Sunday bird blogging

Doctor's appointments and the usual rounds of chores have eaten up all my free time, so no blogging recently, but I did find this nice picture of a red-tailed hawk in the park from a few years ago. It was doing the leg shakes and wing flaps hawks do when they've been bathing or just want to shake off the dust and get their feathers re-aligned before they take off.

Sunday bird blogging

Like chocolate, penguin pictures are always a good idea.

These king penguins were going for a swim in Fortuna Bay, in South Georgia.

Saturday reflections

Taken on the way to school this morning.

My knee replacement surgery is two months from today. Mostly I am able to get around, but I desperately miss walking. Just walking.

I hobble, I limp, I lurch, but it's walking only in a technical sense of the word, in that I manage to transport myself from one location to another. Slowly and gracelessly, but I get there eventually. Doing it for more than a couple of blocks is exhausting though, despite the industrial-strength prescription NSAIDS I am taking.

Which I forgot to take on Thursday, and then again this morning. I took a pill as soon as I got home, and by tomorrow I assume that all of the screaming joints will have quieted down again, but I am so ready for this to be over.

Not that I can blame my unmedicated state for my bonehead move of the day. I have braces for my knee and ankles, so getting dressed is more complicated than it used to be. This morning I put on a shirt from the closet and grabbed a clean pair of socks, then moved to the chair where I strap myself into all my medical accoutrements. When I was ready to put on the ankle braces, socks, and shoes, I couldn't find the socks. I knew I had just had them, and they were nowhere to be found. So I hobbled back to the dresser, got another pair of socks, put on my shoes, and left for school.

Later, I was standing in my classroom chatting with the early arrivals when I happened to glance down and saw the missing pair of socks poking out of my cleavage. Clearly I had needed another free hand while I was gathering clothes and shoes and just stuffed the socks down my shirt temporarily.

The students thought it was hilarious, and once I got over the embarrassment, so did I.

Astronomy Tuesday

I love this image of NGC 4753, a lenticular galaxy 60 million light years from Earth in Virgo (lenticular meaning it's not quite an elliptical galaxy and not quite a spiral, but something in between). Those twisting lanes of dust, probably the result of a galactic collision long ago, are strange enough, but that golden glow makes it thoroughly spooky.

Image Credit: NASA , ESA , Hubble ; Processing: Alexander Reinartz

Urban poetry

Juxtapositions in Hell's Kitchen.

The building in the foreground is the Interborough Rapid Transit Powerhouse. It was originally the power station for the IRT, New York's first subway line (and I had lived here for decades before I knew what the letters IRT stood for). Now it's part of the city's steam system. It was designed by Stanford White and completed in 1905, and that's an era of New York history that will never come again—when a commission for a distinctly unglamorous building is given to a star architect and built in Renaissance Revival style.

Saturday reflections

The GM Building in Midtown.

I had met a friend for breakfast, and I realized how seldom I leave the apartment for anything purely social these days. The heavy-duty NSAIDS I am taking definitely improve my mobility, but there are still many days when I only go out if I have to, and those reasons are almost always work, chores and the apparently endless stream of doctor's visits. But for food and conversation? I'd almost forgotten what that was like.

Urban poetry

I always love these juxtapositions of different building styles in Manhattan. This was on the Upper East Side a couple of weeks ago. (One consolation of being forced to get a new phone is that the photo quality is noticeably better, especially since I also lost my Olympus in the same incident.)

We're having an unseasonably early nor'easter; fortunately, where I am, it's just steady rain.

Saturday reflections

Here's a picture of reflections in a Manhattan bus, taken towards the end of last year. It got buried in the flurry of end of semester class pictures, and I apparently never even looked at it.

Urban poetry

This image of Paris at midnight, taken from the International Space Station, was taken in 2015, and has probably been sitting in my blog folder ever since then. But better late than never.

Image credit: ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center

Astronomy Tuesday

I haven't done one of these in a long time, but I saw this image on Instagram and wanted to share it: Jupiter peeking from behind a crescent moon.

If you really zoom in you can see two of its moons, Io (on the left) and Ganymede (on the right.) It's startling, to me anyway, how distant the moons are from the planet. (Of course, our moon is also surprisingly far from Earth when the two of them are photographed from space, and I'm still astonished every time I see it.)

