Tel Lachish

I’m back in the blog saddle, trying to paint a bit of my trip to Israel for posterity and the World Wide Web. To be clear, I’m writing about it 5 months after the trip. Experiences are fuzzy in my memory, but with any luck what remains has hung on for some reason. The memories have marinated for a good, long time.

Tel Lachish

On July 24 we went to the ancient city Lachish where kings upon kings came year after year and usurped other kings. Lachish tended to be the final barrier to marauders before they invaded Jerusalem. As such it paid to protect it – and it paid, perhaps more, to take it.

The Assyrians took it from the Jews around 701 BC by building a ramp from the ground to the top of the city wall. Upon completing the ramp I suppose they ran up it and hurled themselves into the town – or else they ran up it and then climbed down the wall using ropes, maybe at night, while the Lachishites slept soundly on their stone beds. I don’t know how long it took to build that ramp, and I don’t know what Lachish citizens did during its construction. Maybe lads hocked spit on the Assyrians from the top of the wall, or poured olive oil on them or worse. Whatever happened, it must have irked the Assyrians so much that they found slaughtering their opponents a suitable retaliation. Wikipedia tells me that 1,500 skulls were found in a nearby cave – don’t mess with Assyrians.

Today little Lachish lacks the grandeur that ought to accompany it. What used to be the city is covered in cactus, whiskery bushes, overgrown grass, like Boothill in Dodge City without the cokes and video games. The base of the Lachish palace and the foundation of a temple and some white stones from the wall remain, but most structures have crumbled to dust or are buried like an ancient corpse beneath manky prairie.

The consensus of my travel companions (save our Roman scholar who put it on the itinerary) was that Tel Lachish didn’t deserve our time. It reminded me of a mound of used tires and Michael believes the drinking water at the base of the city made him sick.

Lachish. I wonder if the people who lived there ever thought that their palace and their temple and their city would one day be compared to a mound of used tires?

What will become of our White House? Of our New York, our San Francisco? Of Parliament, the Bellagio, of NASA ? Not to be preachy, but keeping in mind all of human history it seems ignorant to think that our fancy buildings will last. What will do them in – climate change, Simon Cowell, nuclear war, manmade ramps built to the tops of walls, earthquakes, fires, giant ants – it could be almost anything.

This doesn’t keep me up at night but it has me thinking.

Maybe that Lachish visit was worth our time. Thanks Jonathan.

C'est Moi

Hi.

I’m Alive!

I miss you!

Here is a taste of last week.

Tyson, Dad and Mom came to visit for my graduation. To dispel confusion, I did graduate last fall, but we booked the ceremony several months later because we thought a June ceremony would have better weather than a November one.

The ceremony was Saturday and we went to London Sunday for a whirlwind two days of tours - The Big Bus Site Seeing Tour, the Rock N Roll Tour of London, and a tour in the Tower of London. We saw Sister Act in the Palladium and were amazed by dazzling costumes and huge glitzy sets. Mom and I were a little disappointed that a few actors appeared to be lip syncing; Tyson swears they were above board.

Tuesday morning, Tyson, Dad and I took a cab to St. Pancras where we caught the Euro Star to Paris.

Tyson took four years of French in school and remembers little beyond the couple phrases he learned watching Home Alone (e.g. "You're what the French call 'les incompenant'"). I have been taking a class this term, but don't know much beyond "Bonjour" and "Merci". Dad knows one word in a language other than English: "Gracias."

With a tiny book of French phrases and a French Menu reader, we took to the city. One might have foreseen cultural clash when in the taxi line at the train station Dad took a Euro from the hand of a beggar who, Dad thought, was offering it to him as a gift of hospitality.

