Closed Comma

We are home. Our flight Thursday afternoon was delayed at Heathrow for two hours with mechanical problems and many passengers with connecting flights were frantic. But we were calm because we knew where we would be sleeping. Ah, home. There is no place like it (click ruby slippers here).

We called our blog the Oxford Comma because we hoped that our time in Oxford would be a pause in the series that make up our lives. It has definitely been refreshing and rewarding to be in Oxford all summer, so the Comma was successful. We have traveled a lot, read a lot, seen a lot, talked to many different people, experienced another culture, and so on. Every day of the last three months brought something new: a challenge, an insight, a joke, or just an appreciation. We can't possibly sum up all that we experienced, but the blog has been a good way for our friends and family to stay in touch. That meant a lot to us, to know that many of you were reading our posts to see what we were seeing and to share it with us. Thanks for reading, thanks for your comments, and thanks for allowing us to share the experience with you.

But the Oxford Comma is only a pause and not a stop. The textbook sales conference generated a lot of excitement, both for the sales people and for Phil. But he still has work to do. The lab work gave him some new experiments to begin when he starts back at Haverford. Deb is refreshed by her summer of leisure but is very glad she still has 10 days to re-group before heading back to Newtown Library and other responsibilites. The Comma allowed us to collect a hard drive full of pictures, experience a summer of memories, and catch our breath.

Philip points out the shelf
at the Oxford University Press Bookshop
where you'll be able to find his textbook in 2009

Some final thoughts:

• Mystery thrillers by Robert Goddard are not easy to find in the US, but they are worth looking for.
• Tesco Limeade is very refreshing.
• Clarks Shoes will be forever associated with Oxford in our minds. We came back with 4 new pair between us
  
• Great Britain dominates Olympic rowing, sailing, and bicycling, which you quickly learn from the coverage on the BBC.
  
• The BBC airs a lot of documentaries that you think you would not be interested in. In general, you'd be right.

Pleasant surprises:

• the Iffley lock and the Falkirk wheel.
• the quietness of the college quads.
• Francis Collins at The Eagle and Child.
• a respite from the American presidential campaigning
• Deb's trip to Ireland with "the girls" and her Dad-- priceless memories
  
• returning to Edinburgh--one of the great cities of the world

As good or better than expected:

• Christ Church garden, cathedral, and dining room (although always crowded)
• Durham Cathedral
• The English pubs-- our favorites are the Turf Tavern, Jude the Obscure (discovered the last night), and the Fir Tree, but all of them were interesting.
• The stone walls, narrow lanes, and dreaming spires.
• Living near the Thames towpath
  
• The work Phil got done.

Disappointments: almost none.
The heavy rain prevented us from seeing the gardens at Blenheim, and the crowded Oxford streets were not much fun, but those were very minor compared to the many things that surpassed expectations.

Thanks, everyone, for traveling along with us on our Oxford summer adventure!

--Philip and Deb
August 23, 2008

Back to the Beginning

We are back in Oxford for one more night before setting out for home tomorrow (Thursday). We are in a hotel right next to the bus station surrounded by all our luggage, preparing to re-pack for the flight home. It has been an eventful summer, with new memories and images from every day we have been here.

We left Durham in the rain on Tuesday morning and took a very crowded train to Birmingham, before switching to a local train that went to Stratford upon Avon. We spent Tuesday evening wandering around Stratford, revisiting some of the things we saw earlier this summer and enjoying the stroll around town and along the river Avon. The site for the sales conference at a hotel in the nearby village of Alderminster, so we took a taxi ride there this morning. It was not just any hotel, but a lovely estate that had its own chapel ruins on the grounds!

Ettington Park Hotel

Ettington Park Hotel Chapel

Phil listened to presentations on some of the new textbooks coming out from Oxford University Press while Deb walked the grounds to take photographs of the conference site itself, which dates back to the 15th century. The audience was sales representatives, and sales and marketing directors from the UK, the USA, Europe, and East Asia, about 25 people in all. Phil and his editor Jon gave a lively description of the book, explaining how this is different from every other book (it is, actually) and why they should aggressively market it and to whom. Although Phil questioned whether having him there would increase or decrease sales, the presentation went well and the sales and marketing people showed a lot of interest.

So that was our last official responsibility of the summer and it ended with where it began-- with Advanced Genetic Analysis.

