Get out of town.

I finally got my last two essays turned in this week, for better or worse. I get so fed up with my agonizingly slow writing process, and this usually results in the need for a sort of ritual cleansing of my writing area as soon as I turn a big paper in. As soon as I came home on Friday I fell into a cleaning frenzy, including dusting, vacuuming, organizing my papers and recycling tons of old notes, weeding out library books on topics I don't want to be reminded of for the forseeable future, taking out the trash, organizing my closet, cleaning my sink...it was pretty intense. I felt lots better afterwards.

My week wasn't completely neurotic, however! I had one of the best days since I've been here on Thursday, when I made a day trip to Oxford. The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend a lecture on "The Decline of Poetry in the Fourth Century" (which nobody really believes happened -- the decline, that is, not the lecture). The lecture was fine, but the best part was meeting up with a friend who's a postgrad at Merton College afterwards and spending the afternoon and evening with her. The weather was beautiful by the time we left the lecture, although it had been pouring when I went in -- typical England! We stopped to get ice cream at a famous place across from Christ Church, then walked through the meadow and down along the Thames, where we found lots of cute fuzzy ducklings and several teams of rowers out (including, it must be said, some very fine looking young gentlemen in flattering uniforms). We made sure to be back at Merton by 6, because it was Ascension Day, the only day of the year when the student are allowed to climb all the way up onto the roof of the chapel! They only let 100 people up, and we were numbers 99 and 100 -- whew! It was the most amazing experience -- the views from the top were stunning.



A priest performed a short service, and there was a small choir to lead several hymns. Afterwards, there was quite a swanky little champagne reception on one of the lawns, complete with people playing croquet. We had to leave in time to be at the dining hall promptly at 7 (Oxford runs with military precision) for dinner. It was just like you imagine: everyone in robes, professors at the high table, grace rattled off in Latin...and unimpressive British food. But never mind that last bit. The whole thing was so darned cool to see.



After my friend had to take off for a dance rehearsal, I had an hour or so to kill before my train, so I wandered all around town just as it was getting dark. It was really something to see into the Bodleian from the outside and to observe how the character of the town changes at night after the tourists clear out, leaving the streets to industrious looking students and chavvy teenagers just bumming around, pretty much in equal parts.

It's days out like Thursday that make me realize how lucky I am to be here. The Brits would laugh at me for saying this, because it seems so ordinary to them, but train rides in particular are a sort of spiritual experience for me. I'm not sure why, but I think Britain truly looks its best through a train window. Plus, I love the idea of communal travel: it's so much more interesting to travel among a bunch of strangers (mainly ordinary, respectable looking folks, unlike with Amtrak at home) rather than being sealed off in car all alone. I also think it's hard to underestimate the power of public transport, along with the dominant habit of walking everywhere here, for building a national identity. I see so many more people on any given day here -- just passing them on the street or sitting next to them on a bus, for example -- than I ever would at home. You get a real feeling of being a small part of something bigger. I think America (well, the non-urban parts) could use a dose of that.

My observations are running a little long tonight! I'll cut it out with the words and leave you with some pictures. Click here to see an album that includes pics from Oxford. Happy weekend to all!

I'm um, y'know, famous.

I got my 15 minutes of fame this morning on BBC Radio Bristol, talking to Trevor Fry about my impressions as a "young American in Britain" of the Pope's recent visit to the States. Luckily, I didn't say anything overly stupid, and therefore I don't mind letting you have a listen to a replay of the show if you're interested. Click here to get to the BBC Radio Faith page. Then click on the "listen again" button in the top right corner of the page. Once the broadcast opens, click ahead 15 minutes at a time until your get to the 3 hour 45 minute mark. You'll have to listen to a cheesy oldies song and directions to a garden show for a couple minutes, but then I'll come on. Try to ignore how many times I say "you know." Although I don't think I provided SW England with any particularly profound insight, it was pretty neat to get to see the inside of the BBC building and meet a local radio celeb -- especially cool because I listened to Trevor Fry's morning show all summer before moving to Bristol to get a taste of the local flava. And now I know that he is a very friendly middle-aged guy with long highlighted and straightened hair.


