Urban, well Oxonian, poetry

Gargoyles on the chapel. I think I need to take some closeups of those faces.

The Old Warden's Lodgings

Warden is the name given to the head of the college, so this building was formerly his residence (three women have been warden here, including the current warden, but that's obviously more recent than this building.)

It's now one of the libraries; I haven't gone there yet because the Bodleian is only a ten-minute walk away and I'd rather sit in Duke Humfrey's. There's another library here in Mob Quad that is unfortunately closed for renovations. It is supposed to be haunted by a Royalist who was executed during the English Civil War.

Old glass

You aren't allowed to take photos in the best reading room in the Bodleian, Duke Humfrey's Library, and I've tried to be unobtrusive in taking pictures even in areas where photography is allowed. (Also, I'm trying to focus on working and not gawking when I'm there.)

This is the view through the window in one of the other reading rooms—you can see the top of the Radcliffe Camera. I love the bubbles in the old glass.

Old Schools Quadrangle

The Bodleian entrance is at one side of the Schools Quad. The buildings on the other three sides date from the early 17th century and were originally lecture rooms. The names of the original departments (in Latin) still appear above the doorways.

The Bodleian

I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

That's the oath I had to recite in order to get my reader's card for the Bodleian.

Every college at Oxford has its own library, but the Bodleian is the main research library for all of the colleges. There are three main buildings: the Weston Library, which is new and houses special collections, the Radcliffe Camera, and the Old Bodleian.

This is the entrance to the Old Bodleian. That jolly-looking fellow is the Earl of Pembroke, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford in the 17th century. Thomas Bodley, who rebuilt the library in the late 16th-early 17th centuries after it had been stripped and abandoned during the Reformation, has to settle for the plaque over the doorway. And of course having the library named for him.

Hall

Sometimes Oxford just wants to be rendered in black and white.

This is where we have our meals, “in Hall,”as they say here, banishing those uncouth articles as the English are so wont to do (in hospital, at university). Most nights dinner is informal, meaning we're served cafeteria style and seat ourselves, but twice a week we have high table dinner. We're expected to dress up, and we don't sit down until the administrators, tutors and guests eating at high table have come in, and grace (in Latin) has been read.

That's the high table on the right. Everyone gets an invitation to eat there once during the program; I'm scheduled for next week.

Bath

I spent the afternoon in Bath today—it was supposed to be a day, but the British Railway system had other ideas. It's theoretically only an hour from Oxford to Bath by train, but you have to change trains halfway there, and because the first train was a few minutes late we missed the connection to the second train, and had to wait on the platform at Didcot Parkway (an English name if I ever heard one) for an hour and a half.

And this was after having to stand on the very crowded train from Oxford, although I had a reserved seat in a different car. People were crammed in so tight that it was impossible to move, much less change cars, and I was half-bent over some suitcases in a corner trying very hard not to have a panic attack from claustrophobia. I did have a seat for most of the ride on the second train, but my knees and back have yet to forgive me for that first cramped half hour. So, our plan to arrive in Bath at 10:30, visit the Roman Baths for a few hours, have a nice lunch at a famous fish and chips place, and spend the afternoon visiting the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre, turned into arriving at twelve, having tea and a scone for lunch before visiting the baths, and walking around the city for an hour before getting on the train back to Oxford.

And it was worth it. Bath is a lovely city, very different from London or Oxford, and worth seeing even for a few hours. But next time—and I hope there will be a next time—I'll try to visit when it's not the height of tourist season and spend a couple of days so I don't have to rush.

Sunday bird blogging

I haven't taken any good pictures of birds since I've been here, but this slightly blurry magpie on the Meadow Walk will do for now. At least you can see the beautiful blue of those feathers.

Back to Christ Church Meadow

I visited Christ Church Meadow my first day in Oxford, but I didn't include a picture of the actual meadow. I've now done the meadow walk—a 1.5 mile path circling the meadow—several times. Christ Church College is our next-door neighbor in Oxford, and if you go out the back gate of Merton it's a five minute walk to the meadow.

What still astonishes me is that it is an actual meadow—acres and acres of grass, in the middle of a city where land is almost as expensive as Manhattan. Which tells you how ridiculously wealthy Oxford colleges in general, and Christ Church College in particular, are.

Of course, it wouldn't be a meadow without cows.

Saturday reflections

Windows reflecting the buildings in St. Albans Quad.

Members only

The gate to the Fellows Garden.

I'm not a member of the college, obviously, but I do get to pretend for three weeks, and I confess that I get a thrill whenever I walk through this gate.

When I walked out of Hall after dinner a few nights ago, a group of tourists were standing in Merton Street peering through the gates by the Porter's Lodge. I tried very hard to look as though I belonged here, and since it was a formal night and I was wearing a dress and stockings, maybe I even succeeded.

