Sunday bird blogging

King penguins and seals at Elsehul Bay in South Georgia on New Year's Day.

I've mentioned that I've been taking many more buses this year because my bad knee keeps me from walking as much as I'm used to. I took a crowded bus down Broadway on my way home from class yesterday, and though I had a book I was too tired to look at it and watched my fellow passengers instead.

And was struck, surprisingly, by the basic decency I saw. People were jostling for standing room with several large suitcases, a stroller, and one overloaded shopping cart, and maneuvering your way to the rear door to get off wasn't for the faint-hearted, but everyone was—nice. They tried to move out of the way where they could, and a blind man and a woman with a walker boarded and were immediately given seats.

It was a little bit of reassurance in these very dark times.

Urban poetry

Here's an old picture: a foggy wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2019. It has been so unrelentingly humid here recently (like 90% or close to it) that any outdoor exertion, however mild, leaves me literally soaked to the skin with perspiration.

Which for some reason reminded me of the thick fogs in Nova Scotia, which were just as drenching but not nearly so unpleasant.

Sunday bird blogging

Another towhee (or maybe the same towhee) in Berkeley a while back.

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus down Fifth Avenue after class—the knee was very achy and there was no possibility of walking all the way home—and when a bus finally came, it was so crowded it didn't even stop. The MTA app said the next bus wasn't due for another ten minutes, so I sat down on a bench by the park wall and closed my eyes. And one of my fellow passengers came over to get me a couple of minutes later. “A bus is coming! And it's empty!” I would probably have missed it if she hasn't alerted me and that little kindness made my day, almost as much as the student who'd told me my class was “awesome” earlier that afternoon.

It's difficult to feel optimistic about anything right now, so I try to revel in the positive moments when I can.

Wild, wild horses -- we'll ride them someday

With the country growing progressively more insane by the hour, I find this picture of a wild horse wandering along the top of a ridge in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota very calming.

Just for fun

I took this picture at a rest stop somewhere in Minnesota: Doritos in mustard, ketchup, and pickle flavors. I've never seen these in New York—or the taco pizza, baby back ribs or fried pickle ranch potato chips in the next aisle—so I had not realized how much American ingenuity goes into coming up with new kinds of junk food.

The highway convenience stores in the Midwest are quite an experience. Some of the bigger ones have a hundred different kinds of prepared food, as well as the packaged stuff, but even the smaller ones have an amazing variety of different flavors of chips, cookies, beef jerky and candy, while those of us hoping for something slightly healthier are limited to a few shriveled salads dying of loneliness at the far end of an aisle that might as well be labeled Afterthoughts.

I have been to 7-11's in Tokyo that had candy offerings in some truly unexpected flavors—and colors—and in the UK you can buy crisps (potato chips) in roast chicken or steak, ale and caramelised onion flavors, but I think the United States remains the undisputed junk food capital of the world.

Sunday, oops, Monday bird blogging

A snowy egret wading in San Francisco Bay.

I really did mean to post this yesterday, but the amount of work after the first class of the semester is not much smaller than the preparation before the class. I have to grade the assessment tests and the writing samples. I have to post all the class materials in Google Classroom. I have to send followup emails to the students who registered but didn't come on Saturday. I have to verify all the email addresses and phone numbers and create a WhatsApp group. I have to crop and label the photos I take of each student so we can all learn each other's names. I made a good start yesterday, but need to finish up today. This week I have two tutoring sessions, several appointments, and a professional development class, and, oh, I also need to finish prep for the next class.

I love love LOVE this job, but it is part-time only in theory.

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam

Classes start on Saturday, so I'm buried in prep. My theme this semester is folk tales and folk songs, so I've found myself walking around singing Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo and Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strummin' on the old banjo. I don't know if kids even sing those songs anymore, but I still remember all the words.

I don't have any pictures of deer handy, but here's a buffalo and an antelope, home, home on the range of Custer State Park in South Dakota.

Sunday bird blogging

A California towhee enjoying the sun earlier this summer.

Saturday reflections

I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

Black and white Black Hills

 

More Black Hills woods and water

The Black Hills

Since I was looking at South Dakota anyway...

The Black Hills are a national forest rather than a national park. I was expecting some interesting geology, because I never knew that the “black” in the name refers to how the hills are so covered with trees that they appear black. (Well, if you say so.)

But it is quite beautiful, and very different from the eastern half of the state.

Long ago and far away

That's how it feels, anyway. But this was less than two months ago, in South Dakota.

This is Spearfish Canyon, in the Black Hills. The waterfall was a short hike through some beautiful forest.

Saturday reflections

Here's something more recent and local for a change: cars waiting for a light on Walker Street in Lower Manhattan on Thursday.

I had just had my annual eye exam, and with my eyes dilated the patterns on these windshields looked practically psychedelic.

Teddy Hall

Continuing my peeks through the porter's lodge gates at some of the lesser-known constituent colleges of Oxford, here is St Edmund Hall, rather charmingly known as Teddy Hall.

This is one of the older colleges, dating from sometime in the 13th century, and alumni include Keir Starmer and Terry Jones. That large tub of flowers in the middle of the lawn is actually a medieval well (obviously.) I believe that the newer building you can see behind the quad is student accomodations; I like that while the gable shapes on top echo those in the quad, it looks modern and practical and comfortable. Much as I love staying in Mob Quad, you can get a little tired of the 14th century.

Urban poetry

A street of colorful houses in Oxford, near the Mathematical Institute.

Still more Holywell

The last two pictures. I'm assuming the stick cross is some kind of memorial for the Irish philosopher because of the green ribbon.

To kiss and tell

That's what is carved on the stone on top of the stack in front—an odd sentiment for a cemetery, I think.

