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Harmony is a 9 month old young lady who is lithe, graceful and friendly with humans. She seems O.K. with other cats if they are not being too assertive at her. She found a new home 2 March 2019.
Deschutes Wild and Scenic River
The Deschutes River is located in central Oregon. It provides much of the drainage on the eastern side of the Cascade Range on its way to its confluence with the Columbia River. The Deschutes was an important resource for thousands of years for Native Americans and in the 19th century for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
The Deschutes features ruggedly beautiful scenery, outstanding whitewater boating and a renowned sport fishery for steelhead, brown trout and native rainbow trout. The upper Deschutes River is highly accessible, offers an exceptional brown trout fishery, and is close to Bend, Oregon, adjacent to the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. The middle Deschutes River has excellent hiking opportunities with spectacular geologic formations and waterfalls. The lower Deschutes River offers the greatest opportunities for whitewater rafting and is one of Oregon's premier steelhead and trout fisheries.
Designated Reach: October 28, 1988. From Wikiup Dam to the Bend Urban Growth boundary at the southwest corner of Section 13, T18S, R11E. From Odin Falls to the upper end of Lake Billy Chinook. From the Pelton Reregulating Dam to the confluence with the Columbia River.
Classification/Mileage: Scenic — 31.0 miles; Recreational — 143.4 miles; Total — 174.4 miles.
Middle Deschutes Outstandingly Remarkable Values
Botany/Ecology
The middle Deschutes River segments are in an ecological condition unusual for similar areas within the region and contain a significant portion of Estes' wormwood.
Cultural
Cultural resources on the middle Deschutes River include prehistoric and historic sites found along the corridor and traditional uses associated with the area. Evidence that rare and/or special activities took place in the river canyon areas is represented by lithic scatters or flaking stations, shell middens, rock shelters, rock features and rock art. These sites have the potential to contribute to the understanding and interpretation of the prehistory of the Deschutes River and the region and are considered to eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
Fisheries
Surveys have identified fishing as the number one recreation activity in the upper sections. Stories and pictures of huge catches are found in historical records of the early 1900's.
Geologic
Fifty million years of geologic history are dramatically displayed on the canyon walls of the middle Deschutes River and lower Crooked Rivers. Volcanic eruptions which occurred over thousands of years created a large basin dramatized by colorful layers of basalt, ash and sedimentary formations. The most significant contributor to the outstandingly remarkable geologic resource are the unique intra-canyon basalt formations created by recurring volcanic and hydrologic activities.
Hydrology
Water from springs and stability of flows through the steep basalt canyons has created a stream habitat and riparian zone that is extremely stable and diverse, unique in a dry semi-arid climate environment. Features, such as Odin, Big and Steelhead Falls; springs and seeps; white water rapids; water sculpted rock; and the river canyons, are very prominent and represent excellent examples of hydrologic activity within central Oregon.
Recreational
These river corridors offer a diversity of year-round, semi-primitive recreation opportunities, such as fishing, hiking, backpacking, camping, wildlife and nature observation, expert kayaking and rafting, picnicking, swimming, hunting and photography. Interpretive opportunities are exceptional and attract visitors from outside the geographical area.
Scenic
The exceptional scenic quality along the middle Deschutes River is due to the rugged natural character of the canyons, outstanding scenic vistas, limited visual intrusions and scenic diversity resulting from a variety of geologic formations, vegetation communities and dynamic river characteristics. These canyons truly represent the spectacular natural beauty created by various forces of nature.
Wildlife
The river corridor supports critical mule deer winter range habitat and nesting/hunting habitat for bald eagles, golden eagles, ospreys and other raptors. Bald eagles are known to winter along the Deschutes River downriver from Lower Bridge and also within the lower Crooked River segment. Outstanding habitat areas include high vertical cliffs, wide talus slopes, numerous caves, pristine riparian zones, and extensive grass/sage covered slopes and plateaus.
Lower Deschutes Outstandingly Remarkable Values
Botany
The variety of plant communities in the Deschutes River Canyon fall into four broad categories; the high desert uplands host big sagebrush, juniper-big sagebrush and bunchgrass types, and the riparian vegetation along the river is dominated by alders.
Cultural - Pre-History
Humans have occupied the Deschutes Canyon area for at least 10,000 years. One hundred thirty-five prehistoric sites have been recorded in the lower Deschutes River Canyon, and it is believed that many others will yet be found. Most common are habitation sites. One of these, at Macks Canyon Campground, was excavated by University of Oregon archaeologists in the late 1960s and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sherars Falls, a point of difficult passage for anadromous fishes, is an important traditional fishing station for Native Americans.
Fisheries
The lower Deschutes provides extensive spawning and rearing habitat for both resident fish, such as rainbow trout, and anadromous steelhead and chinook salmon. There is also a regionally unique run of wild sockeye salmon that is sustained by the incidental passage of kokonee smolts through the turbines at the Pelton/Round Butte hydroelectric complex. Runs of anadromous fish sustain an important subsistence fishery for Native Americans.
Geologic
The Deschutes River flows through the Deschutes-Umatilla Plateau, the main part of which slopes northward from 4,000-foot levels in the mountains of Central Oregon to a 400-foot elevation along the Columbia River. The rocks are mostly Columbia River basalt, nearly 2,000 feet thick. The lava flows that make up the plateau occurred over millions of years and formed in distinct layers of various thickness.
Historic
Exploration and fur trapping by Euro-Americans began in the Deschutes Canyon in the early 19th century. Other historic activities that have been documented include use of the Oregon Trail, road and railroad construction and settlement. In the Deschutes Canyon, 38 historic sites have been documented, most of them associated with early railroad construction.
Recreation
The lower Deschutes River is central Oregon's playground, an ideal location for outdoor sports, from whitewater paddling and swimming to hiking and biking. The river provides a stable, high-volume flow, available for recreation all year long, and it has been internationally known for its excellent fishery for many years. One hundred river miles offer segments favored for relaxed, overnight camping and fishing floats, one-day whitewater adventures, and guided or non-guided fishing trips. Notable activities include following the Lower Deschutes River Back Country Byway along the river to campgrounds at Beavertail and Macks Canyon or the accessible fishing ramp at Blue Hole.
Scenic
The lower Deschutes River Canyon contains a diversity of landforms, vegetation and color. The river, having carved a canyon nearly 2,000 feet deep in many locations out of rugged Columbia River basalt flows, provides a dramatic and diverse landscape. The clear water of the river framed by the green riparian vegetative fringe creates a stark contrast to the often barren and broken reddish and brown cliffs and hillsides of the canyon. The river provides a boater with a moving platform for viewing the ever-changing scene. While transportation corridors exist (roads and railroads) and occupational and rural development have occurred in several areas, they are overshadowed by the magnitude and beauty of the river and canyon character.
Wildlife
The Deschutes River Canyon provides habitat for approximately 300 different species of wildlife. Most of these utilize riparian habitats adjacent to the river. This provides outstanding opportunities for viewing many species of wildlife including songbirds, waterfowl, mink, heron, mule deer and many reptiles, amphibians and other small and large mammals. Notable species are the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, osprey, Dalles sideboard snail and shortface lanx.
For more information stop on by the BLM’s Prineville District Office or contact:
Phone: 541-416-6700
E-mail: BLM_OR_PR_Mail@blm.gov
Soil profile: A representative soil profile of the Whipple series in an area of Stormjade-Whipple complex, 8 to 50 percent slopes. (Interim Report for the Soil Survey of Chemehuevi Wash Off-Highway Vehicle Area, California; by Leon Lato, Carrie-Ann Houdeshell, and Heath McAllister, Natural Resources Conservation Service)
Landscape: Typical area of a Whipple soil. Whipple soils are on backslopes of hills. Slopes range from 8 to 50 percent. These soils formed in residuum and colluvium from granite. Elevations are 390 to 490 meters (1280 to 1600 feet). The climate is arid with hot, dry summers and warm, dry winters.
The Whipple series consists of very shallow and shallow, somewhat excessively drained soils. The mean annual precipitation is about 100 millimeters (4 inches) and the mean annual air temperature is about 24 degrees C (75 degrees F).
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Loamy-skeletal, mixed, superactive, hyperthermic Lithic Haplargids
Soil moisture control section: usually dry throughout, rarely moist in some part during summer or winter. The soils have a typic-aridic soil moisture regime.
Soil temperature: 22 to 26.7 degrees C (72 to 80 degrees ).
Depth to argillic horizon: 2 to 4 centimeters.
Depth to bedrock: 13 to 36 centimeters.
Control section - Clay content: averages 12 to 18 percent.
USE AND VEGETATION: Whipple soils are used for recreation and wildlife habitat. The present vegetation is mainly burrobush, brittlebush and creosote bush.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXTENT: Northern Colorado Desert of southeastern California, U.S.A.; MLRA 31. These soils are of small extent.
For additional information about the survey area, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/california/CA6...
For a detailed soil description, visit:
soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/W/WHIPPLE.html
For acreage and geographic distribution, visit:
Excavated from site E2990 Burtown Little, N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford Scheme, Contract 5.
Photographed by: Hannah Sims, 2010
Client: Kildare County Council
Funding body: National Roads Authority (NRA) with funds from the NDP and Transport 21
每一张照片肯定都有故事的吧，上海戏校就在我家旁边，老熟悉的。，后来我看了她的微博几次，发现，这个扈三娘的演出虽然只有半小时只有几百的观众，但是她结束后还是由于充实和平凡的反差而很是失落。然后那个戏院的常驻摄影师给她拍的照片不是很满意，转发了又删掉。而我这边希望能拍得像样点。
Every photo has a story it is certainly, Shanghai Xiqu School right next to my home, very familiar to me. See opera is just because the story Water Margin.
Then I looked at her micro-blog a few times, found she is still very lost ending. And the theater's resident photographer for her photographs are not very satisfied, she think it's not very pretty . There are deleted after repost them. And I hope that looks decent point here.
A pair of cheetahs walking along a dry Kalahari riverbed. Artistic conversion applied.
More images at www.morkelerasmus.com
This photo is Copyrighted. © Morkel Erasmus Photography. All rights reserved. No unauthorised use allowed.
It’s said that superstar basketball players are hounded by more groupies than any of the stars in the American solar system. No-one is more desired than those lithe, hoop-shooting multi-millionaires. No-one, that is, apart from America’s most eligible you black bachelor, Curtis...
It is still a pretty design. Smallish, lithe and very italian - thus quite rare as they did rust with a vengeance.
A Typic Haplogypsid, petrogypsic from the interior of the UAE.
Typic Haplogypsids are the Haplogypsids that do not have have a gypsic horizon with its upper boundary within 18 cm of the soil surface. These soils do not have a lithic contact within 50 cm of the soil surface. In the United States they occur in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The gypsic horizon is a horizon in which gypsum has accumulated or been transformed to a significant extent (secondary gypsum (CaSO 4) has accumulated through more than 150 mm of soil, so that this horizon contains at least 5% more gypsum than the underlying horizon). It typically occurs as a subsurface horizon, but it may occur at the surface in some soils.
