Camino de Santiago

The Pasty, Cars, and Cider

2007-04-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

I'm here to debunk three myths about traveling across England.

Myth #1: the English can't cook. All I've ever heard about English cuisine is that the cheese is great, but the food is bad. The latter must be a rumor started by a French chef. For example, the English have honed the simple Shepherd's Pie to a fine art--it's not your mom's shepherd's pie that consisted of browned hamburger meat spooned out over canned green beans and covered with instant potatoes. No. They begin with sliced carrots sauteed so that there's still just a hint of snap. Add three types of mushrooms, sliced red potatoes, and fresh green beans. Large pieces of lean pot roast nestle down amongst the veggies, and the whole pie is covered with garlic and parsley, whipped potato. Ladle on clear, brown gravy and serve with a fresh salad. Mmmmmmm. If beef isn't you dish, try the fish and chips. Sure, you've heard about this staple of the English diet, but you can't imagine what I mean. Seaside towns like Berwick-upon-Tweed, Portsmouth, or Bristol have access to cod fresh from the Atlantic or the North Sea. The other day, after having skipped lunch because a tour went long, we ordered the "Large Portion" of cod for dinner at a fish house. The 13-inch-long piece of white cod that arrived was an inch thick in the middle. No one who has ever stooped to eat a meal at Long John Silver's could complain about such a meal. Ah, but then there's the pasty! A pasty is a light, tasty pastry filled with almost anything imaginable--chicken, beef, fish, cheese, onion, mushrooms, sliced or whipped potato, carrots, peas, beans, or any combination of these and more. Almost every rail stop and large underground hubs boast a shop called "The Original Cornish Pasty." These sell deluxe pasties about five inches long and an inch thick, filled with premium ingredients--all for four to five buck each. Every small town had at least two or three pasty shops along its main street: some selling rectangular pasties filled with mashed potato for as little as 65 cents. In Salisbury, we found four pasty shops on one square. As a matter of quality testing, we tried two of them one day, and the other two the next. I never met a pasty I didn't like. And I tried them all.

Myth #2: driving in England is crazy. Well, this one's a little more difficult to discount. As much as I told myself "drive on the left . . . drive on the left," I turned out onto my first street and had to swerve from the right to the left side. I made a second mistake by deciding to pick the rental car up in downtown London, one of the world's most traffic-congested cities. It would have been a simple matter to take the underground to a suburb where a rental car would have been waiting. Live and learn. Actually, driving on the left side of the street isn't the most difficult adjustment to touring by car--it's a combination of the lack of signage and the dreaded traffic circle. The English paint directional information on the street surface. Good idea, you think? No. Circling a "roundabout" at 40 mph while trying to make out a worn highway sign painted on the road surface is a recipe for confusion. Having said all this, once you drive for a week or so, things do become a little easier. The motorways (multi-lane highways are designated "M" for "motorway") are fast and open, and the views afforded by small, country roads are not available any other way. Plus, the cars are uniformly compact, easy to maneuver, and get great gas mileage. Our Vauxhall gets about 43 miles per gallon, and we've been touring countless side roads.

Myth #3: English beer is warm, dark, bitter, and generally nasty. Well, truthfully, I can't say one way or another about this. I'm not much of a drinker, and less so when travelling. Nevertheless, I can say that the English love their cider, and it's very tasty. Only about 3% alcohol, this is a type of drink even an Oakie could love. Almost any fruit is fair game for conversion into a sweet, smooth cider, and most of the small pubs where we stop in the early evening for dinner offer a variety. I do see plenty of dark beers being passed around, but for me, a diet-coke with food and a "small cider" (about half a glass) after dinner makes for a relaxing break.

The Author and The Preacher

2007-04-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

One of the pleasures of travel in England is the opportunity to visit the homes of persons whose lives I have heretofore followed from afar. For more than a week I have been carrying the memory of two such places that I visited in London.

For several years now, I have voluntarily allowed a monthly deduction from my checking account to support, among other charities and organizations, Channel 13 and National Public Radio. I am, thus, a self-acknowledged geek, so it should come as no surprise that I have also been a member of the Dickens Fellowship. Members are mostly people whose level of boredom is such that they devote their spare time to reading and discussing the works and life of Charles Dickens. In the Fellowship (not to be confused with J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship), we habitually refer to Dickens simply and reverently as "The Author." At the February meeting each year, the customary final toast is always made to the memory of The Author. Little wonder, then, that I took the opportunity when I was still in London to visit 48 Doughty Street--Dickens' first residence which he shared with his wife, Catherine, and a place where they lived for about three years.

The home has been a museum owned and operated by the Dickens Fellowship since 1925, and it houses an impressive collection of Dickens' manuscripts and memorabilia. In the lower level, a kitchen during Dickens' stay, the Fellowship has gathered the most complete library of editions of Dickens' works in the world. In fact, the remainder of the home is filled with artifacts that Dickens described in his novels, personal items, proof pages from his novels, and original personal letters. In the study on the second floor, Dickens completed "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist," and he began work on "Nicholas Nichleby." In a bedroom on the third floor, his wife's sister, Mary, died in Dickens' arms; she was stricken by heart disease at the age of seventeen and became the inspiration for the character of Little Nell in "Old Curiosity Shop." I walked the streets surrounding the house, passing the law courts, Grey's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, and walking through Lincoln Park to the Chancery Court. These places figured in three of Dickens' novels.

The next morning, I visited a home and a chapel less than a mile away from Dickens' residence. Beginning in 1779 and for the final eleven years of his life, John Wesley lived in a small Georgian home at 49 City Road, London. He had built the chapel according to his own design in 1778, and he and his wife moved into the home on the same lot the following year. Almost all of the furniture and all of the books in the home belonged to the couple. Wesley's writing desk, his favorite chair (a gift from a convert who had been a slave auctioneer), his clothing chest and a robe in which he preached, and his small prayer table at which he spent an hour each morning were all in the building. His last portrait was painted in the second-floor sitting room; he died in his bedroom on the third floor. The chapel at the center of the courtyard was constructed of honey-colored limestone, and still has the original doors and windows. Wesley intended the sanctuary to be a classroom for the training of his circuit preachers; he placed the pulpit in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped structure so that the practicing preachers could be evaluated by their peers. Wesley himself delivered sermons from the elevated box, and he served communion from the rail that he designed against the back wall. The building also housed the small organ at which John's brother, Charles, composed over 600 hymns. A small museum beneath the sanctuary held a number of artifacts including the first list of circuit preachers, their destinations and dates along their respective routes were inscribed by hand. There was a pen with which Wesley wrote one of his sermons, and a bonnet owned by his mother, Susanna, along with one of her own manuscripts concerning childhood education.

I never encountered any ghosts on my walks through London, nor did I ever sense strange fluctuations of temperature or an eerie breath that might indicate the presence of anyone long dead. But I did gain a clearer understanding of the day-to-day lives of individuals--and perhaps a keener sense of why one under-paid legal clerk became a famous novelist, and how a child plucked from the window of a burning house was destined to light the fires of faith.

The West Country

2007-04-18T05:16:00.000-05:00

For the last several days I have been driving (!!!!!!!!) through the "West Country." Internet availability is almost non-existant here. Right now, I have 14 minutes (it took a minute of my time just to log in) at the Salisbury Public Library in which to make an entry on this blog--oops, make that 13 minutes. Here's just an overview of travel since last Saturday.

Windsor--stayed two days in the small town that is home to the largest occupied royal residence in the world. Visited the castle, of course, and saw its fabulous art collection, collection of gifts from around the world to the English crown, and the royal reception areas. The changing of the guard came with a full regimental band because the queen and royal family were spending the week here too.

Winchester--the ancient capital of Enland, the cathedral keeps the remains of Anglo-Saxon kings of the past. Really a fine city tour with a guide who lectured on subjects from the Iron Age settlements to the Medieval through the Renaissance. The 12th-century hall has been home to King Arthur's Round Table for more than 600 years--it's mounted on the wall. A huge table weighing several tons, it was painted in green, red, and white (the Tudor colors) in 1522 when King Henry VIII wanted to impress the visiting Pope with a connection to this famous king. Poet John Keats once walked along the River Itchen--we took his path. Jane Austen lived right outside of town, and died in a house near the cathedral--the visit to her home was splendid, of course. Lots of other great sights to see in Winchester--the old city gates, bishop's house, Medieval mill house, old coach houses, the oldest pilgrim's hospital in Europe--many buildings and locations dating to the age of King Alfred the Great in the 870s--could have spent a week.

Salisbury--the cathedral has the tallest spire in Europe--we walked to the top of the tower for a wonderful view of the Medieval city. The entire cathedral surround was filled with historic homes, buildings, and an archeological museum. Found the little church in which poet George Herbert preached and wrote--the rectory in which he lived and died is just next door.

I'm timed-out for now. Going to Stonehenge and Avesbury today.

Canterbury

2007-04-14T16:06:00.000-05:00

In my last blog, I said that henceforth I was just going to write topically as I was impossibly behind in any sequential description. Here's an overview of what I mean. Just in the past few days, we've visited the historic site of Edward I's palace and castle on the Thames river that later would become home to an early Parliament House. The remains included the impressive Jewel Tower, a stronghold that once housed the royal collection of valuables and crown jewels. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was home to the records of Parliament. We spent more than half a day in the British Museum, enjoying a tour lasting just over an hour and a half that covered the most ancient relics in the collection. Yes, this included the Elgin Marbles, the Portland Vase, and the Rosetta Stone. While in the neighborhood of Westminster Abbey, we, of course, had to visit Methodist Central Hall, London's largest venue for Methodism and the first meeting place of the United Nations.

Taking a little trip to the east of London, we visited Leeds Castle, a splendid fortification the main body of which sits in the middle of a picturesque lake. Rare birds, art treasures, and Medieval excavations kept us running all over the adjacent countryside. Then, we saw those white cliffs. There are no bluebirds native to England, so I didn't sing the song (do you know "There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover"?), but Dover is just as lovely as the pictures. We ate lunch atop one of the chalk cliffs and then went down into the port city to wade in the channel foam and enjoy the vista that included Dover Castle, called the "Key of England," and a Roman lighthouse four stories tall, the tallest Roman structure in the country.

And then there is Canterbury. In my last entry, I wrote that Westminster seemed more a ceremonial/historical shrine than a church. Canterbury is a shrine that nevertheless retains the best qualities of a church--connected to a past of religious worship and veneration and of political intrigue. If you don't know the story, in the late 1100s Henry II was emerging as a powerful king whose struggle to gain control of his country, courts, and tax structure led him into direct confrontation with the Pope in Rome. When Henry installed his friend Thomas Becket as leader of the English Catholic church--the Archbishop of Canterbury--the king thought his problems were over. Until Thomas became religious. In 1170, Henry told four knights that he wished someone would rid him of "this troublesome priest," so the knights rode to Canterbury and entered the cathedral. They caught Thomas as he was climbing the stairs to the alter for Evensong service. Thomas fled downstairs but was caught at the entrance to the crypt where three of the four knights struck him across the head and shoulders. He died in just a few minutes. His monks took his body and placed it in between two columns in the crypt. Miracles associated with Becket blossomed, and the faithful began to arrive on pilgrimage to see where this martyr had shed his blood. By the late 14th century, Chaucer memorialized the pilgrimage in his "Canterbury Tales."

With the catherdral over 600 feet in length, I had trouble capturing the entire structure in a single snapshot. It is constructed in the form of a Greek cross, which means that there is a long, central nave that is intersected by two crossbars. Few side alters or monuments obstruct the view of the entire length of this tall, gothic nave. In fact, the cathedral is an interesting combination of styles. An older cathedral in Romanesque style on this site left an under-croft of low, semi-circular arches, while the newer gothic construction of the 13th and 14th centuries created the 120-foot-tall, peaked arches of the primary nave. There is a lovely inner harmony--the sort of place that you could sit and just look up to marvel at the genius of the stonework. A monastic chapter house in gothic style and a beautiful yard enclosed by a peristyle complete the serenity the infuses the church.

And the pilgrims came. There is a single candle lited each day on the spot where the shrine to Becket stood until the Reformation. Four twisted stords hang over the place where Thomas fell. Also interred in the cathedral are Henry VI, his queen, and the Black Prince, but the pilgrims came to see Thomas. There were so many that the monks built a special tunnel underneath the main alter to take them to the site of his martyrdom without disrupting customary services. I came as a pilgrim too. Brought by the story of the argument between two friends--Henry and Thomas--and impelled by Chaucer's sometimes irreverent pilgrims, I wanted to see where the martyr's blood wrote itself into history, literature, and legend. And I found what I came for.

The Abbey

2007-04-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

I'm four days behind in describing travels in and around London. Coming to the realization that I won't have enough time to cover everything until I fly home, I've decided just to blog about a few highlights as they occur to me (you did know that the word "blog" could be used as a verb, didn't you?).

On Monday, I entered Westminster Cathedral for the first time. I'd traveled around the place many times now but had been waiting for Dianna to join me before going in. We arrived early, just after the opening at 10 o'clock, in the hopes of finding a lessened crowd--those hopes were soon dashed. Passing the 15th-century church of St. Elizabeth, we could see the crowd four abreast stretching about 60 feet back from the north portal. A little disappointing, but what a portal! The great, gothic arch extended 30 feet upwards to where a stone stature of Christ was surrounded by a peaked gathering of angels playing ancient instruments. Admission is £10 (almost exactly $20) per adult, and the guided tour is another £5--a total of $30 apiece for the whole fee--pretty pricey. We paid our money and entered inside. Dianna's first comment was, "My gosh," followed by "What a clobbered up mess!" What she meant was that on first looking up, the rose window in the south transept is stunningly beautiful (that's the "My gosh"). One the other hand, the press of human flesh almost overwhelms the senses. Additionally, what should have been the beauty of a long, slender gothic nave was obscured by the countless--literally countless--memorials which seem to fill every possible space available in the church (thus we get to the "What a clobbered up mess!").

More than 3,300 people are buried in Westminster Abbey, and their interments are marked by everything from a simple diamond-shaped stone to a large stone scultpure 30 feet high on a base larger than my living room at home. Additionally, the war dead from every English conflict since the 1600s have some type of rememberance in the church. These do not include, by the way, the individual statuary and plaques mounted to honor the deeds of the individual dead--the ship captain who died just as his vessel overcame a French frigate at heavy odds or the general who fell in a cavalry charge during the Crimean War. Sculptors, hoping for a sizable fee from the families I'm sure, frequently represented these fallen heroes in the form of Greek gods clad in martial finery struggling against centaurs or some other such fanciful creatures. Some of the side chapels are so choked with busts covered with laural, angels with outstretched wings, or soldiers with sword in their raised fists that visitors duck and weave their way around, under, and through--often taking several minutes just to make their slow way into and out of a small area.

