more old things (Salisbury Part II)

This might not look like it, but it's a clock -- a bulky one, compared to my wristwatch, but the oldest functional one in the world.

The clock's thick cords span several floors to their bells above.  We were in the attic when it sounded the hour.  The cords shook and the whole space filled with vibrating sound.

Somewhat older is this tomb.  The inscription reads thus:

William Longespee:  Earl of Salisbury.  Illegitimate son of Henry II and half brother of King John.  He was present at the laying of the foundation stones of the Cathedral in 1220.  He died in 1226 and was the first person to be buried in the Cathedral.

We thought our tour guide was joking when he told us he wanted to show us the cathedral's bumping stone.  A disincentive for bad singers, I suppose?

As we were leaving the cathedral, some unseen person started playing the organ.  The big sound filled the big space well.  It was beautiful and I wished I could stay in the sanctuary and listen.

old things

Hence begins the field trip sequence.  During my last four weeks in Oxford, we took a field trip each week.  The first was to Salisbury Cathedral.

The Magna Carta:  This is one of the few things I remember from history class.  King John's nobles made him sign it in 1215.  Simplified, it was their way of telling him he had to obey his own rules (at least sometimes) and not boss them around quite so much.  It was really quite democratic for its day.

Salisbury has one of the four surviving originals.  I liked seeing it because I actually knew about it beforehand and why it was important.  Of course I wasn't allowed to take photos of the actual, but the walkway and courtyard leading up to it were quite nice themselves.

The stones were laid for Salisbury's foundation in 1220, five years after King John signed the Great Letter.

The wood impressed me more than the stone.  We took a tour up in the cathedral attic, where the guide showed us the massive oak framework.  This old wood has been holding up the cathedral for almost 800 years.  The wood itself is probably a thousand years old.  I just don't think of wood as lasting that long.

To be continued.

sheepless yards, churchills in churchyards (Blenheim Part II)

Here's Winston Churchill's tomb, in a next door churchyard.

Churchill was born at Blenheim, which helps make it more important.  Even though his tomb is free access, his birthplace is not.  We peered wistfully through the gate.

Break-in unsuccessful.

(Of course we didn't actually do this!)

We contented ourselves with moseying around in the backyard instead.

The sheepless part:  Some Romantic-period well-to-doers wanted to gaze out their windows at sheep romantically scattered across their backyard.  However, they disliked the practical effects of having livestock in the yard.  So, they constructed terraced ridges -- the sheep couldn't come up on the higher ridge, but the ridge itself is invisible from the house (example below).  So from the window, the view is uninterrupted green.

(photo from Wikipedia, of Heaton Hall)

The term for these ingenious walls:  Ha-ha's.  (Think of the jokes waiting to happen from that name...)

fenceless gates, oversized bridges (Blenheim Palace)

On a rare sunny afternoon in January we took a bus over to here, Blenheim Palace, about 10 miles from Oxford.

The interesting things I remember at this point aren't actually about the palace.

One of them is this gate:  You can't tell from the photo, but it's fenceless and all by itself, like the magic door in The Last Battle, except the world stays the same when you go through.  Good thing, too, because at least one person has to walk through it every seven years.  It marks one of Britain's many public right-of-way footpaths, and in order for these to legally stay public, they have to be used at least once in seven years.  Mercifully, there's an association that ensures this happens.

All the landscaping at Blenheim - water, hills, trees - is artificial:  It's meant to look rustic and natural but actually isn't.  Hidden meanings are everywhere.  Even the trees are planted to match the position of troops in some battle (I can't remember which).

Oh, and this bridge:  They built it too big, and the tiny stream trickling under it looked rather puny.  So they brought in more water to make it look respectable.

More to follow.

Oh, and I saw the Queen

And I barely went looking for her.  Friends at a lecture that morning said they were going to see her and invited me along.

She showed up at Christ Church for a Maundy Thursday service, so we showed up to see her show up.

Americans cheer at moments like this.  But when the Queen walked out, there was a hush.  Reverent silence?  Perhaps for some.  For us Americans, it was more of an awkward silence -- to cheer or not to cheer?  (We didn't.)

I do not often become excited about celebrities.  But this time was fun.

Mongolia (just like England, right?)

Last December -- a couple weeks before heading off to the wilds of England -- I started thinking ahead to this summer:  about spending part of it in the wilds of Mongolia.

This is the site I'll likely be teaching at this summer, which I explain in my letter below.  (no!  I am not turning my blog into a fundraiser.  But I wanted to share my plans here because I am excited about them.)  Mongolia will be a rather different experience from Oxford.

Dear family and friends,

Last year when I began working with Lim from South Korea, I didn’t realize it would become more than a tutoring job.  The first time I met with Lim I was impressed, not just by her high-energy attitude toward improving her English, but also by her outgoing personality and her genuine desire to get to know me.  Soon we started getting together outside of tutoring.  She showed me how to make Korean egg rolls and soup, and we talked about South Korea and families and God and American movies.  What started as a job turned into a strong and real friendship.

Friendships with students like Lim have formed some of my most enriching college experiences.  These experiences have made me seriously consider teaching in an international setting after I complete my education degree.  Actually, that’s the reason I’m writing this letter:  I want to share with you an opportunity I have to teach English in Mongolia this summer.

I’ll be spending five weeks (June 20-July 30) at a beautiful site in rural Mongolia, working with high school students in a summer-camp setting.  (Click here to learn more about the organization.)  The program is both academic and relational.  I’ll be doing the same kinds of activities I did with Lim – direct teaching and coaching in English skills, as well as simply getting to know my students and sharing cultural and life experiences with them.