After lunch, Jon drove us back to Oxford where we picked up the luggage we had stored at the lab. We then took a (fully loaded) taxi to our hotel. We now have to find our return plane tickets, our bus tickets back to Heathrow, our American cell phones, and the other things to return to our everyday life. We promise more reflections on the Comma in our final post yet to come after we get home.

Durham

These two days are our "found" days. At the beginning of the summer, Phil was told to hold open August 18-20 for a meeting in Stratford-upon-Avon with the sales representatives who will be selling his book. As time neared, it turns out that he is only needed for an hour on Wednesday morning, so we had some time open. When we traveled from London to Edinburgh 16 years ago, we remembered seeing Durham's cathedral and castle from the train, so we decided to stop here and check them out. We left Edinburgh Sunday and arrived here in time to get to the cathedral to enjoy Evensong and the organ concert following in the cathedral.

Durham Castle (left) and Cathedral (right)

It was magnificent-- both the cathedral and the service. The cathedral is huge, towering over the river and valley below. It was built before 1100, with impressive stone walls and the highest bell tower from any Norman cathedral in Britain, maybe in Europe. It also houses the body of St Cuthbart and the Venerable Bede,and it was the site of many pilgrimages in the Middle Ages.

Durham Market Square

Durham is also the home of the third oldest university in England, which includes the castle. Unfortunately, the castle was closed today for a wedding reception, so we walked around the medieval town, with narrow passages, high bridges, and a stone-paved central market arena. This was a coal-mining area so there are many signs of the old mining economy. So it was a good free day, with an impressive cathedral, an excellent and inspirational Evensong service, and an interesting town.

Falkirk Wheel

On Saturday we took the train out of Edinburgh to the town of Falkirk to see the world's only boat lift, the Falkirk Wheel. Like everything else, this probably requires a bit of a history lesson.

Scotland used to have a series of canals that connected its rivers and cities. Two of these were the Clyde-Forth (the rivers of Glasgow and Edinburgh) and the Union Canals. The Union Canal was built about 80 feet higher than the Clyde-Forth Canal, so in order to connect them, the engineers constructed an elaborate series of 11 locks. When the trains came in the 1830s, the canals were not used so much, and eventually were closed. Now, fast forward to the celebration of the millenium. One of the millenial celebrations involved rebuilding Britain's waterways, which we have taken advantage of with our walks along the Thams towpath and Thames canal in and around Oxford. The Clyde-Forth and the Union Canals were also reopened, but most of the locks connecting them were not rebuilt.

Instead, the engineers built the Falkirk wheel, a huge rotating boat lift. A boat-- mostly pleasure craft and tour boats-- sails into the gondola at one level. The gondola, full of water and the boat,is raised or lower to the other level by a roating wheel more than 100 feet high. The ride takes four minutes and uses the same amount of electricity that is used to boil an electric tea kettle eight times, less than 10 kilowatts. We got on the tourboat (named the Archimedes-- if you remember him, you will get a chuckle) and made our way to the gondola. The wheel rotated, raising our gondola up 75 feet to the Union Canal while at the same time lowering the gondola on the other side. The ride was amazingly smooth, and if not the ground giving way on the horizon, we were not even aware that we were moving. The tour boat chugged along on the Union Canal for awhile, then we moved into the upper gondola and were lowered back down. OK, it is not exactly Splash Mountain but it is an amazing feat of engineering that replaces eight of the 11 locks.

So on this trip we have seen locks that dated from the early 17th century, and ones that date from the 21st century. And in one 24 hour period, we saw amazing architecture and engineering that spanned more than 600 years, from the Rosslyn Chapel to the Falkirk Wheel. (And, as we will tell you tomorrow, we went back a thousand years of engineering in the next 24 hours.)

Thanks to Sue Fairman who saw the Falkirk Wheel featured on tv and mentioned it to Deb in an email. We appreciate your comments, and we even respond to them! It was a great part of the Scottish phase of our Oxford Comma. On to Durham!

Rosslyn Chapel

Yesterday we took a bumpy bus ride out of Edinburgh to the tiny village of Roslin to see the chapel.  If you are familiar with the Da Vinci Code, you may remember that Rosslyn Chapel figures prominently in the final sequence when they are attempting to uncover the mysteries of the Holy Grail.  (The chapel and the village are spelled differently.)  Although we are not fans of the book or movie, we did want to see the chapel.  And what a place!

