Chelsey's Birthday (not the last hurrah!)

The last couple of weeks at Bread Loaf are hard, not so much because of the work, but because it is when everyone is finally comfortable in the place and with the people. It becomes a critical time when, in addition to studying and getting good grades, everyone is interested in the last hurrah!

Chelsey’s birthday was the perfect occasion. So we went all out and decided to get away from the Lincoln College campus, eat at a posh restaurant and meet people for drinks afterwards. Chelsey, Nichole, Martha, Tara and I walked to the Brasserie Blanc in Jericho, where we shared appetizers, main dishes and deserts along with two bottles of wine (one white and one red) and incredible conversation.

Afterwards, we met the rest of the students at the Duke of Cambridge, a very trendy (but expensive) bar located about five blocks from the restaurant. Before we were all broke, we decided to leave and meet at a pub where we concluded the night with pitchers of Pimms and English ales.

It was a great birthday but (hopefully) not the last hurrah!

Oh! For heaven's sake!

I’ve been really thinking about what to do with the following picture.

Some alternatives include posting it on Breadnet, sending it to the photography competition, handing is as a cover sheet for my final paper, and lastly, posting it on my blog. I’ve chosen the latter.

After Mozart’s Requiem, Nichole, Chelsey and I stood outside the Lincoln College entrance while Nichole finished her cigarette. We were discussing the concert and our plans for the night when Professor Peter McCullough (my professor and Director of the Bread Loaf Program in Oxford) came out of the college, went through a small door and into the building right in front of us. I knew it was the where the professors parked their vehicles and so assumed Peter would be coming out any moment driving his car. After a couple of minutes the garage door began to open and slowly revealed the front wheel of a bike, shiny narrow brown shoes, khaki pants… Peter McCullough with a bike helmet on! I can’t figure out why, but my reaction was to scramble through my purse for my camera, take a tripod position and wait for the shot. Meanwhile, Chelsey and Nichole burst out laughing at my reaction, making the Director look directly towards us! As I took the shot (which I consider the best picture of the entire summer) I heard: “Ohhhhh, for heaven’s sake!” which, not only made me enjoy the moment infinitely more, but has become a phrase that upon hearing will forever transport me back to the summer at Oxford in 2007.

Thanks Peter!

Wine Cellar and Mozart's Requiem

On Tuesday at 11:30am I a bunch of us got a tour of the wine cellar in Lincoln College. I was surprised to see, not only how big it is, but how many professors invest in wines and how quickly a good wine can appreciate.

The wine cellar includes French wines from 1945 to recent American and Australian wines. In the middle of the room, there is an old well that, although not functional, actually helps regulate the temperature. After the tour we got some samples… I was tipsy at 12pm!

In the evening, and after a lot of reading, seven of us went to watch Mozart’s Requiem at the Sheldoniam Theatre. It was an amazing performance by 10 singers and a band of 22.

Flooding in Oxford!

During the last couple of weeks parts of Oxford have been completely under water. The constant rain made the River Thames overflow and the houses on its banks had to be evacuated.

Thankfully, Lincoln College is not near the flooded areas and we have been able to stay dry and attend class without a problem. The water did affect the public transportation (both trains and buses) so some people who were planning to spend a weekend in London and other cities had to cancel their trips.

So Mom and Dad, I am ok!

Our Last High Table

Meeting with Emily Bartels, the Associate Director of the Bread Loaf School of English, after breakfast, class at 2pm and High Table.

Class is always interesting. I leave inspired by the passion and literary genius of the British writers during the 17^th and 18^th century. No matter what, the writers found a way to voice their opinions through poems, plays, letters and novels. The multiple layers of meaning (ranging from the political to the personal) give the works a depth that is hard to grasp in our century, when liberty is a hallmark.

After class I ran into a friend in crisis. The crisis was solved almost immediately. What is forth mentioning is that she looked to me for support. I know it takes me a while to get to know people, and so I was grateful that she thought of me and so I did my best to put her at ease.

