The afternoon of Friday, October 25th, it became apparent that something was amiss. Jogging along the ring road, trying to shake the irksome "hospital" feel out of my body by running, I assumed that the hair raising on my arm was from my earlier attempt to participate in a study of arterial pressure in order to earn 25 British Pounds. I say attempt not because they didn't pay me (they did) but because I have no veins and no arteries. At least I have no veins and no arteries that either of the practicing physicians (both well trained, and earning secondary research degrees at Cambridge) could locate within 45 minutes. Eventually a needle was inserted, but my body managed to expel it (and bleed all over) within about 30 minutes of a 2.5 hour testing period. Attempt two was completely unsuccessful.
Because I rock that shit. I've always known I had small and squirly veins. Giving blood is a nightmare, and the childhood fears I had of dracula coming to eat me were totally unfounded. He could have sucked for hours and would have come up dry because I just don't have blood. Not like a person anyway. I strongly suspect that I may be a step back in evolutionary biology--like a grasshopper. It's there, just sloshing around all over. Not in veins and certainly not ordered. Given my porcelain like pale skin you'd think that I'd be a prime target for the Red Cross. But no. I'm so troublesome that there's a note written on my redcross donation card. "Be Careful Drawing." I assume that the volunteer who penned it must not have liked my rendition of the T-Rex. Drawn while I was eating a cookie and drinking milk after yet another failed donation in 2009.
Blood banks and arterial pressure aside, Friday was windy and traffic was bad. Looping back into the Porter's office, I ran into a series of printed signs. "Bad Weather Sunday." I ignored them and wandered off to my room for a nap. Because that's what graduate students do. We nap. All the freaking time. No social life, and few friends....what else are we supposed to do? I've been learning to ignore the Porter's Lodge and their signs/emails/etc. If I didn't the information there gleaned would limit pretty much everything I do to staying inside and studying.
It's unsafe to walk at night. In the dark.
There WILL be a fire.
Do NOT park here, you'll be towed.
Bicycles are prone to accidents.
Leave nothing in the forecourt, it WILL be stolen.
Generally speaking the Porter's Lodge here at Newnham will keep students safe from EVERYTHING. Including themselves. A lot of it just doesn't really apply in the same way after about the age of 25. I've been at a point where home ownership was on the radar as a thing that I might someday actually DO. Whether or not to leave bacon alone on a stove for 2+ hours is not a question I ask. The answer is a given; only if I want it to be delicious (no seriously, slow cook your bacon on super low heat....it's amazing).
Saturday morning the signs had multiplied. "Bad Weather Sunday PM: Do Not Go Out If Possible." It was also raining and I was bored, so I popped into the library to watch Louis C.K. clips and see what the BBC had to say about the weather. There are apparently 4 levels of Weather Alerts here. And we were headed into an Amber. Level 1. Indicated by newscasters in jackets standing int he wind, and an amber colored bar under the screen. Some things are universal. Hurricane force winds on the coasts of southern England and Wales, and gusts up to 80mph throughout southern England read the report. And rain. We could get up to an inch in a day.
A whole inch.
I should point out that I am from Portland Oregon. A WHOLE INCH of rain is like every Monday from about mid August through late June in Portland Oregon. And that's just the last few years. While we've been having this miserable drought. Oregon gives the word "drought" a whole new meaning. Wind I get. Wind is scary and trees can fall down. And there are trees here. They seem to cap out at about 20-25 feet. At least in town. But they are trees, little trees, but treees that could fall down. My umbrella might also be broken. Which would be a problem since the only waterproof jacket I brought is rated to 30 below, and it's not cold enough to wear it yet. There's also the question of the ocean. I've learned, by being around it, that The Ocean does pretty terrifying things during storms that are otherwise quite mild. A little bit of wind can turn a pretty beach into a thing of terror. But Cambridge is nowhere near The Ocean. At least for the U.K.....and let's be frank. It's an island. "Near The Ocean" is a relative term. There is no Iowa here. There is also no doppler radar here. I had a conversation with a co-worker early this spring about how dopplar radar in Oregon is not "real." AKA the South has it down when it comes to dopplar. Something about tornado alley makes weather prediction important. As things turn out, Oregon Doppler is to UK Doppler as Texas Doppler is to Oregon Doppler.
We've been bracing for this storm since Friday. The news seems to indicate that there are portions of the island that got hit pretty hard. Trees caused damage, a half a million people lost power at one point or another, but here in Cambridge, as far as I can tell, the worst of the damage was that inflicted by scotch tape peeling paint off of walls where signs were hung warning people not to go outside.
Tomorrow I'm attending a lecture which the Men's Anti-Feminist League of Britain has promised will be protested.
I honestly can't wait.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Signs of the Times: A collection of the signs in and around Cambridge the City and Cambridge the University.