The chapel was built in the 1400s by William St. Clair, a prominent member of the Knights Templar and a Freemason.  We haven't figured out these medieval secret societies but they are connected to many of the legends about the Chapel.  The Chapel itself is not large, maybe twenty five feet across by eighty five feet long, with a very high arched ceiling.  It is all stone walls and stained glass windows, and it seems like every part of the stone inside is carved with some sort of figure.   They don't allow photographs to be taken within the chapel, so here is a link to Wikipedia that shows some of them:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel   There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of carved figures and images into the stone.  These include stars, moon, and the sun; lilies, roses, and other flowers; skeletons, angels, demons, and dozens of other kinds of faces. There are more than 100 images of the Green Man, a carving of a manís head with trees and foliage surrounding his face and growing from his head.  The meaning of the image is unknown but Green Man carvings date from the Middle Ages and are found throughout churches and temples in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and India; some of the best examples are here. 

With so many mysterious images and the connection to secret societies, legends about the chapel abound.  Among the things that are supposed buried beneath the chapel floor are:  the Holy Grail, wood from the cross, the Ark of Covenant, the treasures of Solomonís temple, information related to the Second Coming, and many others.  All of these legends date back hundreds of years, so Dan Brown did not invent them for The Da Vinci Code.  The bodies of the St Clair family are definitely buried there, so the family will not allow excavation or searches, which of course only adds to the legends.  Here are a few of the interesting legendary tidbits.

The chapel was completed in the 1480s, before Columbus came to America.  Yet there are clear carvings of corn plants, the leaves of a Trillium plant, and an aloe veraóthree plants that are only found in North America.  These lead to legends about the Knights Templar coming to the America in the 14th century, or 100 years before Columbus.  

There are two elaborate pillars at the front of the chapel, referred to the as the Master Pillar and the Apprentice Pillar.  The legend is that the master mason first carved the Master Pillar, an elegant and carefully carved pillar.  He then left for awhile, searching for inspiration for the second pillar.  When he returned, his apprentice had already carved the second pillar.  This one features spirals, dragons, and even more elaborate images than the Master Pillar.  Angered that his apprentice had out-done him, the Master smashed him with his mallet.  The master was then arrested and executed.  In support of this legend, there are three faced carved in the wall facing the pillarsóa young man with his head apparently bashed in, an older weeping woman (the apprenticeís mother), and an older man with a hammer.  The legend was first recorded 300 years after the completion of the chapel, so judge for yourself if you believe it.  

And that is part of the mystery of Rosslyn Chapel.  With so many carved images of different types and so many years of history, it is possible to connect these images to make many different stories and legends.     

Hello Edinburgh

We arrived in Edinburgh yesterday afternoon after a long train ride through northern England.  But the long train ride was worth it for the fabulous view you have as you arrive in Edinburgh by rail via Waverly Train Station.  We had forgotten how dramatic it is to pull in beneath the sheer cliff with Edinburgh Castle above you.  We are returning here after 16 years-- we made this trip in August of 1992, when Alison and Andy were 8 and 11.  We're staying with Deb's Scottish friend, Carol Lenagan, who hosted us back then as well.  In fact, we remember watching the Olympics on the BBC with their family that August, just as we are now.  The Edinburgh Festival is in full swing as well, so the streets are lively, to be sure.

Today we did a walking tour of Edinburgh and immediately noticed some of the differences between walking here and walking in Oxford.  Edinburgh has hills!  We saw a lot of the usual, great sites-- Arthur's seat, the Castle (still one of most impressive castles we have seen), the Palace of Holyrood House where Queen Elizabeth stays when she is in town.  (She isn't here right now.) 

Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street

 We also saw more street performers than you can imagine-- jugglers, acrobats, musicians, plays, etc.  We were handed flyers for many performances since there are literally thousands of events going on right now. 

 Edinburgh Castle Entrance

We did go to a chamber music concert at the Canongate Kirk (Scottish for church).  At our dinner after the concert at a nearby restaurant, who should show up but the musicians!  So our touch for eating next to well-known people continues.  

Arthur's Seat

Rainbows over Oxford

We couldn't resist one final posting from Oxford of a magnificent double rainbow in the sky last night. We took these photos from the landing outside our apartment.