Image credit: AJ Smadi (www.instagram.com/aj.smadi/)

Saturday morning meeting

A little urban poetry (those big windows hanging over Broadway putting all of the people inside on display), a few reflections.

Taken on the Upper West Side yesterday on my way to teach the first class of the semester. I was very glad that I no longer have a job where I might be required to attend a meeting on a Saturday morning; although I was on my way to work, I hadn't already spent Monday through Friday in similar conference rooms, unlike I suspect most of the people in that room.

Urban poetry

It's the sad anniversary of 9/11, and classes start tomorrow and I'm nervous about how I'm going to manage with limited mobility, so here's some serenity: a tree and a tree house in 6BC, a community garden in the East Village.

Urban poetry

A laundromat in the East Village a few months ago.

One last look at Merton

One last picture from Merton, from Oxford, and probably from England, at least for now.

I just love the architecture there.

Branwell's room

This installation, showing how Branwell's room might have looked in the 1830's when he was pursuing his art and writing, was produced by the production designer for the Sally Wainwright Brontë film To Walk Invisible.

One of the frequent criticisms of that film was that there was too much Branwell in it. Which I think is a fair comment—at times, it does feel as if you have to peek behind all the Branwell drama in the foreground to catch a glimpse of what his sisters were doing. But that's what it's like with an addict in the family; I know from sad experience how they act as a kind of black hole sucking all the life and energy around them into the vortex of their own endless neediness.

The story that Branwell set off for London to enroll in the Royal Academy of Art, spent all of his money getting drunk and then returned home claiming that he had been robbed, may not be true, but it is not implausible. He was a talented artist and writer (Charlotte cribbed part of her first novel The Professor from one of the Angrian stories Branwell wrote) but not as talented as he believed himself to be. He tried to make a living as a portrait painter in Bradford, but there were too many better painters in the area for him to succeed. He worked for a time at an isolated railway station but was fired, and then lost the job Anne got for him as tutor in the family where she had been a governess for several years after he had an affair with his employer's wife (costing Anne her job as well—she felt she had no choice but to resign.)

But even before the horrors of the last few years of his life, the frequent raging arguments begging money from Patrick so he could buy gin, passing out and setting his bedclothes on fire so that Patrick was forced to sleep with him every night, there was the anger and resentment his sisters must have felt at seeing the opportunities and privilege he had enjoyed as the only son squandered. And knowing they could never rely on him if their father died and they lost their home.

After the book of poems they published anonymously only sold two copies, they turned to writing novels. It was as much a practical decision as an artistic one, if not exactly a guarantee of success. Their only other option was being teachers or governesses, and both Charlotte and Emily had already failed to make a success at that. But it turned out that writing novels was something they were very, very good at.

The children's study

(That's how the servants referred to it.) This overgrown closet was their playroom, where they invented their famous imaginary kingdoms, inspired by a box of toy soldiers bought as a gift for Branwell. They play-acted stories, and wrote tiny, hand-sewn books and literary journals, complete with advertisements, about their characters.

Originally all four worked together on one group of stories, about a city called Glass Town, but Anne and Emily broke away to create their own country, Gondal, while Glass Town became Angria and belonged to Charlotte and Branwell. Some of the Angria writings survive, but there are only a few poems about Gondal (although some of Wuthering Heights may have started as Gondal stories.)

Even in their mid-twenties, Emily and Anne were still pretending to be their Gondal characters. In her diary paper after she and Anne took a brief trip to York, Emily doesn't mention anything they saw, only that “during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosobelle Esraldan, Ella and Julian Egramont Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Firzaphnold escaping from the Palaces of Instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans.”

The kitchen

Mr Brontë's successor, John Wade, made extensive changes to the parsonage, adding an extension and moving the kitchen (apparently he didn't understand that the building was a future shrine to the previous inhabitants) so this isn't the kitchen the Brontës used, although the furniture, dishes, and utensils here did belong to the family.

The Reverend Brontë's study

Both Anne and Emily played the piano—Emily in particular was a skilled musician—but Charlotte had been discouraged from learning because of her extreme nearsightedness.

A few years after Anne's death, Patrick had the piano moved upstairs to one of the bedrooms, possibly so he no longer had to look at an instrument that no longer had anyone to play it.

