If It's Friday, This Must be Lincoln

On Friday, there was a school trip to Lincoln.  It was great!  The school organized everyone so that we would all have four "slots," one each for the Cathedral, Roman ruins, Castle, and then a fourth for going to whatever seemed fun.  Faculty were allowed to do whatever, so I tagged along for the Roman ruins and Cathedral tours (led by British faculty folks), then had lunch at a pie shop, then went to the Castle, and then back to the Cathedral to look some more.  Because the Cathedral is just that GREAT!

Without someone telling me, I would have totally missed these in the street.  There's a row of them, as you can see in the next picture.  Just right in the middle of the street.

 They mark, according to our guide, the columns that held up the Roman basilica/forum thingy, back when Lincoln was a colonia of Rome.  (I love that some names have Roman origins, and we still use them.)

 Part of the Roman wall still stands.  I gather it started as a fort, and then once the local population was pretty much pacified, turned into a colonia, a city with colonists from all over Rome.

 And, when it was a colonia, it had big open gates, the better to welcome traders.  Unfortunately, that meant it wasn't defensible really when the Angles and the Saxons attacked once the Romans pulled out the legions.  Oops.

Amazing to think these have been here for about 2000 years.

 The Cathedral, on the other hand, is practically new, not even a thousand years old yet.

 We learned a bit about architecture and planning.  Notice, for example, that the row of kings disrupts the arches built around the door.  Not part of the original planning, perhaps.

 The Normans were descendants of Vikings, and their buildings show motifs that come from Viking imagery, like this amazing dragon over the arch.

 And these very weird heads with massive, ornate tongues sticking out.

 Inside, if you embiggen the picture, and look along the roofline, you can see where there's an architectural error.  Or something.  (I missed the story that went along with that, alas.  But I've read that a lot of the Cathedral was ruined by an earthquake in the 12th century, so maybe after that?)

 A closer view.

 The stone masons were amazing!

After the Roman and Cathedral tours and lunch, I went to the Castle.  Imposing!

The most interesting part of the Castle for me was in the prison chapel.  When originally built, the prison was built on a system of separation, keeping prisoners alone.  And the chapel was built the same way, so there are individual little cells where the prisoners all stand, with a door between each, and watch/listen to the preacher in the pulpit up above.

 They had manikins in some of the little cells, and holy cow, they're creepy!  I looked down, not realizing one was there, and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw it!  You can see a couple heads in this picture below.

 Magna Carta was, as always, magnificent and exciting.  They also had two Charter of the Forests from different signings on display.  But you can't take pictures in there.  So I walked around the top of the castle wall walk, in the rain, and took a picture looking towards the Cathedral.  I hadn't realized how different the spire things are until I looked from this angle.

 After walking the wall, I went back to the Cathedral to look at things I hadn't looked at enough before.  There's little Hugh's memorial, and a Bishop Richard Fleming's famous cadaver tomb (there was a scaffolding being put up just in front of it, so my picture's sort of iffy).

And then it occurred to me to see if there were any Green Men about, so I asked, and the docent gave me a map!  Here's the first one, in a little hidden place, but lit now by modern lighting.

 This next one is interesting, with oak leaves and such.

 And finally, a friend showed me these snails, which are a reminder of our mortality.

Midweek Visit to Woolsthorpe, Isaac Newton's Home

Woolsthorpe (the link is to the National Trust site) is amazing.  It's where Isaac Newton was born, and where he lived for a few years before being sent off to school.  But when he finished his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, the plague was bad, and he (I'm told) returned to Woolsthorpe for about 18 months.  And later, he credited those 18 months with helping him make the discoveries he made about gravity and the light spectrum.

He lived much of his adult life away, though he owned Woolsthorpe.  But his death mask (or a copy, anyway), made it back.  Death masks are very weirdly fascinating.

 Kitchen, I think.

 Desk!

 Here's the room where he supposedly did lots of his work.

 And the room where he was born.  (None of the furniture is from when he was at the house.)

 Here's a back view of the house.  On the left is one of the outbuildings for farming stuffs.

 And here's the front, facing onto the fabled orchard.  See the S things?  I'm told they're ties, and attached to long bars that go through the structure, and so keep the walls from bulging out from age and weight.  (And so says Wikipedia!)

