More Paris!

After that, we found our way to the Museum of the Middle Ages, the Cluny, which was high on my list, and totally wonderful. They have lots of stuff from the 12th to the 15th centuries especially, and it's just so darned cool to get to see it! I even took a picture of my hat (now called Onofre, by the way) visiting the gargoyly statue on the outside well thing.

From the Cluny, we went to eat. And that was good! And then we walked to the Pantheon.

The Pantheon is big. It's supposed to be like a secular French monument to all things French, but it sort of did nothing for me. And that's strange, because you know how much I like to visit dead people? Well, there are a LOT of really great dead people here: Voltaire, Rousseau, Madame Curie, Alexandre Dumas! All sorts of people. But there's nothing that struck me as, I don't know, personal? about the vaults. There are these big vaults in these crypts, and they're all basically the same (except for Voltaire and one or two others). It's not like there's a little Chaucer thing here and a Spenser thing there, as in Westminster. Nor are you even walking over Darwin and Newton. Somehow, that walking among them made me happy to visit them, but this just left me cold.

After that, Singing Woman wanted to buy a purse at some special shop, Longchamp. We got lost here and there, but finally found it and she got her bag. (She'd been looking at this purse for a good long time, I guess, and knew exactly what color and size and such she wanted. Once we found the store, it took all of perhaps five minutes for her to buy her bag.)

And then it was getting late, but the guide book SAID that that Musee D'Orsay was open until 6pm, so we headed there. Unfortunately, we got there shortly after 5pm, and they weren't letting people in any more. So we didn't get to go in. We did eat dinner, though :)

But the guide book said that the Louvre was open on Friday evenings until 9pm, so we went there. Unfortunately, maybe because of the holiday, it wasn't actually open. The mall was open, so people could buy stuff, but you couldn't go into the galleries to look at stuff.

Next up, Versailles!

So, Paris!

Last weekend was Paris. It amazes me right now to think back that merely a week ago, I was in PARIS! (I've never been to France, much less Paris, before. Exciting!) We started off by traveling to London, specifically St. Pancras Station, which is where the EuroStar trains that travel the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) leave from.

We all got our passports checked and then got on our train, and a few hours later, voila, we were at the station in Paris, the Station de Nord. From there, we walked through the station (imagine this huge herd of American students mostly, with a few adults tagging along, more slow and lost than the students) to the metro station (the Paris subway is called the metro, not the tube or the underground), and got on a subway train for three stops. Then we got off, walked around the corner and up a tiny block, and we were at our hotel for the weekend! We got there at about 6pm. Yep, here's my lovely hotel room. Look at the size of that bed!

I was travelling mostly with another faculty member, Singing Woman, who is lots of fun. We get along well. So once we got checked in and dropped our stuff, we wandered around for an hour or so and found a bar/restaurant to have dinner. I had a lovely lasagne, and then we shared a chocolate cake, because, after all, PARIS!!!!!

I should probably mention at this point that Singing Woman and I had bought "Paris Pass" tickets ahead. The idea is that you pay a lump sum and get a four day metro ticket, tickets to lots of museums and tourist stuff, and tickets to a boat ride on the Seine and other activities. You also get to go into the shorter lines for people who already have tickets, which saves a lot of time.

In the morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and then went to the Louvre. THE LOUVRE! We visited the Mona Lisa of course. I know a lot of people say that it's a much smaller, less impressive painting in person, but I thought it was plenty big and totally cool and impressive. We also saw other Renaissance paintings. When I went back to school at a local community, I took an art history series of classes, so it's way cool to see a painting from across a room and think, "hey, that's Malateste!" and it actually is. (He's the subject of a famous portrait.) The Louvre is a lot like the British Museum: you could spend weeks wandering around and never see everything. Unlike the British museum, it's a pretty amazingly beautiful space all by itself.

But we only spent a couple of hours, long enough to see some of the pieces we most wanted to (Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and so on), and then we left and walked through the gardens area to the Orangerie. Even the views in the gardens are artistic :)

The Orangerie holds some of the huge sets of Monet water lilly paintings. There are two large oval rooms upstairs of water lilly paintings, with seats so you can just sit and be overwhelmed and amazed by the paintings. And then downstairs there are selections of other modernist European works, including some really lovely Picassos. But they frown on plebians such as myself taking pictures in there, so I didn't.

We went back out to the garden then (the Tuileries) and found a cafe for lunch. Food is good!