I went to the conference at 5:30pm at the Oakshot Room. The guest speaker was Victorian literature scholar Dinah Birch. The seminar was so amazing I had absolutely no questions.

Although I enjoyed the cocktail (Debonnet and sparking lemonade), dinner was the beginning of the evening. I sat with Chelsey and Nichole who sang various songs of a movie, or play, or something (I will never see) called Oklahoma. The diner ended with an inspiring speech from Emily and an amazing chocolate tart. Afterwards most of us wondered down to Deep Hall (Lincoln College Pub) and indulged in a couple of drinks.

I never never…

Darts…

Weird English blokes…

Telling Dave what NOT to say (ever)…

It was a great night!

Concert: What is our Life?

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty place from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare: Macbeth.

After having a quick bite at the Mitre, Chelsey, Nichole and I went to Queen’s College to see the Cambridge Taverner Choir perform, under the direction of Owen Rees.

The theme of the concert was What is our life?: Renaissance Laments and Elegies, and the program included works from the Franco-Flemish Tradition, from Spain and from England. The concert cost £8 and lasted for an hour with a twenty minute intermission.

The poems that follow were part of the repertoire, both of which capture the theme of “human mortality and transience, and the insignificance of worldly achievement”.

When David heard that Absalom was slain, he went up to his chamber over the gate, and wept. And thus he said: O my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom my son.

What is you life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division.
Our mother’s wombs the tiring-houses be
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That’s its and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest:
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Second All-School Play: Henry IV

At 4pm most of us met at the gates of Trinity College and took a bus to Stratford to see Shakespeare's Henry IV. It was an hour and a half bus ride through incredibly beautiful countryside and across quaint English towns.

I had to take a picture of this swan because it was so huge!

Stratford is Shakespeare's hometown. It is a touristy town built around the river with swans and boats. In addition to the Royal Shakespeare Company , the town has a wide variety of local shops and restaurants that specialize in indian, english, mediterranean, thai and even pub food. It is well worth the visit!

We arrived at 5pm, with two hours to spare before the performance. We split up into small groups and found different places to have dinner. Ten of us ate at the Lamb, a resturant specializing in English/Mediterranean food. It was a wonderfully relaxing dinner!

Although I was a bit confused by the first 20 minutes of the play, the entire performance was stupendous. Faltaff, in particular, had the entire audience roaring with laughter well before the intermission.

Blackwell's Literary Tour of Oxford

The Original Literary Tour
Tuesdays at 2pm, Thursdays at 11am
An interesting and informative tour around Oxford and the university led by a knowledgeable and trained guide. Visit locations where Dorothy L. Sayers, W. H. Auden, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Percy Bysshe Shelley, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, Alan Bennett, Lewis Carroll and many more lived and studied. The tour also includes a visit to The Old Inn; a building older than Oxford University itself, home of stunning Sixteenth Century cloth paintings and stopover of William Shakespeare. Please note: this tour includes some stairs.


Short history of Oxford
The city of Oxford was founded in 1007, making 2007 the year of its 1,000 birthday. Although the city began as a ford of oxen it became a seat of learning as early as 1100, when students lived in Academic Halls and paid their Masters for their educations. Each Master took up to six students, a tutorial system that continues today in Oxford and Cambridge. In 1263 the first college was founded as an institution that ran independently of the Masters and prevented them from taking the students money without paying their dues. There are now 38 colleges that belong to the University of Oxford, education approximately 16,000 students.

1. Exeter College
J.R.R. Tolkien studied there as an undergraduate. He wrote "The Hobbit" and the series "the Lord of the Rings"

2. Museum of the History of Science
Has free admission and the oldest scientific laboratory in the world located in the basement. Visitors can see a blackboard with Newton's original writing.