Happily, our guide, a church verger named Benjamin, took our group into the enclosed, central alter for an orientation. A verger, by the way, is an Anglican Church official who is responsible for leading all processionals and for assembling the Eucharist materials. To my great joy, we gathered around the tomb of Edward the Confessor, an early English saint and the king who in 1065 built the first cathedral on this site. Edward's tomb was a primary site for pilgrimage in England until Thomas a Becket's maryterdom at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Surrounding this alter were the crypts of Henry III, the king who had the current gothic cathedral built on this location in the 13th century, and Henry V, England's great warrior king and subject of Shakespeare's play of that name. Benjamin also made touring the cathedral a little easier by clearing our way into such tomb areas as the chapels where Mary and Elizabeth I, the daughters of Henry VIII are buried together, and where Mary, Queen of Scots, is buried.

Certainly for me, one of the highlights was the so-called "Poet's Corner" which is not actually a corner--it is simply the south chapel. A statue of a reclining Shakespeare dominates one end--even though he's not buried there. Several great writers are likewise honored, but not interred, in this location. Chaucer actually is buried there--he was the first to be placed in this area, though more for his service to the king and because of his friendship with the Black Prince than because of his writing. Charles Dickens is there--against his wishes; he had actually expressed a desire to be buried in a quiet service elsewhere. The church also serves as the final resting place of many great scientists (Newton, Darwin, Faraday, and Lyell--to name a few) and composers (a towering statue of Handel and a little plaque of Ralph Vaughn Williams--one of my favorites).

Clearly, Westminister Abbey has become a ceremonial certer for the nation. You may know that it has served as the place of coronation for every English monarch since 1066 in the age Harold. However, with plaques and memorials to Churchill, Roosevelt, Monty, Eisenhower, the Korean War Dead, and a capsized tourist boat from 1989, the place feels more like a monument and less like a church. Nevertheless, Westminster is a site of considerable history--even if it is "a clobbered up mess."

London, Inside and Out

2007-04-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

Again, I'm pressed for time--less than half an hour--to make a blog entry tonight. I'm just going to make a few notes.

SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE
Located just past "The Clink" (a museum dedicated to one of London's earliest prisons), Vinopolis (a wine warehouse and tasting room), and the ruins of King Stephen's abbey (nice 12th-century rose window left from the great apse) lies the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe theater. It's less than 100 years from the historic location of the original Globes. Yes, that's plural because there were two previous theaters. The first was built in 1599 and burned to the ground 15 years later when a canon fired from the "heavens" (the canapy covering the stage) set the tatch roof on fire. The theater was reconstructed in 1615 only to be closed and dismantled by the Puritans (spoil-sports!) in 1649. The latest Globe was opened in 1990 and is a "faithful reconstruction" of the originals--at least as close as we know based on sketches and diary discriptions. They used great, hand-hewn beams held together with wooden pegs and hand-cut board nailed with wrought-iron nails. The thatched roof was considered a fire hazzard (go figure) by the fire department, so a sprinkler system was installed along its apex and the whole place is sprayed with a fire-retardant material each season. The only other concession made to modernity was the use of a concrete floor where the "groundlings" would have stood--they actuall tried a dirt, nut shell, and ash floor in the first theatrical season, but it raised too much dust. In any event, just being in the facsimile of Shakespeare's theater rendered a memorable experience.

MILLENNIUM BRIDGE
After catching a bite at a wharf-side cafe, we strolled Millennium Bridge which connects Bankside which was once the disreputable (those theater folk!) side of the river to St. Paul's on the north bank. It's a suspension bridge and allows for a dramatic view of the river and most of Central London's sites. When it was originally opened, the Queen took the inaugural stroll--and then officials closed it for several months. The structure swayed dangerously up and down on the suspension cables and engineers were called in to stabilize the thing.

EASTER
Saturday evening we attended the first "Easter" service of the season at St. Paul's. This was actually the Confirmation Service that began outside the cathedral, processed to the baptismal font in the narthex, then moved to the main alter for Eucharist. The Bishop of London presided and the cathedral choir provided the joyful noise. Just one part of the pleasure of attending involved the treat of seeing the interior of St. Paul's illuminated for the evening service.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE
The country estate of Cardinal Wosley, this 15th-century palace is located about 15 miles outside of London. All I have time to say is, "Wow." Henry VIII took the place over--William and Mary made expansions and added a garden. It's on the Thames River--the monarchs could boat into The Tower when they were needed for state ocassions. They had costumed actors playing famous historic characters--including a fire-eating jester. Food was cooked on site in the way it would have been prepared 500 years ago. It was really like stepping back in time. And the location with its vast gardens held us until near nightfall.

Okay--no time to proof--check for type-o's or nothin'--this place is closing and I'm only up to what we did Sunday. Sigh. May never finish this blog.

Too Little Time--Too Much To See

2007-04-08T15:03:00.000-05:00

I haven't made a blog entry for four days, both because the internet cafes tend to close before 10:00 and because Dianna and I have been trying to fit 14 hours of touring into 12 hours each day. I'm happy that she is finally able to experience the non-stop wonder that being in a city like London offers the diligent traveler. I'm not going to try to compile a nicely developed prose narrative--just a list of some of our stops for future use.

CABERET
Well, we haven't been spending all our time with ancient history or literature. We've taken in our share of the local entertainment including a trip to the Lyric Theatre for a performance of Caberet. Along the way, we've tried to experience the local cuisine, including fish and chips and mushy peas (the last is really quite good) down at the warf and a nice chicken pie with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies all covered in thick, brown gravy.

THE TOWER
This was an entire day's excursion. Americans tend to think of this historic location as "the" tower, but, in fact, the white stone tower and wall built by William the Conquerer in 1084 was subsequently surrounded by a secondary wall with 13 additional towers in the 12th century. In the 13th century, another wall was added with six more towers; thus, when you visit "The Tower of London," you'll actually see 20 towers--the white tower rising above the others in the center of an elaborate fortification. And what history! Not only did the early Norman kings settle here as their primary residence in England, but also Henry VIII and the Stuart kings used this location as well. Famous prisoners such as the two princes (see Shakespeare's "Richard III"), Sir Thomas More, two of Henry's wives, and John Stuart were murdered or executed within these walls. Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard are buried under the alter in the Royal Chapel within the walls. Many prisoners left graffiti in their cells which were located mostly among the 13 towers of the inner wall. For those of you who care little about history, there's always the gross display of opulence known as the Crown Jewels. Yep, we saw them--several times. The display of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and gold scattered like so many rhinestones on crowns, swords, canes, and clothes was pretty astounding. Also on the grounds is the museum of the Royal Fusiliers--very nice--and a fun changing of the guards ceremony.

SHERLOCK HOLMES
Yes, I realized a boyhood dream and visited the rooms of The Detective and the doctor at 221b Baker Street. The Baker Street metro stop is the oldest in London--first opened in 1863--and it would have, of course, afforded Holmes rapid transit throughout the city. On the street above, there really is a 221b address where an enterprising company has constructed "The Sherlock Holmes Museum"--strictly a tourist trap since old Sherlock is purely fictionally--but for me a fun hour. The rooms are decorated with period elements that replicate descriptions from the stories, and an actor playing Dr. Watson greets you as you are shown upstairs. He asked who I was, and I, of course, replied, "Mycroft!" (I'll just let you look that up if you don't know.) As you continue to climb the stairs up the apartments, you'll see scenes from the stories depicted using wax figures from Madame Tussaud's (pretty campy). Just a little up Baker Street from 221, by the way, we saw the work room and living quarters of a real person--author H. G. Wells.

KENSINGTON GARDENS
Dianna and I took a stroll across this natural marvel in the middle of a bustling city. Stopped to see the Elfin Tree--an acnient oak tree with figures of the wee folk carved by a 19th-century artist into its trunk and branches. At one end of the gardens is the impressive ALBERT MEMORIAL, a tall, neo-Gothic tower and monument erected to commemorate the passing of Queen Victoria's consort.

KENSINGTON PALACE
Located at the west end of Kensington Gardens is the city get-away of British monarchs William and Mary. A country house in the 1600s, the royals purchased the residence in order to have a home removed from the center of London. Christopher Wren (of St. Paul's fame) expanded the home into a palace, and it has remained in the royal family ever since. All four Georges lived there for a time during their reigns, and Victoria was born there. Indeed, Victoria was awakened in her bedroom there on the day that her uncle, George IV, had died, and she was told that she was the queen of England. More modern residents included Princess Margaret, the current Queen Elizabeth's sister, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana--right up to their divorce, of course. The rooms of William and Mary have been restored to late-17th-century spleandor, and the art work throughout the palace makes the spot worth the visit.

HMS BLEFAST
Resting at dock along the Thames River is the light-crusier HMS Belfast. Commissioned in 1938, she saw action in the North Atlantic, was part of the Normandy invasion bombardment, and supported British and American troops during the Korean Conflict. We climbed to the Captain's Deck, ducked our way into the forward batteries, and visited below decks where the crew lived and worked--a fun, floating museum.

BANQUETING HOUSE
Located just down the street from number 10 Downing (Tony Blair's current digs), the Banqueting House is the only surviving building from a great palace build by Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century. The poor cardinal was forced to surrender the place to King Henry VIII (it is good to be king!) who expanded the location into his primary London residence. Queen Elizabeth entertained ambassadors and saw dramatic perfromances on the location, and current Banqueting House was built by James I in order to house the elaborate court masques that he enjoyed. Designed and executed by Inigo Jones, the Banqueting House introduced Italian Renaissance design to England. The lower floor consists of row on row of beautiful low arches after the style of a monastery; James and Charles likes to bring close friends there for drinking parties. The upper room boasts a single, cavernous ballroom decorated with white stone walls and gold-gilded columns and a gold, coffered ceiling. Charles I commissioned the Flemish artist Rubens to paint eight vast works to decorate the ceiling--they were allegorical works that validated his divine right of kingship. Ironically, in 1649, following his capture and trial during the English Civil War, Charles I was marched through this room and executed on a platform built onto the Banqueting House just for the ocassion. William and Mary held court from the room, and, much later, it became a museum for the display of militaria taken during the Napoleonic Wars. Today, it is used for official state dinners. Several American presidents--to say nothing of diverse diplomats from around the globe, have dined there.

And now, a final anecdote. So, what's one of your greatest concerns when traveling? Of course, where can you find a clean bathroom!? Well, we're in the Banqueting House where heads of state are entertained, and Dianna says, "I have got to go to the bathroom." She goes downstairs, and I follow her down where another husband is already waiting. Dianna heads in through a marble doorway with a great carved door festooned with elaborate appointments. In a minute, a woman comes out, walks immediately to her husband and says, "It was just beautiful--I knew it would be." A couple of minutes later, Dianna appears at the door and says, "You should go the the Men's room just to see this." Okay, I'm game. I enter. It was heaven. To begin with, it may be the only clean bathroom open to the public in London. Marble walls and busts gleam white, while the tile floors mix grey and light blue. I'm nearly faint with the dazzling display and take a seat--you know where. Afterwards, I wash my hands at the polished fixtures using designer soap available in clear dispensers. I dry my hands on one of the thick, folded towels stacked beside each sink. I didn't want to leave. Finally, as I stagger out, I walk over to Dianna who says, "Do you realize that I might have just sat where Laura Bush once sat?" The thought is just too much for me to fathom.

This list brings us up to yesterday--but this internet location is closing. More later.

St. Paul's, Southwark, and The Author

2007-04-04T14:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, so some of you are curious about what Dianna and I are seeing now. I'll just gloss over a few highlights. Yesterday, we spent half a day in St. Paul's Cathedral. The towering work of Christopher Wren, this is a 17th-century church built on the foundation of a 12th-century structure that went up in flames in the Great Fire of London (1666). A great mathematician, Wren had been given the job of renovating the old building that was practically falling down, built scaffolding all around the church that he said should probably be knocked down, and low and behold, the whole thing is consumed in fire presenting Wren with a blank slate. Personally, I think that Wren started the fire himself, but then, I've been reading a lot of Dan Brown. Its cavernous interior is gleaming white stone--gleaming because the whole thing has been cleaned in the past three years, having been covered by a layer of grey-brown London grime over the past three hundred years.

Since that other church--the Abbey over by Parliament--has been filling up with famous dead people since the 1200s, St. Paul's has become home to artists, composers, and statesmen since it opened. The crypt holds Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, poet John Donne, Holman Hunt (the Pre-Paphaelite painter), and Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame!) to name a few. What you really need to know is that Dianna and I climbed to the very top of the cathedral following the tour. Yes, past the "whispering gallery" that looks down on the nave, beyond the dome porch, she kept going up until we stood at the tower overlook. She was stunning with the wind tossing her hair. London was nice, too.

Today, we crossed the Thames River to Southwark. We visited the catherdal that has been much rebuilt since a Christian church was first founded there in 606AD. There are several nice sculptures including a 12th-century, wooden crypt carving of a Crusader knight. It holds the burial crypt of Lancelot Andrewes, bishop and scholar whose claim to fame is that he worked on the 1611 translation of the Bible that became know as the "King James Bible." Additionally, the church is the home parish of one of London's most famous suburbs. John Gower attended, died, and was buried there. Gower wrote "Coffessio Amantis" and other Latin works in the mid-14th century that proved early English writers were capable of high art. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens were also known to have attended services there; in fact, Shakespeare's brother, Edmond, and friend and fellow playwright, John Fletcher, are buried in the transept.

Having visited the hub of the neighborhood's culture, Dianna and I wandered the streets of Southwark. We passed the one remaining wall of the prison where Dicken's father was held as a debtor and saw the street where Dickens' lodgings once stood. A park wedged between streets is called "Little Dorrit" after the Dickensian character. We walked down Tabard Street to near the spot where the Tabard Inn stood until a 16th-century fire. The Tabard is the location where Chaucer's 29 pilgrims are supposed to have gathered for their trip to Canterbury to see the grave of Thomas Becket. In fact, Tabard Street is crossed by Pilrgrim Street and Becket Alley. That's the way of walking in London--a little history around every corner.

P.S. To Kathy N.--I forgot to mention in my last blog that the Norwich Cathedral has just opened a stone labyrinth that they laid in the southeast yard of the church. Monthly walks have been very popular, and I had to think of you as I took a turn around the stones.

P.S. to Bonita--thanks for the quote from your comment. I had never read the passage, but I found it accurate to the word to the sights and feelings of my walk to and from Holy Island. Don't mean to be too sentimental, but it literally brought a tear to my eye.