This pedon has a petrogypsic horizon at a depth of 100 to 200 cm (130 cm in this pedon) and is identified as a "phase" in classification. In the UAE soil classification system, phases of soil taxa have been developed for those mineral soils that have soil properties or characteristics that occur at a deeper depth than currently identified for an established taxonomic subgroup or soil properties that effect interpretations not currently recognized at the subgroup level. The phases which have been identified in the UAE include: anhydritic, aquic, calcic, gypsic, lithic, petrocalcic, petrogypsic, salic, salidic, shelly, and sodic.
The petrogypsic horizon is a horizon in which visible secondary gypsum has accumulated or has been transformed. The horizon is cemented (i.e., extremely weakly through indurated cementation classes), and the cementation is both laterally continuous and root limiting, even when the soil is moist. Th e horizon typically occurs as a subsurface horizon, but it may occur at the surface in some soils.
Haplogypsids are the Gypsids that have no petrogypsic, natric, argillic, or calcic horizon that has an upper boundary within 100 cm of the soil surface. Some Haplogypsids have a cambic horizon overlying the gypsic horizon. These soils are commonly very pale in color. They are not extensive in the United States. The largest concentrations in the United States are in New Mexico and Texas. The soils are more common in other parts of the world.
Gypsids are the Aridisols that have a gypsic or petrogypsic horizon within 100 cm of the soil surface. Accumulation of gypsum takes place initially as crystal aggregates in the voids of the soils. These aggregates grow by accretion, displacing the enclosing soil material. When the gypsic horizon occurs as a cemented impermeable layer, it is recognized as the petrogypsic horizon. Each of these forms of gypsum accumulation implies processes in the soils, and each presents a constraint to soil use. One of the largest constraints is dissolution of the gypsum, which plays havoc with structures, roads, and irrigation delivery systems. The presence of one or more of these horizons, with or without other diagnostic horizons, defines the great groups of the Gypsids. Gypsids occur in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, West Asia, and some of the most arid areas of the western part of the United States. Gypsids are on many segments of the landscape. Some of them have calcic or related horizons that overlie the gypsic horizon.
For more information about describing soils, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_052523...
For additional information about soil classification using Soil Taxonomy, visit:
sites.google.com/site/dinpuithai/Home
For more information about soil classification using the UAE Keys to Soil Taxonomy, visit:
agrifs.ir/sites/default/files/United%20Arab%20Emirates%20...
Interview Hugh Morris – The Guardian
Sax star Immanuel Wilkins: ‘Hands are a symbol of praise – but they are also lifted up at police’
At 24, the saxophonist is being hailed as one of the most promising jazz artists in the US – and his music, which explores faith and Black cultural vitality, is utopian in an America that isn’t.
Immanuel Wilkins appears on a video call from his flat in Brooklyn, looking intently at the laptop perched on top of his Fender Rhodes keyboard. A column of light bounces off his forehead, and his red circular glasses magnify his eyes ever so slightly, making him look particularly absorbed in conversation.
We’re speaking before the release of The 7th Hand, the follow-up to his Blue Note Records debut (“an alto saxophonist whose playing is at once dazzlingly solid and perfectly lithe”, trilled the New York Times, as the album topped its best jazz of 2020 poll). He’s warm, effusive and a tad nervous. There’s a tantalising moment where he considers playing the Rhodes to explain a point, before getting tongue-tied, reconsidering and starting again. He’s only 24, and yet this new album – which examines spirituality in its artwork and contemporary dance in its videos – is mature and adventurous.
“At the core of Black existence, which is to say jazz music as well, is this idea of the in-between,” he says. “What makes jazz so great – it’s the solo, right? We play the head [the central theme], then we remix, we do our own thing in-between.”
He was born in Philadelphia, moving 20 minutes east to the suburb of Upper Darby for grade school: “I had grass. I had a playset in the backyard. I had the quintessential suburban kid life.” An only child, music was Wilkins’ way of making friends, via school bands and the historic Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts. Back home, his parents encouraged his music, perhaps living out their abandoned artistic dreams – he recently stumbled upon Archie Shepp and Benny Golson transcriptions compiled by his dad, who flirted with professional work as a trombonist and flautist.
Wilkins is a member of the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, and began his musical career as resident pianist in the worship band at his local church. “I realised early on that there was a correlation between the atmosphere in the room and what I played. That was a turning point for me as a composer, player, everything. The idea of being responsible for how people consumed the spirit.”
He moved quickly through his early instruments: “I started on violin when I was three, and yeah, it didn’t really work out. Then I tried piano, and was not good. I tried singing. Yeah …” he says, chuckling. To convince his parents he was serious about the saxophone (and to fork out the money for one of his own), Wilkins returned home from church one Sunday and found he “could already play through one of the hymns [on it], like halfway, just.” They said yes.
Growing up, it was all about saxophonist Kenny Garrett (“third grade, fourth grade, fifth, sixth, seventh …”) and tips passed down from Branford Marsalis, whose band his unofficial “big brother” Justin Faulkner had recently joined on drums. Fellow Philly dweller Marshall Allen, leader and longtime member of the Sun Ra Arkestra, invited Wilkins aged 12 to the famed Arkestra House in Germantown, where the interstellar adventurers have lived since 1968. Wilkins got to sit next to Allen and experience his caustic sound. “Marshall used to tie a red rope around the bell of his saxophone, and I got a red wristband and put it round mine to be just like him.”
Why did he leave, then? “There’s some good Philly colleges, but I just wanted to go to Juilliard, I wanted to be around Wynton [Marsalis]” – the Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter and teacher who typifies august, classy jazz. “So I got up and left.” Marsalis pointed him towards Ornette Coleman’s Town Hall, 1962 album (“Emulating [Coleman’s] sound became a big part of what I do”), and the move to New York also brought him closer to forward-thinking pianist Jason Moran, who would later produce his first album. “I first met him at an Aretha Franklin concert when I was a child. Then, whenever he was in Philly, I went to all his gigs. When his drummer heard me in New York he said to Jason, ‘Hey, you know that cat who used to come to all our gigs? He doesn’t sound that bad, you should probably give him a chance.’” It was at Juilliard that Wilkins also met his quartet (Micah Thomas, Daryl Johns and Kweku Sumbry); there’s now an expectant buzz developing around all four of them.
Juilliard’s jazz department shares a floor with the dance and acting divisions, and Wilkins regrets not branching out across disciplines earlier (his mum was a dancer, and still dances in church on occasion). The 7th Hand makes up for lost time, a collective creative statement with roots in Black critical thought. The cover art, featuring Wilkins mid-immersion, remixes established ideas of southern Black baptism, placing women in the traditionally male leadership role. “I guess I’m trying to ask, who is really worthy of being baptised? Or, what is the established imagery around holiness that we see?” Meanwhile, the video Emanation/Don’t Break (featuring Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble, and directed by Cauleen Smith, above) searches for the connections between Black dance styles – footwork, line-dancing and double-dutch – weaving yet more rich symbolism into Wilkins’ creation.
The album’s title comes from the Book of Ezekiel, where God commands Ezekiel to build an altar with the measurements of “six cubits and one handbreadth”.
“Hands are at the centre of spiritual life, they’re so powerful,” says Wilkins. “Those lifted hands in the church are some symbol of praise, right? But those same hands are also lifted up at the police.” His philosophy, and music, is utopian in an America that isn’t: “It’s about imagining a scenario that is so far beyond our reach, but that gets us to a certain truth that meets us farther than we are now.”
The album continues where Omega’s rhapsody on the totality of Black life left off: seven movements that flow into one another and culminate in the 27-minute immersive tapestry of Lift. Collective improvisation gradually subsumes the quartet as the record progresses; the group morphs into vessels through whom divine inspiration can flow freely. The sound is excitingly diverse, flowing quickly from harsh, driving dissonance towards gentler gospel tones, before exploding back into vibrant improvisation.
I ask Wilkins where he stands on the idea of spiritual jazz, a genre now bound up with cosmic psychedelia. “I like the phrase sacred music better,” he says. “Like, John Coltrane had A Love Supreme, and Duke Ellington had Come Sunday. I wonder if maybe this is my sacred music period.” Either way, as band members gradually peel themselves away from the group and embrace Wilkins’ idea of vesselhood with transcendent solos, his music always feels carried by spirit.
The 7th Hand is out now on Blue Note Records
This was my first shoot with the lovely MJ - what a sweet, lithe, fun and sharp young lady. Amanda and I shared her for a bit and we gave her a workout on Ron's bike. All in all a fun shoot and I look to more shoots with MJ.I took these photos at the Caldwell Train Depot back in March 2020 before Stay at Home kicked in.
A representative soil profile of the Acorph series. (Soil Survey of Lassen Volcanic National Park, California; by Andrew E. Conlin, Natural Resources Conservation Service)
The Acroph series consists of shallow, well drained soils that formed in tephra over residuum from andesite, dacite and rhyodacite. Acroph soils are on scoured glacial-valley walls and floors and roche moutenees in the southern Cascade mountains. Slopes range from 5 to 80 percent. The mean annual precipitation is about 107 inches (2718 mm) and the mean annual temperature is about 40 degrees F (5 degrees C).
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Ashy-skeletal, glassy Lithic Vitricryands
Depth to restrictive feature: Lithic contact 10 to 20 inches (25 to 51 cm).
Mean annual soil temperature: 38 to 42 degrees F (3 to 6 degrees C).
Mean summer soil temperature: 43 to 46 degrees F (6 to 8 degrees C).
Soil moisture control section is dry: July to October (about 90 days).
Particle-size control section (thickest part): 2 to 5 percent clay, and 35 to 62 percent rock fragments.
Surface fragments: 5 to 66 percent gravel, 3 to 15 percent cobbles, 2 to 6 percent stones, and 2 to 5 percent boulders.
USE AND VEGETATION: This soil is used for wildlife habitat, recreation, ecosystem management and watershed. Vegetation is pinemat manzanita, California red fir, western white pine, and mountain hemlock.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXTENT: The soils are inextensive and are mapped in MLRA: 22B, Southern Cascade Mountains.
For a detailed soil description, visit:
soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/A/ACROPH.html
For acreage and geographic distribution, visit:
Measurements 95.5 inches long x 19.75 wide x 33 inches tall. A lithe machine. *** On the headphones*** "Short Skirt, Long Jacket"--Cake
The original stone may have been a megalithic marker. The oldest depictions show a larger stone and site it at a different place to that of the cage protected current lithic marker. The outdoor rural court at the larger Birlay Stone under the shade of the Birley Tree first found Marion Lillie who was locally called either the Rigwoodie, or the Ringwoody Witch not guilty. The Rigwoody Witch was later accused again, the Rigwoody attached to her name and label of witch is from the Scots Rigwoody meaning thin, or bony. Her second recorded trial has her sent to further courts with a guilty verdict to present to them. Some suppose that she would have been found guilty there and put to death as a witch. Before the imperfect legal process was concluded Marion died and was buried in Spott Church grounds showing she was not convicted at the time of her demise.
Whether the either the process of accusation and defence were contributing factors in Marion’s death, or not the records are not present to say, yet there is a record, “Many witches burnt on Spott Loan,” this follows Marion’s death and some believe that these many were 13, maybe a number not recorded, as 13 are considered by some an ideal number for a coven and 13 has several wicked and even evil connotations for some. The records and several authors comments are visible through the links below. Some record Marion and link her to a Marion Lillie and some record her as the last witch burned in Scotland. We will never have that perspective that ran throughout the times when Europeans thought Witches were to be discovered, tortured and put to death. That perspective that allowed many to dispose of often elderly women who some saw as hanging on to what they waited too long for. Through the death of the falsely accused person others could be rid of the living obstacle by convicting them and killing them as a witch.