Then we decided to walk to the boat place on the Seine and take a ride for about an hour. It was a nice day, not too cold, and clear enough to see well, and the cruise was on a big barge thingy, so we got to see stuff along the Seine, including both sides of the two islands that make up the very center of the city. (The one is the Ile de Cite, and the other the Ile de St Louis, which was added later, I think. The Ile de Cite is the medieval heart of the city. I may be backwards about these...) So we saw Notre Dame from the water and the Louvre from the water, the Orsay, and so on. Pretty darned neat!

The boat loads and lets off right near the Eiffel Tower, so that was next on our list. There was a HUGE line to ride up, and a smaller line to walk up the stairs, so we went up the stairs. It's got a lot of stairs. And then you reach the first platform, and realize there are a lot more stairs to reach the second platform. But it's totally worth it! We got there and it was becoming dusk. I rode the final elevator up to the top platform, and could see the city lights in the evening light (the last picture in my previous post is from the top of the Eiffel Tower), and that was about as good as it gets.

When we got down, we got to see the tower all lit up, which they do for about ten minutes every hour in the evening. It's something they supposedly started for the millenium, and was so popular that they continued it. It's pretty darned amazing.

And then it was time to eat, so we found a Japanese restaurant and had sushi. Yum, and something completely different from our usual fare. And then off to bed. (Yes, I missed out on the Paris nightlife.)

The next morning, we were at it again. It was the 11th of November, and so rememberance day. We started by walking to Notre Dame, and when we got there, they were just starting a special service in honor of a bishop from one of the Francophone African countries. The place was PACKED. We sat through the start of the service, and then we decided to split up because Singing Woman wanted to stay for the service, but I wanted to wander around the Cathedral. We agreed to meet up in front at 11 am. So I wandered and saw the different chapels and such, and walked around the outside (and checked out the massive line of people waiting for the tower tours) so that I could see the big flying butresses. And at 11 am, I was in front of the Cathedral.

And that, of course, is when the bell started tolling for rememberance. So that's where I was on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year. And I remembered and thought of some friends of my parents when I was a kid, one of whom was a soldier during WWI, the other a nurse, especially. (I think this is St. Denis, who got his head chopped off and picked it up again, if I recall?)

Then Singing Woman came out and we ran into some students, and headed towards the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, which is Paris's holocaust memorial. It's behind Notre Dame in a park. You know how the Vietnam Memorial is, that you walk down into it? Well this is down, like that, but you take stairs down into a square, and it's very somber and grey, and then there's a crypt thing that you walk into, with the names of concentration camps, and a tomb of an unknown victim. It's quiet, and sad.

And that's enough for this post. More to follow, shortly.

Pick One?

There's a small (tiny) photo contest, and I'm thinking of entering a photo. Help me choose which one, please!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

Which one should I enter? (And can you explain why you chose that one?)

ps. Yes, I took them all, not a hyperactive four year old. I'd love to learn to take better pictures, but I just haven't put in the effort in a real way.

On Tape and On My Mind

I listen to a lot of books on tape. I listen to go to sleep at night, to stay awake while driving, and to pass the time on busses and trains. (I know the first two seem contradictory, don't they.) Not all books are good for all of these things.

Recently, I finally finished listening to Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning. It's NOT a good fall asleep book because I kept getting caught up in the story and not falling asleep. It's a great bus and train book, though.

I really like contemporary novels that try to do something other than the 19th century realism thing. I like magical realism usually, for example. I like epistolary novels. I like books that try to do something interesting, even when they don't fully succeed.

And so, I liked Tan's novel a lot, because it has a really interesting conceit and works it through in interesting ways. The narrator, you see, is a ghost. And there are gnats (I'm not sure of the spelling) around, sort of mini-gods of places and things, and they have power and the narrator treats them as real, or real enough.

And it's a travel book that thinks about what it means to travel and how and where one chooses to travel, and I think that's important to me. And I love travel narratives anyway.

I would totally love to sit in on a really good college level discussion of the book!

(And I really liked the tale behind the title.)

Separation Anxiety

It seems like so much is happening at home right now, so much, and I'm here doing this thing, which is fine, but the things at home are urgent. Of course, they're getting done, but I feel like I should be part of things, and I'm not.

I'm keeping busy here, though. I just got back from four days in Paris. I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of spending the weekend in Paris (a long weekend, but nonetheless, a weekend).