3. Sheldonian Theater
The Theater was build by Sir Christopher Wren (the same architect of St. Paul's Cathedral). It is considered one of Oxford's architectural jewels. It seats 1,000 people for conferences and 800 for musical concerts. By the way... Wren didn't study architecture!!!!!

4. Bodleian Library
The Bodleian is a library that has been expanded over time. If you stand in the middle quadrant you have a 17th century building on one side and 15th century on the other. The Camera is one of the last additions and it is where most of the students go to read.

5. Wadham College
This college was founded by the 75 year old window of Nicholas Wadham, who fought against all the relations to establish the institution. Some distinguished alumni include Robert Blake (Cromwell's admiral and founder of British sea-power in the Mediterranean) and Christopher Wren (arquitect of St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London).

6. Hollywell Music Room
Although we could not look inside, this concert hall is said to have one of the best acoustics sounds in the world, a sound that has not been able to be reproduced even with today's technology.

7. Bath Place

8. The Turf Tavern and the Old City Wall
The Old City Wall separated the rich from the riff-raff. We were on the riff-raff side.

9. Bridge of Sighs
Reproduction of a bridge in Venice.

10. All Souls's College
This is an academic reserach institution for post-graduate work only. Unlike the other colleges, it is not always open to the public. It is rumored that All Soul's College has the second best wine collection in the country, Buckingham Castle is the first.

11. Merton College

Notable mertonians include: Dr. William Harvey (1645), Sir Richard Steele (1691), T. S. Eliot (1914) and J.R.R. Tolkien (1945) among others.

12. Oriel College
Oriel college was founded in 1326 by King Edward II, it is the fifth oldest of Oxford's Colleges. Rhodes, the founder of the Rhodes Scholarship, studied there and lived only a block away.

13. The Bear Inn

14. Pembroke College
The college was founded in 1624 by King James I and was named after William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke who was Shalespeare's patron and University's Chacellor. The main buildings are 17th to 19th century and are made from cotswold limestone. Samuel Johnson and James Smithson (founder of the Smithsonian Institution) both attended the college as undergraduates, even though Johnson had to leave before he completed his degree because of lack of funds. The college still has two desks, teapot and mug that he left there.

15. Christ Church College
Some distinguished people who graduated from Chirst College are: John Locke, Robert Hooke, John Wesley, Robert Peel, William Walton and others. It is one of the largest colleges in the area and it has a bell tower, called Great Tom, that was designed by Christopher Wren and supervised by Dean Fell. At 9:05pm the bell (which weighs 7 tons) is rung 101 times, keeping with a tradition that called the first 100 undergraduates to their respective dorms. The last chime is for luck!

Dorothy L Sayers was the first woman to get a degree at Oxford University. He father was the headmasyer of of Christ Church College and she was born in the headmaster's house.

16. Center of Town

17. Cornmarket Street
Has the oldest building in Oxford, dating back to 1040.

18. The Golden Cross
Small market where Shakespeare's Macbeth was first performed and Inn where he used to stay, which is now a Pizza Express. The walls and fireplace are original and thus protected with a glass sheet.

19. Oxford University
Headquaters for the 38 colleges located in Oxford. It is where the Ashmoleum Museum is located. Oxford is an historic and unique institution. As the oldest university in the English-speaking world, it can lay claim to nine centuries of continuous existence.

20.Lincoln College
Dr. Seuss attended Lincoln as an undergrad. His teacher asked him to make writing fun... so he did! It is one of the colleges that remains almost completely unaltered from its original foundation.

21. Trinity College
Trinity College was founded by Sir Thomas Pope in 1555. A devout catholic with no surviving children, Thomas Pope saw the foundation of an Oxford college as a means of ensuring that he and his family would always be remembered.

Our Fourth High Table (Formal Diner)

I had a busy day yesterday. I had to hand in my first paper, read for class, attend class and get ready for high table (formal diner).

Before diner we had Stephen Gill as a guest speaker on William Wordsworth, a poet of the romantic period. After the conference we had an all-school cocktail where I tried a new drink made from Dumone liquor and lemonade. It was great!