Days one and two we saw several masterpieces of art and architecture and took a few more tours - Le Tour Paris and one in the Louvre. We ate well and had nice wine. I am not exaggerating when I say I nearly killed myself on a Bicycle when, confused and a bit to proud, I cycled into a huge intersection as the green light came on for oncoming traffic. Tyson bellowed "What are you DOOING?" but it was too late. He said everybody waiting at the crosswalk gasped as I screamed and attempted to weave in and out of the cars that were barreling towards me at light speed. I recovered and lived to rent a bike the next day - but admittedly did more walking the bike than riding it.

One highlight of Paris for me this time was visiting a famous, English language bookshop across from Notre Dame. I have never been in a bookshop that got is so, so right. There were reading corners with soft chairs tucked around, they had a cool old piano and new and used books for sale, shelved to the ceiling. There was a lending library on the top floor with little cubby spaces for writers, one complete with an antique typewriter. I've read they let writers sleep there for free. I bought an antique copy of The Power and the Glory and an Updike novel called Couples.

We left Paris for London on Friday.

Saturday I moved house from 29 Norham road to 12 St Margaret's road. My new room is big and bright with three tall windows that look out onto a leafy, sleepy street and a Catholic church. It took me the entire day to put stuff away and I am relishing in the order of it all right now. Every shoe, scarf, and book is in its place.

Shots from the new place:

Final note, I am currently reading The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and am blown away! I haven't been so captivated by a novel in a while.

Lucky Readers

I could not be more thrilled that my mom agreed to be a guest blogger on The Shire to recount her first trip to the UK. Here are days 1 to 3. You, readers, are in for a treat!

Here it comes…..gnawing at me like the need for water after a 12 hour fast. Subtle at first, it starts with an anxious heart rate, the welling of tears, a heaviness that makes breathing a bit difficult. It’s called the night-before blues, and it’s as familiar to me as an old friend.
While it’s no surprise, I would have thought I could have staved it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day before I’m going home.

I came to Oxford 5 days ago. Tenelle met me at the Heathrow airport, her face popping up amid a sea of unfamiliar faces in the area where all foreigner air travelers enter. In my excitement to see her, I had failed to zip the compartment that housed my beloved passport, and it fell on the cement floor. Tenelle grabbed it up and told me to put it somewhere safe. That was the first of many times that the parent-child role would be reversed in the days to come.
We boarded a bus that was equipped with luggage storage underneath; a pleasant bus driver tucked in my two large black bags weighing 49.5 and 48 pounds respectively, quipping that I must be intending to stay for a while. “Only a week,” I said.

The bus brought us through the English countryside under a gray sky. It was chilly, and I wondered how the pastures stayed so green. Old brick barns, sheep grazing in meadows, a well-maintained highway with an absence of billboards are things I remember about the 90 minute ride.

Upon arrival to Oxford, we exited the bus, gathered my luggage, and summoned a taxi to take us to Norham Road. It was a quarter till 9 am, and I had been traveling since 4:05 the day before. I glanced at my watch. It was 2:47 am in Houston.

The cab wove its way through a maze of streets lined with beautiful stone buildings. While I couldn’t totally take it in because we were driving too fast on the wrong side of the street and my seatbelt didn’t work, it was evident that I was in an incredibly unique and magnificent place.
The driver collected his fare from Tenelle, and we drug my bags though a stone path, plowing our way as we went. There were 5 stone steps leading to a green wooden door with a heavy tarnished brass knob situated right in its center. On the other side was a hallway and a narrow staircase covered with a brown and beige hounds-tooth carpet that had seen better days. She must have sensed my weariness, because Tenelle suggested that I just leave the luggage and she would lug it up the stairs later. I didn’t argue.