What's almost as odd are those leaning crosses. At first I assumed they had been mounted on monuments and had fallen, and someone had propped them up, but there's nowhere to mount them on those stones. So I am assuming this is deliberate, and as those stone stacks don't have any names and don't appear to be headstones or monuments, maybe the crosses have some other purpose or meaning?

I found a lot of information about this cemetery online; in the 1840's the churchyards in Oxford were full, and, like Highgate Cemetery in London, Holywell was one of several new cemeteries that were built to meet the demand. It was opened in 1848 on land donated by Merton. But I can't find any mention of these stones with the leaning crosses. I'll find someone to ask when I'm back there next summer (going back is the plan, anyway.)

More Holywell

Solitude in the city

I visited Holywell a few times while I was in Oxford, and I never saw anyone else there. I sat on a bench and read, I watched the magpies hopping around, I took pictures, and I enjoyed the solitude and the near-silence. (The cemetery entrance is on a busy road, but the traffic sounds were muted and seemed very far away.)

I've only been in Oxford during the summer, when the crowds are tourists rather than students, many of them on day trips from London, so my experience probably isn't typical. But one of the things I love is how easy it is to get away from the mobs. Of course I was lucky to be able to retreat behind the walls of Merton, where there are benches and gardens to spend time in, but I've found unexpected alone time on Addison's Walk at Magdalen, along the canals, down side streets, and even occasionally at Christ Church Meadow.

Holywell Cemetery

This small cemetery in central Oxford is a short walk from the hotel where I stayed for a few days before the Merton program started. The entrance is set back from the street, and the sign is so inconspicuous that it's easy to walk past—and I have—without noticing it. I happened to be reading a mystery set in Oxford where the characters met here, and one of them said she'd never realized the cemetery was there.

I was curious, so I looked it up on the map and was surprised to see that it was just up the street from where I was sitting.

Saturday reflections

Punts under Magdalen Bridge.

Urban poetry

High Street in Oxford on a sultry summer night.

I had taken the daytime flight to Heathrow, so it was after nine PM when I got to my hotel in Oxford. And it was hot. The temperatures had been in the 90's that day, and my hotel room had one small window and no air conditioning. (It did have two fans, but the sensation of having hot air blasted at me reminded me of South Dakota, and not in a good way.)

I went out for a walk to stretch my legs and after only a couple of blocks I desperately wanted some cold water. But all the shops were closed, and I didn't want to sit in a bar just to drink some fizzy water. This food truck had water, which was cold only in the sense that it was maybe a few degrees cooler than the air, but I was grateful to get it.

Random things I saw at Magdalen College

 

The Hall

This is very similar to the one at Merton, which also has the tables set in three long rows. But at Merton, only the center table has chairs; the other two have benches, which are really difficult to get in and out of when it's crowded. Unless, of course, you're eighteen years old.

On the other hand

I love the college bar (called the Old Kitchen Bar). I would love to curl up on that sofa with a cup of tea and a good book.

I did get a coffee in the adjoining cafe, but chose to have it on the terrace outside overlooking the river.

For example...

I took this picture through a window; it is apparently a meeting room.

And mostly it looks fairly comfortable, if a little dowdy. But that carpet! It's almost as bad as the one in my room at Merton.

15th century paint job

Just kidding—I'm sure it's been touched up in the last 200 years. This is part of the covered walkway around all four sides of the Cloister. There are some of the typical Oxford death-defying stairs without railings that presumably lead to student rooms, and a door intriguingly labeled the Cardinal Wolsey Room (he was also a Magdalen alum) which Google informs me is just a private dining room.

There is something endearing about how much bad paint and shabby furniture lie underneath the dreaming spires of the Oxford colleges.

The Great Quad

This is more typical Oxford. Magdalen College was founded in 1458; this quad, also called the Cloister, was built at the end of that century.

Here be badgers

That lovely gate marks one of the boundaries between the wilder parts of the college—the footpath, the woods, the river—and the more cultivated and manicured areas. I loved the sign on it.

Magdalen Bridge

The bridge sits at the top of the High Street, so I've crossed it many times, usually stopping to look at the punts on the Cherwell below. But from the footpath you can see the bridge from below and watch the punts as they go through the arches.

The unexpected rusticity

Another bench I passed along the way, and grasses growing along a small stream. The crowds and traffic on the High Street seem very far away here; even the college itself, with its quads and spires, feels miles away.

There are allegedly otters and kingfishers in these woods, but I didn't see any. I had to look hard for the deer!

The Water Meadow

I sat on that bench for a while, hoping the deer would come out from under the trees where they were hiding. They did not.

Addison's Walk

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

That's from a poem by C.S. Lewis, a Fellow of Magdalen College, referencing this footpath in the college, where he often walked. (There is a plaque with the poem on one of the gates.) Unlike the walk around Christ Church Meadow, it's not open to everyone; it's inside the college and you have to buy a ticket to visit.

I went there early on a Saturday morning, and while the other tourists clustered in the quads, I mostly had this walk to myself, through these long tunnels of trees around the water meadow where the college's herd of deer live in the summer.

Because of course they have a herd of deer in the middle of the college in the 21st century. Christ Church College has cows, doesn't it?

Eating and shopping

Except for that big castle and some nice parks, central Windsor seems to consist entirely of shops and restaurants, and a few hotels where you can recuperate in order to do more eating and shopping.

Many of the larger old buildings—like the old train station on the top left—have been converted into arcades, full of still more shops and restaurants. But it all felt very jolly, with all the Union Jacks fluttering in the summer breeze, and my Disdain-O-Meter never registered above zero.