Of course, I'm here to take a class and I'm really enjoying that as well. We meet every weekday from 9 to 12:30, with a tea and biscuit break at 10:30. We're studying the Victorian ghost story, and have been having some lively discussions about the difference between terror and horror, the reasons for the (very strange to an American) tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, and today, do vampire stories really count as ghost stories?

The accommodations...

...are fairly basic, as you can see. A small, rather monastic bedroom, and a very large sitting room. This is an undergraduate room, and would look much better with posters on the walls and books on the shelves. (The shower is surprisingly excellent though, with good pressure and lots of hot water.)

The furniture is comfortable enough if kind of clunky, but the carpeting is truly heinous. It reminds me of the scene in The Sound of Music where Captain von Trapp tells Maria she has to change her dress and she says that she doesn't have another. All of her clothes were given to the poor when she entered the convent, except for the dress she's wearing, because “the poor didn't want this one.”

But if I stick my head out of my sitting room window and look up, this is my view: Mob Quad, and behind it, Merton Chapel.

I can live with the carpet.

Chaucer's stairs

Obviously these stairs don't really date from the 14th century; at least I don't think so.

The friends who saw me take a nasty tumble a couple of weeks ago because of some broken 21st century pavement in Berkeley will probably be relieved to know that I do not have to drag my klutzy self up that spiral staircase—with the rope handrail!—to get to my room.

That's my door in the picture, and the staircase I take from the ground floor is old but wide, and has actual metal handrails on both sides. Which I use.

Mob Quad

I was lucky enough to be assigned a room here—the three windows on the left on the second floor are my room.

Mob Quad is usually described as the oldest quad in Oxford, and my building is the oldest part of the quad, built between 1310 and 1320. Yes, I am sleeping in a building that is more than 1000 years old. Never mind J.R.R. Tolkien—this was built twenty years before Chaucer was born.

Merton College

I have been putting off writing this post because I couldn't decide which picture of the stunningly picturesque college I should start with.

I finally decided to go with this—a small stone table in the Fellows Garden, where J.R.R. Tolkien used to sit and write. He may have written some or all of The Lord of the Rings here, or maybe he just graded student essays and scribbled notes to his relatives. It may be my favorite thing at Merton so far, and that's already a very long list.

If you sit at the table, this is your view, looking over the gardens and one wall of the Fellows Quad.

I'd like to think that if I sat there long enough I might be inspired to write something brilliant of my own—assuming of course that I could ever get accustomed enough to how beautiful it is here to make myself look away.

Muntjac deer

I encountered a new animal yesterday. There was a tiny deer in the field with the horses, and at first I assumed it was a stray fawn. But it was thick-bodied and obviously not a baby, and Google identified it as a Muntjac deer, also known as a barking deer. They're native to Southeast Asia, but were released to breed here by some idiot and have now made themselves quite at home all over England.

The picture with the horses in the background shows how small it is. (And as a bonus, there's a magpie by the foot of the horse on the right.)

Of course not everyone is into rowing

The paths are full of runners, walkers and bikers, and those who prefer more sedentary Sundays.

Sunday morning on the Thames

There are two rivers in Oxford: the Cherwell, which is small and sedate, suitable for punts and kayaks and paddleboats, and the Thames. This part of the Thames is supposedly “really” called the Isis, only acquiring the more famous name when it merges with a river called the Thame (singular) south of Oxford. But all the signs in the city refer to the river as the Thames, and the paths along it as the Thames walk, so much as I like the idea of a River Isis flowing past the dreaming spires of Oxford, there seems to be a consensus that this is the Thames, no matter what the guidebooks say.

The two rivers merge just below Christ Church Meadow. The buildings in the background of this picture are some of the boat houses of the various colleges at the point where the two rivers meet, and the conjoined river leaves all the frivolous punts and paddleboats behind. This is a serious river, full of serious rowers (and the occasional tour boat.)

I had no idea that Oxford was so full of waterways—there's a canal in addition to the rivers, and tributaries and channels and small inlets branching off of all of them. The walkways along the Thames are full of small arched Venetian bridges spanning all the small bodies of water feeding the larger ones. It's completely charming, and I particularly like that I can take the Thames Walk from my hotel to the Folly Bridge when I'm going to the city center, instead of walking on the street the whole way.

Sunday bird blogging

This woodpigeon was hiding in the grass, but you can really see that iridescent ruffled collar.

Five-day forecast

England in July.

It's actually beautiful this morning, sunny and warm enough to go without a jacket. All subject to change within the next five minutes, of course.

Not a hallucination

I saw these horses as we were driving into Oxford yesterday, and when we turned into the hotel driveway, I was surprised and charmed to see that they were right next door to the hotel.

But by the time I'd checked in, washed up, and grabbed my camera, they were gone. There were a few crows pecking at the grasses in the field, but no horses. And when I came back from my long walk around central Oxford, the field was still empty and I was starting to wonder if I'd imagined them. Horses? In the city?

