Carthage College Choir and George's Mom

     Last night Star, and her roommates and I went to hear choral music at St Nicolas (the really old Anglican/ Church of Ireland church, really old= hundreds and hundreds of years).  The singing was wonderful and the old stone church was built with amazing acoustics.  First a choir from Carthage College in Wisconsin performed and then the local choir from Galway sang as well. The spirituals were the highlight, although Star and I were ridiculously excited when

George's monument 

the American choir sang Oh Shenandoah as their final song. (It was our theme song at camp in 2006 and so we got really excited when we saw it in the program, like excited-to-the-point-we-kinda-scared-star’s-poor-roommate-excited.)

St Nicolas’s is full of incredibly old tombs along the walls (and in the floors as well, which makes me feel slightly odd to walk across them). My favorite of the tombs is this one on the wall memorializing young George Fredrick De Carteret who was my age, 22, when he died in 1843.

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It's still a little hard to read, but this is the close up of what it says

I’m a history and literature major because I love stories. A lot. (I love people, they’ve all got stories!) The plaque has so many stories packed onto one carved stone scroll. His mother seems like the type that would be organizing MADD if she lived a century and a half later. And the verse she chose is not one of hope, or comfort, it’s just descriptive because it relates to young George’s mother as well. It also captures such a particular moment in the childless mother’s grief when the loss is overwhelming and “irreperarable”. Plus how many sentences warrant the use of a word as awesome as tempestuous?

Today I went to a coffee shop and enjoyed some tea, a chocolate muffin, and their free wifi. As well as worked on the job seeking and all. Shop street was fun since it was bustling with people and street musicians (who have an impressive balance, I’ll get a picture next time I pass them, really I will).