Rocks On Top Of Other Rocks (March 14, 2010)

Hello All,
The spring weather has not abated, and while a history paper keeps me in close proximity to my laptop at the moment, once class obligations abate somewhat, I hope to enjoy the weather to the fullest.
I left off on Monday morning.
On Monday night, I joined one of my British pals (or "mates") for his birthday dinner. After class, I met him near campus and walked to a house that he shares with six or seven other students. It was kind of a large, rambling terraced building that probably served as apartments in the past, cluttered with clothing, food containers, empty bottles, and the other paraphernalia that piles up in college housing. We played videogames for maybe half an hour before three of us walked to the restaurant: The Lettuce and Slug, which I understand is a chain across England. All food is half off on Monday nights, and evidently the occupants of this house dine there nearly every Monday. This led us to eye the menu all the more greedily as more guests trickled in, some of whom I recognized from Christian Union meetings--there ended up being about twenty in our party. Before the food arrived, we were bantering back and forth, debating whether England or the United States is superior--at one point, one of my arguments was met by the retort: "Pardon me? I can't hear you over our free healthcare!" Following a massive dish of appetizers that I split with two other guys, my main course--a chili burger--arrived, and needless to say, I was stuffed. After the meal, the rest of the guests were going to a bar and then to a club, but I had homework to take care of, so I walked back to my flat and busied myself with that for the rest of the night.
On Tuesday morning, we proofread assignments that we had prepared for class. Mine was on the attraction that draws people to history. After some more spit and polish, perhaps I'll send it out as a separate email. Then the weekly tapestry presentations commenced. Since this time period covered the mid-Victorian era, there was a substantial presentation on Charles Darwin and On the Origin of the Species, and with Darwin occupying such an established niche in modern culture, it was intriguing to try to imagine the impact of his work at the time of initial publication. There was also a presentation about the ordeals of Victorian dress. Another girl presented on the macabre practice at the time of posing the deceased for keepsake photographs, and I said a few words about the Crystal Palace. In the evening, I attended Small Group; I was the only one there apart from the group leader, so we discussed the commandment not to murder between ourselves before another guy showed up near the end. Then I returned to my flat and started reading George Eliot's Middlemarch.
My single Wednesday class was cancelled to allow the students time to work on their essays, so I spent Wednesday morning taking care of things around the flat and running an errand or two. In the evening, I met the same kid whose birthday I attended, Jared, for some soccer ("football" to the British, of course). We walked with a couple other guys from the house to the outdoor soccer "pitch" (field) where about twenty other players were assembled as well. Initially I had thought that this was a league of players that all attended the same church, but it may have actually been intramurals for the university. We played on astroturf under floodlights, since dusk was rapidly giving way to night. There were two half-field matches going on, with teams of about six players each. I had warned my comrades that I hadn't played soccer since middle school, and not only had I been mediocre at that time, but I had been mediocre by American standards. They reassured me that people came with a range of different skill levels. Stick to what you know, was their advice.
Needless to say, I was out of my league. I admit that I'm rusty on the rules and conventions of soccer, but it seemed like nobody was playing a set position and people ranged all over the pitch. The game seemed much more dynamic than my memories of its American counterpart. I played defense most of the time, with little distinction, although I managed to work in a couple of stabs throughout the course of the game. All the players rotated through the goal throughout the game, and at least I didn't get scored on during my short time as keeper--probably because the benefit of replacing me with a more competent player on the field gave my team an added edge. Most of the players were student age, but there were two or three adults, who seemed to be university faculty. As we played, a crowd of youngsters and a couple of teenagers gathered outside the pitch fence, waiting to use the field once our game was concluded. After about an hour of play, we were done; I think my team lost.
As I approached my apartment complex in the dark, I looked off to my right to see that the entire time I had been playing, I had only been about a hundred yards from the gate. I had seen that athletic pitch before, coming and going from my flat, but it was funny to think that I had to make a twenty-minute walk to get around the river that separated the pitch from the road. I finished up Wednesday by doing homework and talking to Karin via Skype.
