Happy 30th JEFF!!

Happy 30th to our new brother-in-law from the River Ouse in York!

Well, I have to say we've been thinking about you a lot lately as the River Ouse keeps creeping out of its banks. In the summer and fall, the River Ouse was a sluggish, black ribbon that I like to call the River Ooze for its not-so-inviting-water. However, everything changed this winter. It picked up a current and changed to a muddy brown froth with all of the debris it gathered, almost deserving a mighty Viking grunt at the end of its name.


(River Ooze on the left, River Ouse-Grr on the right)

This new version of the river made us remember your sample-gathering adventures as you chased storm clouds on the westside. We're quite confident you could pull some interesting samples from this science experiment.

We hope you have a fantastic day—stay dry!

the Yorkshire Museum

Since colder temperatures have arrived, we decided to spend the day visiting the Yorkshire Museum in York's Museum Gardens. As the name implies, the museum contains artifacts covering 2000 years of occupied history for York and the surrounding areas as well as some creepy fake prehistoric animals that inhabited the area when it was covered with a warm sea. There are a few interesting items of note in the collection.

Starting with the Romans (71AD-400AD):
Of course, York oozes with Roman finds. Most are small buckles and brooches, but also include cooking implements (with some modern-looking strainers), combs, weapons, and grave stones. As always, the Roman craftsmanship is impressive. Even the belt buckle in the picture below has an inlay design.


Next, the Anglo-Saxons:
Anglian "Coppergate" or "York Helmet" from the 750s. Found when a mechanical digger was excavating ground in York for a shopping center. Reconstructed, it is "one of only three complete examples from the Anglian period found in England." Made of copper alloy and iron, it is stylistically Northumbrian and has interlacing animals on the nose guard.




Anglian sword from the 9th century. Found in a Yorkshire stream.


Then the Vikings (866AD-965AD):
A Viking canoe, or log boat, from the 900s. Found in silt at the bottom of a river. (Crossbars are obviously not original)


Fun fact—the last Viking King of what was then known as "Jorvik" was named Eric Bloodaxe. How cool of a name is that? Better than Walter the Woodpecker, that's for sure.

After that, the Normans:
This is a nice example of some reconstructed Norman-style stone arches. I like this style because it's so graphic. In reality it would have been painted and more garish—I think I probably appreciate it more now. I believe this is actually a part of St. Mary's Abbey and is still on the site in which it was originally built—now the museum basement. There are several features of the Abbey including arcades, floor tiles, and a warming room still visible in the basement. The museum was just built on top. (Click on this link for the St. Mary's archived post)


And, finally, the English:
The famous Middleham Jewel from 1460. Found by a metal detectorist buried beside a public bridleway near Middleham Castle, it was first sold at auction for £1.3 million and then the Yorkshire Museum raised £2.3 million to buy it for their collection. (Click on this link for our visit to Middleham Castle) Made of gold with a 10+ carat sapphire, it's very striking and looks brand new. It's thought that the locket was a religious reliquary and, judging by the Latin inscription, was meant to protect from "falling sickness" or epilepsy. The front has an engraving of the Trinity.


The back has an engraving of a Nativity scene.


Free for residents, this museum is interesting. As a paying tourist, I don't think it's worth it unless you have an extreme passion for museums or have just never seen stuff like this in person. It might be a little better for kids, but doesn't hold a candle to the British Museum.

Happy 2nd Birthday ADAM!!

2 years old on 2/2–that won't happen again!

We're wishing you a Happy Birthday from a really big choo-choo. We hope you have a really fun day! Go ahead and stick your whole hand in that cake while you can still get away with it—I'm sure mom and dad won't mind :)

Happy Birthday SARAH!!

This quirky little tidbit about York made us think of you!

There happen to be cat statues integrated into the architecture sporadically throughout the city. Some are perched on window sills or railings, some scale buildings, some stalk pigeon statues on rooftops. Apparently the older ones date back to the early 1800s and people speculate that they may have been added to amuse, attract people to shops, or simply to scare pigeons away. More recently, a York architect by the name of Tom Adams used them as a signature element on the many of the buildings he worked on. (Check out this link for more info)

Here's a detail shot since it's a little hard to see in the birthday photo...


In addition to cat statues, York seems to have a fairly active cat society with a store dedicated solely to feline knicknaks and a charity shop whose proceeds go to cat shelters.

This is all a long-winded way of saying Happy Birthday! We hope you have a great one!

Burns Night

Now we can say we've eaten haggis.

Burns night is a traditional Scottish dinner, held on or near January 25th, to celebrate the life of Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet from the 1700s. He wrote Auld Lang Syne, among other things, and is a cultural icon.

One of Pat's Scottish co-workers, Duncan, and his wife, Jane, invited us to their home on Sunday for a Burns Night celebration. Duncan was the only Scot among us, so only one kilt in attendance and just a little bagpipe-playing on CD. A traditional dinner is filled with ceremony, speeches to the lasses and laddies, poetry, singing, and even dancing. Our dinner was a little more laid back.