Girls' night out at Po Na Na

Not much else to report for the moment. I'm locked in mortal combat with an essay due Friday, and about to make my opening sallies against another one due the same day. It's a terrible time of year to have to be chained to the computer, as thing are really starting to get springy here in Bristol. I went for a run yesterday afternoon, and when I got to the Downs I found that the whole town had been out playing football, having picnics, and patronizing the ice cream man in the gorgeous 70 degree weather without me...what gives?? Anyway, after this Friday, hopefully I'll be up there right along with them.

You snooze, you lose.

I'm taking a few minutes out from research at the library to post this afternoon, hoping that it will wake me up from a literary-theory induced stupor. Although I would be more productive if I could stay awake, it's been nice to switch gears and get back into the business of essay-writing today after a week of obsessing over a presentation yesterday. All of us MA's have to make a 15-minute presentation this week on our plans for our dissertations. The scary part is that they are in front of the whole classics faculty (well, supposedly -- in practice it's really just the 6 or 8 who can be bothered to show up) and all the other postgrads, and we are, of course, subject to the dreaded Q&A period at the end. Those two aspects have been enough to get all of us suitably stressed, and I'd put everything else pretty much on hold until I got through mine. The title of my paper (and working title for my dissertation) was "Augustine against the Clock: Time, Language and the Economics of Salvation." I think it went about as well as could be expected, and people seemed positive about my ideas.

I had a good excuse to take the night off yesterday because a friend from Edinburgh is in town doing a short course at the uni. We went to a pub I like in Clifton Village and had a lovely time catching up. Not to depreciate all of his other charming personal attributes, I must note that spending a few hours listening to his Aberdeen accent was music to my ears! The posh South of England accent is fine, but it just doesn't stir the soul in the same way, evoking the sound of bagpipes in the distance...a sip of aged single-malt...the low of a hairy coo...OK, I'll cut it out.

In other news, I have another speaking engagement coming up, this one much less stressful! I'm going to be on a faith chat show on Radio 1 on Sunday morning, because they want to hear an American's impression on the Pope's visit to the States. I'm very happy to oblige, and there will be lots to say about such a successful visit and the positive benefits I think we'll see from it. More on that later, if I don't say anything stupid that makes me want to forget the experience entirely, which, knowing myself, is a very distinct possibility!

I'll take what I can get.

On the roof of the Duomo, before the weather went south.

I'm back to work in Bristol this weekend after five days in Italy that were not exactly what I had in mind -- but that wasn't a bad thing, in the end. The staples of my itinerary -- the wheres and whens -- held firm, but the whats and hows evaded my control.

I flew into Milan on Sunday night and after two bus rides and a lot of confused wandering, I eventually found my hostel in the back of an apartment block across the street from the biggest disco in the city. The weather was glorious on my first day in the city -- 60 degrees and brilliantly sunny -- and, having seen the foreboding forecast for the rest of the week, I rearranged my plans in order to make the most of it. After Mass inside the Duomo, I climbed up to the top and walked around on the roof, and got my first and only clear view of the Alps in the distance, complete with snow-capped peaks. then I walked south to Ambrose's Basilica, where in the crypt I found, to my surprise, that the remains of SS. Ambrose, Gervasius and Protasius took the rather surprising form of full skeletons dressed in bishops' robes, exposed to full view. I'd expected little boxes full of bone fragments, bits of skin, etc., as you usually find, so it was a bit of a shock. Continuing the patristic theme of the day, after lunch, I took the train to Pavia, a little town about 30 minutes SW of Milan to find the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, which houses St. Augustine's remains (imported there from North Africa by officious bishops fleeing the barbarians). Tiny, medieval Pavia was a nice setting for an afternoon wander, and I stopped and had a rest and a gelato before heading over to the church. You would never find the church if you weren't looking for it: it's tucked away in the corner of a little square a block or so behind a main road, and I'm sure doesn't attract much accidental tourist traffic. I spent a while in the church, then wandered around town a bit more and came back for Mass later in the evening before heading back to Milan.

Unfortunately, by the next morning, I couldn't ignore that I actually was sick (it happens so rarely that I had been in denial) and the rain had started that wouldn't end for the rest of the trip. Still, neither of these factors slowed me down much, partly because I am both stubborn and cheap, and partly because really, the experience of travel is always rewarding in itself, even when the run of my days doesn't turn out to be particularly guidebook-worthy.