High table began at 7pm. The diner was served with a light chardonnay, the menu was:

Fried brie with salad and honey-balsamic dressing
White fish with tomato salsa over wild rice
Lamb with stuffed tomato and vegetables
Lemon Mouse with whipped cream

Class Trip: London

Professor McCullough, Stacy and I met at 10:30am in London.

We went to the National Gallery and saw painting of English landscapes.

Then to the National Portrait Gallery, around the corner, where we saw portraits of Charles I and Charles II, their wives, members of Tory and Whigs political parties and other people related to the restoration period. Both museums have free admission.

We went to Sever House, a dwelling built in the 1750’s and refurnished to capture the way silk merchants lived during that time.

We went to St. Olaf’s church, Samuel Pepys’ parish and saw statues of him and his wife. From the church we could see the steeple Pepys climbed to see the Fire of London in 1666

Had quick lunch at a small park where Pepys naval office used to be located.

Stopped by a St. Aldermary Church which was built by Wren before he built St. Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire of London.

The Temple Gate with statues of Charles I and Charles II welcoming the return of monarchy.

There are 434 steps to reach the very top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. On the way up, one can see the inner layers of the structure and even some places where the cathedral was damaged during the Second World War. There is a peeping hole on the very top, from which one can look down to the center and get an idea of the height of the structure. The cathedral is approximately 90% Wren’s design, the other 10% are colorful Victorian mosaic hat was added years after.

Stacy and I had wine and tapas at Healden Market and took the coach home afterwards.

Susan and Aunty Ethel

After being picked up, we stopped at Aunty Ethel’s house for an hour, where I got to see Adam and Tom (his baby boy). Once Adam left, we took a trip to the West Lodge Park where we had cream tea (or coffee), sandwiches, cheeses and desserts. The hotel is located on a beautiful spread of land where Queen Elizabeth used to hunt.

Susan and I dropped Aunty Ethel off at her house and did the food shopping for the BBQ that she (Susan) was hosting the next day. We returned home, made the pineapple cheesecake, had a quiet diner and went to bed.

It was a busy morning! By 1pm, when people started to arrive, Susan and I had prepared the rhubarb crumble, mowed the lawn, planted some flowers and set the drinks out. The house looked great! A total of thirteen people came to the family BBQ including Jonathan and his wife, Elizabeth, Julian and their two children, Helen, Anne, baby Helen and John, Aunty Ethel, Tom Wallace and his daughter. All of us are related one way or the other. Julian cooked chicken, pork and sausages on the grill which we ate with salad. After people had left, Elizabeth, Aunty Ethel’s daughter, stopped by for tea, there after Susan and I had a quiet diner and went to sleep.

Visiting Ana and John St. Croix

I arrived to London by 11am. It was an easy trip from Gloucester Green to Victoria on the Oxford Espress and from Victoria to Earl’s Court on the underground because I just missed the rush hour traffic. I walked a couple of blocks to Ana and John’s flat located at Chatsworth Court, where I dropped off my belongings before the two of us headed out to walk the streets. We had coffee at Le Pain Quotidien, visited Holland Park and Kensington Palace, did a bit of shopping at a new Whole Foods Market and had an amazing lunch at a local place called…

In the evening, Ana, John, Jeremy (John’s friend) and I had a wonderful roast with vegetables and potatoes, which John prepared after he came home from work. The three of us (Ana doesn’t drink) polished off 5 bottles of the most exquisite wine! Thankfully, I was not hung-over in the morning, although I admit I was a bit tired. I left at 1pm to meet Susan (my second Aunt?) at Oakwood station.

I must admit that when Winston, Charles's father, warned me about "the wines" I never thought that he meant that John would be opening bottles of "fine wine" until all of us (except Ana) passed out!

On his behalf, I must say that he started with a bottle of wine from 1990, the year they got married. Let's say he did it to be romantic!