Cambridge is an odd collection of colleges, University Sites, Dept. buildings, labs, homes, offices, community centers, grocery stores and all the other odds and ends that make up both universities and small cities. Having been conglomerated together over literally a period of time spanning more than 800 years, the signs throughout town are varied and unique.
I don't expect anything in this collection to be particularly old/interesting, but it's a snapshot of what getting around town/the university can be like. Enjoy.
Downing Site Building
CCTV signs are everywhere, as are CW signs and the handy dandy KPH signs.
Downing Site Dept.
Downing Site Dept.
A mailbox, Sft (don't know what that means) and dedication plaque.
Construction sites. They are alarmed.
From an unused Porter's Lodge on the Downing Site.
Downing Site.
Downing Site.
(Guess who spends a lot of time on the Downing Site?)
Friday, October 18, 2013
My Shameful Confession...
...and there it is. The Question. The one that I dread, that comes up at least 2-3 times a week now that orientation week is over (orientation week saw it popping up daily). The question that really truly defines my place at this , or I suppose any, world class university. Not "did you get in?" Not "what's the focus of your research?" Not "what made you choose to apply to Cambridge?" Or even "Where did you do your undergrad?"
Nope.
The Question is "how are you funded? AKA "does anyone besides you really think you might actually belong here?" AKA "are you really intelligent enough to merit a place here?" AKA "Where did you land on the list of candidates? Near the top--a student who brought such insight that we demanded they come, or did you barely scrape by?" The Question susses out those who will go on to successful careers in academia, business, economics, etc. and who will simply be a slightly better off middle class person, occasionally skimming articles written and published by one of our more academically focused PhD holding peers. Funding is designed to ensure that the best and brightest students spend their time at Cambridge focused on becoming the next generation of academic thinkers and global policy advisers, and despite not being a "scholar" of any kind, I really believe that those who did get funding most likely in all cases, were the best candidates selected.
That said, I've been carefully crafting my answer to The Question for the last week. Since my bus pulled up on campus and I figured out post-haste that The Question was important. "Funding? OOOOHHHHHH." In my mind I have this big understanding smile. In real life I'm just sort of embarrassed and ready to run. "Funding." I've rehearsed it;
"Well, in 1965 the Congress of the United States followed in the footsteps of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and offered to all US citizens attending eligible universities, the opportunity to succeed by establishing..." I usually make it as far as "well...." You see people who are funded start their answers with "I am a," followed by the name of the organization that funded them, and the fact that they are a scholar. Those who can simply pay for the cost out of pocket usually have some magic social skills. I don't know how, but you can just tell that funding isn't a question that they need to be asked.
It's the middle group. Those of us in bluejeans whose collars are starting to fray. By the time the first consonant is out of my mouth it's clear that I have not started my sentence in the acceptable manner. I, it has become apparent to whomever is listening, am not a scholar. Nor am I coiffed. Infrequently I will pull off confident, but that really depends on the day. That "well" is when people start looking at their feet. Or avoiding eye contact. Or humming and hawing their way out of the conversation.
Apparently far fewer people are interested in the political situation surrounding the origins of the US Student Loan Program than I might have thought.
Here's the thing though. There are quite a few "self funded" students. I've met dozens of folks who are getting parental support, or help from a grandmother or whose families planned around paying for College and Graduate School. Props to those families. Just like I do think the University is making the best funding choices they can and selecting people who will really make the world a better place for us all to receive funding, I also strongly support the idea of families, who can afford it, helping each other out. Seriously: props.
For me, this is the culmination of a lifelong dream. A dream that somehow landed in my 11 year old mind when I declared I was going to go to Harvard and find dinosaur bones with feathers attached and write a paper about it. My limited middle-school understanding of geography was not important, because it wasn't a place somewhere on the East Coast that I wanted to go. It was an idea. The idea of academia. Of lectures and tests and reading until my eyes bled. The eventual dream of maybe teaching, hosting discussions and even traveling a little to learn. The topics changed as I grew older. Paleontology morphed to archaeology and then anthropology. Sociology shifted to Politics and Government and by the time I'd graduated from Pacific University I'd applied for scholarships and graduate schools all over the world.
Marshall, Gates, Rhodes. Fulbright. Oxford, Harvard, Boston College, UC Berkley. Why not? Thought 22 year old Callie. College was awesome, a graduate degree would be even more mind-blowingly-fun. Then the inevitable letters came rolling in;
"We regret to inform you..."
"There was a record number of highly qualified candidates..."
"The committee struggles each year with their decision....."
Bit by bit I got my pride handed back to me on a plate. I learned what "overshooting" means and how valuable humility can be--even if it just makes you pick a back-up school. One "safe" application I had never made.
Graduate school, it seemed, was not for me that year.