Day One: Louvre for a couple of hours. Park. The Orangerie. Rode a boat on the Seine, and then went to the top of the Eiffel Tower (walking what could be walked, including a lot of stairs). It was all magnificent up there!

Day Two: Notre Dame. That's where I was at 11 am, when the bells sounded for rememberance. Then to the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation (a sort of Holocaust memorial). Then to Cluny (which was just perfection for me). Then to the Pantheon. Then a long shopping excursion and getting sort of lost (my friend wanted to buy something specific at a specific place, but we didn't go directly there at all). Then a long walk to the Orsay, which was already closed to new visitors for the afternoon, and then a long walk to the Louvre, which was supposed to be open for the evening but wasn't (because of the 11th?).

Day Three: Versailles. Holy Cow. I really enjoyed the Grand Trianon. I think it felt sort of like an intimate palace, somehow, like real people could have lived there. I can only imagine that the gardens in spring must be beyond belief.

Day Four: The Orsay, and then hours of travel and waiting and more travel. There are several Van Goghs there that I'd be happy to give a home to if they don't want them in France any more. (And if anyone can help with that, I can supply details about which ones.)

According to my camera, which is downloading it's pictures even now, I took 291 pictures this weekend. A lot are repeats, since I tend to take several pictures of the same thing, especially in semi dark places where you're not allowed to use flash, since I sometimes move, and sometimes get lucky and don't move.

And now I'm back at the Abbey, hunkered in my room with crackers and really good Stilton and Poachers cheeses I got at a local market a couple weeks ago. I'm in a mood for quiet and rest, but my neighbor is doing the yelling over skype thing next door.

My hat is acquiring a name. To me, my hat looks like it could take on a life of it's own, not necessarily malevolent (look at that smile!) but perhaps a bit mischevious. Here, for example, the hat is visiting Cluny. Anyway, I'm thinking of calling it either El Mono, or, what I really like but am afraid I'd have to explain to everyone forever, El Mono Onofre.

Do you all remember the book The Milagro Beanfield War? I first read that while I was in the Peace Corps, and some things about it just stuck with me. There's a character in the book, a guy called Onofre, who had lost his arm (sometime before the book starts, if I recall). And when something goes wrong in town, or can't seem to be explained by normal means, everyone blames it on his lost arm, el brazo Onofre.

What do you think? El Mono (or just Mono) OR, El Mono Onofre?

Every time I tried to speak a few words of French, just to say thank you or please, whatever, they came out in Spanish. I only have one foreign language channel, and it's set to Spanish. That's why the hat name is Spanish. And because of Onofre.

Same Old Dance

I was sitting in the shuttle with some students earlier, and I effectively disappeared, I think. At any rate, they (visiting the Abbey from different schools) were complaining about difficulties enrolling for the courses they wanted. Their complaints included a few choice words about their advisors and others about instructors who either haven't answered emails about letting students over-enroll (my word, not theirs) into full courses or whose answers were unsatisfactory. And they were frustrated by the numbers of courses already full by their enrollment time.

When I taught at a SLAC, we faculty folks were strongly encouraged to over-enroll students who wanted to take a course, but I don't recall it being a huge problem in my courses. (It's way more of a problem in lab courses where physical space is an issue than in the small courses I was teaching, it being a small school and everything.) There was also a sort of implied agreement that if students took and passed the courses their advisors told them to, and didn't change their majors, then they'd graduate in four years.

At Northwoods, we don't have any sort of implied agreement like that. And we have a pretty low four year graduation rate. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the contributing factors is that the school has cut course offerings pretty severely over the past ten years without cutting enrollments. This makes it difficult for some students to get the course they want, especially for general education type requirements, their first year. We mostly do okay with composition, though many students don't get to take it their first semester. Still we have very few sophomores taking it unless they failed it as a first year student.

I started wondering when this became a problem. It was a problem when I entered college in the late 70s. I remember students at my school who wanted to do anything biology related being held up because they couldn't get one of the 1200 slots in the first term of the chemistry sequence during their first semester. Since two terms of chem were prerequisites to the first biology course, and the first biology course was prerequisite to all but one other biology course (Human Sexuality being the exception), it put them behind. And for very sequential programs like the one I took, being a term behind was a serious problem.

I'm sure they did the two terms of chem thing so that they could "weed" out or scare off people who weren't actually going to get the grades to get into vet or med school, and so get them started exploring other majors. But it's a cruel way to do it.