Our Third High Table

I worked on a paper all day, taking short breaks only to eat and stretch my legs. It was a very productive day rewarded by high table and a couple of drinks with friends.

At 6pm friends dropped by to borrow some clothes. I poured myself a glass of Snake Creek Shiraz (to unwind), showered and proceeded to the dinning hall at 7pm. The menu for the evening was salmon with mayonnaise accompanied by a glass of white wine, chicken with mushroom sauce and summer vegetables with red wine and summer pudding cake for desert. Our server was wonderful, consistently filling our respective glasses throughout the meal. I did not attend the question and answer session with the team of Brideshead Revisited because I had not read the book, seen the movie, and thus had nothing to contribute. Instead I went with Rachel, Jesse and Matt to the Bear Inn and shared a pitcher of Hancock Ale.

While there, I bummed a cigarette off a group of oriental men in exchange for which I was obliged to take a picture with each of them (there were three). This is the second time in my life I have had to take photographs with oriental men who are on vacation. It is still always an odd experience!

Lottery Winner: The Merchant of Venice

I didn’t make it to breakfast! I said to the ladies who clean our room, “Ten more minutes!!!” but they never came back. I was hoping that they would knock just one more time and jolt me out of bed. So I walked out of my room at nine o’clock, disoriented, and wandered into the first Starbucks with Nichole. We read there for a couple of hours, went to the Bodleian and then back to Lincoln College for lunch. Although the English food is drenched with sauce (which we now call funk), I have to admit the quality of the fish here is incredible. I have salmon or white fish for lunch and dinner every single day.

At 3pm I met the members of the Page to Stage class along with the lottery winners for the Merchant of Venice at the Trinity College gates. We arrived in London at 5pm, which gave us a couple of hours of leisureuntil the beginning of the play at 7:30pm.

I walked around and found a quaint store called Funki Fresh on Gabriel's Wharf, on the same side of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. I bought a nitted skirt and comfortable shoes (which I wore). Afterwards, I had a greek salad and a glass of red wine at "The Real Greek Restaurant" near my final destination.

The theater is a replica of a typical playhouse in Shakespeare’s time. The seating reflects the differences between social classes, with the groundlings (the poor) standing during the entire performance while the wealthier viewers sat in balcony boxes. We got balcony seats right in front of the stage, so we got to see the actors interacts with the audience without getting wet!

I liked this comic rendition of the Merchant of Venice because it kept me entertained throughout the production, which is extremely important when you are seating in wooden benches for two hours!

Breaf Loafing Summers

Every summer I spend with the Bread Loaf School of English program I learn something new about life.

Juneau, Alaska
My first year, in Alaska, I realized that I function well on my own and enjoy the opportunities I have to prove to myself that I can be self-sufficient if need be. The summer at Juneau was a hard one for me, academically, because all the courses were full when I applied and I took two challenging writing courses, The Brontes with Prof. Easley and Ethnographic Essays with Prof. Jeff Porter. From the very first day I new that I was in over my head! I had not written anything since college and I felt that even my language skills were not up to par in a highly intellectual and competitive environment typical of a Master’s program in English. But I read, participated in class, locked myself in my room during the weekend and passed the first session… with very good marks! From this I learned two things: there are no limitations to what I can do and doing it can be an awesome experience.

Middlebury, Vermont
I spent the second summer at the headquarters of Bread Loaf in Middlebury, Vermont and took Storytelling with Mr. Armstrong and Technology in the teaching of Writing with Prof. Lungsworth. This time around, both classes were highly interactive and required frequent class participation and daily assignments. In contrast to the other campuses, Vermont prides itself in the amount of activities that are available to the students throughout the summer. Activities include parties, readings, seminars, barbeques, plays, contests, etc. I lived off campus (in Rochester) with my mother and step-father and had a bunch of friends up for the weekends I spent at Vermont. I learned that it is not a good idea to watch the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” before you have to stay home, ALONE, for an entire week! Needless to say, I went back to sleeping with the light on.