Or the next.
Or the next.
I learned how to use microsoft outlook, and how to handle a screaming customer on the phone. I bought a bike and began improv classes. I settled into "life" because that's what you do. And it was a good life to settle into. Solid job, good friends, fun hobby.
And then, on a whim when I thought I might lose my job because of layoffs, I took one last risk. Better to be in school than unemployed. So I applied to Portland State University (again). Essays polished and transcripts on hand, I took my shot in the dark. I applied to study at Cambridge (and to a scholarship to fund part of it). To this day I'm still not even sure why.
8 months later I woke up in the middle of the night to an email coming in on my new smartphone whose 2 year plan I had just activated, read an email from the Graduate Board at the University of Cambridge, and started to cry.
Not because I "got in" (although that was unbelievable--literally), and not because I did not get the scholarship (quite believeable actually) but because 26 year old me knew something that 22 year old me never did. Opportunities come to those who create them, but even those people only get them once in a great while. And this, I knew was the sort of opportunity that would be tied to risk. I cried because I knew I had a decision to make. Did I stay home, take no risk, but keep my job (which I liked), and hung out with my friends (whom I adore) or did I risk everything for the next 10-25 years just to go back to school? Without a scholarship, without funding and without help from my family (the situation doesn't allow for it--do NOT ask) my choice boiled down to stay where things are financially "safe" or take a deep breath, dive in, and know that the only person I can rely on to get me back up to where there is air to breathe is me.
So I'm diving. Arcing gracefully down into the ice-cold water of somewhere completely new, knowing that not everyone gets the choice of whether or not to pursue their childhood dream. That risk is an honor--and that's something I wish I could convey to every person who ever pauses awkwardly when I mention I came here on loans. That, for me, it is the chance of a lifetime to sign off on my student loans. An adventure to step into the unknown professionally and personally, and the rare moment in which I can try to fulfill a childhood dream.
And guess what? If I weren't willing to work my butt off and do everything in my power to make that dream happen, if I only wanted it when it was easy, it wouldn't be a true dream.
But I certainly wouldn't appreciate it, the way I am already appreciating this year--and when I meet other students who traveled the world to come here, and who are also shaking their heads at how plasma is donated instead of sold, and how hard it is to not work full time, I shake their hands proudly. Because even if they won't be field-changing, earth shattering brilliant minds, I know how hard they worked to be here. So I know how hard they'll work to have an impact when they leave.
So congrats to all---and to those of you who are considering taking a risk: do it. And don't look back.
Nope.
The Question is "how are you funded? AKA "does anyone besides you really think you might actually belong here?" AKA "are you really intelligent enough to merit a place here?" AKA "Where did you land on the list of candidates? Near the top--a student who brought such insight that we demanded they come, or did you barely scrape by?" The Question susses out those who will go on to successful careers in academia, business, economics, etc. and who will simply be a slightly better off middle class person, occasionally skimming articles written and published by one of our more academically focused PhD holding peers. Funding is designed to ensure that the best and brightest students spend their time at Cambridge focused on becoming the next generation of academic thinkers and global policy advisers, and despite not being a "scholar" of any kind, I really believe that those who did get funding most likely in all cases, were the best candidates selected.
That said, I've been carefully crafting my answer to The Question for the last week. Since my bus pulled up on campus and I figured out post-haste that The Question was important. "Funding? OOOOHHHHHH." In my mind I have this big understanding smile. In real life I'm just sort of embarrassed and ready to run. "Funding." I've rehearsed it;
"Well, in 1965 the Congress of the United States followed in the footsteps of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and offered to all US citizens attending eligible universities, the opportunity to succeed by establishing..." I usually make it as far as "well...." You see people who are funded start their answers with "I am a," followed by the name of the organization that funded them, and the fact that they are a scholar. Those who can simply pay for the cost out of pocket usually have some magic social skills. I don't know how, but you can just tell that funding isn't a question that they need to be asked.
It's the middle group. Those of us in bluejeans whose collars are starting to fray. By the time the first consonant is out of my mouth it's clear that I have not started my sentence in the acceptable manner. I, it has become apparent to whomever is listening, am not a scholar. Nor am I coiffed. Infrequently I will pull off confident, but that really depends on the day. That "well" is when people start looking at their feet. Or avoiding eye contact. Or humming and hawing their way out of the conversation.
Apparently far fewer people are interested in the political situation surrounding the origins of the US Student Loan Program than I might have thought.
Here's the thing though. There are quite a few "self funded" students. I've met dozens of folks who are getting parental support, or help from a grandmother or whose families planned around paying for College and Graduate School. Props to those families. Just like I do think the University is making the best funding choices they can and selecting people who will really make the world a better place for us all to receive funding, I also strongly support the idea of families, who can afford it, helping each other out. Seriously: props.