Farewell to Oxford

Our bags are packed and we are waiting for the taxi to help us take our luggage over to the University. We are storing the bulk of our luggage in the lab for the next 8 days while we head to Scotland and Northern England. We'll just have overnight bags and our computers for the final leg of our trip.


Yesterday we ran errands (returned library books!) and picked up last minute souvenirs, ending our afternoon at the Turf Tavern, where the Hodgkin lab members met us for a farewell pint. Philip and Jonathan entertained us with stories from the worm research community over the years-- since both of them have been working in the field since the mid-70's...

Mocha break

Our train for Edinburgh leaves at 7:30am tomorrow morning-- a 6-1/2 hour trip by rail. We'll be staying with our friends Carol and Thomas Lenagan up there for 4 nights, before returning to northern England for several nights, then flying home on August 21st.

We hope to post blog entries while on the road, but as I learned on our trip to Ireland last week-- internet access is not always easy to find.

More soon,
Deb

Isis Tavern

The sun decided to make an appearance in Oxford yesterday-- our last Sunday in Oxford. We enjoyed one last service at Magdalen Road Church, saying goodbye to some folks who had befriended us. We neglected to mention that Andy accompanied Philip there last Sunday, when an American couple said their goodbyes to the church after having spent 3 years here. They had worked with international students while the husband was working on a PhD. Philip and Andy went over to talk with them afterwards and it turned out they had worked with Andy's Calvin College roommate Nathaniel 2 years ago when he attended Oxford during a semester abroad... it is a small world!

We took a little time to walk along the Thames to the Isis Tavern for Sunday lunch one last time. It's hard to believe our time here in coming to a close.

Isis Tavern along Thames
(only accessible by boat, bicycle, or on foot)

Narrowboat out for a Sunday ride

--Deb

Shakespeare at the Castle

With the reunion of the blogging duo, we can go back and fill in the remainder of Phil and Andy’s time in Oxford, while Deb was in Ireland (Thanks to Andy for posting some blogs by logging on as Deb.)

After the London in a Day tour on Monday, Tuesday was as rainy as it has been here all summer, other than the infamous Blenheim downpour. We managed to make it to the Ashmolean Museum and to find a nearby street where Tolkien lived, but mostly we found shelter from the rain. This made us nervous because we had theatre tickets for that evening—an outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing—and we did not want it to be rescheduled.


The play was at Oxford Castle. We have not written before about the castle, mostly because there is not much to say. It is a small castle, recently restored, but of little historical significance. The play was in its open courtyard. We arrived early and waited (in the coffee shop, of course) as the rain came down in buckets. Finally, they announced that the play would go on, with a brief delay to mop the stage. The rain stopped, or at least slowed to a mist, and about 100 people including us enjoyed a great performance in a fantastic setting. We were in the cheap seats, but still less than 40 feet from the stage and elevated enough to see over the umbrellas in the front row. The play is a comedy which, for Shakespeare, means broad and sometimes bawdy. It had all the elements of classic slapstick, with people hiding in bushes, tripping over things, getting water dumped on them, mangling the language, and so on. (It did include the unintended comedic suspense when an actor was nearly unable to strike a match because of the rain.) We were waiting for Moe, Larry and Curly to make an appearance. Great performance, great setting, and the rain subsided long enough to let us enjoy it.

With nicer weather on Wednesday, we visited the Botanical Gardens and squeezed in visits to several more colleges.

Andy wearing his coffee t-shirt standing
next to the coffee tree at the Botanical Garden
(double-click picture to read caption on his shirt)

We also had a classic pub evening, when we went for a pint at “our local”, a pub called the Fir Tree at the end of our road. (Contrary to what you may think, we don’t go to the pub that often.) The Fir Tree was celebrating the opening of a new and nice outdoor patio, and in the course of events, we ended up in a spirited discussion of classic rock music (and other things) with some other patrons. This discussion included the profound insight that, “ah, there will always be nutters”. (A “nutter” is what we would call a nut.) Andy left on Thursday, having gotten the full Oxford experience and a new catchphrase.
--Philip

Irish postscript

It's a rainy, windy Saturday here in Oxford-- so we are hunkered down in the apartment watching the Olympics on the BBC. I (Deb) am doing laundry and Philip is poring over the proofs to his textbook. He only just received them yesterday after waiting nearly 3 weeks for them to return from the typesetter-- and he must have it all corrected by August 29.