The dining room

This is what I most wanted to see at the parsonage: the room, and the table, where those seven novels were written. (This is near the front entrance, and I would have come back to spend more time there, but I didn't realize that, for crowd control reasons, the museum has one-way traffic. You look at the dining room, kitchen, and study on the first floor, then it's up the stairs to see the bedrooms and exhibits on the second floor. You go down by a different staircase and exit through the gift shop.)

The medallion above the sofa is a portrait of Branwell Brontë by his friend J. B. Leyland. Emily Brontë is believed to have died on that sofa, after refusing to see any doctors until a few hours before she died.

When Charlotte Brontë's friend and first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, visited the parsonage in 1853, she could hear Charlotte walking in the dining room below her bedroom at night. One of the servants, Martha Brown, told her how the three sisters had spent evenings walking around the table, reading from and discussing their writing, late into the night. “Miss Emily walked as long as she could, and when she died Miss Anne and Miss Brontë took it up - and now my heart aches to hear Miss Brontë walking, walking on alone.”.

I've written that I often find Charlotte Brontë difficult to like, but it's impossible not to feel enormous sympathy for her.

The Parsonage

I'd seen many pictures of it, so I wasn't surprised by how very ordinary a building it is. The stone buildings on the main street of Haworth look more like what you'd expect the birthplace of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre to resemble, instead of this staid, square 18th century Georgian.

More of the churchyard

I'm not usually creeped out by graveyards, but I admit that knowing the history makes this cemetery seem very creepy indeed.

And the wind didn't help, blasting through the trees and around the gravestones, freezing my hands like Cathy's ghost in Wuthering Heights, even though it was rather warm the days I was in Haworth.

The churchyard

This is very different from the one the Brontës knew, and that's a good thing. Patrick Brontë had fought for many years to improve sanitation in Haworth; in 1838 the average age of death was 19 years, as bad as the worst slums in London. The local property owners fought him for years because they didn't want to pay higher taxes for improvements, but in 1850 the national Board of Health finally sent an inspector, Benjamin Herschel Babbage. His report found that in addition to a shocking shortage of toilets—69 for 2500 people—and the resulting overflow of sewage, the village's water was also being polluted by the graveyard. It sat uphill from the village, and material from decomposing bodies ran directly into the water supply. There were annual outbreaks of typhoid, as well as cholera and dysentery. (Ironically, this wasn't an issue at the parsonage; it was on the other side of the churchyard from the village, and had its own well. Unfortunately, clean water didn't protect them from tuberculosis.)

After the Babbage report, headstones which had previously been laid flat on the ground, preventing natural decomposition from taking place, were pulled upright. Trees were also planted then—there were no trees when the Brontës lived there—so their roots could help purify the contaminated soil.

Landscape minus wind farm

This landscape is actually still inside Haworth, so wouldn't be affected by the proposed energy park. It's another view from the footpath behind the parsonage, and the field beyond.

I limped very slowly across the first part of that field, which probably amused the sheep—if they bothered to notice that I was there.

Wuthering Wind Farm

I can attest that the winds around Haworth are indeed wuthering, and I'm sure they're even more enthusiastic out on the moors. But although I'm a big supporter of green energy, I can understand the opposition to this project, which would create an energy park with 34 wind turbines on the moors outside Haworth, visible from the traditional hikes to Top Withens, possibly an inspiration for the house in Wuthering Heights.

The supporters say that the tourists will still come, they'll just see a few wind turbines along with the landscape. And the opponents say, Do you even hear yourself?

Away from Main Street

My lack of mobility meant that I couldn't really see the countryside away from the village—I would have loved to do the hike to the Brontë falls—but in such a small village I didn't have to walk very far to feel I was officially on the outskirts of town.

More Main Street

I loved this steep stony street, with the old buildings and the view of the moors beyond. But looking at these pictures does give me an awful sense-memory of standing awkwardly on the cobblestones trying to balance myself with my cane before hobbling on down the street. I'm focusing instead on a different memory, of sitting in a cafe across from the Black Bull eating a really delicious scone with some coffee.

