Out of Town, in the Meantime...

Bill writes: We'll be out of town for the next few days, going to Granada, Spain to see the Alhambra. As soon as we return, our visitors begin arriving. So we owe you all a bunch of blog postings, from such things as the Spitfire Exhibit, the Farraday Museum, Chichester, Open London, and the Carnival.

In the meantime, here are just a few pictures from these events to hold you until we get back.

The mood…

Aline writes: I thought I would post an update on the mood in London these days. Besides the ecstasy due to the ashes win, there is still that lurking concern about terrorism. But it’s very muted these days. People pay more attention to each other on the tube. Fewer people listen to music. More people listen to the incomprehensible announcements. Tube ridership is back up to pre-July 7 levels (although the spike in bike-riding is still around), but there is no forgetting. There are reminders everywhere – not only in the news, but every day on the tube and in the streets. Posters like this one are still displayed on the tube and buses


And a new campaign by the Mayor of London is visible on the tube, buses, and in banners along many London streets


New tube posters also make it clear that there is a dual responsibility: tube personnel are there to respond if an emergency occurs, but it is everyone’s responsibility to watch for unattended packages and report strange behavior. The posters say, “it’s your tube.” It’s interesting that they are intentionally distributing the responsibility on the community. It’s a strategy that works very well here, but I wonder how well it would work in the US where there is so much more emphasis on individuality.

Bentham in a Box

Bill writes: I went to the Petrie Museum of Egyptology today. It's in the University College of London (so good they named it twice). It's kind of buried in the back, but, like the Royal Academy of Music museum, it had world-class stuff. I particularly liked the shabtis (but that's because it popped up in some stuff I wrote for school). My favorite was this blouse. It's a young woman's dress from 3,000 BCE. It's over 5,000 years old. That just blows me away. It's the oldest dress in the world.



Well, when I was getting ready to leave, I noticed on a brochure that they had Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon. I had to see this. I'd read about this as a kid when my best friend Gary and I bought an armful of Ripley's Believe It or Not paperbacks at the Museum on Fisherman's Wharf. Are you reading this, Gary? I saw the auto-icon!

After walking through the back halls of the college, going up and around the south quarter, I found him, sitting in his box at the back of the hall. The deal is, Jeremy Bentham, one of England's greatest political philosophers (1748-1832), willed his body such that it would be preserved and displayed. And that's just what he did. So there was Jeremy in his box.



He does look rather mournful to be there after all this time.



A little plaque at the top of the box tells the story of how he came to be there.



Well, that's not all of him. I seemed to recall from my Ripley's, that his head (Bentham's, not Ripley's), being separate, attends board meetings. I saw a faculty member giving some students a tour, and interupted (as that's what Americans are good at) and asked him if this was indeed the case. He said, yes, but that they try not to bring his head out too often, as it tends to roll off the table.

Having seen a photo of his actual head these days, I can see why they don't want this to happen. And I can say how profoundly glad I am that I'll never be a member of the board of the University College of London.

England wins the ashes back!

After 18 years, England wins the ashes back! Don't worry if you don't know what I am talking about, I barely know myself. One hint: it's a cricket thing.

There was a huge parade through London today, from St. Paul's to Trafalger Square, for the team. Tens of thousands of people greeted the team along the way. Check out the Lord's cricket ground website to learn more about the ashes (the most famous cricket ground in the world and walking distance from us!) Suffice it to say that the ashes involves Victorian cricket players, romance, burned cricket balls, and the smallest trophy in the world. For more on today's parade, the BBC says it all.

Amati, Stradavari, Guarneri, and I

Bill writes: I went to the Royal Academy of Music yesterday to visit their museum. I'd read about how they'd just purchased what is perhaps the most important violin in existence, the Stradivarius "Viotti ex-Bruce."

When I first entered the academy and asked to visit the museum, they thought it was closed. But after I mentioned that the sign out front said it was open on Sundays and some checking on their part they realized that it was, in fact, open. They were very gracious and the man at the info desk went and got keys for the lights to the museum. He then took me down to the basemant, through an incredibly twisty maze under the school, passing through set after set of doors, double doors, through rooms where people were having conversations, etc. Finally, into a back room where he turned on the lights, gave me a brief but friendly intro to the museum and said to follow the same way out when I was done. And with that he left me alone in the museum.

The museum spans three floors, but to me the most interesting one is the second floor, for the strings. This room was filled with glass cases containing Amati, Guarneri, and Stradavari violins and violas. Imagine, there I was with an entire room housing perhaps the finest musical instruments ever made, and I had it all to myself! For the next hour I just roamed from instrument to instrument by my lonesome. It almost made me wish I'd taken up the violin instead of electic guitar. Almost.

I hope to come back on one of the rare occasions when they take out a violin to play it. The most valuable violin in their collection, and arguably the most valuable violin period, was on display, too. In case you want to know what it looks like, here are a couple of pictures. Sorry for the quality, I had to take the pictures off angle through a smudgy glass case (probably due to violinist drool).

People in Parks

Bill writes: You never know who you'll find doing what in parks here. Walking through the park the other day, we found, not suprisingly, a group of cricketeers.



However, they didn't seem to be setting up to play, and in fact after setting up their equipment and standing around for a long while chatting, they then packed it all up again and left. Aline's theory is that they were some kind of cricket-trekkies: they just like to dress up like cricket players and talk about cricket.