Accordingly, the next three days are best recollected through highlights. Such as: Roman ruins at the Museo Archeologico. A very pleasant evening with a Canadian hairstylist I met at the hostel, spent over a very fine aperitivo and an appalling Chinese-Italian dinner. The views on the train ride south to La Spezia, although I could hardly stay awake. The hike along the cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea from Riomaggiore to Vernazza, mostly in the rain. A solitary happy hour spent writing postcards in Vernazza. A consolation, comfort-food dinner of pesto pasta, red wine and an incredible tiramisu when sprinkles turned to a downpour in Monterosso. A long, hot shower with deliciously strong water pressure on arriving back in my very own hotel room in La Spezia. The sheer black humor of arriving in Lake Como and being unable to see the lake, much less the Alps, for the thick grey clouds enshrouding the entire region. An afternoon wander (in the rain, of course) through town and dinner at a pizzeria with an Australian meteorologist in Menaggio. Seeing Mantegna's Cristo Morto in the Pinacoteca di Brera after abandoning Como as a lost cause and heading back to Milan. Emerging from the metro and walking straight into a six-inch pool of water that left me soaked to the knees, and laughing along with the group of schoolkids who saw me do it. Another consolation meal served by a typically flirtatious young waiter the afternoon I left as the light rain became torrential yet again.


Manarola, gorgeous in any weather.

In short, it was an unexpected, exhausting, very wet, and ultimately very good few days. You can see it in pictures here. And now, I'm home for a good long while. EasyJet, don't even tempt me with your sales.

Have tickets, will travel.

Funny thing about being in possession of plane tickets: I find it extraordinarily difficult to resist the temptation to use them. I know that in my last post I was quite clear that I wanted nothing more than to stay home and become a complete bookworm for the next month or so. Nevertheless, I bought cheap EasyJet tickets to Milan last month for April 6-11, and although just a few days ago I'd resolved to cut my losses and stay home and study, I'm going to be on that plane Sunday evening.

For the record, I've definitely thought through this decision, and I've at least managed to convince myself that it won't actually be irresponsible to jet off to Italy for a week. I've only been home a few days from Liverpool, but I've gotten a lot of work done, mostly because my social life has completely evaporated. The University won't be back in session until April 21, so my coursemates and most my friends from the house are away for quite a while. There's nothing like coming home from the library every day at dinner time and then facing another six or seven hours of solitary time before bed to convince me to get the heck out of my house for a week while I have the chance! I'll be traveling solo, but I always have a big time meeting people in hostels, and I hope the situation will be the same on this trip.

Speaking of which, I have it all planned out: it's going to be a five-day, part classics field trip, part scenic hiking excursion. I'll spend the first two days in Milan, mostly looking at fourth-century goodies -- the Basilica Ambrosiana, containing both Ambrose's remains and those of SS. Gervasius and Protasius (which he placed there), other churches from the same period, and lots of mosaics and other ancient artifacts -- and then go down to the Cinque Terre for a day of hiking between the little villages hanging off the cliffs. Finally, I'll go up to Lake Como for the last couple of days and spend the night in a little town on the centre of the lake called Menaggio and spend some time hiking at the base of the Alps in that area. The pictures I've seen are stunning, and I hope they're true to life!

Although a bit lonely, life is still good in Bristol at the moment, but I'm glad to have a fun week away to look forward to. I should know by now that the travel bug doesn't go into remission for long.

Culture is as culture does.

I'm very happy to be writing from Bristol tonight after a long weekend in Liverpool for the annual Classical Association conference. The conference itself was pretty good, and it was a fun weekend, don't get me wrong; the fun just came from different places than we students had imagined. Expectations were high because Liverpool has recently been crowned European Capital of Culture for 2008, and we were looking forward to spending our free time touring the docks and browsing through galleries and museums. Through no fault of Liverpool's, the weather pretty much put the kibosh on those plans. Apart from brilliant sunshine as we arrived and left the city, the weekend was solid rain, varying from annoying sprinkles to a full-on downpour complemented by high winds that washed out our free afternoon yesterday. So, if you want an assessment of Liverpool as a cultural Mecca, I can only say that if by culture, you mean vast quantities of mediocre coffee and cheap wine, then Liverpool has a lot to offer.