Before society could allow for people differing from ‘the norm’ there were many targets to haul before what passed for justice. Those times for some are not that far away and we can at times act like such victimisation is still completely acceptable. Every culture has people at risk as we seem to realise that high ideals are for art, culture and dreams and that low acceptance is still fuelling violence and inherited intolerance is still simmering ready to burn any that happen to be seen as Witch, whatever it meant back then and for whatever it means today. Witch is a word we say, for some it is used as an insult and a slander. Witches past and present are the ones victimised and victorious in reclaiming our rights to be different and to accepted, to be in need as we all are of the harmony and the balance that comes through tolerance. Witch is just one word that people have used to label and dehumanise another person to such extreme that a Witch being murdered was seen a blessing.
The links below give the history better than I have above.
This was part of a journey to other sites. Some are listed below.
© PHH Sykes 2022
phhsykes@gmail.com
The Witches Stone. Spott Community Association
www.spottvillage.org.uk/witches-stone-2/
Witches' Stone, Spott
canmore.org.uk/site/57667/witches-stone-spott
Witches' Stone, Spott
www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6453/witches_stone.html
Witches' Stone, Spott
www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=8239
Witches' Stone, Spott
www.johngraycentre.org/collections/getrecord/ELHER_MEL1560/
Spott Church
Easter Broomhouse Standing Stone (Prehistoric)
canmore.org.uk/site/57622/easter-broomhouse
Also The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic Portal
Easter Broomhouse Standing Stone
www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1492/
Easter Broomhouse Standing Stone
www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?x=368000&y=676600
Pencraig Hill Standing Stone (Prehistoric)
www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1494/pencraig_hill_stan...
Pencraig Hill Standing Stone (Prehistoric)
Processed for a vintage look to reduce the vividness of the orange T-shirt and place the emphasis where it belongs.
Alien Bee B800 with standard reflector aimed at white ceiling, camera right. B800 close to camera axis, camera left, with 20 degree grid for fill, aimed at model's face. Lots of fill coming from white bedsheets. Skyport triggers.
Location: Campton Place Hotel, San Francisco
Model: Michèle
The soils in the foreground are dominantly in the Winona series. The Winona series consists of very shallow and shallow, well drained soils that formed in eolian deposits over alluvium from limestone and calcareous sandstone. Winona soils are on plateaus and hills and have slopes of 0 to 70 percent. The mean annual precipitation is about 11 inches and the mean annual air temperature is about 52 degrees F.
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Loamy-skeletal, carbonatic, mesic Lithic Ustic Haplocalcids
USE AND VEGETATION: These soils are used for livestock grazing and wildlife habitat. Vegetation is blue grama, black grama, needleandthread, galleta, sand and spike dropseed, hairy grama, muttongrass, bottlebrush, squirreltail, alkali sacaton, winterfat, bigelow sage, fourwing saltbush, cliffrose, juniper and pinyon pine.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXTENT: Northern Arizona and west central New Mexico.
For a detailed soil description, visit:
soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/W/WINONA.html
For acreage and geographic distribution, visit:
casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/see/#winona
Soils in the mid-ground are typically Lithic Ustic Torriorthents. Lithic Ustic Torriorthents have more available moisture than Lithic Torriorthents during summer or, if located in the Tropics, during the rainy seasons. They are moist in some or all parts of the moisture control section for more than one-fourth of the time (cumulative) when the soil temperature at a depth of 50 cm exceeds 5 oC. They have a shallow or very shallow lithic contact, which limits the moisture-storage capacity. Consequently, the soils commonly are associated with the Ustalfs and Ustolls on more stable surfaces. Lithic Ustic Torriorthents are of moderate extent in the United States. They are used mostly for winter or spring grazing.
Torriorthents are the dry Orthents of cool to hot, arid regions. They have an aridic (or torric) moisture regime and a temperature regime warmer than cryic. Generally, they are neutral or calcareous and are on moderate to very steep slopes. A few are on gentle slopes. Many of the gently sloping soils are on rock pediments, are very shallow, have a sandy-skeletal particle-size class, or are salty. Others are on fans where sediments are recent but have little organic carbon. The vegetation on Torriorthents commonly is sparse and consists mostly of xerophytic shrubs and ephemeral grasses and forbs. They are extensive in the Western United States.
For additional information about soil classification using Soil Taxonomy, visit:
sites.google.com/site/dinpuithai/Home
For more information about describing soils using the USDA-Field Book for Describing and Sampling Soils, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_052523...
In the background is Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona at 12,633 feet and one of the most scenic viewpoints in the San Francisco Peaks. On clear days hikers can see the Grand Canyon from the summit. The alpine forest trail is located just north of Flagstaff. This is a strenuous rocky trail with over 3,000 feet elevation gain. Humphreys Trail is open year round but snow can make the hike difficult during the winter months. Humphrey's Peak is a 9.2 mile moderately trafficked out and back trail located near Flagstaff, Arizona that features beautiful wild flowers and is only recommended for very experienced adventurers. The trail offers a number of activity options and is accessible year-round.
Madia Gonds or Madia or Maria are one of the endogamous Gond tribes living in Chandrapur District and Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra State, and Bastar division of Chhattisgad State India. They have been granted the status of a Primitive tribal group by the Government of India under its affirmative action or reservation programme. The Madia Gonds are strongly affected by Naxal activities. The Madia Gond use the self designation Madia, and call the area where they live Madia Desh. They speak the Madia dialect of Gondi. A study mentions living megalithic practices amongst the Madia Gonds. One of the findings of The Bench Mark Survey done in 1997–1998: 91.08 percent of Madia Gond families lived Below Poverty Line.
TRADITION AND CULTURE
Madias today are doctors, teachers, government employees and naxalites. Performance of school going Madia children is on par with other children of Maharashtra state, a Madia girl student has figured in the merit list of candidates at the state level. The following are the descriptions of the Madia Gond as recorded by the British Rulers in the District Gazettes, which has been carried in the Gazettes of independent India.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CHANDA DISTRICT GAZETTE
The Chandrapur district gazette description of the Madia is as follows: "The Marias inhabit the wilder tracts, and are in their unsophisticated state a very attractive people. The villages are usually built deep in the jungle near some wide shallow stream, which offers facilities for the gata cultivation, and the surrounding jungles supplement the fruits of their agricultural efforts. Few villages lack the customary grove of toddy – Palm wine trees, the juice of which, fermented or unfermented, is ever acceptable to the Gond. The Marias are a lithe, active looking, well-built set of men, open, hearty manner, and the cheerful smile of good fellowship. Their dress is scanty, consisting of a compromise between a langoti (a loincloth) and a dhoti, a strip of cloth wound tightly round the waist in rope-like folds and passed between the legs with the spare end hanging down in front below the knees. Often this garment diminishes to the scantiest rag. They adorn their necks with handsome strings of beads and their arms occasionally with metal and glass bangles. Their ears are pulled out of shape by the weight of numerous brass rings with which they are usually garnished and occasionally they wear pagris. A curved knife with a brass mounted handle is stuck into the waist cloth and, from the shoulder dangles the ever handy axe without which a Gond seldom moves. Maria women wear a lugada of strong cloth usually white with a coloured strip in the border. They wear no choli (blouse), no Gond woman ever does, and their necks, like their husbands are garnished with beads. They frequently tattoo their faces and limbs in intricate patterns."
DANCE
All Gonds and especially Madias, are very fond of dancing. It is the great amusement of the people. Night after night in the eastern tracts in the cool, moon-lit nights of the hot weather ,the rhythmic lilt of a Gondi chorus fills the air, as the villagers dance round a fire in some open space near the hamlet. The favourite dance is a peculiar rippling step forward with the foot dragged, not very graceful when done by a single individual, but looking quite different when done in unison by a great circle of dancers singing a 're-la', 're-la', chorus to which the step keeps time. In some villages, where the headman is an enthusiast for the pastime, a trained band performs weird and wonderful step dances to the sound of the drum. At a big dance, the trained band occupies the inner ring round the fire, while the common folk, men and maids, in separate rings move round in great circles in opposite ways. All are dressed for the occasion in their best, bearing in their hands weird ornaments of wicker work, with garlands of flowers on their necks and in their hair, feather ornaments humorously or coquettishly placed. Seen in the glow of a huge log fire, glinting on the shining beads and barbaric ornaments of the dancers, with the throb of the drums and the beat of many feet moving in unison to the wild music of the voices in chorus, a Madia dance is a spectacle not easily forgotten, but lingers as a characteristic scene when other details have faded out of the memory. Men and women ordinarily dance in separate circles but in the dances where the young men choose their brides, they dance in couples.
GHOTUL
The youth dormitory system or Ghotul is deeply rooted in Madia Gond culture. Traditionally the Madia have a Ghotul in every village where unmarried boys and girls assemble in the evening and play, mix, dance and sing till late night but return to their houses for sleeping, which marks the difference between Bastar Ghotuls and the Ghotuls of Madia Gonds. There is a taboo against married women entering a Ghotul.
GOVERNMENT´S LIQUOR POLICY
The Government has granted concession to Adivasis to manufacture and possess toddy for domestic consumption on obtaining toddy licences for a period of one year (i.e. July to June every year). This privilege is given to the people of this community as they are used to toddy drinking as a part of their food for ages. According to the excise arrangements now in force in that area, each individual applicant is granted Toddy licence for tapping trees ranging from 1 to 5 for domestic consumption. The permit fee and tree tax per toddy tree is 75 paise per annum respectively.
MUNDHA
Mundha is one-piece decorative wooden pillar carved by a bridegroom after he is engaged. It is kept in front of Ghotul during his marriage ceremony perhaps the best example of skill in wood carving. These are reminiscent of the totem poles of the Americas.
MYTHS
About menstruation, the Maria Gond believe that the vagina once contained teeth and that when these teeth were removed, the wound never healed completely.
CONTEMPORARY LIFE STYLE
NAXAL ACTIVITIES
A Frontline Cover Story calls the Bhamragad Taluka where the Madia Gond Adivasis live, the heart of the naxalite-affected region in Maharashtra. In the jungles and 120-odd naxalite-affected villages of eastern Gadchiroli, it is the Adivasis who pay the price for extremist violence. "Whether a policeman or a naxalite, it is the Adivasis who is caught in the crossfire. The bosses are never Adivasis. They are safe in their offices or hideouts," a resident of Bhamragad is mentioned saying in the article.The police are quoted as saying that The Communist Part of India (Maoist) has around 250 full-time members and 3,000-odd local supporters. Many tribals accused of being informers are killed by naxalites or harassed by the police. Despite the constant fear, Adivasis do agree that naxalites have forced contractors to give them higher wages for tendu leaves collected and bamboo cut. The possibility of justice and action against their exploiters – the forest Department, the police, the government, the contractors, makes the Madia Gonds sympathise with the naxals. Harassment by the police pushes many naxalite sympathisers underground.
