Cold in Exeter

I've now returned to Exeter after a brilliant trip to London. I had a wonderful time with Ahreum and enjoyed a bit of time out in addition to my studies at the British Library.

I went to a Korean restaurant, which was alright, but overpriced. The problem is not that the dishes are too expensive, but that all the side dishes, which would simply be included in Korea, have to all be purchased separately. I guess this way of ordering has been tried and failed in Korea, but in England the locals will have no idea things are done differently. As for the Korean clientele, who seem to be a big chunk of the business, I suspect getting a good meal like at home makes up for the inconveniences. That is completely reasonable. Still having had so many wonderful meals in Korea, I can definitely say that Korean restaurants in England are only a pale doppelganger of the original.

I also went to a cool Dutch pancake house with Ahreum and another friend of ours, Tara, who is now working at a top notch conservatoire in London after finishing her PhD in Exeter. To top it all off she is from Wisconsin and studies Korean traditional opera-Ponsori (I'm sure I have not managed to transliterate this correctly). We all decided to go for desert pancakes, and it was a real treat. They were absolutely gigantic, maybe 12 inches or a bit more in diameter. Mine had sliced pears in the pancake and ice-cream and advocaat sauce on top. What decadence. Now far be it for me to be dominated by my sweet tooth, but this was very worth while, and I heartily recommend the place for all visitors to London. It's on High Holborn Street, and is called My Old Dutch Pancake House.

Research went well, but there really is a tremendous wealth of material available just on Locke's ethics of toleration, not to mention his ethics and politics more generally. I made my way through some of the monograph books, but there is still more to do. One particularly good source, by a theology professor at Yale, Nicholas Wolterstorff, works through the ethics of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is clear from this that Essay’s very project has political ramifications, for Locke’s looming fear Locke is the problem of sectarian strife, which he hopes to circumvent through his account of human knowing. Using Wolterstorff's work, one can subsequently see that Locke's theory of knowledge justifies the old Christian recommendation (though not all Christians make or hold to this recommendation) that contention and intolerance are divisive and sinful and that brotherly love and toleration are commanded by God and conducive to peaceful relations between men. My priorities are different from Wolterstorff's, but it is clear his rich account is penetrating in addition to being useful for my own research.

Now, I am away from Ahreum, from the bastion of learning in the British Library, and from the culinary dynamic of London. I am greeted by the chill frost of a November morning in Exeter. The sun shines, but it produces no warmth.

However, I am not writing figuratively. It really is cold today. I should have worn gloves to the office. Other than that, Exeter remains the same.

Once more into the breach,

Ben