After a soup appetizer, Duncan did the ceremonial presentation of the main course, haggis. This includes a Burns poem, Address to a Haggis, and the ritual slitting of the sheep stomach casing. Traditionally, neeps (mashed turnips) and tatties (mashed potatoes) accompany the main course.

It looks a little like this (picture courtesy of the internet—I draw the line at whipping out a camera at a private dinner).


There was also a pasta alternative to Haggis incorporating some Scottish salmon. I surprised myself by liking the haggis and neeps. Haggis is not as much like sausage as I expected. The sheep stomach casing is used to contain the rather loose contents while it's cooked. Once you cut it open, you scoop out the insides to eat and leave the stomach. I thought it had a lot more flavor than I would have expected and was actually quite good. Pat liked it at first, but his enthusiasm went down as dinner progressed. I surmise that was because he was sitting next to the slit stomachs and I wasn't.

Dinner was followed by scotch (of course) and desert—one was a rhubarb crumble with a shortbread topping and the other a chocolate pear cake. Both were quite good. During dinner you're suppose to read Burns poetry, but, with the exception of Duncan, we were all more than a little intimidated by the Scotisms—I certainly wouldn't know where to begin from a pronunciation standpoint. We all weaseled our way out of it. For example, I was suppose to read To A Mouse, a poem Burns wrote after uncovering the nest of a field mouse with his plough. Even if I could say it, there's little chance of me understanding it. Here's the first stanza...

Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

It was a good night. Everyone was very nice which made it pretty comfortable. We even drove through a town called "Friendly" on the way there that had Friendly Fish & Chips and The Friendly Hotel. Guess that says it all.

In case you desire your own haggis, we did discover the best brand is MacSweens—you'll just have to come over here to have it. I found out that the US has banned real haggis due to potential health risks associated with some of the ingredients. The haggis you find in the US isn't a traditional recipe and has been altered to comply.

Residents First Weekend

Although more tourists than residents, we do have library cards which entitle us to events during York's Residents First Weekend. Being the "European Tourism City of the Year," York caters to tourists. However, they also set aside one weekend at the end of January for the residents to experience some of the city's sights at discounted rates or for free. That works out especially well for the tourist part of us.

With 42 participating sights and organizations, we managed to see a few new things. We concentrated on the things in town that you usually have to pay for and that didn't have ridiculous lines. On Saturday, we saw the Richard III museum consisting of a poorly designed exhibit examining whether he was truly a villain or just misunderstood. Thumbs down. Looks like someone went crazy with a laminator and plastered the place with letter-sized pages—total information overload. The most interesting thing about it was that it is housed inside Monk Bar (one of the gateways in the city wall). It's the only Bar where the floors still exist and you can climb them all. Being able to see the architecture, the portucullis mechanism, and the guard/potty chambers was the best part.

Then we went to Hungate, the current archaeological dig in what were York slums. This is a site that will become apartments after 2012, but before it does they are digging down as far as they can to learn about the history of the area. They are in the relatively early stages and have uncovered the Victorian layer across the whole thing and are down to the medieval layer in some areas. The hope is to uncover some Viking artifacts as they get lower. Ironically, the construction barricade surrounding the site had better information than you got from walking through the dig itself. You were also able to see some of the finds extracted from the site which included some combs, game pieces, dishes, shoe soles, and a bone skate. Apparently the Vikings introduced ice skating to England and, in that time, it's thought that the rivers iced over on a regular basis. They made the skate blades from an animal femur with some minor modifications. The only downside to animal bone skates is that if you stay in one place too long, you stick to the ice.

After that, we joined a walking tour of York. We saw and learned some interesting things including...
• An original Georgian building feature was a torch snuffer (the black cone on the right of the doorway in this picture. After carrying a fiery torch with you to light up the dark streets at night, what do you do with it when you get to your destination? Why snuff it of course. Then you deposit it into an umbrella-like stand by the entrance. How polite. Even today, the British call flashlights torches.


• A group of the richest families in York commissioned the Assembly Rooms in 1730 for their private balls and social gatherings. It was trendy at the time and allowed them to strut their stuff and meet the "right people." It is thought to probably be the "...earliest neo-classical building in Europe." It still looks much like it did then and now holds an Italian restaurant—pretty fancy digs for pizza and pasta.


• York has 19 surviving medieval churches, the most in England after the bombing of WWII. Originally there were "...40 churches, eight monasteries and friaries and countless chapels and chantries" in medieval times.

• York had the first hospital in England, first built in around the 10th century. Towards the end of its life-span, it occupied 4 acres and is thought to have been the largest in Northern England. Some of the remnants of St. Leonard's Hospital can still be seen in the Museum Gardens.