EKA NAKSHALWADYA CHA JANMA
Eka Nakshalwadya Cha Janma, (Marathi: एका नक्षलवाद्याचा जन्म – The birth of a Naxal), a novel written by Vilas Balkrishna Manohar, a volunteer with the Lok Biradari Prakalp, is a fictional account of a Madia Gond Juru's unwilling journey of life his metamorphosis from an exploited nameless tribal to a Naxal, a fugitive from the law.
COLLECTION OF TENDU LEAVES
Tendu patta, or the leaves of the Diospyros melanoxylon (an ebony tree with date-like fruit) in which tobacco is rolled to make beedis; is for the poor in this impoverished eastern Maharashtra district a crucial source of livelihood. Summer when temperatures touch 45 degrees Celsius, is peak earning time for the Madia. Tens of thousands of tribal women and children are engaged in collecting tendu leaves every summer. Women and children get up at 4.30 in the morning and walk towards the forests near their village. In no time the forests are transformed into a beehive of activity, with small armies of women and children plucking tendu leaves with assembly-line precision. The plucking session ends around 11 am and the women and children walk back balancing the weight of the leaves on their heads. Back in their villages, the women sort out the leaves and tie them up in bundles, squatting for hours inside their huts. They do the bulk of the work; it is they who bear the brunt of the hot sun and the drudgery. The day's collection of tendu patta is taken to the market or phad at around 4.30 pm and laid out in long, neat rows that stretch for acres in sun-baked fields or dry riverbeds. Men appointed by private contractors count the bundles and record them in their registers for future payments. Interestingly, the names in the register are those of the men. It is the husbands and fathers of the toiling women and children who claim the money. Although the tendu patta season doesn’t last more than two weeks, each healthy family unit can make a significant earning in this time. Tendu patta thus helps the poor earn enough money to survive the two months before the onset of the monsoons.
STATUS OF WOMEN
A Madia Gond girl has the freedom to have premarital sex and choose husband. As a married woman she has a freedom to take divorce if the husband gives ill treatment to her or if she cannot beget a child from him. She has a right to spend her earnings. A husband does not interfere in her affairs. However, even these women are taboo during menstruation and are not allowed attending the festivals.
ORGANISATIONS ASSOCIATED
- Lok Biradari Prakalp is an NGO working in the fields of health and education in the Bhamragad taluka of Gadchiroli, where many Madia Gond live. It was established in 1973[19] Dr. Prakash Amte and Dr. Mandakini Amte working for the Lok Biradari Prakalp received the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. In the citation the board of trustees stated: the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today's India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions.
- The Tribal Cultural Heritage of India Foundation: Established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2008.
- SEARCH Society For Education, Action and Research In Community Health.
HEALTH ISSUES
Historically the Madia Gond were victims of the ravages of small-pox and skin-diseases and a mild form of leprosy called Gondi rog. Prevalence of sickle cell anemia is very high amongst the Madia Gond.
RESEARCH STUDIES
The primitive tribe status of the Madia Gond make them the subject of various studies, such as the following:
GENETIC DIVERSITY
A Microsatellite diversity was analysed in Gondi language speaking Madia Gonds of Maharashtra and three other Marathi speaking Proto – Australoid tribal groups, to understand their genetic structure and to identify the congruence between language and gene pool. Allele frequency data at 15 Short tandem repeat (STR) loci in studied tribes was compared with data of 22 Indo-European- and Dravidian-speaking caste and tribal populations using heterozygosity, allele size variance, analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), GST (Glutathione S-transferase) estimate, PC plot, and Mantel correlation test. Results demonstrate that Gondi tribes comprising the Madia-Gond, a hunter-gatherer population, harbour lower diversity than Marathi tribal groups, which are culturally and genetically distinct. The Proto-Australoid tribal populations were genetically differentiated from castes of similar morphology, suggesting different evolutionary mechanisms operating upon the populations. The populations showed genetic and linguistic similarity, barring a few groups with varied migratory histories. The microsatellite variation clearly demonstrates the interplay of sociocultural factors including linguistic, geographical contiguity, and microevolutionary processes in shaping the genetic diversity of populations in contemporary India.
EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN
The study is a record and analysis of the following events. The coming together of Madia women to form a Self Help Group, in Bagul village of Gadchiroli District, to assert their independence, the breaking of Madia customs which triggered a group member to be brutalised and paraded naked by her husband, her committing suicide, the subsequent coming together of the other members in protest, further breaking of tribal taboos, the decision taken to wear blouses and to the breaking of isolation and pollution norms during menstruation, the initiative taken in execution of government development schemes. The Naxal fear of loss of influence in the face of development and inclusion in the mainstream of the Madia. Their opposition to the activities of the Self Help Group. The murder of an engineer by the Naxals. The ongoing struggle engaged by the Madia women against poverty, prejudice, male domination and vested interests in the form of the Naxals, the politicians and the bureaucracy.
BENCH MARK SURVEY 1997–98
The results of the Bench Mark Survey was organised in the tribal area of the Maharashtra State pertinent to the Madia Gond are tabulated hereunder.
POPULATION
female 38749 - male 38156 - total 76905
LITERACY
female 30.19 - male 16.09 - total 23.19
OCCUPATION FAMILY WISE
Agriculture 10444
Agriculture labour 2260
Forest labour 365
Other 282
Total 13351
Migration 34%
BPL 91.08%
____________________________________________
SHILPGRAM
Shilpgram is a rural arts and crafts complex, situated 3 km west of the city of Udaipur. The center is spread over an undulating terrain of about 70 Acres of land, surrounded by the Aravali mountains. The complex is conceived as a living ethnographic museum to depict the lifestyles of the folk and tribal people of the region. With an objective of increasing awareness and knowledge about the rural arts and crafts, the Shilpgram provides opportunity to rural and urban artists to come together and interact through the process of camps and workshops.
DESCRIPTION
The Complex has an open air Amphitheatre with a seating capacity of approximately 8000, used for the major theatre festivals held here and the traditional folk performing arts. Each member state of the West Zone has traditional huts built within the Shilpgram, derivative of certain basic occupations fundamental to the way of life of the people of the area and also central to the culture of the country. In these traditional huts, household articles of everyday use, like terracotta, textile, wooden and metal items, decorative objects and implements are featured with appropriate signages and explanatory details with the objective to give a realistic glimpse of the people and their belongings.
The huts are constructed around an interlocking occupational theme. In this integrated pattern are five huts from Rajasthan, representing the weavers' community from Marwar, pottery from the hilly areas of Mewar and the tribal farmer communities of the Bhil and the Sehariyas.Apart from the state's own representation, there are seven representative huts from the state of Gujarat, five from the state of Maharashtra and five featuring the arts and crafts of Goa.
SHILPGRAM FESTIVAL
The Shilpgram Festival is organised every year from 21 December to December 31. The Shilpgram Fair (Shilpgram Mela), a part of the festive celebrations, serves as a destination for hand woven clothes, embroideries, mirror works and handicrafts. The 'Mela' aids in encouraging the urban potters, visual artists and designers and the cottage industry of Rajasthan. The Festival provides opportunities for learning the craft skills through various workshops. Cultural programmes during the evening and the local food stalls attract many visitors and locals.
SHILPDARSHAN
Shilpdarshan is a continuing activity at Shilpgram in which traditional performing artists and craftsmen are used to draw from the interior villages of the member states. They are regularly invited to exhibit their skill and to demonstrate their crafts, and sell their works in order to have direct access to the buyers. This programme has been initiated with an aim to encourage the rural craftsmen and performers.
WIKIPEDIA
Paralithic (lithic-like) contact is a contact between soil and paralithic materials (defined below) where the paralithic materials have no cracks or the spacing of cracks that roots can enter is 10 cm or more.
Paralithic materials are relatively unaltered materials that have an extremely weakly cemented to moderately cemented rupture resistance class. Cementation, bulk density, and the organization are such that roots cannot enter, except in cracks. Paralithic materials have, at their upper boundary, a paralithic contact if they have no cracks or if the spacing of cracks that roots can enter is 10 cm or more. Commonly, these materials are partially weathered bedrock or weakly consolidated bedrock, such as sandstone, siltstone, or shale. Fragments of paralithic materials 2.0 mm or more in diameter are referred to as pararock fragments.
The photo is from the Polkton soil series. Polkton soils are moderately deep, moderately well drained, and very slowly permeable, occurring on uplands of the Triassic Basins in the Southern Piedmont. They formed in residuum weathered from Triassic siltstone, mudstone, shale, and sandstone. Slope ranges from 2 to 25 percent.
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Fine, mixed, active, thermic Oxyaquic Vertic Hapludalfs
Polkton soil series:
soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/P/POLKTON.html
Blocky structure. In this type of soil structure, the structural units are blocklike or polyhedral. They are bounded by flat or slightly rounded surfaces that are casts of the faces of surrounding peds. Typically, blocky structural units are nearly equidimensional but may grade to prisms or plates.
The structure is described as angular blocky if the faces intersect at relatively sharp angles; as subangular blocky if the faces are a mixture of rounded and plane faces and the corners are mostly rounded.
Blocky structures are common in subsoil but also occur in surface soils that have a high clay content. The strongest blocky structure is formed as a result of swelling and shrinking of the clay minerals which produce cracks. Sometimes the surface of dried-up sloughs and ponds shows characteristic cracking and peeling due to clays.
Clayey soils have 35 (more than 30 percent in Vertisols) to less than 60 percent (by weight) clay in the particle-size control section.
For more information about describing and sampling soils, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/field...
or Chapter 3 of the Soil Survey manual:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/The-Soil-Su...
For additional information on "How to Use the Field Book for Describing and Sampling Soils" (video reference), visit:
I am home near Edinburgh having been on a tour of Aberdeenshire taking in Stone Circles and Pictish Symbol Stones along with other lithic monuments and also enjoying the locality in finding whatever happenstance could bring. My memories are criss crossed in heavenly glimmering and my visions are still stellar shimmering. On one memory card there are just five images, from them here are three pictures and each photograph here has been edited to have a second version with the look of a painting. I have been editing these images in an ever darkening and darkened room and I may not like these results tomorrow in daylight. This day has ended and also tomorrow and tomorrow will end too. Some of these day to come might involve finding out where our ancestors chose to make their wondrous places and enduring spaces. Some of the days to come could be recovery and edit days like today where I could have done with more natural illumination, but the Sun waits not and it goes making monumental displays for those fortunate to be enjoying the sun setting rays.
© PHH Sykes 2025
phhsykes@gmail.com
This was my first shoot with the lovely MJ - what a sweet, lithe, fun and sharp young lady. Amanda and I shared her for a bit and we gave her a workout on Ron's bike. All in all a fun shoot and I look to more shoots with MJ.I took these photos at the Caldwell Train Depot back in March 2020 before Stay at Home kicked in.
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
9.4.09
The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.
Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.
Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.
11.4.09
Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.
Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!
Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.
My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.
I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.
For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.
Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.
The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.
12.4.09
At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!
We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.
I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?
Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.
I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.
My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.
13.4.09
There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.
People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.
I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.
Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.
Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.
I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.
Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.
14.4.09
I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.
I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.
I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.
Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!
Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!
15.4.09
I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.
On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.
John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.
I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.
There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!
I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.
I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!
Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.
At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.
That's all for England!
