Just back from a very pleasant evening drinking and chatting with Kieran in the “Seven Stars”:http://www.englandpast.net/education/campaigns5.html , a Bristol pub where Thomas Clarkson stayed whilst investigating the slave trade in 1787. Meeting Kieran brings my person-to-person encounters with other CTers up to three. No doubt I’ll collect the full set eventually! In testimony to the power of the blogosphere I can reveal that when he picked me up this evening Kieran’s car CD player seemed to me to be defective, but he soon put me right: reading “Michael Brooke”:http://www.michaelbrooke.com/archive/2004_03_28_index.html#108050871652994237 had inspired him to buy a disc of music by Ligeti.
{ 28 comments }
Ophelia Benson 05.04.04 at 10:37 pm
It would be quite amusing if some day one of you returned from meeting another of you and reported that it was a horrible dreary toe-curlingly boring experience.
asarwate 05.04.04 at 10:55 pm
Which disc of Ligeti? I remember asking my parents for cds of his for my birthday present before going to college. I don’t think they made me the hit of the dorm, but I found the piano etudes helped me while away the hours toiling on my physics homework.
John Isbell 05.04.04 at 11:38 pm
IIRC Bristol had the first (recent) museum of slavery in England, if not the UK, apt given its major role in the trade. Which adds a twist to the 1798 Lyrical Ballads. My sister’s in Bristol, and I’ve drunk in the Seven Stars, but I didn’t know the Clarkson connection. A good man, with Wilberforce.
Ophelia Benson 05.04.04 at 11:45 pm
The Lyrical Ballads? Why? Do they have some connection with Bristol? Weren’t WW and STC pretty well dug in around Nether Stowey at the time? Or am I forgetting something. No doubt I am.
eszter 05.04.04 at 11:48 pm
OB – I thought of posting something along those lines a few weeks ago after meeting Henry for the first time.. but I didn’t think it very polite to do so.
JUST KIDDING.;)
I get to meet Maria in Paris this summer! Then I’ll have to start figuring out ways to meet some of the non-Irish CT folks.
harry 05.05.04 at 12:42 am
But Ophelia, when does one of us get to meet you?
And that question makes me wonder, is there a non-CTer who has met more CTers than any Cter has met? I bet there is.
Keith M Ellis 05.05.04 at 1:46 am
Funny you should mention Ligetti, since I just discovered him, particularly Coloana (which blew my mind) last week.
Weird.
Ophelia Benson 05.05.04 at 1:53 am
Eszter, not polite, no, but so amusing!
Harry, anybody can meet me and report how toe-curlingly boring I am any time – just come to Seattle.
John Isbell 05.05.04 at 4:12 am
Ophelia, the small LB 1st edition was in Bristol.
laura 05.05.04 at 6:02 am
I’m a non-CTer who has met two of them — not more than they have done, but respectable in any case. Although since it’s the two who went to Princeton it’s sort of cheating. In fact Eszter is entirely responsible for starting me off on my now quite time-consuming blog-reading habit. When I don’t finish my dissertation I believe we’ll know who’s responsible.
Maria 05.05.04 at 9:00 am
If there’s a wooden spoon for having met the least CTers, then I nominate myself. I’ve only met one; my brother Henry (though on several occasions). Even worse, practically all my family met Chris last summer in Kerry, but I was elsewhere. So that almost counts as minus one.
As for non-CTers who’ve met more of us than anyone else, or at least can match the highest count; I propose Gus Hosein who knows me, Henry and Ezster, and all through separate contacts I think. Now that’s impressive.
harry 05.05.04 at 3:03 pm
I’m up to 4 — Micah, Henry, Chris, and Jon. I’d guess that many of us have met Jerry Cohen, but that he is blissfully unaware of CT. My *guess* is that some readers have met more than 4 of us. Well?
I’m sure I’ll be in Seattle sometime Ophelia (my wife’s from there, but we haven’t visited for ages).
Henry 05.05.04 at 3:19 pm
I’m at four too – Maria (obviously), Harry, Chris and Eszter. I wonder about Jerry Cohen though. Through mysterious processes, I’ve found myself on the Boston Review’s mailing list, which suggests that someone there is aware of us (I reckon I’m too obscure/off-topic as an academic to have come to their attention through other channels).
eszter 05.05.04 at 4:08 pm
I wonder how many of us Laurie has met, Laurie Paul that is. After all, isn’t it partly because of her work and conferences that Kieran is now meeting all the philosophers? And she has met me as well (and obviously Kieran;).
eszter 05.05.04 at 4:14 pm
Laura – I won’t take blame for unfinished dissertations. After all, you should find this space inspiring!:-) Plus hey, I finished mine while writing a blog and reading many of them so if anything, it’s probably conducive to finishing a dissertation. (I had to throw that in there with all the logic work that goes on around here…;)
Chris Bertram 05.05.04 at 4:40 pm
Adam Swift has met at least three of us: Micah, Harry and me, and my colleague Paul was at Princeton with Kieran and Eszter. Jerry C is certainly aware of CT, though not a big blog reader.
