China have long since raised the refrain that China's modernization makes the country ever more familiar to Western eyes. This view is correct enough, even if it's obvious, but there are a few areas in which it is the West that lags behind. When the Twelve Tables were first being scratched out in Italy, the Chinese states had already devised a bureaucratic system to make any libertarian weep.

The well-developed offspring of this system was on display on Monday, when I visited the 中华人民共合国驻纽约总领事馆 (at left) to arrange for my visa for this summer. I had a few fairly impressive-looking letters of invitation, and I had taken care to write "耶鲁大学" in large, legible characters anywhere I could find an excuse to put it on the application. The clerk at the visa desk was unwilling to speak Chinese, for some reason, and quite unable to speak English, but if several hours of waiting and copying out forms in an overcrowded and under-air-conditioned room can be considered good fortune, I had the good fortune to get a Chinese visa. Some of my friends were not so lucky; this year it's especially hard to get one.


The consulate, at 42nd and 12th, doesn't draw much attention to itself--there's only a small sign next to the door, and no Chinese flags or any other insignia. I found the building by the line forming outside the door, already fairly long when I showed up an hour and a half before opening. Falun Gong was out in force, with banners informing the gathering crowd that "Falun Dafa is Good" and calling for legal action against Jiang Zemin and a few other characters. Their protest was a quiet one: a group of a dozen or so mostly elderly Chinese meditated and performed what seemed to be a sort of simplified Tai-Ch`i, while some Chinese music played almost inaudibly. I managed to get a picture of this protest on my cell phone, as well as of the Tibetan protest I encountered when I returned to pick up my visa after grabbing lunch with my brother uptown.


Unlike the Falun Gong practitioners, the Tibetans (and the one or two white persons protesting with them) were accompanied by policemen. Most of them carried Tibetan flags or placards, which they waved as they shouted slogans in Tibetan, or in what I think was Tibetan. I couldn't tell if they were agitating for Tibet's independence or merely protesting China's actions there. The protest seemed well-organized, and had drawn many more people than Falun Gong's protest had, but it only passed by the consulate briefly once, at least as far as I saw. In any event, this protest, like the other one, drew no response from the consulate or from the many Chinese nationals waiting in line outside.


After I returned to New Haven, several interesting things happened, but I don't have time now to post on the Chamber of Secrets and the dangerous and quite illegal Rooftop Romp.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Practice Video Post

Just to see if I can put video online, some footage from yesterday afternoon's practice (I'm in the 4-seat):