The weekend did feature one genuinely impressive cultural experience. The conference dinner on Friday night was held at Liverpool Cathedral (Anglicans apparently don't mind allowing crowds of indeterminate religious persuasions to chow down in their sanctuary, apparently, if they can cough up the appropriate fee). The Cathedral is absolutely massive and looks ancient (that is, less than a millennium later than anything classicists study) although it's actually a Gothic revival, finished in the 1970s. Everyone came all fancied up for an opening wine reception, after Robert Harris (author of Pompeii, Imperium, and other historical novels) gave a very good presidential lecture, in the very back of the Cathedral. Afterwards, we proceeded to our tables in the sanctuary proper for a three course dinner with a more bizarre program of entertainment. After the main course, a hush fell over the crowd as a man and a woman in dressed in gold-and-silver ornamented robes came striding slowly and deliberately down the aisles, addressing to the audience in measured and mellifluous tones what was, by general consensus of the diners, absolute crazy talk -- distinctly creepy pronouncements about love, marriage, sex, childbearing, etc. We soon took note of little notecards on our tables that clued us in to the explanation that these were a husband-and-wife team giving a realistic performance of ancient Sumerian proverbs, shortly to be followed by a performance on the Golden Lyre of Ur. Somehow this did nothing to mitigate the creepiness of the situation which only intensified during the lyre playing and a monologue in which the woman acted out participation in a mass suicide. The conference organizer was heard to be apologizing profusely to as many tables as he could when dessert was finally, mercifully served. A fantastic demonstration of the Cathedral's organ after dessert went a long way towards taking our minds off the earlier entertainment, and we all left in good spirits. (For those of you keeping track at home, I would put the evening's programme somewhere in the top 10 on the list of Things That Would Only Happen in a Catholic Church Over the Pope's Dead Body).

In any case, the Cathedral was a pretty impressive backdrop for the conference dinner, such as it was. The weekend went downhill in the culture department from there. We students (there were four of us total, and we had a great time together) bravely ventured out into the downpour yesterday afternoon to go get a look at the Albert Dock area, but by the time we made it to the city centre, we were soaked head to toe despite umbrellas and ducked into a huge shopping mall to wait out the rain. After some dry-sock shopping and a greasy cup of coffee, we did finally make it to the waterfront and walked through the Tate Modern, but weren't overly impressed with the whole area. Luckily, though, by the time we left the museum, it was a respectable hour of day to commence what one must always turn to when weather and culture fail: eating and drinking as a form of entertainment. We knew just where to turn: a friend and I had had a delicious meal at a cute French bistro on our first night in town, so we hiked back up the hill and had a long, warm, dry, relaxing, fun meal, then continued the festivities at a pub in town with another friend. We ended the evening with spontaneous stops at a kebab shop and (enticed by free drink coupons) a dingy club populated by freshers from Liverpool University. It may not have been classy, but it was our best night in the city.

So, grateful for my first-conference experience and a taste of the Capital of Culture, I am even more thrilled to be relaxing in my own room tonight in lovely, lovely Bristol. I'm glad to be done with traveling for a while, but I have enjoyed noticing that every time I return home that I've become even more attached to the city. What's more, I'm absolutely stoked (and I am not kidding) to be able to throw myself into a straight month of uninterrupted work starting tomorrow morning after all the stressful distractions of the past six months. I've almost forgotten what it's like to work with a clear head.

Entertaining pics of Liverpool later. But now, I'm going to bed.

I'll have the fish I can't pronounce, si vous plait.

Glow-paint party!

Even though I've already told some of you about it, I want to write about an event from last weekend that I still can't quite wrap my mind around.

Living in England, I don't have many moments of profound culture shock. There are the general differences in landscape, accent, culinary tastes, etc., that I still take some notice of, but for the most part I spend my time around students and average joes, and students and average joes tend to be more or less the same all over.