Walking on a few dozen yards, we next bumped into a re-creation of some kind of ancient Monglolian wrestling match. (And thanks to an alert reader who pointed out that the wrestling style was not Japanese, as I'd originally written.)



In the next park, we heard singing. Someone was singing brazillian tunes and people from the park were tangoing like mad.

Dava Sobel

Bill writes: OK, here's something I can describe without photos. We went to Gresham College to hear Dava Sobel, the author of "Galileo's Daughter" and "Longitude" give a lecture on her latest book, "The Planets." Gresham College is an old college with no students. (Now there's a concept to warm the heart of professors everywhere.) Established by charter of Queen Elizabeth (the first one), Gresham College has a staff of several professors who basically are hired for a year or so. While there, their duties are to deliver free lectures to the public at lunch or in the evening.

The college is located in Barnard's Inn, which is mentioned in Dickens "Great Expectations." (You'd appreciate this, Linda!) We were really looking forward to the talk by Ms. Sobel, but it was actually a bit of a letdown. The talks are typically 45 minutes with 15 minutes for questions and answers afterward. The author spent the first 15 minutes reading chapter one of her book. She spent the next 30 minutes describing a series of interpretive art on the nine planets. These were new-age illustrations that she'd designed with the artist. Now, Dava Sobel is a science writer, but she spent 30 minutes explaining things like why in the illustration of Venus the planet was shown as growing on top of a flower in a garden, what the butterflies represented, why there were angels floating overhead, what the cat in the corner meant, and the importance of the rainbow. Seriously. At the end someone asked her if the illustrator was selling any of this original art from the book. She replied that none of the illustrations she'd just shown us were in the book. So she spent two-thirds of her talk discussing her personal new age symbology that had nothing to do with the science or history of the planets and that did not even appear in her book. Yikes, that went over like a lead balloon. Well, at least there was plenty of wine at the book signing afterward.

Thinking back on it, I realize Dava Sobel's talk ought to have been constructed exactly like our MLA colloquia. Yet she broke every rule of how to put together a successful colloquium, and the result was exactly what the head of our program, Linda, had warned us about. It certainly made me wish it had been one of our fellow MLA students talking instead.

Temporary Problem Blogging

Bill writes: Blogger (the host site), is currently unable to let us post photos. That's why we're not posting much at the moment. When they get their system fixed we'll post some more.

OK, so if you're bored, I'll just tell you what we did today. I got a haircut. On the way back to the flat, I bought a paper, milk, and some dishwasher salt. We ate lunch. Aline had the brie and grape sandwich; I had chicken. Aline returned some books to the library and checked the price of dirt at the nursery while I cleaned off the rooftop terrace.

See, it's not so interesting without pictures, is it?

Aline adds: I know, I know, a Brie sandwich? OK, it may clog my heart, but, man, is it good. Maybe I should drink more cider to cut all that artery-clogging material....Yeah, that's the ticket!

A Taste of Home

Aline writes: As I have mentioned before, there isn’t much evidence that our landlady likes to bake, since there is no bakeware or mixing bowls (or whisks, spatulas, etc.) in the flat. But I do miss baking, especially the banana muffins that I made regularly for our breakfast. This was my adventure in order to make what are very simple muffins:

What I needed
An American muffin pan. Yes, that’s what it is called, since the muffin pans they have here are tiny and shallow (more for Yorkshire pudding?). Since the spread of Starbucks, there is an awareness of what muffins are, but the pans are few and far between. I finally found one at the 8th store I looked at. OK, OK, I did find one earlier, but didn’t want to pay $40.00 for it.

Whole wheat flour. This wasn’t too hard, although it’s called wholemeal here. It is widely available, as more people here appear to eat more whole wheat products than Americans do.

Baking powder. I found this at a local deli in the community next to us where a lot of Americans live. The deli has a little section demarcated with a hand-drawn sign: American Baking Center. They had baking powder there. What do the English use? I have no idea….

Baking soda. Also found in the American Baking Center. It’s called bicarbonate of soda. The texture is different, and is finer-grained.

Sugar. The English use this all the time in all their cakes and scones, so it was easily found.

Splenda. I use splenda in Bill’s muffins – I found it in a local pharmacy that also caters to Americans (the only place I have found Noxzema).

Walnuts. Nuts are becoming more popular here, but you don’t see the big displays of cooking and eating nuts that you do in the US. I did find some walnuts after some looking (they are SO into hazelnuts here!)

Light Sour Cream. I’ve only seen sour cream in one small deli here, and I can’t remember where it was. I substituted yogurt.

Bananas. Yes, there are bananas here, and they are just like home ☺.

Chocolate Chips. I put these in a few muffins as a treat. The only place I found them was, yes, you guessed it, the American Cooking Center at the deli.

Eggs. This may have been the biggest barrier. I have not bought any eggs since I have been in England. Why? Because they aren’t refrigerated. Now my scientist mother drilled into me the dangers of food poisoning, and rampaging bacteria that develops when food is not stored properly. This indoctrination is far too strong for me to violate it. Luckily, I found a local deli that refrigerates their organic eggs. But only after I had been here for 4 months!

I can’t say the muffins turned out perfectly – I think the oven temp is off (yeah, that's it). But they still tasted good, and I am sure I will work out the kinks after a few batches.

Now that I have banana muffins under my belt, I plan to make my deadly delicious bourbon balls this Xmas – I’ve already found the required Nilla Wagers in the American Cooking Center! Yeah!