And it doesn't make real sense pedagogically. Yes, sure, it's good to know chemistry, but the only biology type courses where I really needed to know the chemistry even a little were the ones that dealt with kidney stuff and permeable membranes and environmental toxicology. Once I figured that out, I got really suspicious of requirements for the sake or requirements.

Anyway, by the 70s, at least at my undergrad institution, people weren't necessarily getting into the courses they wanted when they wanted them. And it didn't seem like a new thing, since there were all sorts of student rumors and strategies about how to work the system.

What about you folks? How are enrollments in classes going? Are things looking over-enrolled a lot?

And do you have a sense of when it started to feel like that? Was it in the beginnings of time, or is it the result of specific decisions made by administrations?

I'm aware that I sound a little "student as consumer who should get what s/he wants" here. I understand the argument that students should take course Y for a GE requirement even though course X makes more sense for their interests. I hear it a lot, especially in certain contexts within my university. But I tend not to disagree, because Y and X, equally wonderful as they are, may not be of equal value to the student getting the education s/he wants to get.

Stylin'

Do you remember how I said before that I really don't understand people shopping in foreign countries and stuff? Well, I'm going to have to eat my words. Yes, it's true; while I was in Norwich, I went shopping. I couldn't help myself. The castle wasn't open yet, but all the stores and shops and market were, and I started wandering.

And I found an utterly perfect hat.

Do you remember those hats that different people wore to the wedding last summer, the one where William married Catherine? Yes, those hats? Remember seeing all the pictures and commentary about how creative and stylish those hats were?

When you look at pictures from that, they all tell who designed the hat and the dress and so on (I just looked at those pictures, so I'm in the know). Well, I'm sad to say that I don't know who the designer of my new hat is, but I think the person deserves a big "hurrah!"

I also think that if any of the women at the royal wedding had worn MY new hat, she would have stolen the show completely! All eyes would have been on her the whole time. And she would have warmed things up considerably. Not only is my new hat stylish, but it's also supremely practical. Okay, maybe not supremely, but at least a tiny bit, which is more than I can say for the royal wedding hats!

Isn't it GREAT! I love the smile! It's so very me!

Adventures in Norwich, Part the First

I bought my train tickets ahead, so got a good price for once. (See, I can learn new tricks!) And I got a room at a hotel ahead! I was set to go!

I had called for a taxi to pick me up at 8am, figuring a ten minute ride, maybe 15, and then catch my 8:27 train. You know what this means, right? Yes, the taxi came at 8:15 because it was raining and there was traffic, and blah blah. So I got to the station in time to get my tickets and run across the overhead bridge thingy while the train pulled out. Then I had to buy a new one way ticket, effectively doubling my train fare. Lovely, right? But you know, it was okay because I could do that, and no one was going to suffer horribly as a result.

And so off I went on a different train, did a switch at another station, and got there only 40 minutes or so later than scheduled.

Then I started walking and got sort of lost. Let's just say that Norwich is somewhat confusing. I found the visitor information place and got a good map (they always seem to have the BEST maps, and nice people to circle the places you want to go so you can see them easily and tell you what's open when). That's when I found out that one of the places I wanted to go was only open on Friday and not Saturday, so I moved that to the top of my Friday visit list.

And off I went. And realized that I'd been about two blocks from visiting the Church of St Julian when I'd been lost. And the church is on the way to Dragon Hall (and very close), so I went on in and calmed down a bit. I like to sit in little sanctuary places, though I've never had a spiritual experience in one. Nonetheless, they're calm and quiet, and often quite beautiful in their way.

This is the shrine of Julian of Norwich in the church of St. Julian. Supposedly, Julian of Norwich is named after the church of St. Julian and not the other way around (which I would have thought. For those of you who don't read medieval English lit or religious lit, Julian of Norwich was an English mystic in the late 14th and early 15th century. Or a crazy woman who saw stuff. She had these visions and became an anchorite, that is, she went to live in a small room, anchored to the church. The church of St. Julian was bombed badly during WWII, so they've rebuilt on the site, and since then refurbished.

This is the door from within the church to the new shrine. (There's no door from the outside.) It's fairly close up where, say, the transcept would be in a much larger church, but this is a parish church, and fairly small. (I'm now sure how big the medieval church would have been.) It got me wondering why she'd anchored at this parish church rather than at the Cathedral up the hill a bit, or at one of the bigger parish churches in the city. I guess I don't know nearly enough about Julian.