Nothing much happened on Thursday morning; I slept in and puttered around my room. I went to class at 12:30 where we started our discussion of Middlemarch. George Eliot is our professor's favorite author, and he warned us beforehand that any dissatisfaction with the novel should be hidden from him. The picture he presented to us of George Eliot intrigued me--I knew nothing about her beforehand, so it was all new information to me. Evidently Eliot possessed a very sharp mind, and she managed to accomplish a monumental amount of work as the assistant editor of The Westminster Review, a publication that served 1850s England much it the same way as The New Yorker or Harper's in contemporary America. She published a prolific number of articles, covering a comprehensive array of contemporary thought and trends. On top of all of this, she took up fiction "on the side" at the recommendation of a friend; her books were well-received, but she only published eight novels over the course of twenty years, essentially the opposite of writers like Dickens or Trollope. In the intervals between novels, she would research her material exhaustively, traveling to her settings to take accurate notes and even learning Hebrew in order to better construct a Jewish character. Immediately I made the comparison to Stanley Kubrick and the obsessive quantity of research he would do in preparation for his films. There's something that attracts me to such singular and meticulous inquiry, although it also does seem simultaneously overwhelming and impersonal.
After class, I had just enough time to pack a bag, grab some food, and have a quick word with Karin before meeting two other students for a weekend excursion. We walked to the railway station in York and boarded a train outbound to Bath. I discovered that I had forgotten to bring my youth discount card, but as there was no time to return to my flat to get it, I figured I would just go with the flow and see what happened.
I spent much of the four-hour ride reading Middlemarch and observing some of our fellow travelers. I was most interested by a young man who sat across from me for an hour or so; as soon as the train departed, he hunched over a notebook and began feverishly copying notes of some sort from a webpage he had accessed on my cell phone. This student had an intense, even timid expression on his face; he was silent the entire time, and when he finally finished his writing, he promptly shut the notebook, put away his phone, and collapsed back in his seat, arms crossed, almost as if the completion of his task had stricken him with profound melancholy.
Thankfully none of the rail staff asked to see my youth pass for the entire transit, and we arrived in Bath with no difficulty at about 8:00. We checked into a hostel, which was associated with a pub and was located in the second and third floors of the building. We declined an invitation to join in celebrating one of the bartenders' birthday, and instead struck out to see Bath by night. It didn't take us long to figure out that Bath is a pretty small place, and pretty much everything worth seeing is concentrated in a relatively small area. We saw the complex of buildings built around the mineral springs that feed the eponymous mineral bath, as well as the elegant structure of the Bath Abbey. A couple of block over, we saw the Circus and the Royal Crescent, two stately Georgian apartment complexes built to host the rich who would travel to indulge in the mineral waters. As the names suggest, the Circus is a circular arrangement, and the Royal Crescent forms a half-ellipsoid atop a hill, overlooking much of the rest of Bath. Standing by the Crescent at night with lights dotting the horizon was a gorgeous sight, and it made me lament the fact that my girlfriend was 4,000 miles away. Back at the hostel, we sat up and talked for a while before calling it a day sometime after 11:00.
Friday dawned overcast and chilly; I awoke to the percussive sounds of the window washers' implements agains the bunk room windows. After a shower and some breakfast, I sent off a couple of letters, then the three of us checked out the Bath Abbey. It was a gorgeous structure, like most abbeys are. At 10:30, we joined a free walking tour of the city, who showed us around, explaining Bath's history from its foundation by the Romans and conquest by different factions (both foreign and domestic) to its more recent history as a resort town, with all the accompanying social machinations. From the sound of it, most of Bath's patrons were the idle rich, who would visit the bath daily to converse, gossip, and flirt, before returning to their lodgings, dressing in their finest costumes, and venturing back out to promenade around the city for the sole purpose of attracting attention and keeping up appearances. However, there was also some medical practice in Bath for those suffering rheumatic afflictions, and stories of the common people as well. Our tour guide was entartaining and very knowledgable, and despite chilly winds and intermittent rainfall, it was two hours very well spent.
After the tour, I grabbed some lunch and wandered into an indoor flea market, where I got a cheap secondhand copy of T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The three of us then headed to the Roman Bath museum for the afternoon.