I returned from London yesterday after seeing everyone off to their respective flights home to the U.S. Jill, Shannon, and Dad left for Minneapolis directly from Dublin yesterday and then Andy met Alison and I at Heathrow for their own flights back to Raleigh and Seattle. It has been a whirlwind the last 10 days with everyone coming and going, but we all have great memories to take with us.

I thought I would add a few final favorite photos from our Ireland trip. There are so many good ones it was hard to choose which ones to post!

Alison, Dad, Shannon, Jill
on streets of Dublin

Jill, Dad, and Deb
St. Stephen's Green, Dublin

Deb and Alison
Galway Bay

Our favorite photo of Dad--
taken by Alison-- in a Dublin coffee shop
while waiting out a rain squall

There are no elephants in Piccadilly Circus

… but there are lions at Trafalgar Square. That is one of the conclusions that Andy and Phil drew after a whirlwind tour of London on Monday. We used a combination of the hop-on, hop-off bus, an all-day pass on the Underground, a boat cruise on the Thames, and speed-walking in honor the upcoming Olympics to see a lot of the major attractions in one day. As required by the British Tourism bureau, we have lots of pictures of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and the Tower Bridge. We also saw Buckingham Palace, St James Park, the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, and lots more. A picture is worth 1,000 words? Here you go.

A view from St. James park across from Buckingham Palace.

We also made a tour of the Churchill Museum and the War Rooms. The War Rooms were the underground command center of Great Britain during WWII, with the Churchill Museum immediately adjoining it. The Rooms were left in place when the war ended, and were re-opened about 25 years ago with many of the original maps, memos, furniture, signs etc still there. They even uncovered the secret sugar stash that one officer had hidden in his desk. These have been recreated as a fascinating museum of Great Britain during the bombings and the blitz. Being underground, it was hard to take pictures, but here is one that came out OK. Definitely worth including on your next visit to London.

Wax figures in the War rooms where Winston Churchill and his staff made all of the important decisions of WWII

And, as we all know from hearing coaching clichés, there is no I in team. But there is one in London.

Galway Graveyards

Galway greetings!

We're back in our hotels' pub tonight here in western Ireland for today's blog. It's very lively here this evening, with the floor filled with some Irish folk dancers. They have live musicians as well, playing accordian, flute, and violin. We considered tying Dad to the table leg so he doesn't attempt to join in. (Actually, he doesn't know the steps, but it probably wouldn't stop him...)

We had a little less rain here today-- but we did have some misty rain off and on. We started out our day in the two cemeteries located in Galway City, looking for Dad's great-grandparents Burns' graves. We were lucky to run into the caretakers at both places who helped us in our search. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in our quest, but we did get to see some interesting things along the way, and meet some true Irish characters (the caretakers).

Searching for Burnses

After the cemetary tour, we visited the Galway city museum and went shopping. The afternoon was spent wandering the streets of Galway, taking in the sights. Luckily, the torrential rain storm held off until after we returned to the hotel!

Galway Bay (courtesy of Alison)

Tomorrow it's back on the train to Dublin, then a bus to the airport. At the airport, we'll say goodbye to Jill, Shannon, and Grandpa Reid, as they don't fly out until Friday. We fly back to Heathrow on Thursday night, meet up with Andy in London, spend the night near the airport, and then Andy and Alison each fly home on Friday, while I (Deb) take the bus back to Oxford. The next two days are a whirlwind of traveling!

Tolkien and Lewis, and Hoyle’s Rules of Games

While the female half of our family is off hunting leprechauns in Dublin and Galway, the male half (Andy and Phil) have been holding down the flat in England. Alison and Deb took a bus to a hotel at Heathrow on Thursday (July 31) and flew to Dublin early Friday morning. They were in Dublin until Monday morning, then took the three hour train ride to Galway. They will be in Galway until this Thursday, when Alison, Andy, and Deb meet up in Heathrow before Alison and Andy fly home and Deb returns to Oxford.

So what have Phil and Andy been doing in Oxford? On Friday, we went on a lengthy walking tour that showed us the Oxford of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. We saw houses they lived in, pubs they frequented (the Eagle and Child—mentioned earlier), lanes they walked frequently, colleges they attended or taught at, and plaques in their honor. One house where Tolkien lived is on Phil’s regular walk to work, so he has been past it dozens of times without recognizing its significance.