Fiction: Graphite and ink lines, combined with colors, move and transform into another beautiful young warrior woman
Finished on Saturday, December 4, Chicago
Crayola art markers, Crayola color pencils, #2 pencil, Uniball Signo black jet ink pen, and Paper-Mate red ink pen
Arteza mixed media sketchbook
9" x 12"
2021
sn 008
Specifications:
218 bhp 1,986 cc dual overhead camshaft V-6 engine, five-speed manual transaxle, four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs and four-wheel disc brakes. Wheelbase: 2,280mm (89.75")
Lightweight. Aerodynamic. Powerful. The Ferrari 206 SP is the lithe, sinuous, brilliant V-6 son of the V-12 father. It is similar in many respects, but accomplished with conscious differences.
The Origins of the Dino Legend
When Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien went to Le Mans in 1962 and were assigned the 330 TRI/LM, the last front-engined car to win at la Sarthe, they felt a little cheated. There were better Ferraris in Ferrari’s entry. There were V-8 and V-6 Dinos. Hill and Gendebien knew the mid-engined Dinos were Ferrari’s future. They drove a dinosaur, and their victory was a tribute to their skill and maturity as drivers as much as it was to the durability, stability, reliability and speed of the four-litre 330 TRI/LM, the ultimate Testa Rossa.
The V-6 Dinos were introduced in 1957 for the 1.5-litre Formula 2 series. Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo – known as “Dino” - had championed the engines’ layout, and Enzo gave the cars Dino’s name after his son’s untimely death in 1956. The detailed design was done by the old master, Vittorio Jano. With twin overhead camshafts, the inherently balanced conventional cylinder bank angle of 60° left no room for carburetors and inlet manifolding, so Jano increased the included angle to 65°, then compensated for the timing problem with crank throws placed 65° and 185° apart. It was ingenious, and it worked. The first Dino sports racing cars were front-engined; mid-engined cars appeared in 1962, the models Hill and Gendebien hoped to drive at Le Mans. Ferrari then dealt with the problems of slipping a V-12 between the driver and the rear wheels, and development of the compact V-6 powered Dinos languished.
The Sports Prototypes
Ferrari was challenged by Ford in the mid 60s and responded with a series of Sports Prototypes that have earned their position as the most seductively beautiful sports racing cars ever built. The first 330 P was introduced in 1964 and its design clearly showed its evolution from the 250 LM. The 1965 season’s 330 P2, however, was something completely different and it evolved into the Drogo-built 330 P3 the following year, surely the most voluptuous sports racing automobiles ever seen.
At the same time Ferrari introduced the 206 S, an even more tightly wrapped, reduced scale rendition of the 330 P3 with the same voluptuous, sensuous shape on a shorter wheelbase that took full advantage of its compact V-6 powerplant. Franco Rocchi designed this third generation twin-cam V-6, returning to Jano’s original 65° vee angle. It would power not only the 206 S but also the street cars needed to meet the FIA’s requirement that Formula 2 engines be based upon a production engine with at least 500 units built – which Ferrari met in cooperation with Fiat in the Dino sports cars. In addition to the Ferrari sports prototypes and Formula 2 cars, the engine would later power the Ferrari Dino road cars and even the Lancia Stratos rally car.
Like the 330 P3, the Dino 206 S was bodied by Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars. It used a multi-tube frame with alloy panels riveted to it for additional stiffness, in essence a semi-monocoque structure. Ferrari’s intention was that 50 of the cars would be built, qualifying it as an FIA Group 4 sports car, but the financial difficulties that would lead to Ferrari’s merger with Fiat three years later prevented that optimistic goal from being met and in the end only some 18 of these wonderful, quick, beautiful sports racers were built. What started out as a Dino 206 S (for Sport) became known as the Dino 206 SP (for Sports Prototype) when there were not enough built to qualify for Group 4.
Chassis No. 008
The meticulously and accurately restored example offered here, chassis 008, is the fourth of the series production 206 SPs built, (The first 206 S was built on Ferrari chassis 0842) and the third of the standard alloy spider bodied 206 SPs. It was delivered to the SEFAC Ferrari team and used for testing and evaluation. Some sources indicate it was entered by the factory to be run by Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team in the 1000 km race at Monza April 25, 1966 where it was driven by NART driver Bob Bondurant and SEFAC driver Nino Vaccarella, but was damaged in practice and withdrawn before starting the race.
Six weeks later on June 5, Dino 206 SP 008 was again entered for NART in the ADAC 1000 km of the Nürburgring, one of the season’s most demanding races. Driven by the brilliant pairing of Pedro Rogriguez and Richie Ginther, both SEFAC team drivers in 1966, the 206 SP started ninth on the grid and drove to an outstanding third overall and second in class behind another 206 SP, the fuel injected chassis 004 driven by Scarfiotti and Bandini, and the winning Chaparral 2D of Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier which thundered to the overall victory. Remarkably, all three podium finishers were on the same lap of the daunting 22.81 km Nürburgring Nordschleife.
On June 18, 1966, still fresh from its podium finish at the Nürburgring, chassis 008, using a SEFAC Ferrari entry, was on hand at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car, however, was now owned by Chinetti, having been sold by SEFAC Ferrari on June 10. Chinetti put Charlie Kolb and George Follmer in the 206 SP and they started in 32nd position. After an excellent start, oil seeped onto the clutch, rendering it useless, and on just the 9th lap the team withdrew, a fate eventually shared by 40 of the 55 entrants - 73 percent of the starting grid.
Kolb’s seat at Le Mans foreshadowed the next stage in 008’s career. After returning to Maranello for servicing and race prep, it was shipped to the U.S. and its next owner, M. Schroeder, who immediately entered it in the August 28 USRRC-Buckeye Cup race in Lexington, Ohio where it was driven by Charlie Kolb. Kolb brought the 206 SP home second in class and sixth overall.
Entries at The Road America 500 at Elkhart Lake and the USRRC race at Bridgehampton followed before 008 was purchased by Fred Baker, who arranged to use a Chinetti entry in the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours. A fresh engine rebuild and gearbox overhaul were not completed in time to qualify, and 008 started from the back of the grid as a result. The driving team was strong – Jo Schlesser, Masten Gregory and Peter Gregg. At just over half distance, after moving within sight of a top 10 placing, Gregory made a routine pit stop only to have the engine develop a misfire when it restarted, which turned out to be a stripped distributor drive.
Baker again used a Chinetti entry for his Dino 206 SP at the Sebring 12 Hours on April 1. Charlie Kolb and Ed Crawford started from 20th on the grid, where they remained when the green flag fell, sidelined by a broken half shaft. For the remainder of 1967, the 206 SP contested SCCA and USRRC races driven by Lee Cutler and occasionally Charlie Kolb.
It was back at Daytona for the 24 hours in 1968 after being rebuilt by Chinetti’s NART mechanics. Now consigned or loaned to Chinetti, he put Kolb and Pedro Rodriguez in Dino 206 SP 008 and Rodriguez qualified an excellent 10th among the three litre Alfa Romeo Tipo 33/2s. Kolb and Rodriguez kept the little Dino among the top 10 until another misfire brought them into the pits and early retirement. Baker decided to sell the car, although Lee Cutler apparently worked out a deal to drive it in later races. Before the end of the year he bought the Dino from Baker, marking the end of its front line racing career.
Harley Cluxton bought it from Cutler in 1971, selling it later that year to noted Ferrari collector and enthusiast, Walter Medlin in Kissimmee, Florida. Medlin did nothing with the beautiful little 206 SP except store it among his other cars where it stayed for more than 20 years. In 1995 it was acquired by Symbolic Motor Car Company and given a complete two-year restoration by Rob Shanahan. After completion, it became part of several important Ferrari collections and was proudly displayed at such diverse and important events as Rosso Ferrari at Rodeo Drive and the Goodwood Festival of Speed (both in 1997) and Cavallino Classic in 2004. It was featured in the Japanese magazine CAR in 1998. In 2003 it was returned to Symbolic’s restoration shop where it received a comprehensive refurbishment.
It was acquired by the present owner after completion of the work and was displayed at Cavallino Classic in 2004. The vendor reports the Dino is on the button and is in excellent overall mechanical condition. It is a personal favorite of his and while he has not competitively raced it regularly, he is drawn to its character and uniqueness just as Medlin was so many years ago. Most recently, the 206 SP has been returned to its glorious NART livery as it appeared at the 1000 kms of Nürburgring when, it finished 2nd in class behind another Dino and 3rd overall.
1966 Ferrari Dino 206 SP 008 retains its original engine, gearbox and bodywork. Its restoration is of the highest quality and is fresh and sharp. Its history includes ownership and entries by both SEFAC Ferrari and NART. It has been driven by some of the greats in the greatest age of sports car and sports prototype racing: Bondurant, Vaccarella, Pedro Rodriguez, Ginther, Kolb, Follmer, Schlesser, Gregory and even Peter Gregg. Its ownership history is clear. It is fast, responsive and, best of all, a beautiful gem of a car.
[Text from RM Auctions]
www.rmauctions.com/lots/lot.cfm?lot_id=162971
This Lego miniland-scale Ferrari Dino 206 SP (1966 - Carrozzeria Sports Cars), has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 89th Build Challenge, - "Over a Million, Under a Thousand", - a challenge to build vehicles valued over one million (US) dollars, or under one thousand (US) dollars.
This particular vehicle was auctioned by the RM Auction house on Sunday, May 20, 2007, where it sold for €2.420.000 (US$2,567,520)
Soil profile: A representative soil profile of a Typic Acrudox in Brazil.
Landscape: Highway construction in an extremely deep Acrudox in Central Brazil.
Typic Acrudox are fixed on soils that do not have a petroferric contact, a lithic contact, or redox depletions with a color value, moist, of 4 or more and chroma of 2 or less within 125 cm of the mineral soil surface and also do not have aquic conditions for some time in normal years. These soils have less than 16 kg/m2 organic carbon to a depth of 100 cm and have less than 5 percent plinthite in all horizons within a depth of 125 cm. Their colors are reddish, but the soils do not have very dark reddish colors throughout the layers between depths of 25 and 125 cm.
Acrudox are the Udox with very low CEC values in the subsoil and that do not have a sombric horizon within 150 cm of the mineral soil surface. Frequent but small applications of fertilizer and lime are required. Because the CEC is low, the amount of exchangeable aluminum in the subsoil is low. This deficiency can be corrected by leaching basic cations from lime and fertilizer.
Udox are well drained Oxisols with a udic soil moisture regime. They are moist because of natural rainfall in normal years and are dry in some parts for less than 90 days, a period that is short enough for rain-fed crops to be grown continuously in normal years. There are fewer than 90 days during which crops are not planted. In local terms there are 1 to 3 months that considered “dry” in normal years. Udox are an extensive suborder, occurring mostly in South America and in parts of Africa and Asia.
To download the latest version of Soil Taxonomy, 2nd Edition, 1999, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/soil-...
For additional information about soil classification using Keys to Soil Taxonomy, 13th Edition, 2022, visit:
[www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Keys-to-Soi...]
To download the latest version of Keys to Soil Taxonomy, 13th Edition, 2022, visit:
[www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/keys-...]