I'll attempt to give the history of Bath in a nutshell. Rainwater falls on the Mendip Hills to the north of bath and percolates through the limestone in the region to a depth of 9000 feet, where it absorbs geothermal energy and finds its way back up through the rock to gush through a fault line in Somerset at the rate of a quarter million gallons per day, at a temperature of 109 degrees Fahrenheit. According to scientists, this whole process takes about 10,000 years. Prior to Roman presence in Britian, the site of the mineral springs was nothing more than a steamy marsh, venerated by the indigenous people for whatever mysterious force caused hot water to issue from the ground. With the Romans happened upon the mineral springs in the 1st Century AD, they ascribed a supernatural significance to the site as well, but also saw a chance to build a little piece of home in the cold, soggy wilderness that Britian must have seemed to one accustomed to life in Italy. (The Romans valued cleanliness, and public baths were a staple throughout the empire.) Thus the Romans built a complex on the site of the mineral spring, including not only a temple to Minerva--the Latin equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, who shared similarities with the local god Sulis--but also a reservoir to collect the mineral water and a large enclosed bath house. An entire settlement developed around the hot spring complex, known as Aquae Sulis. This settlement existed in a couple different permutations until the Romans withdrew from Britain, when it fell into ruin. Like most old British cites, Aquae Sulis endured the cycle of Saxon, Norman, and local rule, with new structures and streets built on top of older ruins through each phase of development. Bath enjoyed a revival as a spa during the Elizabethan Period; new bathing facilities were constructed and the city enjoyed a rise in popularity that peaked in the late 1700s with patronage by the Royal Family. Since that time, the mineral springs are no longer used by patrons, but Bath remains a popular destination. Excavations and preservation efforts in the 1980s unearthed the remains of the last Roman bathing facility, twenty feet below the current street level, and these remains are now on display to the public.
The Bath Museum was outstanding. It led through what remains of the foundations of the temple area, all laid out in an engaging way, with screens situated at different points depicting what space would have looked like during Roman occupation. Artifacts uncovered at the site were displayed and accompanied by filmed demonstrations of the people and events that took place at the site. In contrast to the corny and unimpressive video segments one sees at many museums, the production values on these segments were top quality, with the actors frequently speaking in Latin. The whole exprience was tied together with a portable audio tour device, which visitors could use to listen to commentaries that corresponded to different parts of the museum. Not only were these devices availaible in a variety of languages, but they enabled visitors to pick and choose their topics of interest and replay them at will. The information about the site was thorough, covering the particulars of worship at the temple of Aquae Sulis, profiles of the various people who would have visited the baths. My favorite artfacts on display were small scraps of pewter on which the ancient Romans inscribed curses and threw into the bubbling reservoir. These curses solicited harsh punishments--bloody death, blindness, and skin disease--for seemingly petty transgressions, such as the theft of clothing.
It's hard to describe the site of the bath itself. Basically it was a large, elaborate in-ground pool, fed from the mineral spring by original Roman lead pipes. The arched roof that would have housed the structure 1700 years ago is long gone, but portions of it were on display in the museum. As I said, all the original drainage and plumbing installed by the Romans still exists and allows the bath to funcion just as it did in Roman times, although the bathwater has turned green from algae and obviously no one uses them anymore. Arranged around the main bath were a series of smaller rooms that housed other pools, sweat rooms, and furnaces, all contributing to an experience much like a modern Turkish bath.
The final thing I did in the museum was swill a glass of the mineral water, which anyone could obtain for 50 pence but comes free with museum admission. The water is sterilized and clear but comes out of a fountain still warm. The verdict: not bad. No different from some of the more robust drinking fountains I've used over the years.
After the museum, I spent about half an hour in a free art gallery in town, then walked over to a house that allegedly was inhabited by Jane Austen during one of many trips she made to Bath with her rheumatic brother. After puttering around town for a little bit, we got some takeout fare for dinner and settled down in a pub by the hostel do get some reading done. I ordered a pint of Bulmer's pear cider--my first alcohol over here, excluding wine for eucharist--to sip as I read Middlemarch, and managed to get a lot read despite the loud music and enthusiastic karaoke performances by other patrons. Shortly before 10:00, I returned to the pub beneath the hostel to join one of the other Calvin students who had left earlier to check out a live band that was performing that evening. Had I known before that it was a Blues Brothers tribute band (only appropriate, as the name of the pub was "Belushi's") I would have been there for the outset, but I remained for the last 45 min. or so, bobbing my head to such songs as "Mustang Sally", "Build Me Up Buttercup", and "Jailhouse Rock". It was more or less the perfect way to end the day.