Main Street today

One thing I really appreciated about Haworth was that although busloads of tourists descend there every day to visit the parsonage museum, it isn't at all kitschy. The main street has cafes and pubs and guest houses but no souvenir shops. You can't buy a Brontë sisters t-shirt or a Heathcliff refrigerator magnet or a mug that says, Reader, I married him. There's a bookstore, but it mostly sells—books.

The museum gift shop does have some souvenirs, but they're all very tasteful; the only refrigerator magnet just says Brontë Parsonage Museum. (I did buy a button that said Team Anne but sadly it was stolen with my purse.)

The village at night

I took this picture of Main Street at night from my room. Swap those electric lights for lanterns, and it probably looked much the same in the nineteenth century.

The Old White Lion

And yet one more inn at the top of the main street, which has also been there since the 18th century—Haworth was clearly busier on a Saturday night in the 1800's than I would have expected.

I stayed in this inn, in the room on the second floor looking down over Main Street.

Welcome Dogs & Muddy Boots

This inn is on the other side of the church steps from the Black Bull. I loved the sign on the back of the building promising that dogs and muddy boots are welcome.

The Black Bull

In a village of only a few thousand people in the 1840's (and fewer than 7000 today) all of the landmarks will of course be close together. But I was still surprised that the Black Bull pub, a frequent hangout for Branwell Brontë, was so close to the church. As in, those are the steps to the church on the right in this picture. The parsonage is maybe a five to ten-minute walk, depending on how drunk you are.

From Haworth Parsonage to the church

Okay, the path to the church did lead past the graveyard, so there was always that Victorian memento mori going on (not that anyone was likely to forget that in Haworth, which had a shockingly low life expectancy compared to similar villages in Yorkshire) but I did think the sign marking where the gate had been was unnecessarily morbid. It could have just stopped with noting that it was the site of the gate used by the Brontë family, and left off the “through which they were carried to their final resting place in the church.”

Inside the church

St Michael and All Angels

The church in Haworth was rebuilt in the late 1800's; only the tower remains from the original medieval church. Patrick Brontë was the minister here for more than 40 years, until his own death in 1861. He outlived all six of his children.

Anne Brontë

Branwell Brontë died in September 1848 and Emily Brontë died less than three months later, both of tuberculosis, aggravated in Branwell's case by alcoholism and opiate addiction. By the following spring, their sister Anne was also dying of tuberculosis.

In one of the episodes that make it difficult to like Charlotte Brontë, she found numerous excuses why Anne's wish for a change of air and a trip to the sea should not happen. She kept saying she wanted to wait until Anne was stronger—In short I wish we could gain time and see how she gets on—while Anne was well aware that time was the one thing she didn't have. Charlotte even instructed her best friend, Ellen Nussey, how to respond when Anne wrote to her asking for her support.

When both Anne's doctor and their father, Patrick Brontë, said that they thought the trip was a good idea, Charlotte was forced to give in. Charlotte and Anne traveled to York with Ellen Nussey on Thursday, May 24, and spent the night there. Before leaving for Scarborough the following day, they stopped in York Minster, which Anne very much wanted to see again. Ellen Nussey wrote that as Anne looked up at the stonework, she said, “If finite power can do this what is the ...” before becoming too emotional to continue.

They arrived in Scarborough on Friday; Anne died on Monday. She's buried in a churchyard there instead of in the family vault in Haworth. I would have liked to visit her grave in Scarborough, but I couldn't face another train ride from York, or the steep climb up to the church on a cliff over the sea, but I did think about her when I was sitting in the Minster on that stifling hot day in York. I was glad that she got to experience that beauty again before she died. I was glad she got to go back to Scarborough, which she had visited many times when she was working as a governess, and had one more donkey cart ride on the beach.

This is the letter Anne wrote to Ellen Nussey on April 5. (Besides being a wonderful example of cross writing, a Victorian method of saving paper, I am amazed by her beautiful handwriting when she was so ill.)

But I have a more serious reason than this for my impatience of delay: the doctors say that change of air or removal to a better climate would hardly ever fail of success in consumptive cases if the remedy were taken in time, but the reason why there are so many disappointments is, that it is generally deferred till it is too late. . . . I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect, in the hope that you, dear Miss Nussy, would give as much of your company as you possibly could to Charlotte and be a sister to her in my stead. But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa’s and Charlotte’s sakes, but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practise – humble and limited indeed – but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose.

She was twenty-nine years old.