We entered the flat where Tenelle shares a bathroom & kitchen with Wanda from Poland and Heinrika from Germany. The walls are painted bright white, and what it lacks in new sparkle it makes up in cozy and solid. Tenelle oriented me to the place. “These are my shelves in the cabinet. (Only two, which seemed a bit unfair, but I didn’t mention it.) This is my shelf in the refrigerator, and we can use all the pots, pans, and dishes that are on these shelves.” In the bathroom, she showed me where her toilet paper lived and warned me that the water isn’t that warm. “Be sure to squeegee off the shower door after you take your shower,” she added.
We unpacked the 49.5 pound bag that carried a plethora of food products from the US mostly requested by her friends, along with a new wool coat. Heinrika had offered space in her bedroom for empty bags, as her room is about 3 times as large as Tenelle’s.

Her little nest of a bedroom is about the size of half a dorm room; two wooden steps lead down to a light hard-wood floor. A raw wood shelf above a glass top desk houses a row of favorite books and CDs; Malcolm Gladwell, Marilynne Robinson, and Anne Lamott’s work are represented there. An upholstered chair covered with muted animals and other shapes, a small lamp table, a guitar on a stand, and a space heater round out that half of the room. The other is filled with a loft bed and closet/cabinet that houses her clothes. Everything was neat and tidy; I knew the entrance of my stuff would complicate the order.

I climbed the ladder to the loft; the puffy down-filled comforter was calling my name. Tenelle went to work, leaving a note on the white board telling me to ‘make myself at home and to put my clothes in the bottom drawer’ that had been vacated for my visit. After dozing a bit, I climbed back down, drank a glass of water and logged on to my hotmail account. I wondered what it would be like to be in a strange land without the internet.

When Tenelle got home we got ready to go to the Barretts’ for a Thanksgiving eve dinner. I had a mix between bed-head & chair-hair, but passed on a full-blown shower. We loaded a bag of US goodies, summoned a cab, and headed their direction. Dr. Justin is Tenelle’s boss. Along with his gregarious wife Sherry and their two kids Skylar and Sierra, he has been a source of counsel and strength since her arrival at Oxford, not to mention the provider of such necessities as blankets, towels and a bicycle. The dinner was a traditional one complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberries; I got to meet Tenelle’s small group friends Caroline and Lindsey and an American couple with 2 young children who just came to Oxford. (They had previously worked in Washington DC, and were displaced after the election). It was a wonderful affair, and a great way to start my visit.

Caroline drove us home, Tenelle blew up an air mattress that covered the floor space of her room, and we went to bed. It was ten minutes till midnight……Houston time- 5:50 pm. Day one at Oxford was over.

The next couple days seemed to fly by. Thanksgiving Day was spent visiting Tenelle’s office, eating at the infamous Eagle & Child pub, soaking up the sights in downtown Oxford, and preparing cornbread stuffing w/ dried cherries & almonds to take to a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. We had intended to take a gourmet green bean casserole but the lack of fresh green beans at the market forced us to change course. Green College was the location of the dinner, and a large room known simply as the bar had been transformed into the banquet hall. A large table stretched down the center of the room, and smaller tables and couches were placed around the side. Matt and his sister had baked two large turkeys, and the 35-40 student-guests filled in the remainder of the feast. I got to meet Shayak and Matt, the travel buddies who went with Tenelle to Morocco & Africa. It was a pleasant event filled with interesting conversation and good food. The students seemed of good cheer.

Friday we awoke early as Tenelle had a dr’s appointment. The brisk 25 minute walk was filled with sights and sounds of Oxford… children bundled up like little mummies being lead to school by their moms and traffic sounds typical of people going to work. Double-decker buses were everywhere, swishing next to the curb so closely that it made walkers take a step to the inside of the sidewalk. At the doctor’s office she checked in, waited in a fairly large comfortable waiting room, and was soon called in to see the doc. I had a pleasant conversation with a British accountant whose appointment followed Tenelle’s. It struck me that he knew much more about American politics than I knew about those in the UK. Tenelle emerged from her exam room with a prescription for her inhaler. The consult was free and she would pay $7 for the medication.