But they were back this morning. It was overcast and I only had my phone camera, but those are most definitely horses.

Saturday reflections

A lookout mirror on a small street across from Merton College, where I'll be staying starting on Monday.

View from Magdalen Bridge

I didn't take many pictures yesterday, and by the time I took these pictures of punts in the Cherwell I could barely hoist the camera. So they're a little blurry, but I like them anyway.

Radcliffe Camera

This is one of the iconic buildings in Oxford, part of the Bodleian Library, and it's a sign of how tired I was yesterday that when I saw it peeking around this building at the end of a narrow street, I just thought, “Oh, there's the Radcliffe Camera,” and couldn't be bothered to walk a block and see the whole thing.

Oxford

Christ Church Meadow, on a ridiculously beautiful summer afternoon. I think that's the cathedral in the background, but I will have to verify at a later time when I am in less of a stupor.

I got to Oxford yesterday afternoon, after a mercifully drama-free flight, and I had booked a private transfer from the airport instead of taking the bus-plus-taxi or two-trains-plus-taxi that getting to Oxford from Heathrow would otherwise have required. (It was surprisingly reasonable, but the convenience and comfort of having someone simply pick me up outside customs and drive me to my hotel after an overnight flight would have been worth a lot more than I paid.)

I walked much farther than I should have yesterday afternoon but I kept being lured on by yet another interesting building or park or bridge ahead, until I was an exhausted, aching mess. I'm planning to take it easy today. I'm here for three weeks. I will have time to look around.

Although I can tell already that you could live here for years and never see it all.

Urban poetry

Here are some fun shadows and geometries from my recent trip before I leave on the next adventure: a bridge over the Truckee River in Reno, and the San Francisco Bay Ferry terminal in Richmond.

Golden hour

Some of the grasses on the verge in the golden light of late afternoon, and a house taking the theme of native plants to a beautiful conclusion

So succulent

This photo of a plant in the garden in Berkeley looks like it has a filter on it, but it doesn't.

There is a noticeable shift in Berkeley towards using succulents and (presumably) native grasses in the parkway strips on the sidewalk verges and islands instead of flowers.

The art of Drakes Beach

I thought this photo looked like a painting, so I helped it out with a little filter.

Sunday bird blogging

A pair of gulls hanging out on Drakes Beach.

California has worn me quite thin

I've had Jimmy Buffett as an earworm ever since I got home Monday night—well, technically, Tuesday morning—though it wasn't California's fault. There was a problem with air traffic controller staffing at Newark, though I didn't know that until after I got home. I stayed at an airport hotel Sunday night because I was scheduled for an early flight Monday. That flight was cancelled, and I was booked on an afternoon flight instead. Then that flight was cancelled, and I was put on the redeye.

I had a doctor's appointment Tuesday morning, but I wouldn't have wanted a redeye anyway. I logged in to reschedule, and there was only one option, a flight leaving in less than an hour, with a stopover in Austin. I dashed to the airport, made the flight, and got to Austin on time. Where we waited. And waited. Our two-hour layover turned into seven hours, and it was almost two in the morning when we finally landed at Newark.

Not that we were able to disembark; there was no one available to drive the jetway. So we waited some more, and I finally got to bed at four am.

I am starting to understand why people hate to travel. But here's a flower from the garden where I stayed in Berkeley, a really magical place that was maybe, maybe worth all the stress of getting home.

Sunday bird blogging

A fairly terrible picture of a scrub jay enjoying breakfast in the garden here.

Drakes Beach

I haven't taken many pictures in Berkeley, and haven't processed most of those I did take, but here are a few from our excursion to Point Reyes on Friday.

Drakes Beach is backed by steep sandstone cliffs, which the wind and water have sculpted into beautiful patterns. The winds were on display Friday, and I could only stand to walk on the beach for maybe twenty minutes, but it was worth being in the grindstone of the flung sand and water to be able to breathe in that fresh air.

Eden

My AirBnB in North Berkeley has a wonderful garden, lush and half-wild, full of bees and butterflies. And I have been spending a lot of time in it after a bad fall on the sidewalk on Sunday night which left me bruised and a little shaky. I have a lot of reading still to do for my Oxford program next month, and I have found that sitting in the shade in the garden and watching the swallowtails and hummingbirds makes it possible (barely) to wade through the impenetrable thickets of Henry James's prose.

At any rate, I have managed to finish The Turn of the Screw, and am pleased to realize that I still hate it every bit as much as I did when I was younger and much more inclined to decide I liked certain books because I felt that I should rather than because I actually did.

I'm very glad that I never have to try to teach my English students to parse something like this:

It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did!

The Truckee River

The trees and the water provided some respite from the heat, and the overwhelming Reno-ness of it all.

Urban poetry

I find it hard to believe that anyone actually rides these things around downtown Reno, but they can't be merely decorative.

So Reno

It's never too early to stop in at the slot machines or the wedding chapel.