Here's the docent telling stories in front of the apple tree.  Well, the not quite apple tree.  Supposedly, this was the apple tree, but it fell.  But then from the trunk, a new tree grew, so it's the same genetic tree.  And lots of people have taken slips of the tree for grafting so that they have the apple tree, too, sort of.  The docent said it was a cider/cooking apple tree, and not an eating apple tree.

I have to say, walking where Isaac Newton walked, seeing where he may have scrawled on walls, being where he was, that was incredible.  Mind blowing, even.

I'd recommend Woolsthorpe for a half day visit, for sure.  It's really fun!

Friday at Hadrian's Wall

This past Friday, I went to Hadrian's Wall.  I went up to Newcastle upon Tyne on Thursday evening, and stayed at one of those hotels that's totally confusing.  It's sort of hidden away (I found it by chance), and then it's labyrinthian inside.  You go up a flight, down a half flight, over, up another two flights, and so on.  But my room was roomy and comfortable, with windows that opened and good drapes, and a comfortable bed.

The best way I could figure out was to take a train from Newcastle to Hexham, and from the train station bus stop there, get on a bus that goes out to Haltwhistle, stopping along the way a bunch.  I got a day pass for about 12 quid, and off I went.

My first stop was at Chesters Roman Fort.  I bought myself a membership in English Heritage for 54 quid.  Let's see if it's worth it for the length of my visit.  (6.60 pounds entry at Chesters.)

 The River Tyne, looking upstream (north).

 The River Tyne, looking downstream (south)

 Roman Baths.  When I'd done walking around, I asked at the information desk about the ruins.  I was thinking that they'd sort of been rebuilt, with modern cement and such.  But no, what's there has been dug up, but the cement is Roman.  And the structures are what survived (partly covered with erosion and such over time).  This blows me away.

 A phallic symbol in the main courtyard.  Naturally.

 So this vault, this has survived for about 2000 years.  Mind blown.

 Early under-floor heating set up.  (I saw this sort of thing when I was in Bath, in 2011, but still, way cool!)

So that was Chesters Roman Fort.  Really interesting!  Well worth a visit.

Then I got back on the bus and went to Housesteads Roman Fort (7.5 pounds).  Maybe even cooler than Chesters Roman Fort.  At any rate, right up there!

 I saw this beautiful butterfly warming itself in the sun.

 Gorgeous scenes!  Big big walls!

 The latrines!  Probably an 8 on my scale when they still worked.  Really interesting!

 More wall, landscape!

 It's like you can see and see a long way!

 Clouds looming.  It drizzled a little, but only a little.

 This sheep was eating on its knees.  It looked fine, but was eating on its knees.

I went out to wait for the bus, and saw a couple of birds, which I've posted on a facebook group for help identifying.

Then I got back on the bus; the day was running down, and I needed to choose between Vindolanda and the Roman Army Museum.  I chose the museum and was amused by this sign:

 The Roman Army Museum was so so.  Maybe I was just tired, but it seemed aimed at kids more than adults, and reminded me of the Viking museum at York, but less full in some ways.

Finally, I took the bus all the way back to the train station at Hexham, and headed back to Newcastle.

All in all, this was a really interesting day out!

Behind Again: Thornton and Haworth

Last Sunday, a week ago today, I went on a visit to Thornton and Haworth.

The house at Thornton, where the sisters were born, has become a small coffee house.  They make good coffee and bisquits!

Here's the room where, we were told, the sisters were born.  It's filled with happy caffeinators.

 Another room, which looked like maybe a sitting room.

Haworth is way more fun, because there's so very much to see!

 Look, a plaque!  (but not a plague.  Good thing!)

I visited the dead folks in the Church.

 Here's the corner.

 And a different view.

 This is the church from the parsonage, across the cemetery.  There are a WHOLE lot of monuments there saying things like: Here lies Joseph X, son of William X and Sarah X, died at 3 months.  And Mary X, their daughter, died at 2 years.  And Anne X, their daughter, died at 1 year.  And William, died at 72 years.  And Sarah, died at 78 years.  Lots of little infants and children, buried and marked with the same monument (same grave?).  It's very sad to think of all those little kids, and the parents just grieving.

 And this is the parsonage, from the same place I took the church picture.  The Bronte sisters were outlived by their father, who was curate of the church.  I can't begin to imagine how impossibly hard it must be to outlive your spouse and children.

