Valley Gardens--Pool and Snacks

The children finally convinced us to take them and their swim suits to Valley Gardens to enjoy the little wading/paddling pool they have by the playground. A new building had been under construction for some time there. We were delighted to discover it finished with both snacks and bathrooms!

Even though the water was a little cold, that didn't chill the children's spirits. They loved splashing in the water.

Wait, I'm not ready yet for a picture!

Lucy and Jacob splash around

Jacob and Autumn have fun while Lucy and a stranger torment one another

We admired the snack shop though we didn't buy anything. I was surprised that Lucy did not demand ice cream. And Jacob did not demand to use the potty. I guess the excitement of the pool was enough to satisfy them completely.

Valley Gardens' newest snack bar

We also showed cousin Autumn the Jubilee wooden chair, which everyone took turns sitting in.

Lucy insisted on going first

Autumn takes a turn

It was a fun discovery. As long as the summer stays warm, we will come again to enjoy the water and hopefully to sample the snacks available.

St. John's College Chapel, Cambridge

St. John's College Chapel in Cambridge is a nineteenth century work by architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. He was inspired by the thirteenth century Sainte Chapelle in Paris. Inside the gates of the college, the exterior looks like this:

St. John's College Chapel

From outside the gates, it also makes an impression.

Lucy is impressed

Visitors walk in between two statues of unidentified saints. This statue was the more interesting one to me. Usually, if someone is holding a building, she had a hand in reforming that order. Or built a magnificent church.

She's maybe a nun, but which one?

Inside, the south wall has a fine painting of Christ being taken down from His cross. Anton Raphael Mengs is the painter.

Deposition from the Cross, c. 1777

Also at the back is a life-size statue of William Wilberforce, who was a student at St. John's and a famous abolitionist.

Seems a little casual for being at church

The nave is dark but impressive.

Nave

Like many churches in England, there is a pulpit in the form of an eagle. This symbolism is especially appropriate here, since St. John is often depicted as an eagle (along with the other evangelist--St. Luke as an ox, St. Matthew as a man, St. Mark as lion).

Pulpit

One of the glories of the chapel is its nineteenth century stained glass windows.

West window, depicting the last judgment

Upper right is St. George; the bottom is the Annunciation

Top, Jesus is handed over; bottom, St. John is inspired to write the Book of Revelation

One of the unique thing in the chapel is the tomb of Hugh Ashton, died 1522. He was one of the first fellows of the college and appears twice on his tomb. On the top is a life-sized replica of him in academic robes. Underneath is a statue of an emaciated corpse.

Hugh Ashton, scholar

Two-tiered tomb, the bottom can't be easily photographed

Leaving out the side door brings one onto the Chapel Court, with another fine view of the exterior of the church.

West end of the chapel

Who was Saint John?

This particular Saint John is John the Evangelist, disciple of Jesus and author of one Gospel, three letters, and the Book of Revelation, all found in the New Testament. Read more about him here.

St. John's College, Cambridge

St. John's College has long been part of the University of Cambridge. The university began in the thirteenth century when scholars came from Oxford and Paris to form a school. Students originally lived in private houses; later communal hostels were used. One monastic house was the Hospital of St. John, built in the thirteenth century on the location that would become St. John's College. By the sixteenth century, it was in a piteous state and Bishop John Fisher persuaded Lady Margaret Beaufort (mother of King Henry VII) to refound the hospital as a college. Eventually the Charter of the College of St. John the Evangelist was granted on April 9, 1511.

The front gate was completed in 1516 and makes for a fine entrance into the college.

Entrance to St. John's College

Inside, tourists pay a nominal fee to go in and see the various courts and buildings of the college. The first spot one finds is the First Court, naturally enough. It's an open area with the chapel to the right (which will get its own post) and the Second Gate (leading to the Second Court) straight ahead. The original college was here, including the library and chapel. The current chapel was built in the 1800s.

Second Gate, with a nice window and a statue of Lady Margaret

People with academic robes!