Oxford, UK
For my third session I picked Oxford because I had been itching to visit Europe. I am taking a class that concentrates on the Restoration Period (1660-1800) with Professor Peter McCullough. Lincoln College is located on Turl Street, in the City of Oxford. We are approximately 60 students from all over the US, France and Venezuela (me). The more I get to know my colleagues, the more I realize how pointless it is to live our lives by going through the motions and falling into the next situation. I have met people here who have decided, at a certain moment in their lives, what they want and have simply picked up their belongings and gone out to get it; one person who has spent months traveling the States, Australia and ended up living in Hawaii. I compare those experiences to those of people who live in their comfort zones, knowing only what exists in their immediate surroundings. The latter never cross the fringes into the unknown and miss so many adventures. And that is the lesson I am learning in Oxford… that live is not worth living unless it is lived as an adventure.

Hanging With My (New) Hommies!

Although in the past I have met wonderful people during the summer sessions, Oxford is the campus that lends itself most to forging meaningful friendships. It might be because the array of activities we can do together or the flexibility in our schedules, nevertheless I have met people I hope to keep in touch from here on, two of which are Chelsea and Nichole.

Chelsea took this picture (to the left) one night the two of us signed out for dinner and headed out for a night in the town. She was embarrassed that I was being a tourist in the midst of cool natives!

The picture on the right was taken at the Watermill Playhouse, where we went with the entire school to watch "the Taming of the Shrewd" played by an all-male cast. One of the highlights of the play was seeing a couple of actors in sexy thongs! A low light was being on the bus that broke down for a couple of hours. We did not make it back to Lincoln College until midnight.


The picture on the left was timed. It took place after the second high-table dinner, when the three of us decided to watch a modern rendition of "The Importance of Being Earnest" but ended up talking all night and polishing off two bottles of wine in Chelsea's room. It was soooo much fun!


And last but not least is a picture of me leaving the Bodleian one afternoon. It was the first day we had perfect sunny weather. One thing about Oxford is that it is very hard to stay inside and study when its nice outside, harder than in Juneau and Vermont!

Class Trip: 18th Century Landscapes

As part of our course, Professor Peter took the class to Rousham and Stowe, estates that have gardens designed by 18th century landscape artists and have survived intact through the years. Professor Peter gave us the guided tour of both places while letting each of us locate and read the scenes that appeared throughout the landscape.

Rousham House was built in 1635 by Sir Robert Dormer and is still owned by the original family. The owners charge visitors £4 for spending an entire day on their property. People are allowed to bring food, books, etc. and enjoy the landscape at their leisure.

In harmony to the 18th century landscaping, the garden is not meant to be seen in any particular order; the foot paths, forest openings and small rivers take you from one beautiful scene to another. It is a landscape that was meant to be read and understood by the visitors. It was designed by William Kent and has become a place of pilgrimage for students studying the work of this artist. Kent added the wings and the stable block to the house in addition to making some alterations to the interior.

On the left is a picture of the inside of a pigeon house. Pigeons were a popular dish because they were less expensive than chickens or ducks. The house is a circular structure lined on the inside with small holes where pigeons nest during the year and are thus available when needed... yummy!

The owners of big estates (such as Rousham) grew fruits and vegetables for personal use and to sell in the nearest towns. As a result, Rousham was equipped with a working vegetable and rose garden, in addition to an orchard with apple, pear and peach trees, all of which are open to curious visitors.

This path, on one side of the orchard, is in harmony with the English style, which consisted of using a limited variety of plants and flowers planted strategically to amplify each other’s beauty in addition to letting the plants grow unto the path in irregularity. In the 18th century, the English landscape artist began to move away from the artificial and symmetrical Dutch and French styles and to imitate the Italian gardens, which were increasingly wild and followed the inclination of nature.

