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.

York streets

Two other street scenes near the Minster. Less touristed, but the medieval is always a presence.

The non-Potter Shambles

There are actually only a few Harry Potter-oriented businesses on the street, and it is authentically medieval, with some of the buildings dating from the 14th century. It was once known as the Great Flesh Shambles (shambles meaning stall or bench) because it was where all the butchers had their businesses. The jettied floors overhanging the street kept it cool and shady, better for keeping the meat fresh.

These streets, for example

One obvious difference between the two locations is size: Oxford is much larger and more urban. The city center with most of the college buildings is surrounded by miles of ordinary English neighborhoods with homes and businesses on every side. (I've heard people say that Cambridge is a university first and a town second, and Oxford is the other way around.)

But in the city centers, they are a lot alike. These two Cambridge streets—Free School Lane, by the old Cavendish Laboratory, and Trinity Street, home to the college—could easily be plopped down in the middle of Oxford.

Urban poetry

It doesn't get much more urban than this: Times Square on a winter's evening this past February.

I seldom carry a real camera around any more, and can't remember why I happened to have it with me that day. Maybe I thought I'd take something I could use in my class this semester—the theme was photography—but it took me three months to get around to looking at the pictures and classes ended last Saturday.

Urban poetry

(I thought I must have posted this one, but if I did I can't find it.)

A row of brownstones on the Upper East Side last August. It's very February today, gray and rainy, so this picture looks especially attractive to me. And it's no longer raining inside my apartment, so I can actually focus on other things.

Regent

The Co-op, and the view from main street, which may be the most North Dakota thing ever

Saturday reflections

A not very interesting look at the main street in Regent, North Dakota. It's the terminus of the Enchanted Highway, a series of scrap metal sculptures along 32 miles of road through farm country. We met the artist, Gary Greff, who started the project in 1989. He now gets a subsidy from the state, but for many years he financed the project on his own.

Faringdon

This is the main street in Faringdon, a historic market town on the edge of the Cotswolds, about 20 miles from Oxford.

I ended up staying there for two nights after my case of suspected appendicitis derailed my plans to go to Yorkshire. I spent the last night of the Oxford program in the John Radcliffe Hospital, and when the surgeon agreed to release me the next day, it was “on a lead”—on the condition that I stay in Oxford for the next 48 hours and return to the hospital immediately if my symptoms got worse. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to find a last-minute hotel room in Oxford on a summer weekend, ideally one that wouldn't cost as much as an Uber to Yorkshire. (I had actually checked the cost earlier that morning, when the painkillers and anti-nausea drugs had kicked in and I was delusional enough to think that maybe I could still go to Haworth if I just didn't have to haul my luggage on and off the three trains the usual journey entailed. It would have cost £700, and I wasn't delusional enough to be willing to pay that, even before I'd received the doctor's orders not to leave town.)

So that is how I ended up in Faringdon. After I was discharged, I took an Uber back to Merton, where they had kindly delayed clearing out my room. I took a shower, checked out Hotels.com and decided that Faringdon, though not technically Oxford, was close enough, and more importantly, had an available room in an old coaching inn at a reasonable price.

The town is charming, the inn was lovely, and once the Uber dropped me off I crawled into the very comfortable bed and slept for twelve hours.

The Ice Cream Capitol of the World

The main street in Le Mars. You can see a couple of the giant ice cream cones celebrating the town's status as ice cream capital.

Urban poetry

This view looking down on an intersection in Midtown Manhattan encapsulates so much of what I love about New York: the geometric shapes of the buildings and the lines in the crosswalks, and the amazing patterns of dappled light on the asphalt, reflecting off the buildings above.

The Library Walk

This is one of the plaques in the sidewalk on East 41st Street, leading to Fifth Avenue and the main branch of the New York Public Library. We're witnessing the dangers of ignorance, and gleeful misinformation, right now.

Jane Austen's Bath

I would have loved to spend more time wandering through the streets of Georgian houses in the city. I had really never seen much of England outside London until this summer; although I used to dream about Cornwall and Yorkshire, there were always places I wanted to see more. If I go back to Oxford next summer I may have to travel around the country a little while I'm there.

Magpie Lane

Posting a few odds and ends until I have time to process the next batch of pictures.

This charmingly named street leads from the High Street to Merton, so I usually walked it at least twice a day, avoiding those cobblestones whenever possible.

That's not possible on the street that runs in front of the college, which is still all cobblestones, no asphalt. Fortunately there are sidewalks.

Streets of Ephesus

 

In the Old Town

Most of the Old Town was crowded, with shoppers and musicians and carolers, and families enjoying the beautiful weather, but I found lots of empty streets to wander through.

Evening in the Sacred Valley

I missed this picture earlier. We'd stopped in Urubamba (a town, not the river) to visit a ceramics studio on our way to the hotel in the Sacred Valley.

It was late afternoon/early evening and I was shooting straight into the setting sun, but I still like this picture. You can see two of the tuk-tuks that were the primary mode of transportation there.

Urban poetry

A typically unlovely West Side street, with a jumble of architecture and those odd beams connecting the fences. But it's hard for me to express how beautiful I found it, walking home from breakfast on a lovely spring morning.

All Covid restrictions have been lifted. Of course I'm still free to take as many precautions as I like, and it will be a long time before the world feels less dangerous to me, so not much is going to change in my life at the moment. 

Still. I just hope the millions of idiots who refuse to get vaccinated don't drag us all down with them.

Snowy streets

If you're going to be spending Christmas inside a real-life Christmas card, snow is a must.