Mín Englisc Blog

While the recent death of Michael Jackson means nothing to me personally, my Internet interests have made it rather interesting. First off — so many people searched Google for information on him that the tech people thought that it was a denial-of-service attack, and required all searchers to type in a special code to be able to access anything about him. Many other sites crashed: AOL Instant Messenger, Twitter, and of course the Los Angeles Times. Over at Wikipedia — the Wikimedia Foundation servers crashed for a good while, and record statistics were noted. According to the New York Times, Wikipedia's article on Jackson registered nearly one million hits within one hour, a far higher number than on Palin's article after her nomination or Obama's article after his election. Internal statistics show an interesting contrast: in May, the page had somewhat more than 500,000 hits, but yesterday and today got 1.4 million and 5.9 million hits respectively. Even the misspelling of "Micheal Jackson" has received over 168,000 hits, and (perhaps most impressively) more people visited "Michael Jackson" than visited the Wikipedia front page!

CNN described this situation with a great phrase:
"Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him".

Today, we received the first case of The Book of Psalms for Worship. Using my recorder, I've gone through Psalms 1-104, playing the tunes that we don't use in the Book of Psalms for Singing. Many more tunes than in the previous volume use notes below middle C, which is the lowest that my instrument can play; consequently, I'm going to have to relearn proper transposition. I'm enjoying seeing many tunes that I've heard in other contexts, whether classical music (28A, using the theme from a Mozart piano sonata [K.331]), well-known hymn tunes (112B, using the tune from "For All the Saints"), or even Christmas (two different selections using "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and one using the Sussex Carol). Having no knowledge of the biblical languages, I can't opine on the translations, and having gone through the selections without looking at the texts, I can't speak of those either. The only exceptions are in Psalm 68, where "bars of silver ore" is changed to "silver bars" [one doesn't make bars of rocks that have bits of silver in them], and Psalm 83, where four Midianite rulers are named (as in the original text), rather than just two.
I am deeply disappointed with two selections — 19C and 24B. 19 uses a tune that I've heard before, using verse 6 of the psalm as a refrain. Since when was that verse in the text four times? 24, meanwhile, is the tune "St. George's, Edinburgh", which is in the previous Irish psalter: I love the tune and the setting (I coördinated a group that performed it at Calvin in 2004), but this setting includes a "Hallelujah" chorus [not Handel's] at the end. In the 1979 Irish psalter, this setting is the final selection of the entire book, placed in a section separate from most versions, so it's obviously clear; with this one, however, it's just in the middle, and if you didn't know the text, you'd think that the "Hallelujahs" were in the Hebrew.
Despite these objections, I'm eagerly anticipating using this book in worship. It's one reason (albeit a smaller one) that I've had trouble embracing this year in Belle Center, for the congregation likely won't be switching soon.

Yesterday was Mom's birthday. She's described it as having been a rather better one :-)
Synod began last night at Geneva College — we've heard that the moderator is Bruce Hemphill, pastor of Covenant Fellowship in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.

Back from Covfamikoi, our presbytery family conference. Speaker was Anthony Selvaggio, the pastor of College Hill RPC during my first two years; except for a short time at Calvin last year, it's been two years since I had any contact with him. It's always good to hear from a strong preacher, especially a preacher whom one has not heard for quite a while. His topics were various themes from the book of Proverbs, ranging from general wisdom to the application of the Proverbs to modern technology.
Unlike in previous years, I met almost no new people; the only individuals whom I can remember are a family from First Durham and the church planter (and his wife) at Atlanta. Socially, the significant aspect of this conference was getting me back into this presbytery: except for Covfamikoi two years ago, I never attended a specifically Great Lakes-Gulf event during college. My other two summers included one Calvin conference (thus all presbyteries) and one Covenant Heights (thus part of Midwest Presbytery), and I've attended the College Winter Conference three times, but all with many other Geneva students. Because of four years in Alleghenies and recent trips elsewhere, I found myself "seeing" people from western Pennsylvania and from Colorado. I hope to spend my life within the bounds of this presbytery, so it's good to be able to be with people whom I've grown up knowing.

The past few days have been more enjoyable than most. Since graduation, my life has generally been rather boring: busy with mowing, some cycling, etc., but almost nothing of real interest. However, on Thursday, we left for Pennsylvania: Isaac's "Preview Day" at Geneva was Friday, and we didn't want to have to leave at 4AM on Friday. It's interesting to note that he had a "Day" — when I was an incoming freshman, it was a "Preview Weekend".
While Isaac and Mom and Dad went around to the various activities, I went around Beaver Falls. When one has fit into a community for a few years and then must leave, one finds it easy to be busy upon returning for the first time. Most of my day was spent with two friends a year behind me: I was able to go out for lunch with this year's roommate, while I visited and helped another guy who is living and rehabbing a house downtown over the summer. Church was the only disappointment: the first person whom I saw was one of our elders, and the time was quite pleasant, but when I went over to Eastvale, I found that the Ramseys were out of town. Perfect example of bad timing: apparently they had been gone for a few days, and were to be gone for a few more, so waiting a few minutes wouldn't have helped :-) Nevertheless, I was able to talk a little with a couple of ladies at church and to leave a message for Micah. It's been somewhat easier to keep up with the congregation so far, because Ramseys are sending me the bulletin each week. Not much, to be sure, but it's far better than nothing. I hope that it won't be long until I can worship there. Such a blessing they were to me in four years!

It's hard to believe that it's been over a year since I began working at RPTS in Pittsburgh over the summer. I learned so much during that time...a pity that there was no way — either on my end or on theirs — that I could have a similar job this year. I'm planning to do a little work for the Archives, but we'll see how little or how much I can get done.

Today was a bit different: in the late morning, I cycled to the northwest to find a celebrated archaeological site that I'd been hoping to see for quite a while. It wasn't the easiest to find, and my first thought was a different site, but thankfully I found it.
This evening, we went to the awards dinner for our local Boy Scout council: aside from various other bits, the truly interesting part was when Isaac was given an award for being "Youth of the Year" in Council.