For me, this is the culmination of a lifelong dream. A dream that somehow landed in my 11 year old mind when I declared I was going to go to Harvard and find dinosaur bones with feathers attached and write a paper about it. My limited middle-school understanding of geography was not important, because it wasn't a place somewhere on the East Coast that I wanted to go. It was an idea. The idea of academia. Of lectures and tests and reading until my eyes bled. The eventual dream of maybe teaching, hosting discussions and even traveling a little to learn. The topics changed as I grew older. Paleontology morphed to archaeology and then anthropology. Sociology shifted to Politics and Government and by the time I'd graduated from Pacific University I'd applied for scholarships and graduate schools all over the world.
Marshall, Gates, Rhodes. Fulbright. Oxford, Harvard, Boston College, UC Berkley. Why not? Thought 22 year old Callie. College was awesome, a graduate degree would be even more mind-blowingly-fun. Then the inevitable letters came rolling in;
"We regret to inform you..."
"There was a record number of highly qualified candidates..."
"The committee struggles each year with their decision....."
Bit by bit I got my pride handed back to me on a plate. I learned what "overshooting" means and how valuable humility can be--even if it just makes you pick a back-up school. One "safe" application I had never made.
Graduate school, it seemed, was not for me that year.
Or the next.
Or the next.
I learned how to use microsoft outlook, and how to handle a screaming customer on the phone. I bought a bike and began improv classes. I settled into "life" because that's what you do. And it was a good life to settle into. Solid job, good friends, fun hobby.
And then, on a whim when I thought I might lose my job because of layoffs, I took one last risk. Better to be in school than unemployed. So I applied to Portland State University (again). Essays polished and transcripts on hand, I took my shot in the dark. I applied to study at Cambridge (and to a scholarship to fund part of it). To this day I'm still not even sure why.
8 months later I woke up in the middle of the night to an email coming in on my new smartphone whose 2 year plan I had just activated, read an email from the Graduate Board at the University of Cambridge, and started to cry.
Not because I "got in" (although that was unbelievable--literally), and not because I did not get the scholarship (quite believeable actually) but because 26 year old me knew something that 22 year old me never did. Opportunities come to those who create them, but even those people only get them once in a great while. And this, I knew was the sort of opportunity that would be tied to risk. I cried because I knew I had a decision to make. Did I stay home, take no risk, but keep my job (which I liked), and hung out with my friends (whom I adore) or did I risk everything for the next 10-25 years just to go back to school? Without a scholarship, without funding and without help from my family (the situation doesn't allow for it--do NOT ask) my choice boiled down to stay where things are financially "safe" or take a deep breath, dive in, and know that the only person I can rely on to get me back up to where there is air to breathe is me.
So I'm diving. Arcing gracefully down into the ice-cold water of somewhere completely new, knowing that not everyone gets the choice of whether or not to pursue their childhood dream. That risk is an honor--and that's something I wish I could convey to every person who ever pauses awkwardly when I mention I came here on loans. That, for me, it is the chance of a lifetime to sign off on my student loans. An adventure to step into the unknown professionally and personally, and the rare moment in which I can try to fulfill a childhood dream.
And guess what? If I weren't willing to work my butt off and do everything in my power to make that dream happen, if I only wanted it when it was easy, it wouldn't be a true dream.
But I certainly wouldn't appreciate it, the way I am already appreciating this year--and when I meet other students who traveled the world to come here, and who are also shaking their heads at how plasma is donated instead of sold, and how hard it is to not work full time, I shake their hands proudly. Because even if they won't be field-changing, earth shattering brilliant minds, I know how hard they worked to be here. So I know how hard they'll work to have an impact when they leave.
So congrats to all---and to those of you who are considering taking a risk: do it. And don't look back.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Sad Days: Beautiful Bicycles That Have Been Turned Into Fixies.
The Fixie
Before we really begin, I wanted to provide you with a good example of a solid fixie. Simple frame, solid design, meant to be a fixie. No other dreams in mind. No gears. No shifting. No craftsmanship, no workshop arguments about what steel tubing to use or whether alloys would be worthwhile. No makers who earned their stripes tooling after cycling greats in the middle of the night to repair a flat on a second's notice or replace a spoke. Nope. This bike was designed for someone who just wants a good workout, a cheap bike and a way to get around. It is perfect. Either that or someone did such a good job gutting it, that it doesn't matter.
It is also not the subject of this post. This post is about the pure number of good, solid, 1970-1990 steel frames that exist in Cambridge, but have been gutted in order to become "fixies." For someone looking for a really particular bicycle, this is devestating. There are none. There are some nicer low-end newish roadies floating around. And there is literally a PLETHORA of gorgeous frames... gorgeous frames that all would need hours of work to be rebuilt. This post is about them. I focused on bicycles that were locked in such a way to allow photographs. Yes, environment limits, and yes it's hard to really see a frame if it is surrounded by 25 other bicycles. No matter how awesome the frame.