Norwich: One Cathedral and One Saint

2007-04-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

From the far north in Northumbria, I took the GNER (Great North Eastern Rainroad) train to Ely (pronounced "e-le," not e-li) where I made the change to local rail so I could continue through to Norwich (pronounced "nor-ridge"--ain't those English folks funny?). I arrived late in the evening, past seven, and had a little trouble finding a hotel. The small, private hotels were already full, and the Old Maid's Head, the historic hotel built in the 16th century, wanted the equivalent of $220 for a one-night, single. So, I settled for the Travel Lodge at the rail station; pretty boring, I know, but I am almost at the end of my travels and my reasons for coming to town had nothing really to do with hotels.

Usually, my first stop in a town in the tourist information office to pick up a list of opening and closing times for attractions and places of historic interest. In Norwich, however, I had one clear destination, and it didn't matter to me that I was sure to arrive before any doors were open to me. I went directly to the tiny church of St. Julian of Norwich. It's located in a poor part of Norwich, down the river and near where the tidal sweep of the ocean can reach up the fresh waters of town. The neighborhood still preserves a pair of timbered merchant houses built in the 14th century among the dilapidated apartments. Turning up St. Julian's Alley, a street that has been on city maps for 600 years, I came to the churchyard wedged between an auto shop and what had once been a grocery store. And there it was--St. Julian's Church.

At 10:00, a caretaker arrived to open the church door. I went immediatly inside, walked to the south wall, and opened the door of a small room. I settled quietly onto a prayer bench against the wall. This is where my idea for my Faculty Development Leave had begun. In a way, I felt like this is where it ended.

We don't know the name of the woman who spent 40 years living and working in this small cell sometime late in the 14th century. She is called "Julian," but her name is really just that of the location where she chose to devote her life as an Anchoress--a Medieval woman who lived alone in order to engage in spiritual exercises. She is so self-effacing that she never names herself in her work "Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love." What she accomplished is nothing less than the first work know to have been written in English by a woman. She survived a series of plagues that racked her country and saw her efforts to discover a self-directed life reined in by male mentors. Nevertheless, she produced this remarkable book and became a sage whom other women and men sought out by pilgrimage. Most notably, Margery Kempe writes in her own autobiography that she met Julian just before the latter's death around 1416.

In fact, three years ago I began reading these two women's works with an eye to developing a paper discussing how women discovered avenues of rhetorical power between the 14th and 15th centuries. They both mentioned the power accrued through pilgrimage; Kempe had, indeed, walked the Camino de Santiago. And that set me to thinking. Both Chaucer's Wife of Bath had also been to Santiago, and I began to wonder why pilgrimage offered women not only a path to holiness but also a road to self-expression and community esteem. I decided to make this the starting point for my Faculty Development Leave.

And so I sat in Julian's cell. I've read her works, but now I have touched her life with a visit to these few square feet. Inside this cell, she became one of the most powerful religious figures of her time. Norwich has a beautiful cathedral begun in 1094 that boasts the second-highest tower in all England, and the town is home to 30 churches that remain from the Gothic period. Streets are cobbled from flint stones, and 14th-century houses still reveal their oak timber skeletons. But I spent my morning with an un-named woman in a small, single-naved church with an 1,100-year-old foundation.

Today, I'm in London where I have been joined (after all this time!) by my wife, Dianna. We plan to augment the tourist economy. I'll try to make a few more entries--perhaps not about seeing "Cabaret," although we already have tickets for tomorrow night. I'll write about Canterbury and Salisbury, perhaps, but for me the last day of my pilgrimage will always be the day I spent in Norwich.

Holy Island

2007-03-30T07:09:00.000-05:00

Holy Island is located just off the coast of England's northerly-most town, Berwick-upon-Tweed. If you look at a map, the town is in the upper, right corner of the country just a mile or two from the border with Scotland. The largest of the Farne Islands, Holy Island is important for several reasons. King Oswald, ruler of the tribal kingdom of Northumbria in the early 600s, sent a request to the monastery of Iona on the far western coast of Scotland to send someone to build a Christian monastery in his land in order to convert his people. By 635, an Ionian monk named Aidan (later canonized a saint) had built a "Saxon-style" church of heavy oak timbers on the island and founded the monastery called Lindisfarne. The type of Christianity practiced in Lindisfarne followed that of Iona; namely, they both performed "Irish" or "Celtic" rites. These were different from Roman Catholicism in a number of specific ways. For example, and most easily seen, they used the Celtic tonsure for monks; instead of shaving the little spot at the back of the head as did the Romans, the celtic church shaved the front of the head to a lateral line reaching from ear to ear. The celtic church used a different liturgical calendar, and, therefore, celebrated important holy days and events on different dates from he Roman church. Most importantly, they calculated the date of Easter using a unique formula. The Irish church claimed to have the right to follow these and other practices because their version of Christianity had actually been evolving since the second century (Thomas Cahill writes about this conflict in his entertaining book "How the Irish Saved Civilization"). The monastery at Lindisfarne and the monasteries just 35 miles to the south at Jarrow and Wearmouth where Bede would write constituted the front lines in the battle to see which practice would prevail among Christians--the former being Celtic and the latter being Roman. It's strange to me that many modern Christians seem simply to accept that elements of their religious practice have always been in existence--in fact, these elements were hammered out over centuries, and Holy Island is a seminal site in this process.

Another reason why Holy Island is so special is because of St. Cuthbert. By nature a hermit whose only wish was to live out a life like that of St. Jerome (a great saint--drafter of the Latin Vulgate--who had preceded Cuthbert by less than 200 years), Cuthbert was elected by his peers to be the Prior and Bishop of Lindisfarne. To Cuthbert fell many of the negotiations between the Celtic and Roman Catholic churches. Bede writes that Cuthbert was both a holy saint whose life brought many miracles and a scholar whose compromising spirit kept the church together and "catholic."

Finally, there is that famous illuminated manuscript called the "Lindisfarne Gospels." A Latin text of the four Gospels, this may be the single most famous illustrated book in European history. If you have ever seen a page from an illustrated text, chances are that it's this one. It is a treasure of art and devotion; the illustrations are clearly inspired by the celtic tradition with the letters, figures, and border art being filled with the, now-traditional, Celtic knot configuration. Sometime around 700, a monk named Eadfrith, its primary if not sole artist, oversaw the creation of the Lindisfarne Gospels in the scriptorium of the monastery there.

All of this is a lot of history, I know, but I wanted to explain the importance of the place. So, I went. Holy Island is a tidal island--that means that twice a day when the tides are in, it is a true island and cannot be accessed from the mainland. In order to get on the island, you have to have a look at the tide chart for the month and carefully time a visit. I had to rise at 5:45 in order to catch a bus to Berwick. Once there, I rode a city bus down to the causeway that leads to the island and was dropped off at the end of its route--leaving me just about one and a half hours before the sea came in. Then, I walked the six miles across the sand to Holy Island just as Cuthbert must have many times. The day itself was full of cold fog, and visibility was about two miles on the coast. The way to Holy Island is marked with tall, pine poles stuck deep in the sand of the tidal basin. At three places along the way, the locals have constructed the notorious "white houses"--little elevated, covered platforms that serve to rescue anyone caught on the sand when the tide comes in. The tide quickly floods the area, and every year two or three people are trapped--sometimes because the tide comes in with a wind and actually fills the basin more quickly than predicted.

Lindisfarne Abbey was abandoned in 1537 at Henry VIII's order disbanding all fraternal organizations. The skeletal walls of the old abbey and the collapsed walls of the monastery living quarters leave you to wonder what life was like for these men. The remains of most of Aidan's 7th century church have been covered by the newer (11th century!) Church of Saint Mary, but some of the original outline is in evidence. On a hill a mile away rests the fortress built by Queen Elizabeth I in 1560 to protect the northern reaches of her kingdom; it attracts far more visitors that do the abbey ruins, yet what transpired within its quiet walls was far more influential in Western culture. From a little hill next to the abbey, you can look to the southwest and see a much smaller island with a cross on it. Late in his life, Cuthbert retired from his elevated post as bishop and, against the pleading of his peers, moved to a small, stone hut on this unnamed Farne Isle where he died. About six hours after I arrived, the tides receded--I was no longer trapped by the sea, and I walked off the island. About half a mile away, still on the wet sand, I turned around for a farewell glance at Lindisfarne as a late afternoon snow began to fall.

History, Art, and Shopping in Newcastle

2007-03-29T06:03:00.000-05:00

Once again, the challenge of finding internet access has raised its head. Funny, I had thought that England would be easier than Spain--especially since in London there seemed to be an internet cafe or workpoint on every corner. But here in the north, public internet is limited to libraries, all of which are closed by 5:30 just as I'm finishing with the day's touring. Well, I'm taking time this morning, a travel day for me, to make an entry.

Two days ago, I stayed mostly in and around Newcastle. I visited the Roman Wall Museum at the suburb of Wallsend. This is the location where the Romans built a fort that anchored the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. If you're not familiar, the Romans conquered the English mainland early in the second century AD, but those pesky Scottish and tribesmen kept making trouble, so the Roman emperor Hadrian ordered that a wall should be built streatching across the Tyne valley all the way across England. At Wallsend, archeologists have uncovered the largest fortification of the wall and reconstructed a part of the remaining wall. I wish that I had time to do the "Wall Walk"--about 90 miles. It's supposed to be historically interesting but also a lovely view of the Penine Mountains and the English countryside. No time this trip--maybe next time!

In the afternoon, I spent time in downtown Newcastle. First, I visited the Laing Art Gallery which features Brisith painting from the 18th to the 20th century. What this means, to my delight, is that they have several works by Pre-Raphaelites. Look them up if you're not familiar--they painted sensuous works often using mythological allusion. Four works by John Martin were there--one, "The Bard," I've used in World Lit I in the past. Even better, there was William Holman Hunt's "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," a haunting work made more poignant because the model for Isabella was Hunt's wife who died just before the painting was completed. For me, the highlight was Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones' "Laus Veneris," a richly colored painting of reclining female figures taken from the German Tannhauser legend.

To round out the day, I stopped by Grainger Market, an indoor shopping market built in 1835. There were antiques, fruit and veggies, butcher shops, and an optical shop that has been in that location since 1852. In 1882, a pair of entrepreneurs named Marks and Spencer opened a penny goods shop; today "Marks&Spencer" is one of England's largest retailers, but they still maintain a shop in Grainger Market. At one shop I bought hot "Northumberland Stew"--corned beef, carrots, white potato, sweet potato, onion, and celery. As Andy Taylor would say, "Gooo-ood!" There were used book shops where I spent some time sorting through dusty books until I found treasure! I bought British editions of "Something Wicked" and "Buried Secrets"--both Silhouette novels by Evelyn Vaughn, who is better known as Tarrant County College's own Yvonne Jocks! As I was leaving I tried a Scottish Bap. This one had pork, dressing, and pease porridge on it. Now, when the woman making this up asked, "do you want your pease porridge hot or cold?", how would you have responded?! I wanted to say something like, "Ummmm, nine days old?" Anyway, I had it hot, and it really was delicious.

Yesterday, I visited Holy Island, my next to last pilgrimage. I think I'll write about it tomorrow--I need a little more time just to think about the experience. In the mean time, I'm heading south.

Newcastle

2007-03-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

In order to find internet access in Newcastle, I'm in the Philosophical Society Library. Founded right around 1800, Lord Grey (Brisith politician who was involved with the Reform Bill of 1832) was probably its most famous member. There are three stories of books towering above me; they do not, however, seem to be having any effect on my overall intellectual capacity. Well, here's what I've been doing for two days.

Sunday, I wandered into town only to find the Tourist Information folks closed. A helpful woman on the train suggested that the community of Jesmond was know for its hotels, so I bought a ticket on the Metro and headed up the river Tyne on the underground. At the Jesmond stop, another helpful person suggested a general direction, and fifteen minutes later I was dropping my backpack in the B&B otherwise called the Osbourne Hotel. By the time I had come downstairs, the owner had my first day planned out for me. I had told her that I was traveling to see pilgrimage site, and she gave me Metro directions to the town of Tynemouth--it's so-called because it's located where the mouth of the Tyne River empties into the North Sea. After a brisk walk to the ocean, I found the remains of Tynemouth Abbey and Tynemouth Castle on a cliff overlooking the harbor. Founded around 980, they had stood against Scottish and Danish invasion only to be left abandoned when Henry VIII ordered all monastic groups out of the country in 1539. The ruins of the abbey and the graveyard with over 700 vaults and gravestones made for spectacular viewing on a cold, sunny day at the edge of the North Sea.

After inspecting the ruins, I toured the little seaside town and picked up some fried, fresh cod that should make anyone's mouth water. I walked up the beach to the 18th century church of St. Nicholas where I found a trustees' meeting just breaking up. One of them insisted on giving me a tour of the church in which he, as he put it, "began as a choir boy and will be shrouded for burial here." Nothing really out of the ordinary about the church itself, but I enjoyed his obvious pleasure in showing someone around a place to which he had devoted a lifetime of labor.

Today, I started in the town of Jarrow where I found the Church of St. Paul's. This is the location of the Venerable Bede's monastery and a pilgrimage site for the late Medieval period. Bede, as you may remember, was a local Saxon boy who became, by the late 600s, a great scholar and author of many works including a history of the English church that is the only such book describing the spread of Christanity to England. A 19th-century chruch, built in the style of the chapel of Bede's monastery, is currently on the site. The back section of the church, however, is original to the 7th century. Additionally, walls of the monastery itself and the outlines of the adjoining farm still remain. Also on this site is a museum opened in 2001: Bede's World. It offers a look at life in the 7th century and has a working farm adjoining the museum. The curators operate the farm using 7th century impliments and have even bred or maintained animals--cattle, goats, sheep, geese, chickens, pigs--that are as close as possible to those acutally common to the era. All the buildings--from the houses to the pig's hut--are based on archeological digs in the area.

Having made my way around Bede's World, I walked what will be one of my final pilgrimages for a while. There is a 12.5-mile-long path crossing over the River Don and following the River Wear that leads to St. Peter's, the sister monastery of Bede's St. Paul's. In his works Bede remarks that he traveled this path many times in order to guarantee the working relationship between the two locations that he claimed were but one monastery. It's fairly well marked and at times passes through a nature reserve. So, I walked Bede's path. The frequent incursion of modern industry (it lies along a busy port city, after all) was disruptive, but from time to time, the wildflowers and linnets (song birds typical to the area) reminded me of some of what the Venerable One must have seen. About three and a half hours later, I arrived at St. Paul's and saw the tower and part of a wall remaining from Bede's original monastery. A fine way to pass an afternoon.