It's a lovely small church, though, with a nice, intimate, quiet feeling. The door to Julian's shrine is just off to the right of this picture, so you can get a sense of the scale of the church and where the cell supposedly was.

At the back of the church is a 15th century baptismal font that was moved to St. Julian's later (after the war or in the Victorian era, if I recall).

Outside and up the hill was a little shop/library room with two caretakers. I went in and got a couple of postcards and chatted a bit, and learned that it was possible to go into the garden and see the back of the church if you had the key. And these folks had the key, and were happy to lend it to me. So then I had the key and went into the garden.

The two caretakers warned me to be careful in the garden because they said there are drug users who hop the wall and then drop needles and such in the garden. I didn't see any, but while I was there, someone else came in using another key (one kept in the church for parishoners, I think) and a dog for a walk, and she didn't seem too overly concerned about the dog finding needles accidentally.

Here's Julian's shrine from the outside.

It was an overcast, damp day; it had been raining, and felt wet, and I wondered if Julian ever felt quite warm in her little cell. Was there a fireplace? (There isn't in the new built shrine, but why would there be?) Or maybe a brazier? (It might not take a big fire to warm a small space.)

Clearly, I'm not cut out to be an anchorite.

And next, on to Dragon Hall!

A Modest Plea for Help

I'm teaching Swift's "A Modest Proposal" next week, and I thought it would be cool to look at it on EEBO and maybe show the students.

But I can't seem to get EEBO to find it. I've tried looking under Swift, under the title without Swift's name, under keywords from the title, and so forth. But I haven't had any luck.

And now, of course, I'm completely obsessed. I think we should have a new rule that any early text posted to the web should come with an STC or Wing number so that I can look it up easily!

In lieu of that, however, I'd be grateful if someone with access to Wing or better searching skills on EEBO can help, please. If I can get a Wing number or something, I should be able to get it, assuming it's on EEBO. (It was published in Dublin first, and second, but also eventually in England, but I couldn't find it at all.)

Thanks! (I'd be happy to send a picture postcard from, say, Norwich or somewhere equally exciting to anyone who can help!)

Intersections

Sometimes, things intersect in ways I don't expect in my mind.

Every student doing the course of study here takes a course in UK history, politics, culture, and such. The course has lectures for a couple hours a week, which are open to anyone, and discussion sections, which, alas, aren't. The lectures are really good; I've been thinking as I listen to the different lecturers how consistently good they are: well organized, interesting, just what you want in a lecture.

Today's lecture was on 19th century British Imperialism.

Have I ever mentioned that I really like the game Civilization? Specifically, I play Civ II. I know, I'm a decade or more behind the times, but Civ II is really good, and doesn't seem as overly complex as some of the later ones.

So today, I kept thinking of how poor a model of imperialism Civ II affords; it's way too easy to take over a country and that's that; once you've thoroughly defeated them, that's it. Not so with real places, of course. You may take over France, but then you have an infant king and voila, France is kicking your butt again. You try to take over India, and they rebel and won't play nice with the salt. And so forth.

Civ II is much easier. And I don't actually have to think about real people dying or suffering when I go to "war" in the game, either.

Booked for Norwich!

I booked a room for Norwich this weekend! I'm planning to spend one night.

And now, please tell me what I should be sure to see. The cathedral is already on my list, as is the castle. Looking at the area website, it looks like there are several interesting museums, including the castle museum and a Bridewell museum. There's also something called "Strangers Hall."

I know I'm past the prime tourist season, and a lot of tourist stuff is closed now, but I'm where I am when I am.

ps. Is there anything surviving re Julian of Norwich? Which church (or monastery) was she "attached" to? Is there a way to "visit" her? (I wonder how many tourists ask that? It does seem weird to want to visit an anchorite.)

Summer Job

There are times when I'm confronted by my own snobbery. Here's one.

There's a summer job orienting incoming students and so forth. I'm interested because living in the UK has taken a bit more money than I'd budgeted for and our pay cut has hit, too. Between the two, a bit of summer income would be more welcome than usual. This job pays about the same as teaching a class. (I could have put in a request to teach a class, but I didn't think of it in a timely enough manner. Stupid me.)

But, this job involves working for the non-academic side of campus, the folks who bring us the wonders of alcohol awareness and other stimulating programs. (See, I told you I'm a snob.) It also involves an application form with inviting questions about why you want the job (MONEY!). Of course, you're supposed to write in the usual bullputty an enthusiastic explanation of how committed you are to seeing that undergraduates get the best start ever to their college experience (it's no longer a college career, but an experience).