• York is home to Rowntree Limited who invented the KitKat, among other candies. Nestlé acquired Rowntree and now produces the KitKat for everywhere except the US (Hershey makes it there). There's still a Nestlé factory here in York and, sometimes when the wind is right, the air smells like baking cookies when you go outside. I can think of worse things :)

On Sunday we went to Barley Hall, a medieval building largely forgotten as the city grew around it.

Excavation in the 1980s revealed that under this jumble was a surviving example of a medieval townhouse, originally the town house of the Priors of Nostell but later to be the townhouse of its best known inhabitant, Alderman William Snawsell, goldsmith and Mayor of York. It has now been restored to how it looked at the time of Alderman Snawsell, towards the end of the fifteenth century.

It has been very faithfully restored using evidence found in the excavations and 15th century techniques. They have even recreated a horn window, which they say might be the only horn window in England. Apparently they soak cow's horns until the white exterior becomes pliable, strip it off of the bony inside, and roll it into strips. The strips are then overlapped to create a semi-translucent window. In that time, it was a much cheaper alternative to glass and was used in the lesser rooms of Barley Hall.


Horn was also used as an early lamination device. Thin strips were placed on top of fragile parchment in early "textbooks" to make them more durable.

My Soapbox*

If you don't want to hear my somewhat depressing rantings, just skip this entry.

In the spirit of England, I'll climb up on my soapbox. I can't help myself. Granted I'm not at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park actually standing on a box, like so many people do on a daily basis, but I dragged one out into the living room. Everyone has a bias. Mine is that I was never excited about the invasion of Afghanistan, was adamantly against the invasion of Iraq as just plain stupid, and have hated the Bush Administration from day 1.

I'm not alone here in England. I'm sure it doesn't surprise any of you after seeing Britain's oust of Tony Blair, Bush and the war are not popular. While we've been here, we've seen fictional documentary-like movies on the subject. One was filmed as if President Bush had been assassinated and projected the aftermath... would America be able to survive? Come on—bet they didn't show that one in the states :) (Just in case you're wondering, it happens outside of a hotel in Chicago, the Sheraton maybe?) The movie reminded me of the interviews and speculations you saw post-JFK. Another movie was about Tony Blair and his supposed guilty conscience during/after his time in office. Didn't watch that one, can't comment.

Tonight was different. I just watched a real documentary that made me cry. Actually cry. Why? Because I'm American. Because of the bull-headed, know-it-alls that we think we are. Or that the Bush Administration thinks they are. I doubt they have shown this in the States, but maybe I should try to be optimistic for a change and hope they have.

It's called True Stories: No End in Sight. I know, even the title's uplifting. It was a very rational, logical examination of Iraq's "reconstruction." I expected it to be a British perspective and was curious. It seems to have been created by Americans. For 2 hours, they interviewed a ton of military, state department, OCHA, CPA, UN, Middle East experts, on-the-ground reporters, and local people who were involved. Most of the higher level people were associated with the government at one time or another, until their opinions and expertise no longer agreed with the administration and were dismissed one way or another. Of course the big players declined interviews. The information and perspectives they provided filled in the gaps in the news reporting I've seen and actually made the chaos now happening in Iraq seem a logical conclusion to a totally *$%#ed-up process.

I think the three things that really hit home for me were...

1) In WWII, the US was planning the occupation of Germany for 2 YEARS. For Iraq, they planned for 60 DAYS and in that time had to start at 0, meaning they didn't even have computers, desks, or proper staff on day 1.

2) When Bremer took over the Green Zone, most of the team was replaced with graduates who were put in charge of major components of reconstruction. Yes, idiots in their early 20s looking for adventure, whose parents had political connections or donated money to the proper campaigns. In one interview, a Professor happened to be in the building and was shocked to run into one of his students that just graduated. "She couldn't believe her luck, she was put in charge of traffic planning for Baghdad." He asked if she'd ever done that before because it was so important and drastically needed. Of course she said no. Only our best! Now I'm all for giving young people opportunities to learn and grow, but give me a break. When I was that age, I was freaked out to have been put in charge of designing signs for a retail store. Relatively meaningless. And I wasn't really in charge.

3) The border forts, or whatever they were called, that were built by the military were built in something like 5 weeks and cost something like $200,000. The ones built by private contractors took something like a year and cost $1.2 million.

Now, like I said this was a very logical examination of the reconstruction, analyzing the major pitfalls and turning points. This wasn't Fahrenheit 9/11. It wasn't outwardly inflammatory. I think it was all the more disturbing because of that, because it feels closer to fact. Hindsight's 20/20, but there's no excuse here. We just should have known better. There is absolutely no excuse to ignore the vast majority of your experts, to not read any of the reports that have been prepared, to disregard what people on the ground are saying. They ended it with a marine who has fought there and says "Don't tell me that's the best America can do. That just makes me angry." Me too. I just had to go to another country to learn why.

* As a disclaimer, these are my opinions, not necessarily Pat's. He hates when I'm tempted to use this forum as a soapbox, but he's asleep. For all of you that disagree with me, and I'm sure there are a few, it doesn't mean we can't still be friends :)