I rode the bus back to Newcastle where I visited the New Castle. Yes, an "old castle" was built in 1080 by William the Conquerer's elder son on the site of a Roman fort, but the castle was replaced in 1164 by a "new castle" (now only 843 years old) after which the town is named. I saw the 16th century cathedral--nice. But most of the rest of the afternoon, I was really wondering what it would have been like to run into Bede strolling his pathway 1300 years ago. It's funny that I have read his autobiographical introduction to the History many times, but it never seemed real to me until today. He actually was just a seven-year-old kid once upon a time who was placed in a monastery to learn a life from which he never wanted to waver. I suppose that's why traveling to these places is so important.

A Fine, Soft Day

2007-03-25T04:27:00.000-05:00

When it's not actually raining, but the overcast skies constantly drizzle or mist enough to fog my glasses, the locals say, "It's a fine, soft day." I was distracted from my way to the cathedral this morning by the noise of a Saturday market on the square in Durham. There were little shops set up offering food, crafts, candies, home-made fudge, and import goods. They were aligned so as to lead the stroller down into the Durham Market, an indoor facility built in 1851 and filled with more, mostly local, goods. I tried the fudge (very buttery) but avoided the "Scottish Bap"--a sort of puffy hamburger bun with three scary-looking sausages inside. Folks from surrounding towns came in for the market, and I heard a variety of forms of the English language being spoken. I'm so near the border with Scotland that many clearly have a Scottish turn in their locution--in fact, yesterday I bought a potato and corned beef pastry from a chatty young fellow at a pastry shop. He just talked and talked, and I nodded and laughed when he laughed--but I didn't understand a word. I managed to offer the correct change because I could read the price on the window. The pastry, by the way, needed no translation.

When I finally did arrive at the cathedral, I was again offered an unexpected treat. Like many churches I've visited, the Durham Cathedral prohibits the taking of photographs because they find that such activity disrupts the many services during the day. I explained to a proctor, easily identifiable because cathedral staff wear long, blue robes, that I am a college professor and wanted the use of the pictures for presentations and class demonstration; moreover, I added that my camera had a silent mode and that I had turned off the flash. He asked that I wait a moment and ran off. Three minutes later, he introduced one of the cathedral historians; she explained that the only way to take pictures would be in her company--and she offered to give me a personal tour while I took my snaps! For the next forty-five minutes, I had the joy of being ushered about by someone who had made the study of the cathedral her avocation for twenty years. She pointed out the anomalies in the archways, showed with a laser pointer where a flying buttress had been added in the 13th century to support a wall, indicated places where the workmanship was particularly fine, and chuckled about places in the south transept where someone clearly goofed with the carved patterns. She invited me back for Evensong at 6:00 and promised me a seat with the proctors in the Quire (choir stall). So, here's an important travel tip: if you're ever in one of those cathedrals where you can't take pictures, just tell them you're a teacher and you NEED these pictures. I left the cathedral with some fine pictures and a promise to return at 6 o'clock.

Immediately after my longer-than-expected cathedral visit, I walked across the square, past the pilgrim hospital founded in the 14th century, past the bishop's library founded in the 15th century, and right into Durham Castle and joined the guided tour. I felt like I had just entered the world of Harry Potter and Hogwart's. The castle is now the University of Durham--a part of Trinity College, Oxford. About 600 students attend this branch, about a quarter of whom live inside the castle. Right now, the university is out on Easter break (our Spring Break), but a student guide was still on hand to conduct the guided tour. We saw the great dining hall where professors sit on a elevated platform and are served first. The kitchen is touted as the oldest continuously operating kitchen in the world--it was built into the castle in the 11th century and has served food to residents ever since. The dining hall also had a fine display of armour, pikes, and swords from the English Civil War (1642-47). A great, winding staircase leads to the students' quarters, but they are not allowed to use it except on special occasions; the stairs were originally built as "flying cases"--they were attached only to the wall, but they began to collapse. Pillars were added, and they still slant inwards--they still felt a little creaky to me. Different groups of students have their own doorways with student leaders being offered a special set of rooms. It's not too difficult to see where J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books which are set in the north country, found her material.

I'm on my way to Newcastle. The Hadrian's Wall Walk is next.

Darlington and Durham

2007-03-24T05:11:00.000-05:00

With names like Darlington and Durham, this must be England. Actually, I'm in the cold north country and a computer has been difficult to find since I landed. I flew into Tees Valley Airport where I caught the bus to Darlington. The weather is cold and too typically Enlgish--about 36 degrees, foggy, and misting all day my first two here. I had reserved a room at the King's Head Hotel (so very British!) through the website, venere.com. The hotel was built in three sections; I was placed in the "Victroian section," constructed in the 1860s. In order to reach my room, I had to wind up tall staircases and down hallways with ornate ceilings. After throwing my backpack down, the first thing I wanted was a pint of milk. In Spain, few people drink milk that isn't steamed and made the latter half of the expression, "Cafe con leche, por favor." The Spanish don't keep cold milk at all; groceries stock wax cartons of soy milk right on the shelf beside the potato chips. So, I found the local Sainsbury's, England's answer to Tom Thumb, and found a cold pint of semi-skim milk; I staggered down the street taking swigs from the plastic carton like a sober man who didn't want to be.

And then the town rolled up its sidewalks and went to sleep. No kidding, all the shops, including the Tourist Information Office, in Darlington close at 5:30. I asked the hotel clerk what I could see, and her response was, "Dinner?" Back on the street by 6:00, I found that most of the restaurants had just closed--even the Burger King on the corner. I ran into an Italian place and ordered a pizza; by the time I finished, the owner let me out with his key. Oh well, at least the TV programs are in English.

Pop quiz: what's Darlington famous for? Time's up--it's the home of the first passenger train. Yes, there's a train museum with, among many other exhibits, that initial transport that began the passenger train revolution. Friday, I went to the Train Museum in Darlington after having been to the tourist office and aranging for a tour of the local historic church at noon. In fact, there were three church members happy to greet me on the steps of St. Cuthbert's in Darlington. Built between 1180 and 1240, this dark, steepled church is in what is called Norman style; that is, it's laid out in a typical cross with two low naves on either side of the single high nave. My three docents were happy to point out the war memorials, and Victorian alter screen of the Last Supper, and the relics which are remainders of the 7th-century, Anglo-Saxon church on that same location. They even opened the pastor's library, a collection of some 45 books from the 17th to the 19th century, for me to inspect at my leisure. They even gave me bus directions to Durham Cathedral.

I have, in fact, been in Durham for a full day. The cathedral is easily the finest that I have seen on this half of my trip. It is Norman Romanesque, which means that the central nave and the alters at either end make the whole length quite longer than a football field. Nevertheless, there are only two slender side naves, so the body of the church is slim. The pillars attract your attention the moment you enter; they are great, fat structures with geometric designs carved into their midsection. Other that that, there are few other adorning ornaments--one element of the Norman style is its simplicity. For me, this was a special pilgrimage because Durham cathedral is the resting place for two great saints--Cuthbert and Bede. The 7th-century Cuthbert brought a particular brand of Catholicism to England and helped establish the monastery at Lindisfarne as the nexus of Christian faith in this country. The Venerable Bede, monk at Jarrow, wrote the first book by a native Englishman, Ecclesiastical History of the English People--a work that includes a chapter on the life and works of Cuthbert. I stayed in the cathedral yesterday through Evensong service which lasted from 6 to 7 o'clock. This was, by the way, simply a spectacular concert; the choir at Durham Cathedral has made many recordings on classical labels and performed, among other works, a composition for Evensong by Brahms.

Today, I go back to the cathedral once more, tour the church of St. Oswald, and have a look at the castle on the hill. Tomorrow, on to Newcastle and the Hadrian's Wall Walk.

A Farewell to Spain

2007-03-21T15:35:00.000-05:00

This is my second posting today; the first was up this morning at about 5am Texas-time. I am nearly to the end of my last day in Spain. After almost three months in this country since the end of August, I am moving on without immediate plans to return. There are still towns I´d like to visit--Vitoria, Alicate, Tarragonia, and especially towns in Navarra like Tudela, Olite, Sanguesa--the list goes on. There are towns along the Camino I´d like to return to--some to visit again, some to feel again a place I loved, and some because I missed a thing or two along my tired way last Fall.

Today, I visited the 17th century fort on the hill overlooking the harbor and went to the Picasso museum. The latter followed the artist from his earliest painting at age 8 right through to the end of his life. In the afternoon all I really did was wander the streets, shop, and try to soak in a few last moments of Spanish culture before tomorrow. Early this evening, I mailed 24 pounds worth of travel books, guides, maps, and brochures home and spent the rest of the time walking along the docks. I just needed one last look at the Mediterranean. There were several large cruise ships docked. One was unloading--I didn´t realize that the lower section of these towering ships was filled with busses. The flat stern of the ship was backed up to the dock and bus after bus loaded with tourists was rolling out to hotels around the city. Farther down the dock, a ferry was loading sixteen-wheelers for the trip out to the Spanish islands of Majorica and Minorca. I was ready to stowaway, but another destination entirely awaits me.

Like a condemned man, I figured that I had the right to a last meal, so I went to a fairly expensive restaurant and sprang for the three-course dinner-of-the-day to the tune of 16€. For my first course, I chose the bean soup, Catalan style--a tasty mix of lentils, garbanzo beans, and black beans with pieces of ham. Since it is so near Easter, I felt it only fitting to choose the roasted rabbit for the main course. This browned bunny was served with garlic new potatoes in a clear-brown sauce. Finally, the house speciality for dessert was flan--lightly whipped egg custard with a swirl of caramel on top. I am a happy feller.

Well, it´s 10 o´clock in the evening here, and I should go back to my hotel to do a little laundry. I fly Ryan Air out of Girona Airport at 12:10 for Tees Valley Airport in England. I´m back to my pilgrim ways following in the footsteps of the saints. Durham cathedral in what was once England´s northern kingdom of Northumbria is the final resting place of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede. I plan to walk a little along Cuthbert´s path and to visit the church that served as home to Julian of Norwich. But more on that later--when I find an internet connection in England. Right now, I have to look up at Mt. Tibidabo one final time. Thanks again to all those family and friends who prodded me along with notes on the blog over these many weeks across two semesters in Spain. Some of you will never know how timely and helpful your comments were. G´night and adios.

! Barcelona es Hermosa ¡

2007-03-21T05:52:00.000-05:00

I hope you avid readers weren´t disappointed, but I was unable to make a blog entry last night because I was at a concert until after the time that the internet place closed. Oh yes, here in Beautiful Barcelona there always seems to be something worth going to for an evening´s entertainment. But let me start at the beginning.

Monday, I arrived in this sprawling metropolis (cliché) just after noon. I rode the metro to the monument district and then began the seemingly endless task of finding yet another hotel. Why didn´t you just call ahead or look on-line, you ask? I´m too cheap. Only rated hotels offer on-line reservations, and those start at over a hundred bucks a night and can easily be $150 and up in a city like Barcelona. I prefer to spend an hour wandering the old town until I find a hostal with a room available--usually between 35 and 55 dollars a night--and family run with a more personal touch and plenty of recommendations about where to eat and what to see. The discovery process took a little longer on Monday simply because Barcelona is currently over-run by Spring Breakers from America, France, and England (oh, those pesky kids trying to get an education). After settling in Hostal El Pi, I went right to the Gothic Quarter.

The title "Gothic Quarter" is a little misleading since it´s a segment of the city in that offers a Roman wall and the underground ruins of the Roman city of Barcino. While digging to reinforce the foundation of a 16th-century home a few years ago, city workers discovered the remains of the Roman town. Barcelona promptly opened the City History Museum that preserves the city under the city and offers artifacts dating back to the founding of the city by its namesake Carthaginian, Hamilcar Barca--probably more famous as the father of Hannibal. The cathedral, begun in the first years of the 14th century, is a beautiful Gothic structure with a peristyle around the apse instead of the usual and obtrusive alter retablo. There is a fine display of Gothic stained glass and the type of open atmosphere too often closed off by later building in other churches. Plus, you can climb the tower! Yep, you can go up one of the towers and both have an interesting look at the stone roof (the negative image of the Gothic tracery that you see from below) AND have a great view of the city from smack in its middle. There are other fine buildings in the Gothic Quarter including the 13th-century Basilica Santa Maria del Pi (a true basilica structure with one, wide nave) were I found out about the concert on Tuesday. I finished Monday off with an evening stroll around the winding streets of old Barcelona that are filled with tapas bars and ceramic shops.

Tuesday started with a climb up Mount Tibidabo. Okay, I rode the bus to the funicular. What´s a funicular? It´s one of those slanted train thingys at the bottom of a hill that´s attached by a cable to another slanted train thingy. While one goes up, the other comes down. Six minutes later, you´re standing at the top of the mountain that looks down onto this second largest city of Spain, the surrounding mountains, and the broad expanse of the blue, blue, blue Mediterranean Sea. On the very top of the mountain sits the 19th-century church of the Sacred Heart. Small, with a single round nave, it is dedicated to Christ´s donation of his human self--literally, "Tibi dabo" in Latin means "This, I will give to you." On the top of the chruch stands a huge bronze statue of Christ with his hands outstretched, offering himself to the city of Barcelona. And what could be even more cool?--you can climb to the top of the church and stand on a small observation platform at Christ´s feet. What a view. On the way down the mountain, I stopped at the Monastery de Pedralbes. Founded in 1326 by Queen Elisenda de Montcada, the monastery had a Gothic chapel and several works of art including a painting by Fra Angelico! A beautiful image of the Madonna and Child done in his characteristic streaks of vivid gold that seem to glisten and flow down the canvas as you move from side to side. The monastery also had works by Rubens and Caravaggio--all from the Thyssen collection, the bulk of which is in the museum in Madrid.

The remainder of Tuesday was mostly consumed with Touristy things. I went to the unfinished Church of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia), designed and begun by the famous architect, Antonio Gaudi, in 1884. The hope is to have this huge, neo-gothic structure finished in about another 20 years. You shold look at a picture on-line; its twisted towers have been compared by locals to lobster claws. I also visited a pair of houses designed by Gaudi and a museum didicated to his and other innovative Barcelona architects´ works. I went down to the docks, shopped the Fishermans´ Wharf (not a Klingon, if you´re wondering), and walked down to the beach where I could take off my boots and splash in the Mediterranean. A park designed by the surrealist Miró was nearby and featured great twisting sculptures and a fine way to walk the day to darkness.