It also involves questions about your qualifications to be an advisor. Then there's the one about how I want my advisees to view me. Seriously? I want them to view me as a goddess of all things to do with early modern literature, someone whose brilliance is equalled only by her wit and beauty. I don't think any of them will view me that way, but I'd really like it if they did.

But my favorite question is about what I think students think are the most significant issues for their college experience. It's not about what I think are the most significant issues, or what research shows are the most significant issues, but what students think.

Me, I'd put studying hard and using birth control high on the list, along with paying attention in class and participating in college life. I might also put sleeping enough and eating decently.

Students, I'm guessing they put making friends high, along with choosing a major, and, truth be told, getting as drunk as possible without getting arrested or hospitalized.

I'm guessing research would show that they should also be concerned about student loans and debt. And I'm sure some of them are appropriately concerned about debt and such.

What's on your list, and what do you think is on most students' lists?

I have to look at the calendar and really think about whether the money is worth it to me to kowtow to the other side of campus. (And then, of course, there's always the horrifying possibility that they would turn me down. Talk about depressing.)

Stamford

Burghley House is right outside the market town of Stamford, so naturally, Stamford is where I went next. Can I say, if there were a contest among English towns for "most picturesque," Stamford would definitely be in the running. This is the Stamford Meadows and the river Welland. It's beautiful, and busy with people hanging out or wandering through.

Here's a picture looking towards the town center, with Rod Stewart talking on the phone. (Probably not, but still, look!)

We walked around the market, but I didn't take pictures in the market because I always feel a bit awkward and never much like the pictures. I haven't had a lot of experience with weekly markets in a market town. My own community has a farmers' market during the summer, and that's my experience. That happens in a purpose built open air structure, and pretty much consists of farm produce with some food stalls (a coffee shop comes, and some bakeries), some specialty crafts stuff (a potter and a couple soap or candle makers), and sometimes plants to buy.

Here, the market was in the streets itself, with some vendors selling out of trucks directly and a lot of clothes, especially socks and underwear. I guess the clothing stalls really stood out to me because I wasn't expecting them. There was also a guy hawking garden clippers.

We got some cheese, bakhlava (yum!), and other treats.

The market isn't all there is to see in Stamford. You knew that. This is the inner courtyard of Browne's Hospital. Browne started the foundation in the late 15th century to house poor folks, and it still houses senior citizens. Of course, the current houses weren't built in the 15th century, but in the Victorian era, with later updates. But still, my brain reels at the idea that someone in the 15th century provided something to care for people and it's still doing so after 500+ years. It's amazing, isn't it?

Think of most things people built thinking they'd be remembered for it. Chapels are still there, and sometimes castles or monuments, but this hospital is still providing a home for some people who need one. I guess I think that's just the coolest thing. (There are other almshouses in Stamford, but this one caught my interest because of the early foundation.)

Speaking of monuments, this one is what's been put in the place of the cross put after Eleanor of Castile's body was moved to Westminster Abbey. Supposedly, at each place the procession stopped for the night, Edward I had a wooden cross erected, and those were later replaced by stone carvings, and mostly disappeared or got weathered. A fragment of the one in Stamford survives, but it's in the museum, supposedly, and this modern monument is in its place.

Unfortunately, the museum is closed. It doesn't say if this is a seasonal closing or permanent, but we weren't able to go in and see the cross or anything else.

There is still part of a wall from the Norman era castle surviving. I'm guessing this is from something inside the castle, rather than the castle wall itself. We walked up to see where the castle wall had been, but there wasn't much to see.

And finally, here's a Tudor era mill, which isn't quite on the mill trace anymore, but the map in the Meadows says that the trace has been moved slightly.

I also went to our own town market the other day, and got some bonfire toffee for the upcoming celebrations!

Burghley House

A pleasant little country house built by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who just happened to be one of Elizabeth I's right hand men and the Lord High Treasurer at a time when that meant a fair bit of money could find a way to your pocket, or by way of your pocket to your country house.

And this one is stunning. You're not allowed to take pictures inside, but you can believe me when I say it's beautiful and amazing and stately.

The outside is just as cool.

First, there are a bunch of fallow deer about. I gather that the estate keeps the herd, and harvests from it, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it's the rutting season, which means the stags all have antlers, and every once in a while you can see a little conflict happening.