Here is the pub across the street from the Eagle and the Child. The Inklings frequented this pub during WWII when the Eagle and the Child would run out of beer.

We also visited a number of other colleges—more than we did on Andy’s actual college tour when he was in high school in fact. Lincoln College is where John Wesley was a professor, and we were allowed to see his study and rooms. These are not usually open to the public but Phil, flushed with the power of a University of Oxford faculty ID card, persuaded the porter to take us there. New College dates from the 14th century—well, it was new once—and includes some of the original city walls of Oxford. Other colleges on our visit were Balliol (which has a disputed claim to being the oldest college—certainly one of the nicest ones), Trinity (great gardens), Exeter (the Tolkien plaque and Inspector Morse filming sites) and Jesus College (pretty unremarkable actually).

We also went to the Hoyle’s Game Shop, which we also walk past daily. Andy loves board games, so we had been saving this visit for him. Do you know the expression, “According to Hoyle”, meaning that something that is in the rules? Or the book, Hoyles Rules of Games, which lists the rules for hundreds of different games? This is the shop behind those expressions, established in the mid-1700s. It is historically interesting, if a little small and dingy. But all of us might be a little dingy after 350 years of settling disputes over the rules, I guess. (We also went to a much larger and better game shop with no historical significance located on Cowley Road not far from our flat on Saturday.) So we have managed to stay busy.

Slainte'

This blog post is a first, in several ways. It is the first one posted from Ireland; it is the first composed using free wifi internet in a pub; and it is the first written by a guest author!! This is a special "cross-over" blog entry, written by Alison.

As Dad mentioned in his previous entry, Mom and I are in Ireland with my aunt, cousin, and grandfather, and our access to the internet has been rather spotty. We discovered that we could access it from our apartment in the hotel... if we propped the laptop on a windowsill... and rubbed our stomachs while patting our heads and standing on one foot. Ok, maybe not the last part... but it couldn't have hurt! So we were forced to bring the computer down to the hotel pub, where we had absolutely no choice but to drink a pint of Guinness while surfing the internet.

Internet access in the pub!

We arrived in Dublin on Friday and spent the weekend exploring Ireland's capital. We saw lots of sights, including St. Patrick's cathedral, Trinity College (and the Book of Kells), the Guinness Storehouse, the River Liffey and its bridges, the old jail, and an infinite number of things named after O'Connell. Since we had weekend passes to a "hop-on, hop-off" bus, we could probably give you a great tour of Dublin, hitting all the main highlights!!

On Monday, we took the train across the country to Galway, on the west coast. We spent Monday evening exploring the city, and then today we took a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and Burren National Park. The Irish countryside is beautiful and very picturesque... although we found out firsthand WHY the Emerald Isle is so green! In between ducking raindrops and storm clouds we did manage to see the cliffs, although we were unable to catch a glimpse of any leprechauns (which they call Fairies here). Now we are recuperating in the pub with pints and half-pints of Guinness, Smitwicks, tap water, and Budweiser (we'll let you guess who is drinking what!). There is a group of musicians doing live music, and it definitely contributes to a very Irish atmosphere!

Here are a couple of pictures from the last few days:

Alison, Shannon, Jill, Reid, Deb in Galway

The Cliffs of Moher

Grandpa Reid lighting a candle at St. Nicholas Church in Galway, where his grandfather may have been baptized.

~Alison

Blog clog

Hello, faithful readers. We apologize for not posting blogs for the past few days, but here is the explanation. Deb posts the blogs since she knows how to include pictures, videos, links, etc. The software for posting is on her computer. We take turns writing the blogs, as you have probably figured out. You can tell mine (Phil’s)—they are longer, go off topic frequently, and don’t convey as much information.

So why no postings in the past few days? Deb and Alison left Oxford (on Thursday) for Ireland (arrived Friday) and are currently there with Deb’s father, sister, and niece. Although she purposely booked rooms that said they have internet connections, the connections have been weak or non-existent so she has not been able to post. I will do my best to provide some updates, but it will be one-sided (from this side of the Irish Sea), and Deb will post some Ireland blogs when she returns.

Warwick Castle

On Wednesday July 30th, the four of us spent the day at Warwick Castle, considered to England’s best medieval castle and a major tourist attraction. The trip involved two short train rides and about an hour and a half. A castle was built on the site on the River Avon by William the Conqueror (the original Norman) in about 1080 AD, and figured in many battles, prisons, sieges, and political maneuverings until it was given to the Earl of Warwick in the 17th century. Then it became a country home and estate for the next 300 hundred years, before being opened to the public. The castle is celebrating some anniversary this year—could be its 1000th, its 500th or any other one since some famous event occurred there—so there were special attractions all day long.