For an Illustrated Guide to Soil Taxonomy, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/Illustrated...
a possible Kirk point, and pottery that may be a ivory billed wood pecker design. Found on the Archaeological dig I am working on. Florida
These interesting looking guys really stood out amongst the lithe young bodies on the beaches of Maui. I had a delightful conversation and many laughs with them after this pic. I told the taller one that from a distance he reminded me of Jeff Bridges and the shorter fellow laughed and said he was a "stand-in" for Tom Selleck. They were both retirees, had met each other in Maui and become fast friends. A real couple of Fungi's. ;-))
Jahangir's Hauz
Hauz-i-Jahangiri (Jahangir's Bath). The lithic bath basin is now seen in front of the entrance of the so-called Jahangiri Mahal. This circular bath bowl is carved out of a single block of granite.
The monolithic tank (hauz) is 1.22 m. deep, 2.4 m. in diameter and 7.62 m. in circumference at the rim which indicates that it was not buried into the ground and was mobile so that it could be transported and used in the camp as well as in the harem for bathing.
A Persian versified inscription in the Nasta'liq script was carved in relief which mentions 1611 as the year of its construction. The date coincides with the marriage of Jahangir with Nur Jahan Begam. Therefore, it is evidenced that it might have been presented to her as one of the marriage gifts.
This basin was discovered from the ruins of one of the courts of Akbars palace in Agra Fort in 1843 and placed in front of the Diwan-i-Am, from here it was removed to Public gardens (Company Gardens) where it suffered damages. John Marshall, then Director General of Archaeological Survey of India, brought it back to Agra Fort in 1907 and placed it where it is now located and most probably, gave the name Jahangiri Mahal because of the reference to Jahangir in its inscription though it is only a part of Akbars' Bengali Mahal
sn 008
Specifications:
218 bhp 1,986 cc dual overhead camshaft V-6 engine, five-speed manual transaxle, four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs and four-wheel disc brakes. Wheelbase: 2,280mm (89.75")
Lightweight. Aerodynamic. Powerful. The Ferrari 206 SP is the lithe, sinuous, brilliant V-6 son of the V-12 father. It is similar in many respects, but accomplished with conscious differences.
The Origins of the Dino Legend
When Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien went to Le Mans in 1962 and were assigned the 330 TRI/LM, the last front-engined car to win at la Sarthe, they felt a little cheated. There were better Ferraris in Ferrari’s entry. There were V-8 and V-6 Dinos. Hill and Gendebien knew the mid-engined Dinos were Ferrari’s future. They drove a dinosaur, and their victory was a tribute to their skill and maturity as drivers as much as it was to the durability, stability, reliability and speed of the four-litre 330 TRI/LM, the ultimate Testa Rossa.
The V-6 Dinos were introduced in 1957 for the 1.5-litre Formula 2 series. Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo – known as “Dino” - had championed the engines’ layout, and Enzo gave the cars Dino’s name after his son’s untimely death in 1956. The detailed design was done by the old master, Vittorio Jano. With twin overhead camshafts, the inherently balanced conventional cylinder bank angle of 60° left no room for carburetors and inlet manifolding, so Jano increased the included angle to 65°, then compensated for the timing problem with crank throws placed 65° and 185° apart. It was ingenious, and it worked. The first Dino sports racing cars were front-engined; mid-engined cars appeared in 1962, the models Hill and Gendebien hoped to drive at Le Mans. Ferrari then dealt with the problems of slipping a V-12 between the driver and the rear wheels, and development of the compact V-6 powered Dinos languished.
The Sports Prototypes
Ferrari was challenged by Ford in the mid 60s and responded with a series of Sports Prototypes that have earned their position as the most seductively beautiful sports racing cars ever built. The first 330 P was introduced in 1964 and its design clearly showed its evolution from the 250 LM. The 1965 season’s 330 P2, however, was something completely different and it evolved into the Drogo-built 330 P3 the following year, surely the most voluptuous sports racing automobiles ever seen.
At the same time Ferrari introduced the 206 S, an even more tightly wrapped, reduced scale rendition of the 330 P3 with the same voluptuous, sensuous shape on a shorter wheelbase that took full advantage of its compact V-6 powerplant. Franco Rocchi designed this third generation twin-cam V-6, returning to Jano’s original 65° vee angle. It would power not only the 206 S but also the street cars needed to meet the FIA’s requirement that Formula 2 engines be based upon a production engine with at least 500 units built – which Ferrari met in cooperation with Fiat in the Dino sports cars. In addition to the Ferrari sports prototypes and Formula 2 cars, the engine would later power the Ferrari Dino road cars and even the Lancia Stratos rally car.
Like the 330 P3, the Dino 206 S was bodied by Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars. It used a multi-tube frame with alloy panels riveted to it for additional stiffness, in essence a semi-monocoque structure. Ferrari’s intention was that 50 of the cars would be built, qualifying it as an FIA Group 4 sports car, but the financial difficulties that would lead to Ferrari’s merger with Fiat three years later prevented that optimistic goal from being met and in the end only some 18 of these wonderful, quick, beautiful sports racers were built. What started out as a Dino 206 S (for Sport) became known as the Dino 206 SP (for Sports Prototype) when there were not enough built to qualify for Group 4.
Chassis No. 008
The meticulously and accurately restored example offered here, chassis 008, is the fourth of the series production 206 SPs built, (The first 206 S was built on Ferrari chassis 0842) and the third of the standard alloy spider bodied 206 SPs. It was delivered to the SEFAC Ferrari team and used for testing and evaluation. Some sources indicate it was entered by the factory to be run by Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team in the 1000 km race at Monza April 25, 1966 where it was driven by NART driver Bob Bondurant and SEFAC driver Nino Vaccarella, but was damaged in practice and withdrawn before starting the race.
Six weeks later on June 5, Dino 206 SP 008 was again entered for NART in the ADAC 1000 km of the Nürburgring, one of the season’s most demanding races. Driven by the brilliant pairing of Pedro Rogriguez and Richie Ginther, both SEFAC team drivers in 1966, the 206 SP started ninth on the grid and drove to an outstanding third overall and second in class behind another 206 SP, the fuel injected chassis 004 driven by Scarfiotti and Bandini, and the winning Chaparral 2D of Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier which thundered to the overall victory. Remarkably, all three podium finishers were on the same lap of the daunting 22.81 km Nürburgring Nordschleife.
On June 18, 1966, still fresh from its podium finish at the Nürburgring, chassis 008, using a SEFAC Ferrari entry, was on hand at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car, however, was now owned by Chinetti, having been sold by SEFAC Ferrari on June 10. Chinetti put Charlie Kolb and George Follmer in the 206 SP and they started in 32nd position. After an excellent start, oil seeped onto the clutch, rendering it useless, and on just the 9th lap the team withdrew, a fate eventually shared by 40 of the 55 entrants - 73 percent of the starting grid.
Kolb’s seat at Le Mans foreshadowed the next stage in 008’s career. After returning to Maranello for servicing and race prep, it was shipped to the U.S. and its next owner, M. Schroeder, who immediately entered it in the August 28 USRRC-Buckeye Cup race in Lexington, Ohio where it was driven by Charlie Kolb. Kolb brought the 206 SP home second in class and sixth overall.
Entries at The Road America 500 at Elkhart Lake and the USRRC race at Bridgehampton followed before 008 was purchased by Fred Baker, who arranged to use a Chinetti entry in the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours. A fresh engine rebuild and gearbox overhaul were not completed in time to qualify, and 008 started from the back of the grid as a result. The driving team was strong – Jo Schlesser, Masten Gregory and Peter Gregg. At just over half distance, after moving within sight of a top 10 placing, Gregory made a routine pit stop only to have the engine develop a misfire when it restarted, which turned out to be a stripped distributor drive.
Baker again used a Chinetti entry for his Dino 206 SP at the Sebring 12 Hours on April 1. Charlie Kolb and Ed Crawford started from 20th on the grid, where they remained when the green flag fell, sidelined by a broken half shaft. For the remainder of 1967, the 206 SP contested SCCA and USRRC races driven by Lee Cutler and occasionally Charlie Kolb.
It was back at Daytona for the 24 hours in 1968 after being rebuilt by Chinetti’s NART mechanics. Now consigned or loaned to Chinetti, he put Kolb and Pedro Rodriguez in Dino 206 SP 008 and Rodriguez qualified an excellent 10th among the three litre Alfa Romeo Tipo 33/2s. Kolb and Rodriguez kept the little Dino among the top 10 until another misfire brought them into the pits and early retirement. Baker decided to sell the car, although Lee Cutler apparently worked out a deal to drive it in later races. Before the end of the year he bought the Dino from Baker, marking the end of its front line racing career.
Harley Cluxton bought it from Cutler in 1971, selling it later that year to noted Ferrari collector and enthusiast, Walter Medlin in Kissimmee, Florida. Medlin did nothing with the beautiful little 206 SP except store it among his other cars where it stayed for more than 20 years. In 1995 it was acquired by Symbolic Motor Car Company and given a complete two-year restoration by Rob Shanahan. After completion, it became part of several important Ferrari collections and was proudly displayed at such diverse and important events as Rosso Ferrari at Rodeo Drive and the Goodwood Festival of Speed (both in 1997) and Cavallino Classic in 2004. It was featured in the Japanese magazine CAR in 1998. In 2003 it was returned to Symbolic’s restoration shop where it received a comprehensive refurbishment.
It was acquired by the present owner after completion of the work and was displayed at Cavallino Classic in 2004. The vendor reports the Dino is on the button and is in excellent overall mechanical condition. It is a personal favorite of his and while he has not competitively raced it regularly, he is drawn to its character and uniqueness just as Medlin was so many years ago. Most recently, the 206 SP has been returned to its glorious NART livery as it appeared at the 1000 kms of Nürburgring when, it finished 2nd in class behind another Dino and 3rd overall.
1966 Ferrari Dino 206 SP 008 retains its original engine, gearbox and bodywork. Its restoration is of the highest quality and is fresh and sharp. Its history includes ownership and entries by both SEFAC Ferrari and NART. It has been driven by some of the greats in the greatest age of sports car and sports prototype racing: Bondurant, Vaccarella, Pedro Rodriguez, Ginther, Kolb, Follmer, Schlesser, Gregory and even Peter Gregg. Its ownership history is clear. It is fast, responsive and, best of all, a beautiful gem of a car.
[Text from RM Auctions]
www.rmauctions.com/lots/lot.cfm?lot_id=162971
This Lego miniland-scale Ferrari Dino 206 SP (1966 - Carrozzeria Sports Cars), has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 89th Build Challenge, - "Over a Million, Under a Thousand", - a challenge to build vehicles valued over one million (US) dollars, or under one thousand (US) dollars.
This particular vehicle was auctioned by the RM Auction house on Sunday, May 20, 2007, where it sold for €2.420.000 (US$2,567,520)
sn 008
Specifications:
218 bhp 1,986 cc dual overhead camshaft V-6 engine, five-speed manual transaxle, four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs and four-wheel disc brakes. Wheelbase: 2,280mm (89.75")
Lightweight. Aerodynamic. Powerful. The Ferrari 206 SP is the lithe, sinuous, brilliant V-6 son of the V-12 father. It is similar in many respects, but accomplished with conscious differences.