But when I have, a couple of times, been thrown into the heady stratosphere of upper class British intellectual culture, I realize pretty quickly that I am out of my element, and not just because I'm American. Case in point: the occasion of the Friends of Herculaneum Society meeting in Bristol last Saturday. An email went around to the classics postgrads saying that the dean of the school, the president of the society, had invited any of us who were interested to attend as his personal guests (i.e., free). I jumped at that opportunity, enticed by a lecture on Roman public libraries and a showing of clips from a new documentary on the excavation of Herculaneum. So I showed up on Saturday, and in between the lectures, I helped two of my friends serve tea, biscuits and wine to the old rich folks in attendance. As a sort of payment for our services, the dean invited us to come out to dinner with him, the presenters, and a couple of the other members whom we vaguely understood to be Big Deals.

We went to a French restaurant (the name of which I still can't pronounce) up Whiteladies Road that I hadn't noticed before, probably because my food-and-beverage radar tends not to pick up places that far out of my price range. I was the last to hand my coat to the waitress at the door, and I watched in slow motion as everyone else seated themselves, leaving one open place exactly in the middle of the table surrounded by the dean, the presenters, and two other men who looked intimidatingly familiar with this sort of dining establishment. I gave the old social skills a quick pep talk and went into the fray.

There come certain moments in life when it is best to accept the fact that it is flatly impossible to impress one's dining companions as much more than a caveperson who drinks 2.99 wine selected by Sainsbury's and cannot read French to save her derriere. At such moments, one must suppress her suddenly overwhelming appetite for a chicken fried steak and a PBR and embrace her own boorishness. She must forge ahead in any way she can, and hope that the multiple vintages of fine wine on the table will aid her neighbors in soothing the sensibilities that she will no doubt violently offend.

So I sat down and put my napkin in my lap. I introduced myself to the silver-haired man on my left, who turned out to be a recently retired Oxford professor of archaeology who still manages the Lincoln College faculty wine cellar of 13,000 bottles and whose wife, also a connoisseur, has written dozens of entries for the Oxford Companion to Wine. He very capably advised the dean as to which wines were the most likely to be pleasing to our whole table. Red and white both, of course (a given when you begin with the fish bisque and then "go on" to the filet). Across from me was the Roman libraries lecturer, who had the best-cared-for fingernails I have ever seen on a human being. I mean smooth, rounded, with perfect cuticles merging into painstakingly moisturized skin. It was hard not to stare. He looked quite awkward, left out of conversations on either side, and I figured that then was a good a time as any to reveal my breathtaking ignorance and ask a question about his presentation. We ended up having a nice chat about Roman reading audiences and books we'd read lately, and I learned he went to the same (posh) secondary school that features in Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, which I'm currently working on. On my right, I met an Oxford papyrologist with an American accent, with whom the indispensable line, "I must confess I know nothing about (x)..." once again came in extremely handy. We ended up having more in common than I thought, though: his first two degrees were from the University of Nebraska, one of which was in English, so I had a little something to go on.

I am proud to say that I conducted parts of these conversations while digging mussels out of their shells with a fork (it looked less feasible yet more appropriate to use the spoon provided, but the papyrologist was going at them with a fork, so I took that as permission) and intermittently washing fish juice off my hands in my own little finger bowl of tepid water. And then, when the time came, I "went on" to ox cheeks (a bargain at 18 pounds). I thought better of inquiring as to which set of cheeks I had the pleasure of sampling, but they were tasty, and the Roman librarian thought they stood up quite well to the boar's cheeks he'd eaten in South Africa recently!

I have to say that I completely enjoyed the evening, start to finish, and that everyone there was extremely nice. Still, I couldn't take a bit of it seriously, my predominant thought being, "is this really my life?" It was equally inconceivable that I had somehow landed in that situation and that everyone around me seemed to find nothing extraordinary about it. I found myself memorizing every detail so I could tell a good story in an email to Dee and on the blog. The whole experience went in the "remember-for-future-novel" file rather than the "remember-in-order-to-look-posh-at-future-dinners file." And of that, I'm not ashamed. If you ever catch me eating ox cheeks (either set) with a straight face, I would appreciate it if you could remind me to lighten up. If you're going to spend (or have someone spend on you) 40 pounds for dinner, you should at least savor the full entertainment value.