The castle and its grounds are spectacular, and we had a beautiful sunny day to enjoy it. We arrived in time to see the launching of the trebuchet, an oak structure 70 feet tall that sent a 50 pound iron ball at least 200 yards downfield. It was impressive, and Andy took a video that captures the event. Although this one launched an iron ball, trebuchets in the medieval times were often used to send flaming grease pots or diseased animals over the walls of the city. Based on the scorch marks on the ground, they do sometimes send a flaming cargo but we saw no signs of animal carcasses being used. A bit later, we watched a re-enactment of a jousting contest, featuring a variety of events to unseat the other rider, to spear an iron ring, or other sporting contests on horseback. There was also a trick rider who rode standing in the saddle or hanging off of one side with his shoulders inches from the ground. And whatever else happened, the event usually concluded with hand to hand combat involving swords, clubs, and general slamming each other to the ground. The guys playing the knights had to be professional stunt men, but it was still remarkable that no one really got hurt.

A view of all the peasants in Warwick Castle.

The castle featured tours of the dungeon, the ramparts, the ball rooms, armour rooms, and so on. Remarkably for such a large castle, all of the routes ended up at the same gift shop, which was probably not a feature of the original castle. In addition to the medieval rooms, there was also a tour recreating a dinner party in 1898 attended by, among others, Winston Churchill and two future kings of England, as well as various dukes, earls, countesses, and other elite members of British society. Warwick Castle is reputed to be one of the most haunted sites in England but no ghosts were in evidence. We did see the falcon that escaped during the falconry show, one of the dangers of acts involving animals. After a long day together, we ended up back home and played a few board games before bed time.

Genetics at the Eagle and Child

I’ll begin at the end and work backwards. After a long day of showing Alison and Andy the sights of Oxford, we ended up at the Eagle and Child pub for dinner, made famous by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, the Inklings. We have been there several times and sat in different small rooms but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the very table that Lewis and Tolkien used to sit at was vacant, so we sat down and ordered our fish and chips. A few minutes later, a large and friendly group of mostly Americans came in and sat all around us, even mistaking us for members of their conference group. Phil leaned over towards Deb and said, “That man sitting next to Andy is a dead ringer for Francis Collins”. It turned out this group was in town for the CS Lewis conference, and when they went around the table doing introductions, he said his name was Francis.

So most of you—and I think most of the people at the conference table—probably do not know who Francis Collins is or why this was one of the most unexpected and extraordinary evenings of Phil’s life. Francis Collins is one of the great geneticists in the world, but also a humanitarian and science ethicist. In addition to a very successful research career (where, among other things, he discovered the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis—an account in Chapter 5 of Phil’s book), he was the head of the Human Genome Project from its beginning in about 1995 until resigning earlier this year. The Human Genome Project is the huge multi-national effort to determine the DNA sequence of humans, and he insisted that all of the information be made available to the public immediately. He devoted 25% of its annual budget to studying the ethical implications of human genetics, and still spends part of every year as a missionary doctor in Africa. He wrote a book entitled “The Language of God”, one of the best books I have read by a practicing and highly respected science about his Christian faith. To the extent that grown-ups are allowed to have heroes, Francis Collins is one of Phil’s. He asked who we were, so we introduced ourselves and explained why we were in Oxford. We then chatted throughout dinner about genetics, the human genome project, and CS Lewis and the conference (which we are not attending), and so on. So we have to ask ourselves, “What are the chances of bumping into Francis Collins, in Oxford, in the Eagle and Child, while having dinner at the very table where Lewis and Tolkien sat?” Alison asked if she could take a picture of us together, so the Eagle and Child was briefly invaded by genetics.

Phil and Francis Collins at Eagle and Child

This came at the end of our first full day in Oxford. We did a lot—a picnic lunch at Christ Church meadow, a tour of Christ Church dinner room and cathedral (where we ran into the same tour guide we had used for Cambridge and Wales, only leading a different tour—Oxford is a small city), punting, the Covered Market, a walk along the Thames, a stop in the Alice in Wonderland shop, Blackwell’s Books, Tesco, and so on.