The Origins of the Dino Legend
When Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien went to Le Mans in 1962 and were assigned the 330 TRI/LM, the last front-engined car to win at la Sarthe, they felt a little cheated. There were better Ferraris in Ferrari’s entry. There were V-8 and V-6 Dinos. Hill and Gendebien knew the mid-engined Dinos were Ferrari’s future. They drove a dinosaur, and their victory was a tribute to their skill and maturity as drivers as much as it was to the durability, stability, reliability and speed of the four-litre 330 TRI/LM, the ultimate Testa Rossa.
The V-6 Dinos were introduced in 1957 for the 1.5-litre Formula 2 series. Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo – known as “Dino” - had championed the engines’ layout, and Enzo gave the cars Dino’s name after his son’s untimely death in 1956. The detailed design was done by the old master, Vittorio Jano. With twin overhead camshafts, the inherently balanced conventional cylinder bank angle of 60° left no room for carburetors and inlet manifolding, so Jano increased the included angle to 65°, then compensated for the timing problem with crank throws placed 65° and 185° apart. It was ingenious, and it worked. The first Dino sports racing cars were front-engined; mid-engined cars appeared in 1962, the models Hill and Gendebien hoped to drive at Le Mans. Ferrari then dealt with the problems of slipping a V-12 between the driver and the rear wheels, and development of the compact V-6 powered Dinos languished.
The Sports Prototypes
Ferrari was challenged by Ford in the mid 60s and responded with a series of Sports Prototypes that have earned their position as the most seductively beautiful sports racing cars ever built. The first 330 P was introduced in 1964 and its design clearly showed its evolution from the 250 LM. The 1965 season’s 330 P2, however, was something completely different and it evolved into the Drogo-built 330 P3 the following year, surely the most voluptuous sports racing automobiles ever seen.
At the same time Ferrari introduced the 206 S, an even more tightly wrapped, reduced scale rendition of the 330 P3 with the same voluptuous, sensuous shape on a shorter wheelbase that took full advantage of its compact V-6 powerplant. Franco Rocchi designed this third generation twin-cam V-6, returning to Jano’s original 65° vee angle. It would power not only the 206 S but also the street cars needed to meet the FIA’s requirement that Formula 2 engines be based upon a production engine with at least 500 units built – which Ferrari met in cooperation with Fiat in the Dino sports cars. In addition to the Ferrari sports prototypes and Formula 2 cars, the engine would later power the Ferrari Dino road cars and even the Lancia Stratos rally car.
Like the 330 P3, the Dino 206 S was bodied by Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars. It used a multi-tube frame with alloy panels riveted to it for additional stiffness, in essence a semi-monocoque structure. Ferrari’s intention was that 50 of the cars would be built, qualifying it as an FIA Group 4 sports car, but the financial difficulties that would lead to Ferrari’s merger with Fiat three years later prevented that optimistic goal from being met and in the end only some 18 of these wonderful, quick, beautiful sports racers were built. What started out as a Dino 206 S (for Sport) became known as the Dino 206 SP (for Sports Prototype) when there were not enough built to qualify for Group 4.
Chassis No. 008
The meticulously and accurately restored example offered here, chassis 008, is the fourth of the series production 206 SPs built, (The first 206 S was built on Ferrari chassis 0842) and the third of the standard alloy spider bodied 206 SPs. It was delivered to the SEFAC Ferrari team and used for testing and evaluation. Some sources indicate it was entered by the factory to be run by Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team in the 1000 km race at Monza April 25, 1966 where it was driven by NART driver Bob Bondurant and SEFAC driver Nino Vaccarella, but was damaged in practice and withdrawn before starting the race.
Six weeks later on June 5, Dino 206 SP 008 was again entered for NART in the ADAC 1000 km of the Nürburgring, one of the season’s most demanding races. Driven by the brilliant pairing of Pedro Rogriguez and Richie Ginther, both SEFAC team drivers in 1966, the 206 SP started ninth on the grid and drove to an outstanding third overall and second in class behind another 206 SP, the fuel injected chassis 004 driven by Scarfiotti and Bandini, and the winning Chaparral 2D of Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier which thundered to the overall victory. Remarkably, all three podium finishers were on the same lap of the daunting 22.81 km Nürburgring Nordschleife.
On June 18, 1966, still fresh from its podium finish at the Nürburgring, chassis 008, using a SEFAC Ferrari entry, was on hand at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car, however, was now owned by Chinetti, having been sold by SEFAC Ferrari on June 10. Chinetti put Charlie Kolb and George Follmer in the 206 SP and they started in 32nd position. After an excellent start, oil seeped onto the clutch, rendering it useless, and on just the 9th lap the team withdrew, a fate eventually shared by 40 of the 55 entrants - 73 percent of the starting grid.
Kolb’s seat at Le Mans foreshadowed the next stage in 008’s career. After returning to Maranello for servicing and race prep, it was shipped to the U.S. and its next owner, M. Schroeder, who immediately entered it in the August 28 USRRC-Buckeye Cup race in Lexington, Ohio where it was driven by Charlie Kolb. Kolb brought the 206 SP home second in class and sixth overall.
Entries at The Road America 500 at Elkhart Lake and the USRRC race at Bridgehampton followed before 008 was purchased by Fred Baker, who arranged to use a Chinetti entry in the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours. A fresh engine rebuild and gearbox overhaul were not completed in time to qualify, and 008 started from the back of the grid as a result. The driving team was strong – Jo Schlesser, Masten Gregory and Peter Gregg. At just over half distance, after moving within sight of a top 10 placing, Gregory made a routine pit stop only to have the engine develop a misfire when it restarted, which turned out to be a stripped distributor drive.
Baker again used a Chinetti entry for his Dino 206 SP at the Sebring 12 Hours on April 1. Charlie Kolb and Ed Crawford started from 20th on the grid, where they remained when the green flag fell, sidelined by a broken half shaft. For the remainder of 1967, the 206 SP contested SCCA and USRRC races driven by Lee Cutler and occasionally Charlie Kolb.
It was back at Daytona for the 24 hours in 1968 after being rebuilt by Chinetti’s NART mechanics. Now consigned or loaned to Chinetti, he put Kolb and Pedro Rodriguez in Dino 206 SP 008 and Rodriguez qualified an excellent 10th among the three litre Alfa Romeo Tipo 33/2s. Kolb and Rodriguez kept the little Dino among the top 10 until another misfire brought them into the pits and early retirement. Baker decided to sell the car, although Lee Cutler apparently worked out a deal to drive it in later races. Before the end of the year he bought the Dino from Baker, marking the end of its front line racing career.
Harley Cluxton bought it from Cutler in 1971, selling it later that year to noted Ferrari collector and enthusiast, Walter Medlin in Kissimmee, Florida. Medlin did nothing with the beautiful little 206 SP except store it among his other cars where it stayed for more than 20 years. In 1995 it was acquired by Symbolic Motor Car Company and given a complete two-year restoration by Rob Shanahan. After completion, it became part of several important Ferrari collections and was proudly displayed at such diverse and important events as Rosso Ferrari at Rodeo Drive and the Goodwood Festival of Speed (both in 1997) and Cavallino Classic in 2004. It was featured in the Japanese magazine CAR in 1998. In 2003 it was returned to Symbolic’s restoration shop where it received a comprehensive refurbishment.
It was acquired by the present owner after completion of the work and was displayed at Cavallino Classic in 2004. The vendor reports the Dino is on the button and is in excellent overall mechanical condition. It is a personal favorite of his and while he has not competitively raced it regularly, he is drawn to its character and uniqueness just as Medlin was so many years ago. Most recently, the 206 SP has been returned to its glorious NART livery as it appeared at the 1000 kms of Nürburgring when, it finished 2nd in class behind another Dino and 3rd overall.
1966 Ferrari Dino 206 SP 008 retains its original engine, gearbox and bodywork. Its restoration is of the highest quality and is fresh and sharp. Its history includes ownership and entries by both SEFAC Ferrari and NART. It has been driven by some of the greats in the greatest age of sports car and sports prototype racing: Bondurant, Vaccarella, Pedro Rodriguez, Ginther, Kolb, Follmer, Schlesser, Gregory and even Peter Gregg. Its ownership history is clear. It is fast, responsive and, best of all, a beautiful gem of a car.
[Text from RM Auctions]
www.rmauctions.com/lots/lot.cfm?lot_id=162971
This Lego miniland-scale Ferrari Dino 206 SP (1966 - Carrozzeria Sports Cars), has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 89th Build Challenge, - "Over a Million, Under a Thousand", - a challenge to build vehicles valued over one million (US) dollars, or under one thousand (US) dollars.
This particular vehicle was auctioned by the RM Auction house on Sunday, May 20, 2007, where it sold for €2.420.000 (US$2,567,520)
Hanna Bay Member of the upper Rice Bay Formation at Graham's Harbour. This is the youngest bedrock unit on San Salvador Island.
These well-sorted limestones consist of sand-sized grains of aragonite (CaCO3). On the continents, many quartz sandstones are technically called quartz arenites. Because the sand grains making up these Bahamian rocks are calcareous (composed of calcium carbonate), the limestones are called calcarenites. When examined microscopically, the calcareous sand grains can be seen touching each other - the rock is grain-supported. This results in an alternative name for these Bahamian limestones - grainstones. “Calcarenite” seems to be a more useful, more thoroughly descriptive term for these particular rocks, so I use that, versus “grainstone” (although “calcarenitic grainstone” could be used as well). The little-used petrologic term aragonitite could also be applied to these aragonitic limestones.
Sedimentary structures indicate that the calcarenites shown above were deposited in an ancient back-beach sand dune environment. In such settings, sediments are moved and deposited by winds. Wind-deposited sedimentary rocks are often referred to as eolianites. Most ancient sand dune deposits in the rock record are composed of quartzose and/or lithic sand. The dune deposits in the Bahamas are composed of calcium carbonate - this results in the term "calcarenitic eolianite".
Hanna Bay Member limestones gently dip toward the modern ocean (= behind the photographer in the above photo) and include sediments deposited in beach environments and back-beach dune environments. The latter facies is represented by the locality shown above. Beach facies limestones are more or less planar-bedded, while back-beach dune limestones (eolianites) have steeper and more varied dips.
The aragonite sand grains in the Hanna Bay Member are principally bioclasts (worn mollusc shell fragments & coral skeleton fragments & calcareous algae fragments, etc.) and peloids (tiny, pellet-shaped masses composed of micrite/very fine-grained carbonate - some are likely microcoprolites, others are of uncertain origin).
Age: Holocene (MIS 1)
Locality: shoreline outcrop along the eastern part of the southern margin of Graham's Harbour, between Singer Bar Point and the Bahamas Field Station, northeastern San Salvador Island, eastern Bahamas
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The surface bedrock geology of San Salvador consists entirely of Pleistocene and Holocene limestones. Thick and relatively unforgiving vegetation covers most of the island’s interior (apart from inland lakes). Because of this, the most easily-accessible rock outcrops are along the island’s shorelines.