On our way home we stopped by a small café that featured breakfast baps. They were soft roll sandwiches with a fried egg, cheddar cheese, and sliced tomato. Very tasty. In the late afternoon we attended an Evensong service at New College chapel where a choir of young boys and men sang traditional Lutheran-like hymns accapella, in perfect harmony. It was a magnificent experience as the chapel was lighted by tall chunky candles, and the music lilted through the ancient structure.

Our next stop was a formal dinner at the college of one of Tenelle’s friends. The meal was served by waiters in formal dress and many of the guests were dressed in fancy dresses and suits/ties. The first course was a croissant surrounded by a bed of greens. Venison prepared like a stew with carrots and potatoes was served as the main course. I was pleasantly surprised that, with the addition of plenty of salt, it was warm and tasty. The final course was an individual plate of cheeses and grapes. Good, although I would have liked a touch of chocolate.

We walked the long way home to see the Christmas lights in the middle of the village. Carolers were singing traditional Christmas songs, and a large Christmas tree donned with bluish clear lights was a focal point. Large decorations of the earth, sun, and moon were puzzling but ok. Our walk home was in a fog as thick as a cumulus cloud, softening light from the street lamps.

We tucked in Friday night with visions of London floating in our head.

Happy Birthday Mom

Eddi Porter was born Edna Gail Anderson November 24, 19**. The daughter of Chester David and Cora Eileen Anderson, Edna Gail was the second born of three daughters, the oldest Susan and the youngest, Rebecca, all freckled brunettes with different permutations of curly hair. Edna Gail was named after her aunts Edna and Gail, but changed her name to Eddi (rhymes with steady though is commonly mispronounced edy like the ice cream) when she went to college. She remains Edna Gail to an uncle and some cousins and occasionally goes by Edwina, Weena, Ed, Gigi, and Mrs. Porter to certain friends and relatives.

Edna Gail grew up on a farm near Woodston, KS, current population 116 according to the year 2000 census.

As a child she heard mice scratch and scuttle in the attic above her room and developed a fear of the creatures that persists to this day. She loves chocolate-covered cherries and was once duped by her older sister Sue (pictured below with Edna Gail) into trading a brand new doll for one cherry cordial. When her parents caught wind of the un-cordial deed they ordered the doll be returned to Edna Gail who had already consumed the candy and who, according to Sue, suffered no repercussions from the ordeal other than the brief grief that accompanied the temporary loss of the doll.

In junior high PE class Edna saw classmate Lucille Dibble hurl a baseball bat that smacked teacher Pauline Jones in the forehead and knocked her all the way out.

In high school she participated in 4-H, marching band (baton twirler), cheerleading, track and field (long jump), drama, debate, and choir, among other activities. She was named homecoming queen of Woodston High in 19**, homecoming queen candidate of Fort Hays State University 19**, President of Alpha Gamma Delta 19**, Golden Apple Teacher of the Year in 19**, and National Geographic Kansas Delegate 19**.

In her lifetime she has survived one drive-by shooting, one blow to the head with a golf club - delivered by her daughter who accidentally swung too high with a putter on a particularly long hole of mini-golf in Estes Park, Colorado causing the course owner to erect a permanent sign cautioning golfers to keep their swings below the knee - one hoard of stampeding circus elephants that nearly trampled her and son Tyson before a heroic clown tackled them to safety, 3 cesarean births, one Women of Faith conference, countless years as an elementary school teacher, at least one year on the Grant County Library Board, several nights in a mice infested cabin in the Colorado Rockies, one ride on the Megatron (AKA Vomitron, AKA Death Spinner) at the Grant County Fair, two Wichita Eagle Medallion hunts, one Eclipse, two Trans-Ams, one ankle breaking fall down the stairs and one toe stubbing that left her slightly if not permanently crippled.

She will soon, in two days, take her first transatlantic flight to visit her only daughter, that is me, in Oxford England.

Today is her birthday!

Happy birthday, Mom. As you know, ‘I’ll like you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as Im livin my momma you’ll be.’