And then evening came. At 8:15, I was seated six rows from the front alter of the Basilica of Santa Maria. The concert with Manuel González didn´t begin until 9:00, but all seating was general, and I wanted to be right up front. González is a a "maestro" of music for the Spanish guitar. The program included my personal favorite work for guitar, Isaac Albéniz´ "Spanish Suite." You´ve heard Albéniz on commercials or on movie soundtracks even if you don´t recognize the name. Albéniz is a landscape composer; that is, he wants you to see the features and feel the textures of his native Spain as you hear the music. The first movement, "Asturias," is, to me, one of the most atmospheric pieces of Romantic music ever composed--look it up and play a bit on Amazon.com. Well, the concert was perfect. Gonzaléz sat in front of the alter, nine steps above the floor. Yellowed marble, the alter was carved in front with the figures of nine female saints that included Eulalia, Veronica, Justia (patron saint of Sevilla), and others. I´m certain that I saw one smile a bit during the concert; holding a harp, she was Cecilia, patron saint of music. Above the alter stood a lighted statue of Mary. Gonzaléz played two encores and then autographed copies of his CDs in the narthex of the church. I´m coming home with two new CDs.

Holy Toledo?

2007-03-19T14:46:00.000-05:00

I´ve tried twice to make a blog entry at inferior computers (missing keys, blurred screens--you name it) in the corners of smoke-hazed cafes; both times the computer lost the entry before I could post it. Perhaps now that I´m at a genuine "Locutorio" (internet/game room), this will come through. Since I´ve misses a couple of days, I´ll just run through a few topics to catch up.

A LAST NIGHT IN MADRID
I was so wrapped up in my second visit to El Escorial´s library and the Cantigas that I failed to mention how beautiful Madrid is in the evening. Friday night, thousands of people came out to stroll the streets between the Prado and the river by the Royal Palace. This path runs right through my neighborhood of Opera Plaza and included, of course, the Place Mayor. It includes dozens of blocks of shops, cafes, historic buildings, and lovely plazas. Music was literally in the air; I passed a duet playing guitar and keyboard, a quartet of accordion players, an 11-piece brass band, a solo tuba player, a violin playing with cello, a trio of recorders, and couple of puppet handlers performing to Beatles hits. Now, I know that in the past I have complained about too much ham or olive oil in Spanish food, but if you can´t find a tasty gourmet treat in Madrid, you´re not trying. There is every good thing to eat in the hundred or so cafes and restaurants I passed. One advertized 100 different tapas choices and 300 different wines. I chose a Greek/Turkish place and had Kabap--that´s shaved, roasted chicked breast, lettuce, tomato, red and green bell pepper, onion, and two different sauces all laid out on toasted flat bread. Mmmmmmmm. Afterwards, I stopped at a pandelaria for a slice of chocolate mousse cake. Ambling back to my hotel, I couldn´t help but hope that I return to this wonderful city in which walking is an entertainment in itself.

TOLEDO
I rose early Saturday morning in order to catch the 8:10 bus to Toledo. My romantic notions and of this venerable city had been formed by El Greco´s famous paintings and by the fact that it is the seat of Spain´s religious belief. Officially, Toledo is Spain´s prelacy; that is, the cardinal in charge of the cathedral there is the Prelate, or head, of Spain´s Roman Catholics. My expectations turned to apprehensions the moment I stepped off the bus. The Plaza Mayor was crowded with tourists; both the Burger King and the McDonald´s had over-flow crowds. Yes, there were quaint, Medieval streets, but they were packed with more souvenir shops than I have seen anywhere in Spain. Ever heard of Toledo steel? Oh, make that "steal." Sure, they still sell swords--made of stainless steel, plastic chrome, and rinestones, they were mostly replicas from movies like "Lord of the Rings," "Beowulf," and "Highlander." For the more modern collector, they even had plastic guns from "Last of the Mohicans." There were whole shops filled with plastic "Majorica" pearls alternating on necklaces with loops of 24K fake gold, and since this is, after all, La Mancha, there were those goofy tin statues of Don Quixote or little wooden send-up`s of a pudgy Sancho Panza--both with "Made in China" stickers on the base. The cathedral was little better. There was a 6€ charge to enter, 2€ for a brochure, 3€ to enter the cathedral museum, and 8€ to join a guided tour. They funnelled you out through the cloister which featured the longest souvenir shop in town festooned with more guns, swords, knives, Spanish flags, and Panzas on their donkeys. As I pushed past a crowd of kids with plastic Samurai swords, I couldn´t help but think that some bold someone with conviction should throw these money changers out of the temple--oh, but who would be that foolish?

Actually, that evening, Toledo did restore a little of its former glow. I walked through a park that wraps around the city. Looking up, I could see the three rings of walls that once defended this throne of the king. The city planners have recently opened a restored synagogue in the old Jewish quarter. In the distant past, both Moors and Christians lived side-by-side with talented and thriving Jewish craftsmen and traders. The community in Toledo once had five synagogues; the new exhibit includes a museum dedicated to Sephardic culture--a real treat. You may know that after kicking the Moors out of Granada in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered the Jews from the land as well. Another synagogue has survived in Toledo, but it is currently used as the Christian church of Santa Maria la Blanca. Oh well, tolerance only goes so far, I suppose.

ZARAGOZA
Just a short note because this blog is really long. I rode the bullet train from Toldeo back through Madrid to Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon. Sooooo cool. Traveling along at about 120 miles per hour, I was there in an hour and a half. Put Zaragoza on your "be sure to visit" list. There are two cathedrals--one has 11 great domes and houses Santa Maria la Pillar. A Medieval pilgrimage site just a little less important than Santiago de Compostella, Zaragoza was the site where, standing on a pillar of stone by the river, Mary was supposed to have appeared and told the Apostle James to build a church dedicated to her on the spot. Even more impressive was the other cathedral, La Seo. A 14th-century church, it is the most beautifully decorated church I have seen since Burgos. Helpfully for the lay person, all of the art works are explained on kiosks tastefully placed around the church. Unlike in Toledo, both cathedrals indicated to visitors (in the free brochures) that they are houses of prayer and required quiet with no pictures. The La Seo cathedral would be a great teaching tool for illustrating artistic shifts from the 14th to the 17th centuries--I´ll have to take my students there someday. By the way, Zaragoza also had Roman ruins, a Moorish/Christian castle, beautiful plazas and fountains, a Medieval bridge, and stunning mountains. I´d go again.

If you´re so bored that you actually finished this long blog, congrats. I´m in Barcelona today--more on that later. !Hasta luego¡

Holding History / Embracing Life

2007-03-16T14:42:00.000-05:00

This morning, I rose early, caught the metro to the bus station, and rode the bus back to El Escorial. At the monastery, I by-passed the tourist entrance and walked around the immense quadrangle of the monks´ quarters to a door where, at 10:00 sharp, a guard allow three of us to enter. My bag and camera (darn it!) were placed into a locker by an attendant, and I rounded the winding stair to the fourth floor where the private reading room is. Volume One of the "T" manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria was waiting for me on a silk pillow with a silk-covered page weight at my disposal. It was a leather-bound book about three inches thick, 15 inches wide, and 22 inches tall. Its pages are made from vellum--the treated skin of an animal, usually a calf or a sheep. Let me give you a little background. The Cantigas were collected at the court of the scholar-king Alphonso El Sabio ("the Wise") in the latter half of the 1200s. There are exactly four manuscripts of the Cantigas dating from Alphonso´s reign. The "To" manuscript held in a library in Toledo contains only about 100 of the Cantigas and is considered an early, incomplete edition. The "F," held in Florence, is a late, hastily complied version with many omissions and poor art work. The "E" version, also called "codice de los musicas," is fairly complete, but with few illustrations and is at the El Escorial library. And then there´s the "T" version, the gem of them all. This one has 400 songs with complete, illustrated text, musical notation, and framed drawings (much like a modern comic book page) that illustrate the complete story narrated in the text of the song. The Cangtigas themselves are folk tales, miracle tales, and saints´ stories surrounding the Virgin Mary. The "T" manuscript represents the single, largest Medieval compilation of both folk literature and music that exists in the world. Were it to go on auction (someone at El Escroial just gasped!), it would probably draw something in the many tens of millions of dollars--it is difficult to access how much more. A partial Chaucerian manuscript from 1400 sold for $76 million in the mid-90s.

The "T" version represents one of humanity´s great books. Dating from about 1280, it probably had two illustrators that worked on the bulk of the art within. The detail of tiny figures, the gesture of their hands or expressions of hate, envy, or devotion in just their eyes reflects the high degree of skill that the artists must have had. Although the musical notation is present in a 5-bar staff, exactly how to play the Cantigas is a source of ongoing debate and experiment. Although the stories reflect the Christian heritage, both Muslim and Jewish artists and musicians worked on the compositions. Everyone agrees that most of the rhythmic patterns are Arabic, but no one can agree just which rhythms go with which songs. There were at least four basic Arabic patterns from the period, and these were subject to endless variation. Indeed, the attraction of the compositions for many musicians is the freedom to extemporize (as we know they did in the court of Alphonso at the church of Santa Maria la Blanca) around the basic notation. If you want to hear a modern interpretation, click on the website "Cantiga" that´s to the right of this blog, or go to www.cantigamusic.com.

I was allowed access to both the "T" and the "E" versions, but the former consumed most of my attention and time. In fact, I was promised one hour, but the curator allowed me to remain from 10 until the library closes to outside use at 2:00. So, I had four hours. I suppose there are many ways to think of the Cantigas. I did have millions of dollars at my finger tips, but I didn´t really consider that at the time. Yesterday, José Luís de Vallé, the director of the library, called these volumes "Spain´s greatest literary treasure," and I thought at the time that that was limiting their value. These songs are a window into three cultures; they are our distant, and hazy, memory of an active folk and court life that once flourished across Europe. They represent not only how Medievals worshipped, but also how they sang, played, danced, ate, loved, and related to a broader world of the supernatural than moderns imagine.

Oh, that´s all I did today. I arrived back in Madrid a little after four in the afternoon. I walked this beautiful city for one last evening before leaving tomorrow for Toledo. I found myself humming Cantiga 108 as I turned for the internet cafe to write this blog. In my old, junior high school Latin class, I once had to memorize Latin phrases; here´s the first one I ever learned: "Ars longa, vita brevis"--Art lives long, life is short. Good-night, Metroplex.

To Honor the Dead

2007-03-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

After tomorrow, the rest of my trip here is just wandering. I can hardly think what to write about today. I rolled out early in order to take the bus trip up to San Lorenzo, the little town that is home to El Escorial. After moving the capital of Spain to Madrid in the 1560s, the very wealthy and staunchly religious Philip II started looking around for a place to build a monastic retreat and family burial vault. He was important, so the place where his family would rest for years to come had to match his grandeur. It does. El Escorial is a gray, granite giant with family rooms, a cloister for Heronimite monks, a huge church with a dome based on that at St. Peter´s in Rome, and the royal family vaults. In a granite and jaspar vault deep under the alter in the church, all the kings and queens of Spain since Charles V (Phil´s dad) have been shelved in chronological order. Moreover, all their kids and family members--150 or so in all--are likewise buried in adjacent vaults.

Now, here´s the source of my elation. The monastery has one of the finest collections of manuscript books in the world. It contains Europe´s earliest copy of the Koran, an original copy of the Islamic legal codex from the 700s, AND it contains two of the four original copies of Alphonso "El Sabio´s" Cantigas de Santa Maria! If you have read this blog at all, you know my admiration (veneration) for these great works of poetry and music (click on the link to Cantiga´s music). After 45 minutes of wrangling with various docents and guards, I was shown to the monk´s quarters where I was able to speak with José Luís de Vallé, the head librarian. I gave him my card. I pleaded. I reasoned. I begged! Finally, he agreed to give me exactly one hour with both copies in the monastic reading room tomorrow beginning at 10:00. I can´t bring a camera or a bag. I may have paper and one pencil. Sound the bells throughout the Metroplex!

Later that afternoon, having risen from my sobs of joyful expectation, I rode the bus from San Lorenzo to El Calle de los Caidos--The Valley of the Fallen. This is Franco´s El Escorial. Located in the Guadarrama Mountains, this is the monument to Spain´s war dead from the civil war of the 1930s. In the 1940s, when José Rivera (the founder of Franco´s fascist Falange party) died, Franco laid his mentor´s body to rest in El Escorial. This caused a national uproar--not only was Rivera not royal, he had opposed the king. Partially of spite then, Franco built this cavernous mounment a couple of valleys over from El Escorial. His original intent was to honor only the dead on his side; again, a national outcry caused him to allow both sides to be honored--thus the title, Valley of the "Fallen." On top of an outcropping called the Rock of Nava, they built a 500 foot-tall cross decorated with giant statues of war dead and the four Apostles. Into the literal side of the mountain, they dug a great cathedral--an elongated, banded-in-granite tube that flairs out into the shape of a cross. On entering, I felt like I had wandered onto the set of Lord of the Rings. Gargantuan statues in a combination of neo-Gothic and art deco guarded the entrance. The a stone leviathan of a tortured Christ lay twisted above the yawning doors of the cathedral. The enormity of the thing consumes you--yes, Lloyd, you feel like somewhere in a corner, there should be a small man behind a curtain saying, "I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OOOZZZZZZ!"

The Valley of the Fallen still causes quite a stir. Many in the government want the place closed down. Rivera lies at rest right in front of the alter, and Franco is buried in a crypt behind the alter and the place is indelibly associated with his, now unpopular, cause. We have the same problem of political correctness associated with anything honoring the Southern Cause for our own Civil War. Well, let them argue; it´s still the most powerful war memorial I have ever visited.

But who cares about war. All I can think of is tomorrow and sublime music.

CORRECTION: In yesterday´s blog, I mentioned only having been to one strip joint. The truth is that some few years ago, to honor another unnamed friend´s (J**f) forthcoming nuptials, M**K and I went to the Sapphire Club in Las Vegas--the self-advertised "Largest Strip Club in the World" (hey, it´s Las Vegas). For the record, we stayed just about 40 minutes.

Madrid--The Naked City

2007-03-14T16:03:00.000-05:00

What´s the use of living on the Plaza de Opera if you don´t go hear some music? Last night´s concert with the Madrid Men´s Chorus was perfect--just the right combination of classical with Spanish traditional. In fact, I´ve loved living in this area; the musical theaters and clubs in the area add a little excitement in the evening, and during the day, it´s fun to browse the many shops in this locale that offer music and musical instruments. I saw a nice Manuel Rodriguez guitar I´d like--only $5,200; or how about an E-flat, bass recorder?--cheap at $1,800.