The Murray PaceMaker
The odds are good that this Murray Pacemaker came about in the late 1980's after Murray (originally a United Auto Workers company that produced top of the line cycles in the '30's and '40's in addition to auto parts) was acquired by the British investment firm Tomkins pic. With the last US made Murrays' produced around 1988, most Murray bicycles are now, and since then have been, produced in China. and sold around the world. The original "Pacemaker" was the Murray Bike, sold at the 1939 World's Fair. In recent yearsthe name and brand reimagined in much less glory on the racks of stores similar to Kmart and Target. Not the best frame in the world, but despite that, it is an older steel-framed roadie that has been converted into a fixie.
Sad Day.
The Low-End Raleigh
Sad Day.
The Sun Solar 5
The Sun Solar 5 was produced by a company owned by Raleigh (remember our Raleigh above?). Returned bicycles and frames were sent to a factory in Carlton where they were re-worked and re-branded, before being resold. Before being acquired by Tube Investments in the 1950's, Sun had it's own line of bicycles, motorcycles and bicycle fittings. The original company was founded in 1885, but not much remains of that brand, or that name, anymore. Particularly not when people go turning Sun's into Fixies.
Sad Day.
The Harry Hall
(unknown model...it's already awkward enough taking photos of bikes, let alone messing around with them to find serial numbers and model identification info.)
Now here is an interesting bicycle. Not a brand or shop I was familiar with, I was intrigued by the frame's solid design, lack of rust (despite the wear of the stickers) and the moulding of the frame just at the gooseneck and fork (nowhere else). A little google work and I find out that Harry Hall, who is no longer about, was a renowned bicycle mechanic and maker in the UK who worked from the 1950's until his death at 78. Tuning and fixing the riding machines of world class atheletes, building their bicycyles and then running his own little bicycle shop (now owned by one of his sons....the other son apparently killed his French wife, I guess you can't win 'em all). My guess on the age of the bike (after plodding through some forums) is early to mid eighties; aka: the Golden Years of steel frames, and a time when Harry Hall was wrapping up his bicycle making career, and winning racing competitions around Europe for his age group.
The reason this bike is the saddest of them all? It is a vintage steel frame, still in very decent condition that came out of a small family run shop that at the time was producing a limited number of cycles and whose owner cared very much about bicycling and producing good bikes. It's reflective of Miele in Canada (before the buyout) or Pinarello in Italy.
Now it is a fixe.
It even still has the original fork.
Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad Day.
In other news, I know what kind of frame I'm on the lookout for, and when I find it, I will need help selling the bike I got to get to and from class on.....
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Pigeons and Porters.
Each of Cambridge's 31 Colleges and a variety of the University sites and departments have what's called a "Porter's Lodge." According to my new student handbook the "Porters" (aka employees of the Porter's Lodge) are the "most helpful people you will ever meet."
Porter's, as a general rule, are older men between the ages of 50 and 110. As a general rule they have incredible facial hair (we're talking mustache-contest-winning here) and a variety of thick accents that seem to come from all over the British Isles. They have an office at the entrance of each college, including mine--Newnham--and are affable, nice and semi-helpful.
On Friday a pigeon died on the lawn next to the path that I take from my student house to the outside world every day. I reported it promptly to the Porters. Since then we've had about 6 of the following conversations.
Me: "Hi, it's me again."
Porter: "Oh, Hello! Have you come for mail?"
Me: "No. It's about the pigeon."
Porter: "The pigeon, love?"
Me: "Yeah, the pigeon."
Porter: "What pigeon?'
Me: "The pigeon that died on the NW lawn Friday. I called it in and submitted a maintainence request, but it's still there."
Porter: "Yes?"
Me: "It's still there."
Porter: "A pigeon?"
Me: "Yes the pigeon. And what's worse, the magpies have started eating it."
Porter: "Magpies?"
Me: "The nasty black and white birds that make a lot of noise and crap all over the benches."
Porter: "They're not."
Me: "Well they look, and act, like magpies"
Porter: "They're not nasty, and actually it's the pigeons what make a mess."
Me: "The pigeon is dead."
Porter: "What pigeon?"
Me: "The one that's been on the lawn behind the Piele building for four days. "
Porter: "There's a dead pigeon? I'll have the gardner get right on it. I can't say they'll be sorry to see one of the nasty buggers go. Rats of the sky as they say!"
Me: "They should really get right on collecting it."
Porter: "What do you mean?"
Me: "The magpies have been eating at it. There's dead pigeon bits scattered all over. It'll get worse the longer they wait. Besides, the hornets found it this morning, and they'll only get worse."