The chapel, as seen from the First Court

The tour proceeds through the chapel and into the Chapel Court. This court has a hodgepodge of architecture from the sixteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

Victorian era buildings

Cool eagle symbols on the roof of the covered passage we were in

View of the chapel from the Chapel Court

Next is the Second Court. The most noticeable item here is the Shrewsbury Tower, with the coat of arms and a statue of Bess of Hardwick (of Hardwick Hall fame), Countess of Shrewsbury and major contributor funding the building of the court. The court was completed in 1602.

Second Court

Shrewsbury Tower

Also, this drain dates itself--1599!

The doorway in Shrewsbury Tower leads to (you guessed it) the Third Court. Built during the 1600s, it took a while to complete due to the Civil War, especially since the college was largely Royalist in a Parliamentary town. But it did get finished and looks quite fine.

Third Court

Tower over the old library

Leaving through a door to the south, which was the back exit of the college from 1672 to 1831, the tour leads over the River Cam on the Kitchen Bridge. From here we had a good look at their Bridge of Sighs, an imitation of the more famous one in Venice. Though the imitation is strictly limited to the fact that its a covered bridge and looks quite nice from the outside (the Venice one leads to a prison).

Lucy wants to read

Cambridge's Bridge of Sighs

On the other side of the river is the New Court. The buildings here were finished in 1831 and housed the great influx of students at the time. The style is an imitation of Gothic rather than actual Gothic (as was popular in the Victorian era). The especially ornate bits, especially over the central block, has earned it the nickname "the Wedding Cake" for its fancifulness.

The Wedding Cake

Gothic arch entrance

Gothic Walkway

The twentieth century's contribution unfortunately (at least to my eyes) comes from the 1960s and is called the Cripps Buildings. It is named after the Cripps Foundation, which financed the expansions needed for the large influx of post-war students.

By itself it's not so bad, but it is a bit of transition from Victorian Gothic

Nearby was this awesome wall with four stories of ivy covering it.

Insert "Ivy League" joke here

My one regret is that we were not allowed to go into this dining hall, because it sounds so delicious.

Mmmm...butter

More on the chapel in the next post!

Naughts and Zeds: Peek-a-What?!?

Naughts and Zeds is an ongoing series of posts on the differences between language, culture, and everyday items in America and in Britain. For a list of previous posts, go here.

The other day I was at the local library in the children's section and saw a book we have at home. Except the title is different! I wondered what was going on here. I looked through the whole book, and sure enough, the only difference was wherever the title word appeared.

In America it's called Peek-a-boo! In the UK it's called Peepo!

I tried searching the internet for the term "peepo" with no satisfactory results. The internet dictionaries failed me. Google Search failed me. All the search engines failed to provide any sort of context or explanation. So I did what any contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would do, I phoned a friend.

Actually, I emailed a friend, the most excellent Sean McCarney from Just A Catholic Dad podcast. In Episode 85, he replied that he did indeed play the game of hiding his eyes with his hands and occasionally looking out and he does call it Peepo. I take that as confirmation, and I hope internet search engines start pointing to this blog post!

Peepo! is available from here at Amazon.co.uk.

Clicking won't work, sorry!

Peek-a-boo! is available from Amazon.com at the link below.

Movie Review: Revolt of the Zombies

Revolt of the Zombies (1936) directed by Victor Halperin.

Now that our Xbox gets internet connection (yeah new house!) I downloaded the YouTube app so we can watch videos on the big TV. I made a list of movies I wanted to watch and finally watched one the other night. It's called Revolt of the Zombies, and it is sort of a sequel to White Zombie. The director is the same for both movies and he reuses Bela Lugosi's eyes to show when the zombies are under control. The eyes float over the image of who is being controlled.

That's where the similarities end. This story begins in World War I. An Asian priest offers them a secret formula to turn men into zombies, who would be the perfect soldiers. After a demonstration, the Allies decide this is too horrible and imprison the priest for life to prevent him from using it. The French representative decides he wants the formula, so he sneaks into the prison, kills the priest, and takes the partially burned cloth showing where the formula can be found in Cambodia.