Today began at the Royal Palace; built during the 18th century, it is packed full of expensive stuff--furniture, glass, paintings, painted ceilings, and thrones. There´s an armory filled with what they called the largest collection of Spanish weaponry in the world--guns and swords, old and new. To top it off, of course, there were guards in snappy Spanish uniforms. Really, this sort of sight-seeing isn´t to my interest (could you tell by the flippant tone?). I moved on to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia. Wow, that´s a lot to type. The "Nacional" is Spain´s premier museum of modern art. There were many fine works by 20th-century artists, but everyone goes to see Picasso´s "Guernica." This is one of those works I´ve shown in class and looked at many times, but in no way can it be fully understood until its sheer size is factored into its interpretation. At 11.5 feet tall and 25 feet long, it is simply huge. It depicts an incident that occured during the Spanish Civil war in which German bombers struck the Basque town of Guernica on behalf of Spain´s Franco and his fascist party. The slaughter of so many politically and ethnically isolated people led to this painting that carries a profound anti-war message. The fury and death--the overlaying of maimed animals and humans, old and young--literally envelope you as you stand in front of this massive work. This work was reason enough to stop in Madrid. It also stood in stark contrast with the armory from which I had just come. "Guernica" makes you ashamed that we keep weapons on display where children can walk by looking at them in fascination, without really touching the possibility of death dealt on the tip of every blade on display. "Guernica" has that kind of power.

Early this evening, I went to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales--that would be the Monastery of the "Shoeless" Carmalites in Madrid. This is the same monastic group begun by St. Teresa of Avila. After her death, this monastery became THE place for wealthy families to send their younger daughters. Of course, you don´t get to just enter a convent; you have to send along an offering, in money or in objects, that promised to help sustain your child. Ironically, St. Teresa reformed her sisterhood to minimize possession; nevertheless, Descalzas Reales became one of the wealthiest convents in Spain. By the 20th century, however, the convent fell on hard times. It had no cash. Oh, sure, piles of gold objects and great works of art--just no money. The pope allowed a special dispensation for this convent to open its doors once a day to show its art collection to help sustain the order. So, there I was at 6:45 waiting for the doors to open. Inside, I found countless liturgical objects in gold and silver--one reliquary is reputed to hold a piece of the True Cross, and another contains bones from St. Sebastian. Additionally, there were works by artists like Titian, Breughel, and Bosch that are never put on public display or allowed to be copied. Really a treat to peek behind the cloister.

This evening at 9:00, I attended Mass at the Church in the Monastery of the Trinitarian Monks. Did I just feel the need for a religious observance?--well, maybe. But mostly, I was there to see the burial place of Miguel Cervantes. Yes, the author of Don Quxiote lies in the church, and it is not open to the public--except at mass each evening at 9:00. I suppose you could say I was there to venerate one of my own, personal saints.

So, I was on my way back to my hotel--passing club after club with alluring music floating or bursting out into the street as doors would open and close, and I figured I had been fortified against the vanities and excesses of the world, so why not stop in for a little music? You know, check out the Madrid dance club scene. Right in front of me was Club Cosmos--a promising name. I paid the 5€ cover charge and walked on in. It was a strip joint. Hummmmm. Now, I´ve only been to a strip joint once in my life, and that was for a good friend´s bachelor party (John--remember "The Lodge"?!). Well, I just sort of stumbled backwards out. My one thought was, "Wow, this will spice up tonight´s blog!" It also gives me the right to paraphrase the tag line from an old TV show:

There are eight million stories in the naked city. I have been one of them.

Madrid--Big City, Bright Lights

2007-03-13T15:34:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday morning, the bus from Segovia stopped at one corner of the University of Madrid campus, and I stepped off. We had been driving through Madrid for twenty minutes. It´s the first Spanish town or city since Granada that actually had a suburb. One of the unique elements of Spanish urban planning is that the edge of town really is an edge; that is, the town just stops and mountains or green farm land just starts.

Madrid is big. I mean millions-of-people-with-its-own-subway-system big. It is a little scary just walking out onto a streetcorner and realizing that you have fifty pounds of stuff on your back and no hotel--not even a good city map. I found the city center on the subway wall map, rode there, and walked around for a couple of hours until I found a nice hostela for the next few nights. I´m right across from the Madrid Opera and in the theater district; just around the corner, The Producers and Mamma Mia are playing. I visited Madrid´s famous Plaza Mayor, a four-hundred-year-old gathering place. I stopped at a bar in the corner of the Plaza where Hemingway liked to drink (of course, he liked to drink a lot of places). The old boy would probably have been disappointed in me because I only had a mineral water and a chocolate torte (soooo good).

Here´s your short list of what´s hot and what´s not in Madrid. First, soccer--there are two major league soccer teams in town; "Real Madrid" is hot, "Athletico Madrid" is not (this is like rooting for the Yankees vs. the Mets). Kids play soccer everywhere, and everynight on TV there´s some story about some soccer player or coach somewhere. On any given street corner downtown, you will see one of the following: Burger King, MacDonald´s, TGI Friday, or KFC. Everything Cuban is hot. There are Cuban dance clubs, Cuban cigars, Cuban music plays on the street, and kids wear Cuba tee-shirts. There are ¨Cubanito¨ cafes that serve Cuban food, and there´s even a woman on TV named ¨La Cubana¨ who will tell your fortune for a dial-up fee. What´s unusual about Madrid as opposed to other Spanish cities I´ve visited is that it has continued to modernize. Few buildings are older than 400 years (relatively new for Spain)--it´s the art and culture that people come to see.

Today, I have been touring two of the world´s great art museums, the Prado and the Thyssen. When I was eleven, my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Gefritch pointed me to a copy of Granger´s History of Art. I´ve been hooked ever since. Many of the world masterpieces I saw in a book years ago were inches from my face today. There were rooms full of Spanish masters--Murillo, Goya, El Greco, or Velazquez. I loved the Goya ¨Black Paintings¨--look at ¨Saturn¨ by Goya on the internet; it´ll give you nightmares. Of the Spanish works, my favorite was El Greco´s "Adoration of the Shepherds." It has a swirling motion and a sense of simplicity that matches the shepherds as subjects--the rich wonder on their faces juxtaposed with the poverty of their attire provides a perfect contrast. If I had a choice of favorite periods in art, I´d take anything Italian Renaissance or anything from the Flemish School. Dozens of works by Raphael (and other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) were on display; two painting by Andrea del Sarto seemed to shimmer in darkness--what a talent. But of the Italians, Fra Angelico´s "Anunciation" was nothing short of amazing. This was one of those works in Granger´s that I attracted my attention long ago. It´s a work I´ve returned to in books or on the net. There is no reproductive method that duplicates standing in front of this work. The blue of Mary´s gown is far lighter, deeper, and richer than I had ever imagined. The gold halos and streaks of gold from heaven are comprised of strokes from a bursh heavily laden with paint. As you move, the gold flickers with a three-dimensional glow--the effect is dazzeling.

Oh, there were too many great works to completely describe. Allegorical works by Brueghel, Albrecht Durer´s self-portrait, Rogier van der Weyden´s "The Descent from the Cross"--all beautiful beyond those thousand words a picture is supposed to be worth. Finally, if you want to look just one up on the net, try Hieronymus Bosch´s "The Garden of Earthly Delights." Man. This IS a nightmare. I´ve used the work in class to illustrate allegory and use of symbolism. It´s larger than I´d have imagined and certainly drew a crowd. I went back to this and to Fra Angelico several times before I could finally leave the museum.

Tonight, I have tickets to hear the Madrid Men´s Choir perform at the opera; the first half of the program is Bach, the second half is 18th-century Spanish traditional. !Olé¡

Segovia and the Serranos

2007-03-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

Segovia rests on a limestone bluff in the mountains above Madrid; two sides of the city were surrounded by snowy peaks, making all the tourists in town happy almost wherever they pointed their cameras. Why go to Segovia? Three monuments make this another UNESCO World Heritage City (tired of hearing that?): 1) the aqueduct; 2) the cathedral; 3) the Castle. Yep, there´s a towering Roman aqueduct running right through the center of town. Fourteen miles long, this dry-stone structure (they used no concrete or mortar) still carries 30 liters of water per second to the city. The Cathedral is touted as the last Gothic church built in Spain. Begun in 1515 and finished around 1571, it has the merit of being fairly pure in style; that is, it is Gothic through and through rather than being a strange mix of styles over several centuries. And then there´s the castle. Begun as a Christian stronghold after they took the city from the Moors in the 13th century, the castle has been built and re-built over the centuries, serving variously as the kings´ palace and as a Spanish military academy. Historically, its greatest moment may have come in 1476. That was the year in which Isabella I´s brother died and left her the only heir to the kingdom of Castile y Leon. Many opposed her coronation, and she took refuge in the Segovia castle. The cardinal of Segovia crowned her queen in the square before the castle; she went on to marry Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and the two united Spain. I say that this may have been the castle´s most important moment--for Spain. In American history, it´s also important. Early in the twentieth century, Walt Disney saw the castle and decided to use it as his model for the castle at the original Disneyland. Yes, this is the castle on the Disney logo.

Last night, a little tired of eating out, I was shopping in a local grocery for some sandwich makings. A family of five blew by me--a short, stocky dad and mom who could have been locals, an older daughter, and two big, teenage boys who looked as though they were twins. The boys surprised me when they began arguing in English over what kind of chips to buy. I said "Hello," and that´s almost the last word I had with the Serrano boys. "Oh, man! You speak English!" They were big kids--still in high school, both were about 6'1" tall with round faces and broad chests.

"You from America?"
"Dallas."
"Wow! Hey dad--someone from America--from TEXAS!" The dad looked around and smiled.
(Now, you just have to imagine the boys talking in rapid trade-off:)
"We´re from San Antonio--the Serranos. We´re, like, neighbors!"
"Hey, do you hate the food here, too?"
(Jerry: "Well . . . )
"It´s, like, all oily and stuff."
"Yah, I mean, our mom is a great cook--Tex-Mex--you know."
"More Mex than Tex." (laughs)
"Shut up!"
"But it´s good--you know!"
"Here, tortillas aren´t really tortillas, you know?"
"Yah, we got tired of the food here so we talked dad into a grocery."
"My sister likes it! She goes to Trinity University--you know it?"
(Jerry: "Yes, in San Antonio.")
"Anyway, she says it´s like all cultural and stuff here."
"It´s Spring Break, and dad made us come to SPAIN!"
"Yah, it´s like--'Spain will be good for you.'"
"Four years ago he made us go to Mexico City."
"Three years ago, Stupid."
"Whatever, he´s always making us go places to 'expose' us to things."
(Jerry: "That´s pretty great.")
"Yah, I guess--it´s all pretty interesting. We got to drink wine last night at dinner."
"Yah, tomorrow we go to Madrid--at least that´s going to be a big city."
"But mom says we´re going to spend like a whole day in an art museum!"
(Their dad called them from the cash register.)
"Well, we gotta go."
"Yah."
"Nice meeting you and all."
"Yah."

The older one shook my hand; both waved from the door. And the Serranos blew out of my life. It was fun to meet fellow Americans on the trip--not that many take the time to spend a night in a town like Segovia. The two boys were big, sweet kids, and I think that they are luckier than they know now. I never got a good look at Mr. Serrano, but I imagine that he´s been hard at work on those three kids for many years now--and doing a pretty good job.

This morning on my way out of town, I made one more stop--the Church of San Millán. On the edge of town, it´s a parish church, not really on the tourist trail. That, in fact, may be the reason why this 12th-century church has undergone only one addition, a tower, since it was completed 850 years ago. It was a pleasure to sit through morning mass and admire the three, columned apses and the fine sculpture at the tops of the un-retouched columns. While the priest was finishing the service, I couldn´t help but wonder if the Serrano boys finally had a good meal.

Ávila and The Saint

2007-03-11T12:29:00.000-05:00

I´ve lost a couple of days of blogging simply because I spent two days in Ávila and never located an internet connection. But what a beautiful two days. As the bus first winds around the hill, you realize that you are looking at a Medieval city as it must have appeared to any traveller hundreds of years ago. The Wall interposes itself between you and the city that lies beyond. Literally, a 2.5 kilometer-long wall is one of the reasons why Ávila is a UNESCO World Heritage City. It is the only complete wall still entirely encircling a Medieval city in Europe. With an average height of 33 feet and bristling with 88 towers and only 6 original gates (3 additional have been opened for modern traffic), the wall is the work of 12th-century Christians who wanted to use the old Roman and Moorish fortifications and strengthen them as a launching point for further action against the Moors. They really are imposing--great double-towered gates with a crosswalk from which defenders could drop stones or hot oil onto attackers. I walked entirely around the walls, and, looking up, I can see why there was never a successful attack against Ávila after the walls were completed. They´re not only high, but they´re also located on the summit of a rocky cliff; any soldier brave enough to climb even to the base of the wall would have to call "time out" and catch his breath.

And then there´s what´s inside the city. A fine, Gothic cathedral with a pair of Romanesque doors since it was actually begun in 1170. The soaring Gothic umbrella pillars are lovely; unfortunately, an earthquake in Portugal a couple of hundred years ago destroyed most of the stained glass in this particular cathedral. The town also offered a half-dozen Romanesque churches and a nice Basilica in the ¨French style¨--that means that the tops of walls are highly ornamented. The main tympanum (carved illustrations over the doorway) of the Basilica had a detailed representation of Resurrection and Last Judgement--needless to say, I took loads of pictures.

I spent most of Saturday in the footsteps of St. Teresa. As someone keenly interested in the lives of female saints, particularly those who wrote autobiographically, I had highlighted Ávila on my itinerary. Teresa had visions of Christ (hence her modern appellation, Teresa de Jesus) who spoke with her in, as she described in her book, "intellectual dialogue and disputation." She shares several qualities in common with other visionaries whom I´ve studied: 1) entered a spiritual life at an early age; 2) had on-going physical illnesses and at least one near-death experience, 3) frequently prohibited from intellectual musings, reading, or discourse by a male mentor. What´s unique about Teresa is her place in the Catholic Reformation. In the late 1500s there was a movement within the Catholic Church to correct perceived problems. Teresa wrote extensively about the need to renounce ownership; she wanted a convent (and a church?) that owned no property and took a vow of poverty. She founded a reformed group of Carmelite nuns called ¨the Barefoot Carmelites¨ because she required them to wear only cheap, leather sandals instead of shoes. Initially supported by the Pope, she was later forced into ¨retirement¨ (imprisoned) in a convent in Toledo.

