Oxford, England Summer Studies 2010

Seminars on lyric poetry and lectures on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, 

English history and architecture

Each year the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas invites students, associates, friends of the College, and entering freshman to travel to England to participate in seminars, lectures, and tours given by Tutors of the College in the unique environment of the university city of Oxford. The program gives participants an opportunity to immerse themselves in this historic place and introduces them to the enduring tradition of English-speaking arts and letters begun in Oxford in the twelfth century.

The group will stay at St. Benet’s Hall, a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford located in the center of Oxford on the beautiful, tree-lined street of St. Giles.

Participants take an intensive three-credit course in Lyric Poetry, meeting in the mornings, and attend occasional lectures on important places, dates, and people from English history. Some afternoons are reserved for tours and excursions, with day-trips to London and Canterbury. The cost of the program for students and prospective students is $1350, for non-students, $2350, and includes course tuition, room accommodations, and daily breakfast. Participants are responsible for airfare, bus and train fares, lunch and dinner, and museum fees.

The deadline for registration is June 1. Space is limited. Register now.

For more information or to register for the program, please call Stephen Shivone in the College office at 817-923-8459 or write to him at sshivone@cstm.edu.

Audit or earn three-hours of college credit. Some scholarships available.

Oxford Summer Studies / July 12-25, 2010
817-923-8459
sshivone@cstm.edu
www.cstm.edu

Impunity. With or Without?

 "That capering buffoon shall not escape with impunity

though he were favoured by the whole human race . . . " 

Don Quixote

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I have lived most of my adult life wondering if I'll ever get to use the word notwithstanding in daily conversation. Just once I would like to say, "that notwithstanding, I think . . ."

There is another word I admire from a distance and that is the word impunity.

It's best understood breaking up the syllables and their Latin origins. Im is a Latin prefix denoting the absence of and the syllable punity from the Latin punire meaning to punish. So, impunity means the absence of consequences or punishment.

Even in the appropriate setting, when someone or something is wrongly going unpunished, I always want to say "without impunity," instead of  the correct "with impunity." Probably, because it would be correct to say "without punishment."  

There may be a proper use of the phrase without impunity but I am certain I will never understand the proper use of this double negative.  There are things I just can't wrap my mind around. Like the space/time continuum in the movie Back to the Future when they go back in time and then come forward to the present and the person that went back into the past is watching the person in the present.

Young Tomato Plants with Patron

 

This is a poor excuse for a horticultural picture, especially compared to a couple other blogs I visit, but I like my tomato plants, so here you go. The good Saint Francis asked if I would crop him out of the photo but I didn't.

Refrigerator Magnets.

On the side of my refrigerator are no less than twenty promotional magnets, only one or two of which serves any present purpose. They may have served some purpose in the past, even if a minor one, but no one seems to think that a purposeless refrigerator magnet should be discarded, including me. Actually, I think I'm the one that makes sure they don't get thrown out. Well, at least that's true for six of them, anyway.

They are the six large Texas Rangers baseball-schedule magnets, starting with year 1997, each received on opening day of a baseball season. Those magnets represent about 20 years of going to Rangers games with my wife and children, and as they say, "them were good times."

Also, not to be discarded is a magnet with a family picture of an old and close friend. He's a missionary and it's a way for him to ask for prayer and other support when we can.

But I have magnets for several people no longer in business, an insurance agent and a plumber. I have a magnet for important Verizon telephone numbers. I don't have any Verizon accounts, though.  I have a magnet to remind me to buy my printer toner from a place called Inksell. I don't know if I have ever done it. I have a magnet from the Dallas Morning News, a newspaper to which I no longer subscribe -- as of at least ten years ago. A "Trains Galore" magnet. I have no idea what that is. And one for the Trinity Railway Express. You get the idea.

They're not really hurting anything but I wonder if a stranger walking into the house thinks, "why do they have so many magnets on the side of the refrigerator?"

To which I have no answer. Maybe you do.

Throwing Things Out.

I was looking for a pair of black socks this morning. I found two that seemed to match and noticed one had a hole in the heel. I threw it back into the sock pile and fished out another. Same thing, but the hole was in the ankle area. I threw it back in. I could have tossed them both in the trash but I didn't. You never know when you need an old sock with a hole in it.

I have pens that don't work. I know they don't work and will never work.

Keys? Dozens that have no keyhole that I know of.  I have shirts that I haven't worn in years. I have had shirts in my closet so un-used that a  film of dust gathered on the shoulder.

I know what you're thinking -- that I have a "hoarding" problem. I don't. I watched an episode of one of those hoarder reality shows and they take pack-ratting to a level I can't understand. I have my clean-out binges where I am merciless. Honest. I did watch one show where the lady was keeping empty bottles of shampoo on the ledge of her bathtub. Dozens of plastic bottles -- empty, just sitting there. And then she started crying when the guy told her she had to throw them out. It was all a little too weird for me.

Part of the problem is that the homo sapien is a collector by nature. I'll bet you collect something even if it is in a casual kind of way. Stamps, coins, books, beer bottles, anything with a dolphin on it. Something. You name it in this material world and somebody is collecting it. People just love to collect stuff.

The truth is, I don't mind throwing things out. Except shoes. I hate to throw out old shoes. They're like old friends, you just like them for all kinds of unknown reasons.

Now . . . socks should be another thing. But my throw-backs are still there, and probably will be for a long time.

(comments on anything you keep, but shouldn't, gladly accepted)