You'll have to click to make this big enough to see the two bucks facing off in the back, behind the doe looking bored. But after a few interactions, one of the bucks turned tail and ran, and was chased quite a ways by the other. And then after a few more minutes, there was more conflict. As you can imagine, this is all quite tiring, so the bucks wander off from the does and have a bit of a lie down.

Happily for me, they don't much seem to care of there are people nearby while they relax a bit, and indeed, this one settled down right near a drive.

The deer are very cool, but the gardens are even cooler. There's a sculpture garden which displays a bunch of art that, I'm told, changes every so often. You walk through the garden, and you come upon something you can't quite make out at first. There's just something that catches your eye, and makes you look, trying to see the form.

These faces are HUGE, way bigger than a person, and somehow very peaceful and quiet in the garden, which feels very relaxed, and not formal. I think there are two faces in the garden, but I may have missed stuff, too.

This one you couldn't really get close to because there was a sort of gully thing. But the rust look (I can't say for sure that it's rust, but it looks like rust color) just blends in beautifully with the plants.

There are lots of other sculptures, too, but these are the ones I'd love to have near my house where I could visit them regularly.

Wandering around, we saw this building and mound area, and read the sign inside that said it was an ice house. They could cut ice from the small lake nearby and store it in the underground area and have it last up to two years, which is pretty darned cool.

And inside is another art installation, I think. (I really don't think any Elizabethan's could have put this up, so I'm going with modern!) It's this weird blue electic thing which works really nicely in the space, though I have no idea how they got it in there.

And using the light from the blue, you can see down to the bottom of the ice house, where the pre-refrigerator folks would have stored their ice. It's brilliant, actually, because they (ice houses) are built into a mound and with a north facing door, so they don't get any warmer from the sun than absolutely necessary, and supposedly they keep quite cool with ice in there. (There's a wire fence thing to keep people like me from trying to get any closer, which is just as well, but looks a little weird in my picture, alas.)






And then you step out a bit, and you can see the form, and it's magnificent.

Help!!! (Tree Identification)

I went to Burghley House the other day, and it's amazing. I'll post more pics soon, even. Meanwhile, I saw this tree. When I first saw it, the trunk and bark looked a lot like a redwood tree to me.

But the needle things look NOTHING like a redwood at all. They're rounded and scaled, and there's lots of them.

Nor do the cones (shown here with my thumb so you get an idea of the size).

For some reason, I've got it into my head that I really want to know what this tree is, but I've been looking at on-line tree identification keys (for the UK and elsewhere) and I'm totally befuddled. But I'm sure for someone, this is an easy call.

Please help me keep what little sanity I still have and tell me what the tree is!

Disconnected

I feel weirdly disconnected from things happening at home. For example, I keep looking at stuff for "Occupy [Wall Street or somewhere else]," and I don't understand what's happening, really. Of course, there's a very good chance that I wouldn't really understand even if I were in the States, since I'm not very familiar with Wall Street sorts of stuff.

I got a letter from the state, and it was dismal. And another from our HR folks, about some tax withholding thing that they did differently or that changed because I changed health insurers for next year, or something. I'm unclear. It was one of those letters that starts out with a statement about how you're getting this letter because you fall into one of three categories, all highly legalese, and the only one I could fit into has to do with changing my health insurer for next year or maybe the your benefits have changed category.

And that was exciting. Being here, I couldn't attend any of the meetings, but as seems to happen almost every year, my insurer has decided not to serve our area, or not to have a contract with the clinic I go to, or blah blah. I've changed insurers about 6 times in 10 years. And I think a lot of my colleagues have, too. I wonder how much time we non Human Resources folks are devoting to trying to figure out our benefits problems, especially in the past few years with furloughs and all.

And while I would never actually do it, I wish I could just tell them to shove their insurance plan where the sun don't shine.

The good news is that we're not having furloughs this year. The bad news is that the pay cut hurts. (And I think that's what the other possibility about the letter I got is, since we're now going to not have certain benefits and others will now be taxed or something.)

Did you see that the governor of Walkerstan is supposedly going to get a 5.4% pay raise. And all state employees will have a pay freeze with the cut in place. I don't know how he doesn't count as a state employee.

I got my course assignments for next year, and now I have to figure out and send off my request for my teaching schedule. But it feels very far away. Still, I love that we get to request a teaching schedule and usually get something pretty close to what we request. I think it's one of those things we do as a department that makes our lives better.