When I sat down to start this letter, I asked myself again, “Why exactly do I want to go Mongolia?”  I began mulling over memories with my international friends, and wrote this in my journal:

“I remember talking with Kim after a tutoring session about redemption and forgiveness, and her statement, ‘It makes me want to go home and tell my cousins because they do not know this.’  I remember June and Jung and Lee around our kitchen table, singing and making Korean pancakes.  And I remember Easter Sunday with Lim and Sunny at Dianna’s, and Sunny confiding to Dianna and me, ‘We call you – the angels.’

“This is why I want to go to Mongolia – to touch students’ lives and be touched.  And it starts with teaching English.”

I’ve never imagined myself writing this kind of letter, and it’s a humbling and soul-searching process.  I’ve prayed and sought advice and thought hard about why I want to go.  It’s for the students first, but to be honest, it’s for me too.  I’ll learn as much as I teach.  I’ll be pushed out of my comfort zone into an entirely new setting.  I’m hoping that serving students in Mongolia this summer will help me decide if I should pursue international teaching long-term.

I’d love to share more about the program with you in person and hear your feedback.  The entire five weeks costs a total of $3,800, an amount that the program requests its participants to raise through support from family and friends.  [Click here for more information.]  Would you be willing to help support me in preparing to go to Mongolia?

Thank you, both for reading this letter, and for your interest and encouragement.  I would be grateful for your financial support, and more importantly, I covet your prayers. I’m looking forward to making contact with you within the next few weeks.  I’m excited already for what this summer holds!

Blessings,

Caroline Eckstrom

crlnckst@dordt.edu

[Friends, thank you for not reproducing or displaying this letter elsewhere.]

Wales Day 5: boring poetry

Does the name William Wordsworth mean much to you?  It doesn't to me, but it should -- because he's someone that all English majors read -- not quite up there with Shakespeare, but on the next tier down.  I've read him, so I knew who he was.  (A poet who helped launch the Romantic era in literature).  But I struggle to feel appropriately moved when I read him.

He wrote probably his most famous poem at this place, Tintern Abbey.  We visited it on our way home from Wales on Day 5.  It's a ruin now, thanks to Protestantism - well, actually, thanks to Henry VIII, who took it for himself in 1536 under the name of Protestantism.  (He's also the one who had six wives and -- well, never mind.)

Anyway, Wordsworth found the roofless abbey inspiring so he wrote a sentimental poem about it, cunningly titled "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."  It's in dozens of anthologies and textbooks.

As usual, I was skeptical about the poem and the place.  Tourist trap for poetry lovers.  Well...

Surprisingly, ruined churches are even better than un-ruined ones, or at least this one was.  I said to my roommate, "Actually, I can sort of see why Wordsworth liked this place."

All right.  That's an understatement.  I loved it.  In fact, I felt appropriately moved to climb up into one of the windows and write my own poem:

Here's the poem.  It's sentimental and juvenile and whatnot, so I was going to keep it to myself, but then -- why not?

Lines Composed at Tintern Abbey

I look down on grass floor and up at

                blue ceiling,

This sanctuary, once like Christ Church cathedral

                or St. Paul’s,

Better now, and more beautiful, worshipful, reverent

                because open to the sky and ground

                and wooded hills beyond.

The stained glass is gone, and I am glad, because

                it shut off the better and lovelier things outside that

                God made.

Why so beautiful?  I do not understand why

                crumbled rock against grey winter trees

                causes these thoughts.

I cannot do it justice, but I know now that

                Tintern Abbey is not great because

other people have come here and made it so,

                or because Wordsworth stood here.

None of that matters.  He came here first and

                wrote because it is beautiful,

In the way that the mountain ridge outside my

                window at the hamlet was the same

                to me when I sat in that windowsill

and wrote as I sit here and write now,

                And as the tree line and fingernail moon

and chicken shed are the same from my bedroom window at

                home in Nebraska.

(March 13, 2013)

[photo credits to Austin, Brittany]

Wales Day 4: behind the waterfall

[continued: spring break trip]

Here's a sampling of little nothings from my journal that morning:

"The sun is warming my knees and the cedar trees are rocking outside in the wind.  I’m in the spare bedroom next to mine with the door shut.  Outside is a squat stone garden shed of some sort along the stone wall, and beyond the garden are the small fields with their dark hedgerows.  The horizon is near, a hill, dotted with trees. Clouds drift to the right above it and birds float on the wind.

"The ground is frosty with a dusting of snow.  I’m trying to decide whether or not to go on the hike to the waterfall.  Should I just stay here to enjoy this house one last day before we leave?"

Well, I did go -- to Brecon Beacons National Park...

...and found this cool waterfall to watch while we lunched:

...and then followed the Welsh/English signs...

and found another cool waterfall:

This one we walked behind.  Yep, all the way behind, without getting (significantly) wet.  Except for one girl who leaned over and washed her hair in it, after first playing lilting tunes on her Irish penny whistle behind it.    Sadly, I don't have pictures of us behind it because, well, we were all behind it so we couldn't take pictures of ourselves behind it.

just in time for winter, apparently

Well, yes, I've actually been home several days now with these dear folks:

(Charles II, my long-suffering rooster)

(my much-missed little brother)

(the not-much-missed horse, but all the same...)

One of the many things I learned at Oxford:  My ideal of blogging (as in, every couple days) didn't match up with reality (as in, every couple weeks...or longer).  Oh well!  I'm going to keep posting about England -- because a lot happened that I didn't share, and it will keep me from forgetting what I did more than anything else.

Besides, I can't get to work in the garden until that May 1st snowfall sinks in.  Courteous Winter decided to wait for me till I came back.