Porter: "Found what?"
Me: "The dead pigeon that's been on the lawn for the last four days. And besides, it's begun to smell. I stopped in yesterday to follow up on my maintainence request from Friday and to let the Porters Lodge know that there was a dead pigeon."
Porter: "Did you now?" (smiling broadly)
Me: "Yup. But it was just the dead pigeon yesterday, today it's most of a dead pigeon and a large number of dead pigeon parts, and tomorrow it'll be most of a dead pigeon, a large number of dead pigeon parts and a boatload of hornets."
Porter: "What's that now?"
Me: "The Pigeon. It died. Hornets, they found it. Magpies, they're eating it."
Porter: "Well aren't those lovely birds!"
We're on day five, and the magpies have gotten as far as spreading pigeon guts in fascinating patterns on the lawn.
No action appears to have been taken as regards the removal of said bird.
Porter's, as a general rule, are older men between the ages of 50 and 110. As a general rule they have incredible facial hair (we're talking mustache-contest-winning here) and a variety of thick accents that seem to come from all over the British Isles. They have an office at the entrance of each college, including mine--Newnham--and are affable, nice and semi-helpful.
On Friday a pigeon died on the lawn next to the path that I take from my student house to the outside world every day. I reported it promptly to the Porters. Since then we've had about 6 of the following conversations.
Me: "Hi, it's me again."
Porter: "Oh, Hello! Have you come for mail?"
Me: "No. It's about the pigeon."
Porter: "The pigeon, love?"
Me: "Yeah, the pigeon."
Porter: "What pigeon?'
Me: "The pigeon that died on the NW lawn Friday. I called it in and submitted a maintainence request, but it's still there."
Porter: "Yes?"
Me: "It's still there."
Porter: "A pigeon?"
Me: "Yes the pigeon. And what's worse, the magpies have started eating it."
Porter: "Magpies?"
Me: "The nasty black and white birds that make a lot of noise and crap all over the benches."
Porter: "They're not."
Me: "Well they look, and act, like magpies"
Porter: "They're not nasty, and actually it's the pigeons what make a mess."
Me: "The pigeon is dead."
Porter: "What pigeon?"
Me: "The one that's been on the lawn behind the Piele building for four days. "
Porter: "There's a dead pigeon? I'll have the gardner get right on it. I can't say they'll be sorry to see one of the nasty buggers go. Rats of the sky as they say!"
Me: "They should really get right on collecting it."
Porter: "What do you mean?"
Me: "The magpies have been eating at it. There's dead pigeon bits scattered all over. It'll get worse the longer they wait. Besides, the hornets found it this morning, and they'll only get worse."
Porter: "Found what?"
Me: "The dead pigeon that's been on the lawn for the last four days. And besides, it's begun to smell. I stopped in yesterday to follow up on my maintainence request from Friday and to let the Porters Lodge know that there was a dead pigeon."
Porter: "Did you now?" (smiling broadly)
Me: "Yup. But it was just the dead pigeon yesterday, today it's most of a dead pigeon and a large number of dead pigeon parts, and tomorrow it'll be most of a dead pigeon, a large number of dead pigeon parts and a boatload of hornets."
Porter: "What's that now?"
Me: "The Pigeon. It died. Hornets, they found it. Magpies, they're eating it."
Porter: "Well aren't those lovely birds!"
We're on day five, and the magpies have gotten as far as spreading pigeon guts in fascinating patterns on the lawn.
No action appears to have been taken as regards the removal of said bird.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Doors In Cambridge
A General Practitioner's Office
An Apt.
A very expensive men's clothing store
St. John's College
I don't know.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Saying My Hardest Goodbye....
Be forewarned, this is not about Cambridge or the UK, it's about saying goodbye to my Grandma.
She's quiet now, lying there in that bed. The contours of her skin, the wrinkles worked in with care and her arms blotchy from too many hours spent in the sun speak to a thousand better days. Her breaths are raspy and slow, like the long draws she took from her cigarettes in the soft afternoon light, sitting on the porch swing. Nicotine curbing her hunger and trimming her hips for fifty years of moments. Moments dripping by now like precious drops of water lost in the desert sun. A blanket sliding bit by bit towards the floor, she stares out listlessly, her mind gone to another place, another time, a long time ago. She is waiting. One by one we wait with her. Some of those moments, those long fading moments, blending with a smile, a memory, a reminder of what was and will never again be. But mostly she waits alone. Her things gathering dust in the corners of the garage. Color faded, like her hair is finally fading. The black strands at last outnumbered by the grey. Greasy and oily, she never kept it this long. But now she simply lays there, fussing if they cut it, or touch her, or help her bathe.