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Stratigraphic Succession in the Bahamas:
Rice Bay Formation (Holocene, <10 ka), subdivided into two members (Hanna Bay Member over North Point Member)
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Grotto Beach Formation (lower Upper Pleistocene, 119-131 ka), subdivided into two members (Cockburn Town Member over French Bay Member)
--------------------
Owl's Hole Formation (Middle Pleistocene, ~215-220 ka & ~327-333 ka & ~398-410 ka & older)
------------------------------
San Salvador’s surface bedrock can be divided into two broad lithologic categories:
1) LIMESTONES
2) PALEOSOLS
The limestones were deposited during sea level highstands (actually, only during the highest of the highstands). During such highstands (for example, right now), the San Salvador carbonate platform is partly flooded by ocean water. At such times, the “carbonate factory” is on, and abundant carbonate sediment grains are generated by shallow-water organisms living on the platform. The abundance of carbonate sediment means there will be abundant carbonate sedimentary rock formed after burial and cementation (diagenesis). These sea level highstands correspond with the climatically warm interglacials during the Pleistocene Ice Age.
Based on geochronologic dating on various Bahamas islands, and based on a modern understanding of the history of Pleistocene-Holocene global sea level changes, surficial limestones in the Bahamas are known to have been deposited at the following times (expressed in terms of marine isotope stages, “MIS” - these are the glacial-interglacial climatic cycles determined from δ18O analysis):
1) MIS 1 - the Holocene, <10 k.y. This is the current sea level highstand.
2) MIS 5e - during the Sangamonian Interglacial, in the early Late Pleistocene, from 119 to 131 k.y. (sea level peaked at ~125 k.y.)
3) MIS 7 - ~215 to 220 k.y. - late Middle Pleistocene
4) MIS 9 - ~327-333 k.y. - late Middle Pleistocene
5) MIS 11 - ~398-410 k.y. - late Middle Pleistocene
Bahamian limestones deposited during MIS 1 are called the Rice Bay Formation. Limestones deposited during MIS 5e are called the Grotto Beach Formation. Limestones deposited during MIS 7, 9, 11, and perhaps as old as MIS 13 and 15, are called the Owl’s Hole Formation. These stratigraphic units were first established on San Salvador Island (the type sections are there), but geologic work elsewhere has shown that the same stratigraphic succession also applies to the rest of the Bahamas.
During times of lowstands (= times of climatically cold glacial intervals of the Pleistocene Ice Age), weathering and pedogenesis results in the development of soils. With burial and diagenesis, these soils become paleosols. The most common paleosol type in the Bahamas is calcrete (a.k.a. caliche; a.k.a. terra rosa). Calcrete horizons cap all Pleistocene-aged stratigraphic units in the Bahamas, except where erosion has removed them. Calcretes separate all major stratigraphic units. Sometimes, calcrete-looking horizons are encountered in the field that are not true paleosols.
----------------------------
Subsurface Stratigraphy of San Salvador Island:
The island’s stratigraphy below the Owl’s Hole Formation was revealed by a core drilled down ~168 meters (~550-feet) below the surface (for details, see Supko, 1977). The well site was at 3 meters above sea level near Graham’s Harbour beach, between Line Hole Settlement and Singer Bar Point (northern margin of San Salvador Island). The first 37 meters were limestones. Below that, dolostones dominate, alternating with some mixed dolostone-limestone intervals. Reddish-brown calcretes separate major units. Supko (1977) infers that the lowest rocks in the core are Upper Miocene to Lower Pliocene, based on known Bahamas Platform subsidence rates.
In light of the successful island-to-island correlations of Middle Pleistocene, Upper Pleistocene, and Holocene units throughout the Bahamas (see the Bahamas geologic literature), it seems reasonable to conclude that San Salvador’s subsurface dolostones may correlate well with sub-Pleistocene dolostone units exposed in the far-southeastern portions of the Bahamas Platform.
Recent field work on Mayaguana Island has resulted in the identification of Miocene, Pliocene, and Lower Pleistocene surface outcrops (see: www2.newark.ohio-state.edu/facultystaff/personal/jstjohn/...). On Mayaguana, the worked-out stratigraphy is:
- Rice Bay Formation (Holocene)
- Grotto Beach Formation (Upper Pleistocene)
- Owl’s Hole Formation (Middle Pleistocene)
- Misery Point Formation (Lower Pleistocene)
- Timber Bay Formation (Pliocene)
- Little Bay Formation (Upper Miocene)
- Mayaguana Formation (Lower Miocene)
The Timber Bay Fm. and Little Bay Fm. are completely dolomitized. The Mayaguana Fm. is ~5% dolomitized. The Misery Point Fm. is nondolomitized, but the original aragonite mineralogy is absent.
----------------------------
The stratigraphic information presented here is synthesized from the Bahamian geologic literature.
----------------------------
Supko, P.R. 1977. Subsurface dolomites, San Salvador, Bahamas. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 47: 1063-1077.
Bowman, P.A. & J.W. Teeter. 1982. The distribution of living and fossil Foraminifera and their use in the interpretation of the post-Pleistocene history of Little Lake, San Salvador, Bahamas. San Salvador Field Station Occasional Papers 1982(2). 21 pp.
Sanger, D.B. & J.W. Teeter. 1982. The distribution of living and fossil Ostracoda and their use in the interpretation of the post-Pleistocene history of Little Lake, San Salvador Island, Bahamas. San Salvador Field Station Occasional Papers 1982(1). 26 pp.
Gerace, D.T., R.W. Adams, J.E. Mylroie, R. Titus, E.E. Hinman, H.A. Curran & J.L. Carew. 1983. Field Guide to the Geology of San Salvador (Third Edition). 172 pp.
Curran, H.A. 1984. Ichnology of Pleistocene carbonates on San Salvador, Bahamas. Journal of Paleontology 58: 312-321.
Anderson, C.B. & M.R. Boardman. 1987. Sedimentary gradients in a high-energy carbonate lagoon, Snow Bay, San Salvador, Bahamas. CCFL Bahamian Field Station Occasional Paper 1987(2). (31) pp.
1988. Bahamas Project. pp. 21-48 in First Keck Research Symposium in Geology (Abstracts Volume), Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin, 14-17 April 1988.
1989. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 17-22, 1988. 381 pp.
1989. Pleistocene and Holocene carbonate systems, Bahamas. pp. 18-51 in Second Keck Research Symposium in Geology (Abstracts Volume), Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 14-16 April 1989.
Curran, H.A., J.L. Carew, J.E. Mylroie, B. White, R.J. Bain & J.W. Teeter. 1989. Pleistocene and Holocene carbonate environments on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. 28th International Geological Congress Field Trip Guidebook T175. 46 pp.
1990. The 5th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 15-19, 1990, Abstracts and Programs. 29 pp.
1991. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas. 247 pp.
1992. The 6th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 11-15, 1992, Abstracts and Program. 26 pp.
1992. Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas, June 7-11, 1991. 123 pp.
Boardman, M.R., C. Carney, B. White, H.A. Curran & D.T. Gerace. 1992. The geology of Columbus' landfall: a field guide to the Holcoene geology of San Salvador, Bahamas, Field trip 3 for the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 26-29, 1992. Ohio Division of Geological Survey Miscellaneous Report 2. 49 pp.
Carew, J.L., J.E. Mylroie, N.E. Sealey, M. Boardman, C. Carney, B. White, H.A. Curran & D.T. Gerace. 1992. The 6th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 11-15, 1992, Field Trip Guidebook. 56 pp.
1993. Proceedings of the 6th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 11-15, 1992. 222 pp.
Lawson, B.M. 1993. Shelling San Sal, an Illustrated Guide to Common Shells of San Salvador Island, Bahamas. San Salvador, Bahamas. Bahamian Field Station. 63 pp.
1994. The 7th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 16-20, 1994, Abstracts and Program. 26 pp.
1994. Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas, June 11-14, 1993. 107 pp.
Carew, J.L. & J.E. Mylroie. 1994. Geology and Karst of San Salvador Island, Bahamas: a Field Trip Guidebook. 32 pp.
Godfrey, P.J., R.L. Davis, R.R. Smtih & J.A. Wells. 1994. Natural History of Northeastern San Salvador Island: a "New World" Where the New World Began, Bahamian Field Station Trail Guide. 28 pp.
Hinman, G. 1994. A Teacher's Guide to the Depositional Environments on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. 64 pp.
Mylroie, J.E. & J.L. Carew. 1994. A Field Trip Guide Book of Lighthouse Cave, San Salvador Island, Bahamas. 10 pp.
1995. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, June 16-20, 1994. 134 pp.
1995. Terrestrial and shallow marine geology of the Bahamas and Bermuda. Geological Society of America Special Paper 300.
1996. The 8th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas, May 30-June 3, 1996, Abstracts and Program. 21 pp.
1996. Proceedings of the 6th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas, June 9-13, 1995. 165 pp.
1997. Proceedings of the 8th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, May 30-June 3, 1996. 213 pp.
Curran, H.A., B. White & M.A. Wilson. 1997. Guide to Bahamian Ichnology: Pleistocene, Holocene, and Modern Environments. San Salvador, Bahamas. Bahamian Field Station. 61 pp.
1998. The 9th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 4-June 8, 1998, Abstracts and Program. 25 pp.
Wilson, M.A., H.A. Curran & B. White. 1998. Paleontological evidence of a brief global sea-level event during the last interglacial. Lethaia 31: 241-250.
1999. Proceedings of the 9th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 4-8, 1998. 142 pp.
2000. The 10th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 8-June 12, 2000, Abstracts and Program. 29+(1) pp.
2001. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 8-12, 2000. 200 pp.
Bishop, D. & B.J. Greenstein. 2001. The effects of Hurricane Floyd on the fidelity of coral life and death assemblages in San Salvador, Bahamas: does a hurricane leave a signature in the fossil record? Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 33(4): 51.
Gamble, V.C., S.J. Carpenter & L.A. Gonzalez. 2001. Using carbon and oxygen isotopic values from acroporid corals to interpret temperature fluctuations around an unconformable surface on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 33(4): 52.
Gardiner, L. 2001. Stability of Late Pleistocene reef mollusks from San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Palaios 16: 372-386.
Ogarek, S.A., C.K. Carney & M.R. Boardman. 2001. Paleoenvironmental analysis of the Holocene sediments of Pigeon Creek, San Salvador, Bahamas. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 33(4): 17.
Schmidt, D.A., C.K. Carney & M.R. Boardman. 2001. Pleistocene reef facies diagenesis within two shallowing-upward sequences at Cockburntown, San Salvador, Bahamas. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 33(4): 42.
2002. The 11th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 6th-June 10, 2002, Abstracts and Program. 29 pp.
2004. The 12th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 3-June 7, 2004, Abstracts and Program. 33 pp.
2004. Proceedings of the 11th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 6-10, 2002. 240 pp.
Martin, A.J. 2006. Trace Fossils of San Salvador. 80 pp.
2006. Proceedings of the 12th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 3-7, 2004. 249 pp.
2006. The 13th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 8-June 12, 2006, Abstracts and Program. 27 pp.
Mylroie, J.E. & J.L. Carew. 2008. Field Guide to the Geology and Karst Geomorphology of San Salvador Island. 88 pp.
2008. Proceedings of the 13th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 8-12, 2006. 223 pp.
2008. The 14th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 12-June 16, 2006, Abstracts and Program. 26 pp.
2010. Proceedings of the 14th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 12-16, 2008. 249 pp.
2010. The 15th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 17-June 21, 2010, Abstracts and Program. 36 pp.
2012. Proceedings of the 15th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 17-21, 2010. 183 pp.
2012. The 16th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions, June 14-June 18, 2012, Abstracts with Program. 45 pp.