After Rousham we drove to Stowe where, after a quick bite, we continued on our tour of 18th century landscapes and gardens. In contrast to Rousham, the buildings of Stowe function as a private boarding school for boys and the gardens belong to the National Trust and are open to the general public. Unlike Rousham, Stowe was the meeting place for active members of the Whigs party, specifically those belonging to the Kit-Cat Club, and as a result many of the monuments in the landscape are blatant political statements.

Second Week of Class

By now I know that I have definitely lucked-out with my course.

Literature and the Arts in Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century England
This course will set the major literary achievements of Restoration and Augustan England in the wider contexts of politics, religion, and the other arts that flourished after the return of monarchy in 1660. We will consider major published poets and dramatists, as well as manuscript culture, diaries, and the emergent periodical essay. An emphasis will be placed on parallel features and influences in architecture, garden design, urban development, painting, and music, taking advantage (through field trips, for which students should allow a small budget of up to £100 for travel) of the architectural, landscape, and fine art legacies in Oxford and London.

Texts
* John Milton, Paradise Lost (either Oxford World's Classics or Penguin)
* Restoration Literature: An Anthology, ed. Paul Hammond (Oxford World's Classics)
* Eighteenth-Century Poetry, An Annotated Anthology, ed. David Fairer and Christine Gerrard.
* Restoration Drama, An Anthology, ed. David Womersley. Plays include: Sir George Etherege, The Man of Mode; Nathaniel Lee, Lucius Junius Brutus; Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv'd.

The course is taught by the director of Bread Loaf in Oxford, professor Peter McCullough, and the class consists of two other women interested as much as I in the coursework. Our classes are detailed discussions of the work we have read, technical analysis of the texts and commentaries on the points that caught our eye. Although we have extensive reading, the authors of eighteenth century England (Milton, Pope, Addison, etc.) are so interesting we can’t get enough information about their lives. Their works are so packed with indirect comment on the events of their time that two hours of class is barely enough time to grasp the extent of their genius.

Although the reading is challenging, I've had time to get lost in the streets of Oxford and eventually find my way back to class!

Weekend with the Chamber's

On Saturday I took the rail north from Oxford to Banbury where John Chambers (my second-cousin) picked me up at the station. I had not seen John in more than a decade since he visited my family in Boston, Massachusetts. Now he was married to Jenny and had two boys called Matthew and Daniel. After he picked me up, we met his family at their annual school fair.

Although the fair was not unlike the others I have attended, with booths of arts and crafts, face-painting, baked goodies, etc., I got to see Morris dancing, a ritual dating back to the 15th century meant to welcome the spring. The dance was revived in the 19th century by Cecil Sharp, a folk music researcher, and is now considered the national dance of England. It is done by 6 pairs of men dressed in white who wear hats, fresh flowers and bells around their shins. The men sing an English folk song, leap into the air while waving sticks and handkerchiefs to complement the rhythm of the music. During the fair I also got to see parts of the Punch and Judy Puppet show and a man dressed as a street caller, who let us know about upcoming events.

On our way home, John and I stopped at his place of work, the Katherine House Hospice, where he gave me a quick tour of the facility and a short explanation of the founders of this beautiful place.

Sunday was a busy day. In the morning we saw Matthew’s gym recital and took both boys to soccer. While they played, we had coffee in town and a country wine at Ye Olde Reindeer Inn, the place where Oliver Cromwell used to meet with him supporters. I had a glass of country wine made from elderberry, which tastes delicious and set me up for the rest of the day!

Then we went to the Uptown House and Gardens, one of the tourist attractions hosted by the National Trust. John and I were particularly interested in the Uptown House because it was the estate of the founders of Shell, the company my grandfather (George Viney) worked for when he was transferred to Venezuela at 28 years old. We had lunch at the Pavilion Restaurant, took pictures of the grounds and visited the art exhibition (which included advertising posters for Shell when it first began). Although it rained on and of throughout the visit, I enjoyed the beautiful garden and the time I spent with the family.

Here are some close-ups John took at Upton House!