The sun dappling through the room curves across the top of her glasses. Thick and heavy the lenses have settled into permanent creases, sinking her empty cheek bones further into her mouth. Her dentures outlined starker than they ever were before, her green eyes behind them, dim and dull. Not like I remember. The grandmother I always knew. The laughter comes now in wan smiles and fits and starts of recognition. the crease at the edge of her eyes starting to turn downwards. Drool now drips from the corners of her mouth. Her mouth that she kept so perfect, settled in skin that is no longer made-up, her eyebrows are no longer plucked and painted and perfect. They are white and wispy and all but gone. A lifetime of sorrow and laughter has worn her to the bone. Shattered by loss, then mended by time the pieces of my grandmother's mind are finally scattered. A face here, a second captured forever there, a memory of a car, of a dog, of a cat named George all jumbled in with the recognition of my brother as her husband, until wait. No. He's far too tall.
She waits, her body still on the bed, draped by the sun. The sound of her roommates television buzzing in the background. Poverty resigning her, the most private person, to share a room. Now, during the last days of life, everything she still is, and all the moments she has left with us, with so many other people. Surrounded by sound, subtle and soft. Surrounded by so many others who are simply waiting.
She waits and we wait. The inevitable is yet to come, with all its dread and pain and release and grief. We wait and she waits, and we push and beg and cry at once for the waiting to end and yet for it never to cease. The moments, slipping slowly by pile up faster than we care to count them, and the stories disappear into the folds of time. Eyes blurred, she's just another woman. Another wrinkled body drifting slowly away. Another soul in a billion that could die today, tomorrow, next week, next year. And yet, I see her hands, the scar running down her arm, the fingers. Crooked, like mine. Her feet, and the place they cut out the tumor. Another human and I might not see the moments. But she is where I came from, my grandmother, the woman whose features are engraved on the walls of my heart. Lying there, as the sun slowly fades, letting the room drift to dark.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Pictures!
Kings College at dusk. Yes, I have committed a cardinal sin and edited.
Kings College from a different angle, earlier in the day.
One of the residence halls here at Newnham.
People here do not follow signs about bicycles.
Portland!!!
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Day One. AKA 24 hours of transit.
I have the most fabulous pajamas.
And by "most fabulous" I mean that they are the most fabulous pajamas ever. I got them for Christmas a decade ago. It's one of those lovely matchy-matchy tops and bottoms. Light blue, with lovely motifs of cows jumping gracefully over yellow moons and stars. High school aged Callie thought it was decidedly less cool and comfy (aka read less sexy) to wear the big frumpy top. So I only wore the pants, and matched them with suitably defining T's. The result, after 10 years of laundry, camps, trips, etc. is that there is now a solidly discernable color difference between the tops and the bottoms. The top, in fact, might still be something that possibly resembles flannel. The bottoms are just threadbare cotton.
These pajamas have gone everywhere I have gone. They have camped on mountains and been laundered at mats. They learned Spanish and floated the Mississippi. These PJ's love Forest Grove, and it was in these Pajamas that I ended my very, very, very long travel day standing barefoot in the rain, outside the Graduate House where I have a room, repeatedly ringing the bell so that I could hopefully avoid a third walk 7 blocks down the street to the Porter's Lodge and back.
The parking garage at the Port of Portland always reminds me of leaving. In addition to the virtual living wall of ivy along the airport-side of the garage, they've got a new system of lights on each parking spot, red for taken, green for free, so you can look down the rows, and know where your spots are--or aren't. I'm less enthralled with the hourly rate to park there, but you can't win it all. The smell of the rain on the concrete outside mixed with the gas and rubber is a signal to me that I have to say goodbye---sometimes it's been for a week, a month, a year--but it's goodbye, at least for a little bit. Running late through the garage this morning---my mom helping with my bags---every whiff of oily perfume reminded me that I was yet again leaving. Four bags, over 100 pounds of stuff, and I've already identified both things I didn't need to bring, and things I should have brought. Reminders that traveling is never easy, and that moving--no matter how well you plan--will be expensive, hard and sad. I'd slept about 2 hours the night before with an uber cuddly dog named Toby whom I shall miss greatly, and was already late to the airport.
From there it was one last chat with my mom, airport security and then 20 hours of transit. 4 from PDX to Chicago, 3 hour layover and then 8 from Chicago to London, 2 hour wait, 3 hour bus ride from London to Cambridge. I'm not counting the 30 minute taxi ride I shared with 2 other students before being dropped off in front of the wrong dorm, and having to trot myself back down to the Porter's lodge for directions and a map, before hauling my bags a block and a half up the street to the building in which a small dorm room was assigned as "mine."
