Wishing CKS Well On Her Way To London

(First posted 6/7/09)

Most of you know in the last year or so cks has added to JinC with many thoughtful comments.

An educator from Ohio, she recently was awarded a highly competitive National Endowment for the Humanities teacher fellows grant for summer study in London and the Netherlands. You can read more about her NEH award program here and here.

I’ve posted a few times with “current tips” for cks about London which she'll be visiting this summer for the first time in 35 years.

In this post, I wish her well and add a few more tips.

I know she and I will both be happy for you to read along.

John

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Dear cks,

Thank you for your contributions to JinC which hasn’t quite shut down yet because there’s a need for me to explain some things to thoughtful, fair people.

I hope you keep looking in at JinC until I finally “turn off the lights;” and perhaps you’ll comment.

Good luck in London.

I see by your NEH itinerary you’ll travel down the Thames to Greenwich, where you'll have time to visit the Royal Observatory.

The Observatory’s strong, commanding beauty atop the hill always inspires me.

Something else there does too. Fittingly enough, it concerns time-keeping.

You’ll notice people from all over the world standing before the time-recording computer that flashes the official GMT to the second, and then further to the right flashes it in fractional seconds at a recording speed that’s blurred to the naked eye.

Standing in front of the hermetically sealed computer you’ll see people from all over the world who on impulse look down and begin resetting their watches to as close an approximation of GMT as they can manage.

I’m use to that scene now, but the first time I witnessed it my eyes misted.

There they were before the GMT-recording computer – people of every race, nation, and belief, some who in their own countries would actively support murderous actions against people standing just a few yards from them – and they were all agreed at least on the time.

It’s a start.

Back in London, I know you’ll visit Westminster Abbey, perhaps on a pre-arranged VIP tour for you and your colleagues.

You don’t need me to tell you such tours – even the regular tours – are never to be forgotten.

I hope you also have time to go back on your own to the Abbey for choral evensong.

Even in the busy summertime, if you get there 30 minutes before service, you’ll likely get a seat in the choir where you’ll be but a few feet behind the choiristers when the service begins.

It’s truly magisterial.

Every good wish,

John