After a quick shower and breakfast on Saturday, the three of us caught at train from Bath to Salisbury, then proceeded by bus to Amesbury. From Amesbury, a two-and-a-half mile walk along green pastures and sunlit roads brought us to the imposing site of Stonehenge. The Stonehenge site is much less built up than Bath, but it was still impressive. After passing through a reception area, one walks beneath the highway and takes a circular path along the Bronze Age monument. You can't get any closer to the monument than about probably 100 yards, but it remains impressive nevertheless.
Unlike Bath, Stonehenge predates the Roman occupation by nearly 3,000 years. The first monument erected on the site was a circular formation of upright timbers surrounded by a low trench, and over the next 1,000 years, large stones were brought to the site and arranged in a series of about seven different configurations, all roughly circular, with some stones simply standing like upright monoliths while others support horizontal lintels. Two types of stone were used to construct the monument; one type, called bluestone, was transported all the way Wales--this stone is unique in that it always feels warmer to the touch than other stone, which perhaps explains its usage in the monument. The largest stone at Stonehenge weighs in at seven tons; the stones stand erect with one-third of their total length buried underground, and the best theories that experts have on the construction of the monument boil down to simple machinery and a lot of brute strength. The builders of the monument, as well as its intended purpose, remain shrouded in mystery, although different theories abound--some of the more extreme theories credit construction of the monument to Merlin, the devil, and extraterrestrials.
After spending a good hour and a half at Stonehenge, we made our way back to Salisbury, where I checked out the local cathedral. At this point, a realization that had slowly been dawning upon me for the last month suddenly sprang into crystal clear focus: the exploration of history is largely a matter of looking at different arrangements of rocks piled on top of other rocks--cathedrals, walls, abbeys, castles, ancient ruins. I don't mean to imply that this makes historical research more enriching, but perhaps lends the whole affair an air of regal simplicity.
To resume, the Salisbury cathedral was imposing, with a central spire--the tallest church spire in England--jutting high into the sky. One side of the cathedral was obscured by scaffolding, part of a restoration effort begun in the 1980s and scheduled to continue until 2015. With admission at the rate of a discretionary donation, I paid one pound to enter the cathedral and gawk. An added bonus that I didn't find out about until I arrived at the cathedral was one of four original copies of the Magna Carta on display in the Chapter House, an octagonal building adjoining the nave of the cathedral. The Magna Carta was a very plain document to behold---small, neat lines of Latin script covering a sheet of parchment smaller than the front page of a newspaper. I was more impressed by the architecture of the chapter house, and was particularly drawn to small sculptures running along the walls depicting Old Testament stories, from the Creation to Joseph's reunion with Jacob in Egypt.
We made it back to Bath with no problem, stepping on the train at the last minute. On this trip I was reprimanded by one of the rail staff for not having my youth pass. Back in Bath, we recovered our luggage from the hostel and sat in a coffee shop for an hour before boarding our first train back to York at 7:00. At this point my luck ran out, and being unable to produce my railcard, I had to purchase an alternative fare back to York, via three or four different connections. The employee who did this transaction for me emphasized that he was giving me the best possible deal, because the employees on the later trains were less understanding than he. Another employee who was standing nearby--apparently just to watch--chimed in that the other staff were "Hitlers" compared to them, a point which he was quick to reiterate twice or thrice during the transaction. Thus I bade farewell to my two companions at a smaller station where I waited half on hour for a connecting train. There I came face-to-face with one such "Hitler"--in this case, a grey-haired, soft spoken Indian man.
This train left me in Birmingham, where I was supposed to catch a connection to Sheffield. I frantically searched for the appropriate train on the timetables in the station, and after fifteen minutes, I learned at an information desk that the next connection to Sheffield wouldn't depart until 8:37 the next morning. The next hour I spent wandering around the heart of Birmingham, searching in vain for the bus station before resigning myself to buying another train fare, and then looking for lodging for the night. Thankfully one hotel provided me with a contact list for several other hotels in the area, and I was able to book a room without much trouble. As I recounted my situation to my cab driver on my way to the hotel, we both conceded that the best course of action was to handle things philosophically (although in cab driver lingo).
I got six hours of sleep in a double-bed at the hotel, caught a taxi back to the train station, and spent most of the ride to York reading Middlemarch. Needless to say, I was greatly relieved to be back "home" shortly past noon today.
Whew! Another long email. Thanks everyone to all your patience in bearing with me through these messages--perhaps this coming week will be less eventful, and ergo easier to type out. I hope all of you are well!
I miss you all and think of you frequently. Take care!
-John Morton