Unpack, bundle up (it is cold here) and then fall asleep while facbeook chatting with a friend. I woke up an indeterminate time later, changed into the aforementioned PJ's, wandered down the hall to brush my teeth and realized when I got back to my room, that I had left my waterbottle next to the sink. I reached over, nabbed my keys, the familiar Girl Scout key chain jingling when I picked it up, and wandered down the hall. Not yet realizing that my new key is not yet on my old keychain.
Long story short, me, my barefeet and my fabs pj's, had to walk 7 blocks to the Porter's Lodge to get a spare key and access card. The access card didn't work to let me out of Newnham's gardens (the gardens resemble something sort of like a beautiful trap), so I had to walk back to the Porter's Lodge to get to the street, where I walked back to the graduate house, where I discovered that my card didn't work on it's door either. It's safe to say that A) I owe a sweet woman who lives on the first floor and let me in, a serious favor, and B) I'm glad that I wasn't wearing "sexier' pajamas.
British Word Of The Day: "Love," moniker used to identify women you don't know when you need them to help you do something or understand. Used quite frequently.
Example of use: Bus passanger has too many bags and needs to buy an excess luggage card, "I can't let you on the bus love, you need to go over there and buy another ticket for your bags."
And by "most fabulous" I mean that they are the most fabulous pajamas ever. I got them for Christmas a decade ago. It's one of those lovely matchy-matchy tops and bottoms. Light blue, with lovely motifs of cows jumping gracefully over yellow moons and stars. High school aged Callie thought it was decidedly less cool and comfy (aka read less sexy) to wear the big frumpy top. So I only wore the pants, and matched them with suitably defining T's. The result, after 10 years of laundry, camps, trips, etc. is that there is now a solidly discernable color difference between the tops and the bottoms. The top, in fact, might still be something that possibly resembles flannel. The bottoms are just threadbare cotton.
These pajamas have gone everywhere I have gone. They have camped on mountains and been laundered at mats. They learned Spanish and floated the Mississippi. These PJ's love Forest Grove, and it was in these Pajamas that I ended my very, very, very long travel day standing barefoot in the rain, outside the Graduate House where I have a room, repeatedly ringing the bell so that I could hopefully avoid a third walk 7 blocks down the street to the Porter's Lodge and back.
The parking garage at the Port of Portland always reminds me of leaving. In addition to the virtual living wall of ivy along the airport-side of the garage, they've got a new system of lights on each parking spot, red for taken, green for free, so you can look down the rows, and know where your spots are--or aren't. I'm less enthralled with the hourly rate to park there, but you can't win it all. The smell of the rain on the concrete outside mixed with the gas and rubber is a signal to me that I have to say goodbye---sometimes it's been for a week, a month, a year--but it's goodbye, at least for a little bit. Running late through the garage this morning---my mom helping with my bags---every whiff of oily perfume reminded me that I was yet again leaving. Four bags, over 100 pounds of stuff, and I've already identified both things I didn't need to bring, and things I should have brought. Reminders that traveling is never easy, and that moving--no matter how well you plan--will be expensive, hard and sad. I'd slept about 2 hours the night before with an uber cuddly dog named Toby whom I shall miss greatly, and was already late to the airport.
From there it was one last chat with my mom, airport security and then 20 hours of transit. 4 from PDX to Chicago, 3 hour layover and then 8 from Chicago to London, 2 hour wait, 3 hour bus ride from London to Cambridge. I'm not counting the 30 minute taxi ride I shared with 2 other students before being dropped off in front of the wrong dorm, and having to trot myself back down to the Porter's lodge for directions and a map, before hauling my bags a block and a half up the street to the building in which a small dorm room was assigned as "mine."
Unpack, bundle up (it is cold here) and then fall asleep while facbeook chatting with a friend. I woke up an indeterminate time later, changed into the aforementioned PJ's, wandered down the hall to brush my teeth and realized when I got back to my room, that I had left my waterbottle next to the sink. I reached over, nabbed my keys, the familiar Girl Scout key chain jingling when I picked it up, and wandered down the hall. Not yet realizing that my new key is not yet on my old keychain.
Long story short, me, my barefeet and my fabs pj's, had to walk 7 blocks to the Porter's Lodge to get a spare key and access card. The access card didn't work to let me out of Newnham's gardens (the gardens resemble something sort of like a beautiful trap), so I had to walk back to the Porter's Lodge to get to the street, where I walked back to the graduate house, where I discovered that my card didn't work on it's door either. It's safe to say that A) I owe a sweet woman who lives on the first floor and let me in, a serious favor, and B) I'm glad that I wasn't wearing "sexier' pajamas.
British Word Of The Day: "Love," moniker used to identify women you don't know when you need them to help you do something or understand. Used quite frequently.
Example of use: Bus passanger has too many bags and needs to buy an excess luggage card, "I can't let you on the bus love, you need to go over there and buy another ticket for your bags."
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