Ophelia Benson 05.05.04 at 4:54 pm
Has Adam Swift’s mother met any of you? I’ve met Adam Swift’s mother – well not exactly met, but chatted with. Good fun. We shared a particular fondness for the chickens and the armchair.
harry 05.05.04 at 5:55 pm
Adam’s a reader so you’d better be careful what you say about his mum… How could you have chatted with her without meeting her? I’ve not met his mum, but have played cricket with his dad (and met him — its hard to play cricket with people without meeting them), and have also met his brother.
I’m not aware of having met Laurie, but may have done. My colleagues Carolina and Juan have met Brian and me, and Laurie, but I’m not sure if they’ve met Keiran.
I, too, mysteriously got on the BR mailing list, also presumably through CT.
But I think we are missing someone obvious. Jerry C has met Chris, me, and Micah — I bet some other CTers have met him. No?
Chris Bertram 05.05.04 at 6:45 pm
Didn’t Jerry supervise Tom Runnacles at some stage? And isn’t D^2’s spouse friends with Jerry’s. So that makes 5 if Daniel has met Jerry.
Ophelia Benson 05.05.04 at 6:57 pm
All the better. I don’t need to be careful because I’m a great admirer of Adam’s mum, have been for decades. It’s easy to chat with someone without meeting her – on a book tour, of course. (Well, if you like, I met her, but she didn’t meet me.)
Oh and thanks, John, for the info on LB and Bristol. (Adam’s mum is a great fan of Wordsworth’s. So’s his aunt. It all ties up, doesn’t it.)
harry 05.05.04 at 7:12 pm
I was kidding Ophelia (about warning you to be careful, not about Adam being a reader). Yes, I’m a fan too, but only became one recently (my wife has been a fan for years).
ionfish 05.05.04 at 7:41 pm
I didn’t realise until recently who Chris was – I must admit I was slightly taken aback that one of the authors of the group blog I’d been reading for quite a while was the head of my department (I’m a Philosophy undergrad at Bristol).
Tamar 05.05.04 at 9:14 pm
I’m at four as well: I met Harry when he gave a talk in Ithaca a few years ago; I met Kieran through Laurie in Dean Zimmerman’s backyard in South Bend in 1999(?); Brian and I are past and future colleagues; and I met Eszter in Budapest last month when she was here for a conference.
Ophelia Benson 05.05.04 at 9:59 pm
I knew you were kidding, Harry. Good that you’re a fan, however belatedly. Are you enough of a fan to know where the chickens and the armchair are?
In fact, since this thread is really about Wordsworth, despite appearances to the contrary, I’ll just expand on the dear chickens and armchair a bit. On this book tour, during questions after the reading, someone asked about the frogs in the drainpipe, and Adam’s mum said that was a Wordsworthian moment, that she likes Wordsworthian moments, preferably slightly squalid ones. So I asked if the chickens and armchair are a Wordsworthian moment, and she said yes indeed, and it was interesting I asked, because she had brought that section with her to read in case she needed to read something further.
So there you have it. The frogs that say Koax koax (not Aristophanes’ frogs) and the chickens and armchair are Wordsworthian moments. It’s good to know these things.
harry 05.06.04 at 1:23 am
But Tamar, Tamar says you know everybody. Just 4 of us? Are you sure? Puts you ahead of most of us I suppose. (I missed Maria, by not looking her up when I was in Paris for 36 hours predicting, rightly, that I’d be too pressed for time to be polite. Sorry Maria).
Ophelia, those kinds of comments make you seem frighteningly erudite. I’ve concentrated on the recent works and have to admit that my fandom is post-Adam (i.e. after becoming friends with him, unlike my fandom of another of his close relatives which precedes friendship with him). Is it a recent work? I don’t get the reference but I am motivated to figure it out. I am also, I have to say, not a very literary person, so am highly limited on my Wordsworth. (Better on Larkin).
Ophelia Benson 05.06.04 at 1:50 am
Harry – Frighteningly erudite? Moi? Nah.
Nope, it’s not a recent work. It’s in one of her now more obscure novels, but one of my favorites. I [flouncing a bit] have a signed copy – a battered old Penguin, signed.
Chris Brooke 05.06.04 at 10:34 pm
Four — John and Belle (in California), Micah (first in France, then in Oxford), Chris (in Oxford and Boston), Adam Swift (my old undergraduate teacher) and Adam’s delightful aunt Helen (in Rome) …
(And all bar Chris before CT ever came into existence.)
Anarch 05.07.04 at 4:24 am
Vaguely topic-related, my choir (the University of Wisconsin Madrigal Singers) just performed the Ligeti Lux Aeterna last month. It was surprisingly well-received by both the musicians and non-musicians the audience which (aside from the rush of a good performance) made me optimistic about the human race again.
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