Posts Tagged: england

That’s how the Light gets in

Coming in to Land

Relax

This is My Garden

London, one fine day

On the Embankment

A little more knowledge

I have written 36 pages in the last 2 days. And I totally could keep going, but I’ve got to get up earlyish tomorrow morning to drop the guinea pigs off, in preparation for my transatlantic adventure. I’m really on a roll though, and tomorrow I might not be, and … still, let’s be sensible. No one is as young as they used to be. Ever. It’s such a breath of fresh wind though, to be writing something other than the PhD. Darn. Let’s hope the PhD feels like the same fresh wind once I get back to it … or if not, at least like the home stretch… .

Other excitement for tomorrow will include finding out whether the old pin number works with the new credit card (replacement for expired date, not *new* new…). Fingers crossed – if it turns out not to, things will be … interesting.

The bag depicted on here is from the British Newspaper Library, and it holds my stack of copies of newspaper articles about Apollo 13 and/or Earth Day. The text on the bag says, in total, “Researching the World’s Knowledge.”

Waiting in Line

I have some photos from the weekend to share, but since most of them were taken at sunset and the last photo was already of a redish cast, I thought I’d throw a blue one into the mix for now … this one was taken on the Albert Embankment in London when I was there, oh, a month or so ago (time flies) visiting M and D and doing a stint as a travelling scholar. I still have some photos to go through and weed out, but there never seems to be quite enough time for it, and other things need doing more urgently. Will I get done before I fly to the US next week? I doubt it. Thus, there’ll probably be an intercontinental mix of photos starting in July.

That said, yes, tomorrow a week I’ll be off to ASLE 2011! My paper is, hmm, getting there … I’m done scanning images in. Some of them came out really well, some of them … not so much. From document to microfilm to printer to scanner … quite a lot of transitions that crispness can get lost in. But they’re all perfectly legible, so that’s the main thing. Now all I need to do is finish my paper … but that’s what the weekend will have to be for. That, and for putting my final touches on my Remake | Remodel paper for the conference volume (only sliiiightly behind schedule…).

But first, class trip to Hamburg tomorrow! Then 4 days for writing and editing like a mad thing, then two days of oral exams, and then off I go to the states. Note to self: learn how to recognize tornado weather.

Upon Yellow Cross and Crown

Old School Research

No cameras allowed in the British Newspaper Library, so a photo I took with my phone (very sneakily, for those aren’t really allowed either). So, yep, that’s how I am spending my days, tracing the elusive connection between Earth Day and Apollo.

I wish that could be me.

For five centuries the Colosseum nourished artists and writers, but it was precisely the features which conflicted with the original ‘truth’ of the Colosseum which triggered their creativity. The black Martyrs’ Cross, on whose steps sat Daisy Miller, Chateaubriand and Pauline de Beaumont. Moonlit solitude, and the owl’s cry heard by Byron. The spectral smoke which drifted away to reveal Cellini’s demons, Goethe’s geometries and Poe’s dizzying vortex of Eld. The hermit who grew his hay; William Beckford’s reverie in the cypresses; and Deakin’s Christ’s Thorn. All have gone, and the Colosseum is extinct. Today it is the most monumental bathos in Europe: a bald, dead and bare circle of stones. There are no shadows, no sands, no echoes and if a single flower blooms in a crevice it is sprayed with weed-killer. The monument is open to the public from nine-thirty a.m. to six p.m., when the gates are locked. At nightfall one day in the 1820s Stendhal watched an Englishman ride his horse through the deserted arena. I wish that could be me.

From:
Woodward, Christopher. In Ruins. London: Vintage, 2001. page 30f.

Yes, once I make it to the colosseum, that photo is totally getting replaced. Still – different ruin, same phenomenon.