The village itself is pretty nice, very touristy.  It was drizzly, so I went and had tea in a shop, and it was so so good!  The tea was hot, and the scones were perfect, especially with the clotted cream.

A Little Rant

I read the blog of a certain administrative writer who was lamenting yesterday yet again about the evils of tenured faculty.  Basically, the lament goes like this:  if the tenured folks would just do what I tell them without questioning or talking back, my college/the state of education/the whole world would be better, work more efficiently and effectively, and serve students better.  Often, the lament about tenured folks is tied to a lament about unions.  (There's often an undertone of regret that a former employer which was very top down failed, because the blogger can see how very much better a top down approach is.)

The post I just read basically questioned how to innovate when tenured folks are in the way and want input, and that input is seen as negative and inspired by defensiveness about our role.

Maybe I've gotten cynical, but the number of administrators I've now experienced who come into a position and want to make their mark is more than I can count on one hand.  They come in, mandate some massive change, push it through, and then leave, and those of us in the faculty and on the ground work through the problems and try to make it work, and then comes along another administrator and "pivots" and mandates a different change, equally big, totally focused on something else.  And then we do a massive five or ten year strategic plan, but then the administrator leaves, and the next comes in and ignores the plan in favor of their mandate, and then a year or two in, claims that the faculty is horrible because we don't put the strategic plan into effect, and writes a whole new strategic plan line on their CV, and then moves on.

All of these plans end up calling for new administrative positions, and end up putting more students in courses, and then criticizing faculty who lecture to rooms of 100 or more students.  New administrators are hired, who demand more paperwork, and demand that we add the paperwork to the other things we're doing, and then change their mind and demand different paperwork because the first didn't work after all.

I love hearing that administrator X has just come from a special conference at a super fancy hotel in a big city, which was totally paid for by the school, although they didn't give a paper, organize a session, or do anything more than sit around and get lectured at by gurus (probably about how bad lecturing is).  And then I'm trying to put together my funding for a conference to stay in a dorm room.  Ugh.

Okay, enough.

I'm exhausted because I've barely slept all week.  I need to find time to do some work, but my time feels especially fractured here.

9 September: London for "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix"

Last Saturday, I went with a colleague here to a symposium, "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix" at the London Metropolitan Archives.  It was really interesting, fun, and I learned a lot.

One of the most interesting papers for me (because I learned a lot) was Christopher Matusiak's paper on "The Cockpit at War, 1642-1656."  (I may not have the title precisely, because I was taking notes and am reading from them, and not an official document.)

Matusiak argued that despite legislation against theaters/plays, four houses played through to 1649.  According to my notes, these were the Cockpit, Salisbury Court, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.  Even after 1649, three more carried on playing.

[Am I the only one who didn't know that some companies kept playing after 1642???]

According to Matusiak, the companied argued against the validity of the Parliament's ordinances against theaters/playing, since they weren't Acts, since they hadn't been signed by the monarch.  That's interesting, no?

He talked about Christopher Beeston's widow, Elizabeth Beeston, aka Hutchison (also an aka used by Christopher Beeston before he died), who controlled the cockpit for some years, until 1658, when the lease expired.

Another really interesting paper was Stephen Watkins' paper on "Davenant at the Cockpit."  Watkins argued that from 1658-9, Davenant performed three works at the Cockpit, The Siege of Rhodes, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, and The History of Sir Francis Drake.  From what Watkins said, these were sort of opera pieces, with music, and recitatif, rather than what we traditionally think of as plays.  So they may have avoided trouble by not performing plays that were proscribed, but something else.  Watkins pointed out that since the Protectorate was at war with Spain in the 1650s, there might have been a more relaxed attitude towards these performances because of their subject matter.

The Siege of Rhodes had the first legal female actor on the London stage.  And not using cross-dressed boy actors may have made the morality thing less of an issue.  Interesting stuff, for sure!

In my notes about the paper, I wrote "Ballad-vs-Dav[enant]'s play [line break] John Evelyn [line break] 6 May 1659 --> didn't like play."  So either John Evelyn wrote a ballad, or maybe wrote about a ballad and that expressed dislike of the performance.  In either case, it would be evidence that there was a performance.

After the symposium, my colleague and I went to visit the approximate location of the Red Bull, near Haywood's Place now.

We also stopped to see what's left of the well at Clerkenwell, which is weirdly behind a big glass window in an office building.