I tracked Teresa in and around Ávila. I went to her first convent, to the church where she had her first vision, and to the first convent of the Barefoot Sisters. I went to the convent outside the city where some of her relics are kept. And there´s the rub. I certainly understand veneration of a person who has lived an exemplary life. Without influential, self-sacrificing people such as Jana Greenway, my high school Latin teacher, or Dr. J. Don Vann at the University of North Texas, I wouldn´t be the person I am today. I venerate my parents and my wife whose steadfast love and support have been the very soul of my life. Exemplary lives are rare and deserve recognition. But everywhere I went today, I saw pieces of Teresa. One convent had her ring finger of her right hand; another had her left clavicle (no kidding). A convent just outside Ávila featured a statue of Teresa with a little glass case right in her chest. In this reliquary, this little glass case, was Teresa´s heart. Brown and desiccated, there it was.

I honor Teresa´s experience and her writing, and I still need help understanding the veneration of that part of her that I think she would find least worthy of notice--her physical form. Isn´t this an essential irony--or am I missing some point of faith? Tomorrow, Segovia!

Zamora and the 12th Century

2007-03-08T15:08:00.000-06:00

First, let´s get this cleared up. I do not exaggerate (much) on my blog. Remember in October when Hurricane Gordon came ashore just 30 miles from my hostal? So, if you were wondering about yesterday´s story concerning the high winds--look up the weather in Spain on a good internet search engine. When I woke up this morning, the first story I heard on the news was about the high winds plaguing 10 provinces in Spain. They showed all sorts of the usual damage we see after a bad thunderstorm or a twister--downed trees, torn off roofs, dogs and cats doing unnatural things. Apparently, we had gusts of over 145 km/h--that´s 84 mph to you Americans. And I was 200 feet in the air!

Today, the weather was moderate with a light breeze from the southwest (do I sound like Troy Dungan?). I hopped on a bus early in the morning to ride 60 km north to the town of Zamora (pronounced tha-moh-rah, of course). Oh, it had the usual collection of 15th-century civic buildings, and a castle built in the 13th century on the ruins of a Moorish castle. What makes Zamora particularly attractive to me is that it had 22 churches and monuments that dated from the 12th century or earlier. The town is considered a museum of Romanesque architecture with its low, rounded arches and allegorical decorations. Thus far, most of the towns I´ve visited have had few buildings of this age that weren´t Moorish. Since Granada didn´t fall until 1492, the Moorish influence in southern Spain is profound. However, a town like Zamora which is just 50 km or so off the Camino de Santiago has been Christian since the 11th century.

Actually, the fact that the town is mid-sized also helped preserve the buildings. In a larger town like Salamanca, the few 12th-century sturctures have been "improved," which is to say that most of them were rebuilt. If you figure that the Great Plague hits about 1350 and halts construction until population and resources can recover--say about 1500--then, larger towns have the wealth to rebuild churches or town squares by 1550. This is about the time work began on the "New Cathedral" in Salamanca. What happens, of course, is that the old Romanesque elements are replaced by late Gothic or Neo-Classical styles. In a small town like Zamora, this doesn´t tend to happen as much simply because they don´t have the money. Instead, they make do with the old Romanesque buildings--because they knew I wanted to come along in 2007 and photograph them!

There were no fewer than eight Romanesque churches in Zamora--two with transverse vaults. Usually, the vault runs West to East towards Jerusalem. Two of the churches still maintained the West-East nave, but the arches ran counter to this orientation--really beautiful. Additionally, three of the churches were actually from the 11th century--one may have been started as early as 980AD. Their decoration were decidedly Celtic with the Celtic Knot ornamentation, stylized lions, and enlarged heads in human figures typical of Celtic art. All of this was very different from the Moorish-influenced Mozarabic architecture I´ve seen up to now. Finally, one of the churches--really a small chapel just outside of town and away from the fortress on the hill--was used by El Cid as a place for overnight vigil and prayer. It is the Chruch of Santiago of the Caballeros because El Cid´s horsemen are supposed to have stood guard outside while he was at prayer.

What I enjoyed most about Zamora was the intimacy of the church environment. These were parish churches, not soaring cathedrals. Somehow, lacking the need for grand public ceremony or ostentation, these sanctuaries, each with its unique feature, speak more clearly about the nature of Medieval life and worship than a great edifice. The subtile variations in decoration or style stand witness to the personal voice that the local parishoners wanted to include in their worship. Unfortunately, that voice is trapped in fading stonework and can be subtile indeed.

I´m back in Salamanca tonight, and eager to venture on to Avila. Those who want extra-credit will look up St. Theresa of Avila--I´m going to see her tomorrow (well, parts of her). !Hasta luego¡

Blown Away

2007-03-07T14:43:00.000-06:00

Today, I closed down one of Salamanca´s major tourist attractions. But more on that later. I began the day with another trip to Salamanca´s two cathedrals because yesterday, the older of the two wasn´t fully open to the public. Cathedral Vieja was begun in the late 1100s as a Romanesque church, but it was completed about 100 years later at the beginning of Gothic influence; thus, it offers an interesting fusion of forms. The lower part of the columns and the west portal are clearly romanesque--thick bases and rounded arches; however, as the walls and columns rise, you see the thinning and peaked arches typical of early Gothic. What really sets this cathedral apart is the excellent state of its murals and paintwork. Typically, the Medieval cathedral reveals brown stone or gray granite, but in the height of use, these walls and especially portals and burial crypts would have been painted. Because Salamanca has had the good fortune to be relatively untouched by conflict after 1200 and because its monuments have been in constant use and repair, several old murals remain. Most notable, in the south transept--if the church forms a giant cross, this is the branch to the right, looking from the back--there is a stunning mural of Christ with various Biblical scenes. It´s dated from 1150 to 1200 and is easily the oldest and best preserved I´ve seen. Crypts dating from the same period have murals of Lazarus emerging from the cave and Christ rising--really an expression of both art and devotion that demands several minutes of study for each panel.

The old cathedral´s shining glory is the alter piece. It consists of 53 panels depicting Biblical scenes and saint´s lives. Vivid light blues and rosy reds dominate the color scheme quite unlike most Spainish retablos--this is because the work was painted by Nicholas of Florence late in the 1400s and has been called the finest representation of the Florentine School of painting outside of Italy. The alter is topped by a half-dome that shows Christ floating in a sky of deep blue surrounded by angels, Mary, and the writers of the Gospels. I did not expect to find such a gem of the Italian Renaissance this near the Portuguese border. Nevertheless, the University of Florence decided in 1505--even as Nicholas was finishing his work--that the old cathedral could no longer accommodate its growing student body. Thus, the Cathedral Nueva was born. The two are actually side-by-side; the latter almost twice as large and in the plateresque style (stone carvings at the tops of doors and columns are decorated with grotesque figures that blend human and animal forms). I spent three times as long going through the older of the two--the new cathedral being a showpiece that lacked the artistic and spiritual air of the earlier church.

So, what´s this about closing down a tourist attraction? The brave (or foolish) can climb the tower of the old cathedral and take a catwalk across the top of the joined buildings to one of the towers of the new cathedral. The weather forecast this morning predicted bitter cold with high winds of 30 to 40 miles per hour, gusting to 60. No kidding. So, this German guy and I climbed the tower--because we are men! Now, I really don´t like heights, and I clung to the hand rail the whole way across the tops of the cathedrals. On arriving to the second tower, you go out onto a little platform. There was a guard there who said, ¨Very bad--very bad.¨ The German guy took pictures from an archway. I figured I´d come this far, so I went out. I turned around to take a picture of the dome. Just as I was snapping the camera, a gust of wind literally knocked be backwards off my feet. My head popped on the granite, and I could hear the guard call to me: ¨Come out! Come out!¨ (his English is about as good as my Spanish). I could just imagine the front page teaser in the Star Telegram: "TCCD PROF BLOWN OFF CATHEDRAL: Hand of God, or Sheer Stupidity?, more on page 12A." I rolled over an crawled--I´m not exaggerating--back to the door. The guard closed and locked the door after me and said, ¨Close now.¨ My German friend and I agreed and made our slow, white-knuckle climb across and down off the roofs with the guard in the lead.

Oh, the excitement just never ends. The university buildings themselves offer a trip through history, and four churches in the town were worth a visit. The Convento de San Esteban housed a museum of New World exploration and conversion. Many of the Benedictine monks who traveled to the New World were educated at the University of Salamanca and dispatched from this monastery. Some of their bodies were interred there, as well.

Finally, and on a personal note, I ate at Burger King today! BK de Espania offers a fried chicken breast sandwich that´s as good as any American burger. Plus, if you ask nicely, they will give you little packages of salt! I went back twice. I have a little secret hoard of four packs. I have salt. "It is precious to me" (Lord of the Rings).

Salamanca and Those Americans

2007-03-06T13:41:00.000-06:00

Today, I made the three-hour bus trip from Carceres to Salamanca. We crossed over another chain of mountains in passing from Extremadua into Castile y Leon. The day was cold--in the low 30s--and light snow swept across the road and dusted the peaks. We moved from olive trees to oak and onto rolling plains. In Andalusia and Extremadura, it´s purning time for the olive groves. Row on row of trees line the hills, and here and there smoke rises as the grove tenders are pruning the trees and burning the gathered branches. How they decide which branch to leave and which to cut is an art or a science that I cannot fathom. The opposite of a bonsai tree which is trimmed to create a perfect shape and balance, the olive tree seems hacked and whittled on so that the end product looks like a broken old man. It´s a millennial tree; that is, it can live for hundreds of years. Some of the ancient plants I passed today were bigger around than two people might have reached. They frequently have multiple trunks or have great rotten holes in the mid-trunk large enough for a person to step through. Some have just a semi-circular husk of a trunk remaining, yet silver leaves and the promise of another year´s fruit still cling to the twisted branchs.

And then there´s Salamanca. I´m going to run out of hyperbolic phrasing before this trip is over. In the late Medieval period, there were four great universities--lights in a dim world. They were Oxford, Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca. Founded in the 1200s by Alfonso IX, the university still draws scholars from all over Europe. I saw the two cathedrals today--simply stunning. The older of the two was built in the 12th century, and the ¨New Cathedral¨ was begun in the 16th and took 200 years to complete. There are also four Romanesque churches of note, but they´re only open during mass. I went to one at 6pm, and will visit the others tomorrow (yes, I´m going to be in mass three times tomorrow). More on the city later.

Both Carceres and Salamanca are populated by a substantial number of Americans. College students. Boy, I came to Europe to get away from college students, and what do I find? The University of Extremadura in Carceres has an articulation agreement with Iowa State University, so I kept running into Cyclones (the ISU mascot, in case you didn´t know). Several American universities have agreements with the University of Salamanca (I met students from St. Bonaventure, the University of Deleware, and UMass to name just a few). One of the students I met today is working on a Master´s Degree in history while teaching English in a local high school. What a deal! So, where do you meet Americans off campus? I´m sitting next to four of them right now. All you have to do is find the local internet cafe or cyberbar, and those Americans will be hanging out. If this fails, stop by the Burger King or a MacDonald´s--most of the larger towns have one of each. When is Tarrant County College going to start its ¨study abroad¨ program? Sign me up!

Cáceres and Other Travel Notes

2007-03-05T13:55:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I was in ancient Rome; today, I took a stroll through late Medieval Spain. Cáceres is pronounced Ká-ther-eth. Imagine that, when I was in elementary school, I spent two years in speech therapy learning how NOT to lisp a ¨th¨ for my ¨s,¨ but now, I´m corrected when I don´t. Thith thure ith a funny world. Anyway, Cácaeres has a familiar linage--Roman-Visagoth-Moorish-Christian; what´s unusual is that after the Christians took over the town in the late 1200s, the royals moved a number of important administrative offices and ducal families into the town at the top of the hill. The offices and houses that resulted in the ensuing three centuries have remained basically unchanged since about 1580. Caceres is, therefore, one of the best preserved Medieval towns in Spain. Even today, the buildings house governmental branches--the Extremadua Court, the National Guard headquarters, the Catholic Records Office, a research library, the antiquities center for the University of Extremadura. Caceres is a UNESCO World Heratige site not because of one building but because all of these building collectively construct a walk through Spain´s past. Additionally, the Cathedral de Santa Maria has a beautiful Romanesque nave with Gothic additions--the sort of church in which it´s easy to just sit in the back and stare up in wonder.

So, I just strolled along glaring at 700-year-old buildings this afternoon. In the mean while, I´d like to get two or three other things out of my notebook.

BREAKFAST
Lots of places serve ¨desayunos,¨ but breakfast here isn´t what we´re used to. The average Spaniard has a half cup of bitter coffee and tostada--toast. I prefer café con leche--and I´ve become addicted. The tostada is usually a hard roll toasted fresh, but the topping depends on the region. In southern Andelusia, they like a very flavorful, dark-yellow butter with a slightly bitter orange marmalade. In northern and eastern Andelusia, they like tomato and olive oil. Here´s the recipe: take two fresh tomatoes, toss them in the blender and hit high. Take the resulting red slurry and chill it in the fridge. Then, take your toast, put spoon full after spoon full of the chilled tomato mash on it and cover with olive oil. Eat. Really, you should try it--I don´t use the olive oil like the locals (they pour it on), but the tomato is really good.

SALT
This is a particular point with me. I don´t like salt. Like most Americans, I LOVE salt. I put salt on eggs. I put salt on french fries. I put salt on chicken. Sometimes, I put salt on salt because it looks like there´s not enough salt already on the salt. In Spanish eateries, they do not put salt or pepper on the table. Oh, they´ll bring you vinager and olive oil enough to slick a pig, but there´s no salt and there´s no pepper. If you ask for salt, you get one of three reactions. #1. The confused reaction. The waiter looks at you as if he or she couldn´t have heard you right. ¨What could you possibly want with the salt?¨ they would seem to ask. #2. The angry reaction. They tighten their eye lids and their lips turn slightly down. ¨Are you saying the food is no good!?¨ their expression glares. #3. The hurt reaction. This is the worst. They glance furtively around as if they were searching for what to do--as if a small child were drowning and there´s no life preserver at hand. "I´m so sorry that the food is that bad,¨ they would say while fighting back the tears. Look, if you go to Spain, just eat the food. Don´t ask for salt.

THE BUS DRIVER MAN
Last trip to Spain, I walked. This time, I´m taking the bus. The bus station is a culture unto itself. Most stations have a cafe that serves good food, cheap--they don´t jack up the prices as we usually do at airports or bus stations. They love to play American music in bus stations--this morning I listened to one hour of Elvis before my bus left. Two days ago, I was listening to a CD of a Spanish woman singing America standards like ¨Killing me Softly¨ and ¨The Way We Were.¨ My ears really perked up when she tried a version of ¨Tennessee Waltz¨ including a sort of Southern/mountain-gal accent. Clearly, the King of the Bus Station is the bus driver. You don´t put your bag in the baggage compartment until HE says you can. You DO NOT close the cargo hatch. You don´t get on the bus until HE tears a little notch in your ticket. You DO NOT touch the outside of the bus. If he has already closed the door, you must NOT knock or bang on the door--that will bring a sneer to his lips as he backs the bus s-l-o-w-l-y out. If late, you must stand there with your head bowed and keep your eyes DOWN and hope that he notices. If you ask, you may take a bottle of water on the bus--but try just walking onto the bus with a bottle of water in your hand! You´ll be lucky to make the trip. Ever see the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? It´s sort of like that.