What it means to come home

I finished Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home. A friend of a friend told me about an interview with the author recently published in the Paris Review, which you may read here: http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5863

The interview is more about Robinson’s routine as an author than the book, but if you are a writer and a Marilynne Robinson fan, and I cannot imagine you being the first and not the last, my hunch is that you will enjoy taking time to read it.

In another interview Robinson says (of Home) “In a way the book is about yearning, you know. It’s as if we have some sort of very, very primordial notion. But, in fact, home is the place people leave, but the word is only implied in the sense that either you regret it or you will return to it. It’s a sort of pole.” I misused the word ‘primordial’ in a sentence today.

I like using the author’s words to describe the book because Im concerned that mine will do it no justice (I have in mind Sarah Palin’s apology if she (hypothetically) cost John McCain even one vote). For whatever it’s worth I think Home is full of beautiful prose that is best read meditatively; it’s like a long, lovely Midwestern rendering of Luke’s, or rather Jesus’ Prodigal Son. I was taken aback by all the dialogue in it and missed the intimate connection I had with narrators from her previous novels (Housekeeping and Gilead), all the same, Home is graceful, emotionally resonant, believable and tender and I, having just finished it, am ready to read it again.

Robinson poses some questions throughout like the one in this passage (my italics):

“All bread is the bread of heaven, her father used to say. It expresses the will of God to sustain us in this flesh, in this life. Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.
What does it mean to come home? Glory had always thought home would be a house less cluttered and ungainly than this one, in a town larger than Gilead, or a city, where someone would be her intimate friend and the father of her children, of whom she would have no more than three. Then she could learn what her own tastes were, within the limits of their means, of course.”

What does it mean to come home? What does it mean to leave? What is home and why is it? Where is home? How do you find it?

I don’t mean to channel Jack Handey or an eighth grade English teacher by posing this string of possibly irrelevant rhetorical questions. I will pose two more : Why does Home matter? Who cares about home?

Obviously I do.

Im sitting in England (tiny bedroom, flat 1, 29 Norham Road, Oxford) where the sun set at 4:30 PM today. Right now raindrops like silver worms slide down the glass door to the balcony in my room; raindrops clink against the sky light above my bed and sound like gravel ticking off the hubcaps and panels of a car, or like baby teeth clicking around inside a tin can. The wind roars like ocean waves through leaves that have turned gold from green and hang on the branches. My flatmates, Wanda from Poland and Heinrike from Germany, are sleeping. We share a little kitchen, a refrigerator the size of the one I had as a freshman in the dorm, a bathroom and two DVD collections, Wanda’s and Heinrike’s. I drive a short purple bike that a friend pulled out of a dumpster and refurbished.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “you’re not in Kansas anymore”…

Maybe home is not a place at all. Maybe home is something more portable, more nimble, less visible and strangely more concrete and durable. Maybe it goes wherever you go as long as you let it.

Still when I think of home I see white sheets, fat feather mattresses and billowing feather comforters that rise like cumulous clouds from the tops of double beds. I taste ‘the smell of Christmas’, the potpourri that blends cloves, cinnamon, apples and pine and sells for 75% off at Dillard’s come Dec 26. I think of playing Pitch, the unofficial card game of the family, and of reading novels in bed and drinking cranberry tea and eating lots of chips, cheese and hummus. Home seems like a comfortable place where a rocking chair might sit next to an open window, where a breeze breathes into a transparent curtain and makes it expand like a delicate lung, where framed pictures sit on dresser tops and old journals collect dust in the closet and the closet collects every yearbook, love letter and ticket stub too precious to discard. Home feels warm and has natural light and plenty of lamps and soft blankets.

Maybe the point is that still, though I like it here, and I do, sometimes, these days, I miss home.

Britionary

I have picked up some new vocab whilst living in the UK and I intend to celebrate it here in a recurring post called “Britionary”.