I miss my pals, my biking pals, my eating pals, my just relaxing pals. There are good folks here, but I do miss my pals.

And at 1 in the morning, I miss being able to go use a toilet without having a good chance of passing a student skyping in the hall outside the bathroom.

I think I may have a tad bit of crankiness, eh?

Cambridge: It's Graduation Day

I went to visit Cambridge for the first time on Saturday, and much to my confusion, it was graduation day. I'm sure someone understands such things, but didn't the term just start? Was Saturday a graduation for people who'd finished up their studies in June of 2011? And then they come back for a graduation ceremony?

At any rate, it was one of those fun days when you see young folks in gowns walking around, often trailed by two beaming older folks.

I started my visit with a pilgrimage to Spenser's Pembroke College. Happily, for me, anyway, the gate was open, and I could go in and wander the quads and garden areas a bit. There were numbers of people wandering, and it had a friendly feel.

After Pembroke, I walked up to King's College and visited the famous chapel where I took the required picture of the fan vaulting. It really is a beautiful chapel, but it felt more like a cathedral than what I think of as a chapel, to be honest. I gather that King's was founded with Eton as a place where Eton graduates would go on to study at Cambridge (I wonder if they still have some sort of formal relationship?) and it didn't sound like it would have had all that many students back when the chapel was built, so I'm not clear why the chapel would have been built as such a big space. But it is!

King's didn't feel nearly as friendly as Pembroke, maybe because it was a paid admission sort of thing where you could only go along this basic path through the chapel? I don't know if it's the same on regular days or not.

Then I walked up to the Castle Mound. It's basically a built up hill with fairly wide stairs leading up, so up I went. And at the top, I surprised a couple of people with champagne and a picnic lunch. One of them rather blushingly told me that they'd just become engaged, so I felicitated them and wished them many happy years together and left to give them some hint of privacy. It did seem like a nice place to get engaged. And no, alas, they didn't offer me a glass of champagne. (But you can see from this picture why I didn't realize there was anyone else up there.)

So now, they'll have a lovely story about the day they got engaged, romantically picnicking at the top of Castle Mound until a somewhat unkempt middle-aged woman with an American accent stumbled up. Lovely.

Back down, I wandered down to see the Sedgwick Museum, because I'd heard they have a ton of stuff from Darwin's Beagle voyage, and what self-respecting me could pass that up? What they have are mostly rocks, and a few journals. I liked the journals best, but wow, he had handwriting that's hard to read!

Mostly, though, the museum felt like a bit of a clutter hall, with lots of stuff, much of which would have been fascinating if I'd had something more to help me understand them.

I guess I was expecting to see some of his bird collection, and was both disappointed not to, but also sort of relieved because after feeling lousy at the Museum of Natural History in London, I wasn't sure I wanted to visit popsicle birds. Except they would have been Darwin's popsicle birds.

I went on to the Fitzwilliam, and looked at Greek and Roman and Syrian stuff, and medieval stuff.

Finally, I walked across the river where there are punting tours, but I didn't have time to go on one, so instead I walked up the backs of the universities, thinking to get a different view. Happily, Clare College had its gate opened, so I went and looked at the river from its bridge. There were a LOT of punters on the river, so many, that there was a punting traffic jam under one of the bridges. From the path, I could see into a tiny bit of what the gate said were the "fellows garden" and it was gorgeous, all green and flowered, and just inviting (except for the locked gate).

And then it was time to go.

Paradox

I think we'll all agree that these two things are true:

1) Computers and systems have grown better (more reliable, faster, etc).

2) Every time someone says they're "upgrading" something in the system, it makes at least one (and often times more than one) thing worse.

How can these things both be true?

Living the Fantasy

For the first time since nearly the beginning of the semester, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. Last weekend I went to Cambridge and Nottingham. I also walked with some friends to the local town just to walk along a canal path. But this weekend... nothing planned.

I could stay here at the Abbey, perhaps taking a walk in the other direction. Or a bike ride.

Or, you could suggest some places for me to go. I'd like that.

And anyone who is kind enough to suggest a place and email me their snail address, will get a personal postcard from me! (Unless there are more than, say, 20, which is pretty unimaginable.)

Ready, steady, go!

Observation

Based on multiple observations of different individuals: It's pretty nigh impossible to skype without yelling.

Corrolary: if the skyper isn't wearing an earphone, s/he will have the noise turned up loudly enough to be heard well in the next room.