After the war ends, a group of Allies (including the French bad guy) heads to Cambodia to find and destroy the formula. One fellow brings his daughter who instantly sets up a love triangle. Most of the film is focused on this triangle. One of the guys discovers the formula before everyone else and uses it to get the girl.

I found the film a bit disappointing. The atmosphere was all over the place (sometime it was light drama, sometimes it was a romantic drama, sometimes it was eerie, but hardly enough for a movie about zombies) and the zombies are basically hypnotized living people and not very scary. The story meanders around and a lot of stuff seems just thrown in to make the movie longer (like the native Cambodian woman dancing for the group).

The video transfer is not too great and the audio was very muffled, which seems typical for less famous movies from that era.

More Rainbows

This afternoon's weather was quite perfect for seeing rainbows. We were out running errands when we saw them. Unfortunately the only camera I had was the cell phones. Still it was quite awesome since we could see a ground-to-ground bow and even the very light second bow. Check it out!

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge the second bow!

If you're curious about the science of the second bow, check out this information from wikipedia:

In a "primary rainbow", the arc shows red on the outer part, and violet on the inner side. This rainbow is caused by light being refracted while entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it.
In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and has the order of its colours reversed, red facing toward the other one, in both rainbows. This second rainbow is caused by light reflecting twice inside water droplets.

Book Review: Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

This is the fourth time I've read this book, though the first time in over 15 years. It's a science fiction classic about firemen who burn books in a not too distant and far too dystopian future. Bradbury is a great storyteller and weaves an amazingly lyrical narrative. It first grabbed me in childhood as an exciting adventure with a very vivid portrayal of the life of Guy Montag, fireman turned rebel.

One of the delightful things I discovered in this re-reading was the idea of the proper relationship to books. The government represented by the firemen sees books as a hazard that causes both inequality (reading books makes people think they're better than others) and rancor (people may disapprove of how they (as minorities) are depicted in books). The citizens have fallen away from reading and are constantly plugged in to their living rooms, which are now nothing other than parlors with wall-sized TVs on every wall. Montag's wife wants them to buy a fourth wall TV to complete the room. If she isn't watching TV, she's listening to audio programs on little seashell devices in her ears. Books don't even register as reality for her; when Montag brings them into the house she is filled with horror at what they mean. Not that they contain horrible ideas, but that their house will be burned down if they are discovered. It's as if the government had already won their point.

On the other hand, Montag learns to appreciate books, first by meeting Clarisse. She's the seventeen-year old neighbor with the funny family (her uncle was once arrested for driving too slowly at 40 miles an hour). She is interested in nature and people. She has real conversations with Montag about things that matter. She is a catalyst for Montag to explore the forbidden fruit he has been roasting for so long.

Like any amateur, he makes a bit of a mess in how he handles things. He tries to convince his wife's friends that they should listen to books but they all recoil in horror. He tries to play cat-and-mouse with his boss at the firehouse but he is not up to the challenge. He eventually has to flee for his life.

He falls in with a group of people who have been memorizing books, to preserve them for the time when the culture is ready. Interestingly, they constantly tell themselves that they are not more important or better than others for what they are doing. They are keeping a trust for civilization. In one scene, Montag is talking to Faber, a former professor who has been keeping a low profile though is in touch with the book people. Faber explains the difference between four-wall TVs and books:

."..you can't argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'"
[Montag:]"Only the 'family' is 'people.'"
"I beg pardon?"
"My wife says books aren't 'real.'"
"Thanks God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full color, three dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible parlors."

The difference is between what's engaging and what's overwhelming. Books are a help in understanding reality, not a substitute for it or a way to tune reality out (though certainly some have used books that way). They help the reader to understand other people, other times, other places. But they don't force you to agree with them. The proper attitude toward books is not one of hostility or fear or submission. It's of wonder and learning and growing.

The book is definitely worth reading and worth re-reading. Bradbury's death a few months ago really is a great loss.

Hear some better commentary on A Good Story is Hard to Find, which is what inspired me to re-read the book. And now I am finally starting Jane Eyre, which they discussed quite a while ago.