Since Alison is only here for a short time, we wanted to hit as many of the highlights as possible when the weather was good. We ended up criss-crossing the city several times on foot, but we sure saw a lot. Then we headed to the Eagle and Child for fish and chips, and that is where you began this story. A great memory, among many that we have had this summer and this week.
--Phil

Alison and Andy Arrive

Yes, Alison and Andy arrived safe and sound yesterday afternoon-- on the hottest day of the summer thus far. They were a bit wilted by the time they got here, but everything went smoothly as far as finding each other in the Heathrow airport after their respective flights from Seattle and Raleigh.



We had time for an early supper and a walk into the city centre, stopping along the Cherwell to watch the punters. It was fun showing them all the interesting back streets we've found, though by the time we got there, most of the shops had closed. One advantage of meandering in the early evening though, was that the streets were quite free of tourists, so we could take our time without being jostled. During the daytime, Oxford is a bustling place.


We stopped at one of the nicer pubs--- the Turf Tavern-- before heading back to the apartment before a big thunderstorm came through to break the heat.

It's great to be together as a family!
--Deb

British Museum

Yesterday (Saturday) we decided to go to London. We debated which of many things to visit, and decided on the British Museum. The train ride to Paddington Station took about an hour, followed by a few stops of the tube, one stop at Starbucks, and then to the Museum. We mentioned before when we visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that, while we appreciate antiquities such as Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artwork, we don’t usually head to that section of the museum first. We know that there are people who love these ancient cultures—we had lunch today with Naomi Koltun-Fromm for example, and this is her field of study—but generally speaking, when we go to a museum, we prefer European art. But we can confidently recommend that if you ever get a chance, you should definitely plan to go to the British Museum. Plan at least one long day. (The museum is free, too.) About two hours into our visit, Deb said to Phil, “You’ll have to be the one to write this blog”. There is no way to describe this in a few words, but I will do my best. It is genuinely astonishing.

The Museum is huge, and the ground floor is basically laid out chronologically—first the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, followed by the Greeks and then the Romans. The first exhibit you see in the first room is the Rosetta Stone—not a copy, but the original stone tablet unearthed by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt that allowed people to translate hieroglyphics and opened the door for studying ancient cultures. The objects here were collected, purchased, or “acquired” (OK—looted) by archeologists, diplomats, and adventurers over the past three centuries. Many of the statues and monuments are enormous, towering high above our heads, and the number and size are overwhelming. We still have no idea which Pharaoh’s dynasty was which, but we have a tremendous new appreciation for ancient Egypt.

Head of Ramesses II circa 1270 bc

And then you go into the second of rooms—still on the ground floor of a building with six more floors. These are the Assyrian exhibits. From our Bible lessons, we knew that the Assyrians were the people who conquered Israel in about 700 BC—Ninevah, of Jonah and the great fish fame, was their capital city. But we knew little else about this culture. And right there in front of us were the gates of the palace for Sennacherib, the king who conquered Israel. The lions flanking the gates were massive, and the gates themselves were at least 35 feet tall.



The more we read and observed, the more we realized that Ninevah was a beautiful and impressive city, and that the culture flourished for hundreds of years before dying out. Then it was on to the Greek rooms, and here were sculptures and walls from the Parthenon, the ancient temple in Athens. These were sent back to England by Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which then included Greece) in about 1800, so these have become known as the Elgin marbles. (Insert your own joke here about losing your marbles.)

And on and on. We can’t possibly begin to describe the exhibits, room after room, object after impressive object. We saw dozens of mummies, objects from Captain Cook’s voyages, from the HMS Bounty (from the famous mutiny), from the ancient peoples of Europe. We learned more about the history of Europe in an hour at the museum that we could have learned in any number of hours of lectures in a classroom, and in a more interesting way. We saw a burial ship from Sutton Hoo in eastern England, dating to Saxon times or about 650 AD. (It was the Saxon equivalent of the guys who are buried in their favorite Cadillacs—some traditions are older than you think). We saw artifacts of the Vikings, the Celts, the Huns, the Mayans, the Incans, and even from post WWII America. The guidebook offers 15 different museum tours, based on different themes. We did most of two of them, with a few side trips. We saw more than our brains could hold, and we saw only a fraction of what was there. You really need to go yourself.

Naomi and Phil lunching at Kings Arms Pub