If you live outside of the UK, perhaps you could try to assimilate these words into your daily repartee and let me know how it goes.

1. Nackered: (adj, pronounce : n-ăă-ked) tired, exhausted, usually as a result of strenuous work
“Im to’ally nackered after running 8 miles in the rain.”

2. Twat: (noun, pronounce: twăt) twit, bumbler, fool
“What sor’ of twat comes ‘round at 7 in the morning to check the fire alarm and forgets the key to turn it off?”

3. Blimey: (?, prounounce : bl-eye-mēē) expresses befuddlement, disbelief, awe or amazement
“Wha’d you fink? Fe washin’ up would do itself? Blimey!”

4. Wee: (adj, pronounce: w-ēē) diminutive in stature, young, small, small and adorable
“She left the wee dog alone all day. Blimey!”

5. Queue: (noun or verb, pronounce: kew) a line or waiting in a line
“The queue at li’le Sainsbury’s goes out the door.”
“We queued one hour before they let us into the ball.”

CPR

Blogging, as it turns out, is difficult. It may be as difficult (or more difficult) than exercising regularly or dieting or studying or keeping one’s room clean or keeping up with the laundry or keeping up with pets or keeping up with plants or keeping up with anything that requires regular, repetitive, disciplined attention.

I’m glad my blog is NOT a pet or a plant because if it were, it would have probably died by now as a result of neglect. I am hoping to resuscitate it, though I am reluctant to make lofty, new years-y resolutions about the amount of blogging I will do per week so as not to feel so foolish if (when) I fall short of the goal.

I can think of a few reasons for my blog hiatus:

1) Thesis writing: I poured writing energy into my thesis for most of the summer. Time spent writing the thing and time spent procrastinating writing the thing (procrastination included travelling to Barcelona, long distance running, joining Facebook, devoting regular attention to online newspapers, not usually my thing) sucked time and energy from blog writing. I guess I only have so much writing energy to go around. My thesis title was ‘Systematic Review of Remote Support as an Adjunct to Media-delivered (self-help) Cognitive Behavioural or Behavioural Therapies for Anxiety and Depression in Adults’. Bottom line? Evidence suggests that adding brief, scheduled telephone support to self-help therapies for anxiety and depression makes the self-help significantly more effective. Surprising? Not really. Don’t we already know that accountability counts for a lot (SEE ITEM 4)?

2) Hello America: After finishing the thesis, I travelled around The States in August and September. Travel usually provides ample fodder for writing, but I spent more time thinking about fast food and shopping than anything else. Special trips outside of Kansas City, Houston and Wichita included a visit to Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, a quaint town situated along the Appalachian Trail with plenty of trees and corn fields and fly fishermen. My cousin Dustin and a lovely lady named Jennifer tied the knot there and we celebrated at Allenberry Resort, a place famous for its Sticky Buns and live entertainment. One highlight from the wedding was the Groom/Mother- of-the-Groom dance set to ‘Forever Young’ as performed by Joan Baez (?), which had most people in tears from the onset. After Boiling Springs I went with family to DC where we saw the monuments (by night!) and, being so moved by the vigour and inspiring commentary of the tour guides, took not one, but TWO bus tours around Arlington National Cemetery.

3) Moving etc.: I came back to Oxford 7 Sept and had to tend to a number of administrative tasks (e.g. moving, replacing a desk that I accidentally ruined in my old house, applying for a work visa, settling into a new job). All of this kept me busy and away from the blog.

4) Sans Accountability: I don’t have any accountability to keep me writing regularly, and, as we know from the thesis and general life experience, accountability counts for a lot.

5) Arrested Development: I am so, so the last to fall in love with this TV show, but it has been a delightful time sucker the last couple weeks.

I’m settling into a life rhythm now, what with a 9 to 5 job and all, and am not too busy or too spent to write. I still lack accountability – are there any bloggers out there wanting a transatlantic writing accountability partner? Do let me know.