Still, I love Spain. And the best parts of the trip are still to come.

Mérida

2007-03-04T12:19:00.000-06:00

I´ve been in ancient Rome all day. But let me explain how I got here. Yesterday, the bus ride from Córdoba to Mérida was supposed to take four and a half hours, so leaving at 10:30, I figured to have the evening to begin my tour of the latter. But this is Spain. About two hours out of Córdoba, the bus broke down, and as the replacement didn´t arrive for almost two hours, most of my day was spent looking at the mountains of northeastern Andalusia. I suppose if I had to spend two hours at the side of a road, that was about as nice a spot as I might have chosen. About 20 miles back up the road on a hazy hill sat a fifteenth-century castle that taunted me--I think it wondered how or why I had allowed the bus to pass it by. In fact, we passed several castles on several hills, a couple of crumbling Moorish towers, and an interesting abandoned monastery. I almost jumped off the bus at the town of Mansilla; though small, it had a couple of interesting 15th-century-or-so churches and, yes, a castle on the hill. But my destination was more distant in time.

Mérida was founded late in the first century BCE as the capital of Lusitania--the Roman province of Portugal that also included the modern Spanish state of Extremadura. As a provincial capital, Mérida had all the conventional attributes that made Roman life unique. There are the remains of not one, but two aqueducts--one a towering, three-tiered structure. They draw water from a reservoir that the Romans constructed in order to supply the city--completing a three-mile-long dam across the local river. Other remains are equally impressive in size--of two Roman bridges, one is over 800 meters in length. A forum graced the center of town, and for the devout, a temple to the goddess Diana stood nearby (I´ve always worshipped Dianna). For entertainment, there remain two decks of a three-level colosseum, and the archetype of Roman entertainment--a circus. By ¨circus,¨ I mean a racetrack--think Charleton Heston as Ben Hur and Stephen Boyd as Messala whipping each other. This was grand--a great, elongated oval longer than a football field. Most impressively, there was an almost intact Roman theater. Originally comissioned in 17 BCE by the Consul Agrippa (does the name make you think of Inigo Montoya telling Wesley in The Princess Bride, ¨You should have a-studied your Agrippa¨?), the theater has a double row of columns in the proscena, a half oval orkestra for the chorus, and three levels for the audience. Additionally, the Roman museum in town is the best collection of Roman statuary and mosaics I have ever seen; more than 40 statues of gods and those who worshipped them were typically realistic for Roman art.

As much as I enjoyed these fine mounments, the remains of Roman private life enlivened the long-dead inhabitants. Several homes have been excavated with household items--buttons, fishhooks, cooking utinsels, family idols and relatives images. Many such personal items have come from the graveyard that is at the edge of the city. The necropolis--covered with statuary and inscriptions of the dead--offered to humanize these so distant from us. There were several pairs of statues. They were husbands and wives who, like us, prefer to lie together in death just as they had pleasured each other in life--side by side. There were old men--some in their seventies--who had served their community and drew special attention on their passing. Young men and women were plentiful--lost to their families in their twenties and thirties. And there were children. One statue of a boy with hair down over his eyes and ears--his name and exact age are lost. One marker, about three feet high and two feet wide, bore a farewell to Luvia from her parents. She loved music, but all her art expired after sixteen years. She is framed on the marker--a young girl holding a lute, her fingers eternally on the strings and a half-smile on her face.

Well, tomorrow I go to Cáceres and jump back into the Middle Ages. I´ll leave Rome behind for now, but not forgotten.

Córdoba

2007-03-02T08:55:00.000-06:00

Sitting in the Plaza de la Corredera on a cool Spanish evening and having just devoured a local meal called ¨flamancillo,¨ I sighed and realized that I am just about the luckiest guy currently not in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex. I decided I´d better walk over to the cafe with the internet connection and try to explain why.

In the past two days, I´ve run all over Cordova, this UNESCO World Heritage City. I arrived about noon and found a beautiful little hostella in the old Jewish quarter of the city. My second-floor room actually has a patio with a low, wrought-iron grate ($38 a night). I sat for a few minutes to catch my breath, then ran to the nearest monument--the Mezquita Cathedral. I should stop being surprised at seeing history on history in Spain, but this mosque/church astounds. It was the site of a Roman temple--archeologists don´t know to which god; then, it became the Church of St. Vincent around 450AD (archeological remnants were in a museum), perhaps simply using part of a converted Roman basilica as part of its structure. In the mid-8th century, the Moors conquer Cordoba, and decide to build a mosque on the site--and did they build. The Mezquita mosque was the largest such structure in Europe. More than its size, its construction makes it dazzling. It has the usual tower for the call to prayer, and the beautiful ablution yard with fountains for washing, but the interior of the covered prayer hall overwhelms on entrance. Aside from simply being caverous, its ceiling is held up on more than a hundred double-columned, two-tiered arches. Moreover, the arches are striped in white and red--the builders used alternating bands of white stone and red brick to construct the zebra-like arches. Did I say it was amazing? However, in the 1230´s the Christian King Fernando III (¨the Saint¨) took Cordoba. Amid controversy then and now, the Catholic Church decided in 1509 to build a cathedral right in the middle of the mosque. It took 150 more years, and the result is a cacophony of style. You´re walking through this mosque with striped arched, and suddenly, there´s a baroque cathedral. Additionally, the original enclaves for prayer have been filled over the years with special chapels dedicated to specific saints or used as burial crypts. Walking the area, inside and out, took more than four hours--curious with its shifting styles, but colossal in size.

Today is Friday, and on Fridays in Cordoba, entrance to most museums and monuments is free, so I ducked back into the Mezquita Cathedral, for one last look, and then went on the the Alcazar de el Reyes Christianos--the Castle of the Christian Kings. Built in the 1200s, it was Fernando´s lauching point for an assault on Granada; later, it served as the site where Columbus received his final instructions from Isabella and Ferdinand. Inside the reception hall, the kings had collected Roman floor mosaics for display. They were easily the most beautiful and detailed I´ve seen since the Pompeii exhibit. The defensive wall that extends from the castle still encompasses about a fifth of the city. I also visited the archeological museum (lots of great glass, pottery, and brass items from the Moorish era) and the Museum of Art. Housed in a 16th-century ducal palace, it was really a treat just to walk around inside, but the 18th through 20th-century art added a bit--several nice Goyas (I´m going to be an expert on Spanish art when I return).

Late this afternoon, I took the special bus seven miles outside Cordoba to visit the still-active archeological site called Medina Al´Zahara. In 974, the local Caliph decided to build a palace and a small city to support his staff some distance from the city of Cordoba. His reasons for doing so are still debated. A later Capiph abandoned the city about 1017. For nearly a thousand years, the city disappeared, though some documents mentioned its existance and tantalized historians. Finally, about 50 years ago, the Medina came to light; it was a treat to be allowed to walk around this giant jig-saw puzzle. In some places, archeologists had laid out thousands of fragments of plaster-work or other wall art or floor patterns. There had been a palace, a royal residence, guard quarters, servants area, reception hall--and all of the pieces aren´t together yet. Evening was just falling as the last shuttle bus took me reluctantly from this site.

Have I mentioned this lately--I´m the luckiest guy not in Dalla/Ft. Worth. Thanks Tarrant County College. I´m receiving an education and compiling a photo log that will benefit me and my students for years.

p.s. ¨Flamancillo¨: first, the waiter brings out hard, twice-baked sesamee bread and pickled, green olives. Then, the main course appears--bread, ham rolled into a sausage, breaded, and deep fried in olive oil, salad, and fried eggplant and squash. For desert, bread pudding covered in cold tomato sauce topped with half a boiled egg. I´m absolutely serious.

Jaén

2007-03-01T12:00:00.000-06:00

The bus trip from Granada to Jaén was almost more interesting than the town itself. It takes about an hour and a half to drive through the Sierra Haranas--the southern end of the Sierra Nevada range. Every once and a while a mountain or a cliff would be topped by a Moorish watch tower or a monastery; all such monuments were falling to ruin, melting in the elements of southern Spain. Just at the end of the trip, we seemed to emerege from the mountains and suddenly low-rolling hills covered with olive trees extended for as far as the eye could see. Jaén is the gateway from Andalusia to Castile, and the topography must have gathered the attention of generations of travelers. The town is situated at the bottom of a crested butte, and for at least 20,000 years, people have lived in the area. Rock carvings in caves along the cliff line and on the hill bear witness to human habitation before history can recall their names. In the 2nd century BCE, the Romans built a small fortress at the top of the hill, only to find themselves supplanted by the Visigoths in the 5th century AD. These Germanic invaders, in turn, gave way to the Moors who built a town with impressive bathes below the hill and a fortress--sort of a smaller version of the Alhambra--looking out into the precious land of Castile. By the mid-1200s, Christians had taken the area, and Alphonso X (El Sabio--remember!?) built a wall around the town as well as making improvments to the hill. In 1808, the French under Napoleon occupied Andalusia and improved the fort to become their southern headquarters. Today, the hill is a picnic spot for locals and home to one of Spain´s Paradors--luxury hotels usually located on historic sites.

There´s your thumb-nail sketch of the hill, and the ruins on top were truly impressive, but the remainder of the town was a little lackluster. Only about 150 feet of Alphonso´s wall in town remains. No street or monument can be seen that dates before 1500. In fact, two churches that were dated prior to that period turned out to have collapsed in the last 150 years and are rebuilt with nothing like their former glory. The only elements of the town that didn´t disappoint were the Museum of Anthropology and the Catherdal. The museum held a number of artifacts that traced the town´s long history--and enabled me to provide the description above. The cathedral was magnificant--a 16th century work in Renaissance and early Neo-Classical style that took over a hundred years to finish. The interior walls were the tallest I´ve seen in a church on this trip--so tall as to be difficult to photograph. I literally suppressed a gasp when I first entered the church. At the end of the central nave was an ornate alter dedicated to Veronica´s Veil. If you´re not familiar, according to legend Veronica used a cloth to wipe the face of Christ as he was on his difficult way to Golgotha. The image of Christ´s face was left in the cloth. For the Spanish, this cloth rivals the shroud of Turin, and the cathedral was intended to be a fitting tribute to such an important relic. Just before mass that evening, the cloth was brought out and shown to a crowd of about 200 people. Usually, it´s only on display for Friday mass, but the bishop himself called for bringing out the relic because it´s a special day (see below). Watching the veneration engendered by this cloth--the clear adoration and amazement on the faces of those gathered there--certainly brought me closer to the world of writers like Chaucer, Kempe, Langland, and Julian of Norwich. It´s one of the reasons why I made this trip.

I had to stay in a very poor pensión (rooms offered by locals) because every room in town was taken when I arrived. I had no idea, but today was Andalusia Day--a time of provincial pride for all Andalusians. EVERYTHING was closed--even most of the cafes. Just my luck, Jaén was the Andalusian city chosen to host this year´s celebration. That meant that there was a free concert of Andalusian folk music in the City Center featuring the talents of José Luis Caño!--you know, Andalusia´s formost singer! I did listen for about 45 minutes, but I was too tired to stay for the fireworks. I had walked up the hill--a distance of about 4.5 miles--and back down that day aside from wandering throughout town. I was leg-weary and happy to go to my little room (and shared bath) in the pensión. This entry is actually a day behind--there was no computer in Jaén, so I´m already in Córdoba. But news of this stop can wait until morning. I´ll be here a couple of days--it´s a UNESCO World Heritage city, and there´s lots to see. ¡Hasta luego!

Granada--2nd Day

2007-02-27T12:55:00.000-06:00

I moved a little more slowly today--felt like I had been running all over the Alhambra yesterday as if to take everything in at once. I began with the bus tour of the city. Sprawling over hills and valleys, modern Granada has almost 400,000 people in it. Scattered throughout the city rest the remains of many older cultures almost crowded out by new construction. The bus takes riders up the hill of the Alhambra by circling around from the North and provides, along the way, a wonderful view of the highest peaks in the Sierra Nevada range. Only alout 35 miles away, three of them top 10,000 feet and one reaches almost 11,000. The ski resort there is Europe´s southernmost such vacation spot (the bus came with a running commentary about local features). In fact, Granada has applied to be a host city for the next available Winter Olympics (don´t know when that is). At the top of the Alhambra, the real size of the ancient city reveals itself; there were remains still being excavated outside the defensive walls that I visited yesterday.

After the round-about of the modern city, I took the tour of the old town that consists of winding streets too narrow for any bus to traverse. At one shop, I bought a copy of Washington Irving´s ¨Tales of the Alhambra¨ that was wonderfully illustrated with photos of the sites I´d seen yesterday. Then, I made my way up a hill to the 16th-century church of El Salvador. The church, a small, local parish, was fairly unremarkable, but the view was incomparable. Sitting atop a hill beside the Alhambra, the plaza of the church affords a panoramic view of the Alhambra streached out in its length. I took a seat at one end of the plaza in the cool Spanish sun and began reading Irving´s tale of ¨The Three Daughters¨--didn´t stop until I´d finished the story of ¨The Poor Mason.¨ Now, this is how I should have my students read Irving next time I teach survey of American Literature--first, we get on a plane and fly to Spain . . . . Halfway down the hill, there was a "Cervaseria." The only way I know how to translate that is "little beer shop." They were offering an afternoon special: one small beer and one order of ¨tapa de dia¨ for only €1.5 (that´s about two bucks). I´m not much of a beer drinker (despite what Mark Coley will tell you), but that sounded tasty. The beer in Spain is COLD; the Spanish, like Americans, want their cold drinks cold--unlike the British for whom "cold" means "not actually hot." It was the local brew--"Alhambra," of course--and a small, cold glass was perfect. The tapas of the day turned out to be a piece of flat bread with a heaping tablespoon of spinach, sprinkled liberally with goat cheese, and topped with a slice of boiled egg. Show me where you can find this snack in the mall!

In the late afternoon, I visited the Carthusian monastery--included in its art collection were a pair of Murillos--and then made my way over to the home of author Garcia Lorca. Lorca´s house is a national museum and has been surrounded with a lovely municipal park. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the flower-laden park was almost Spain´s apology to its poet. You may not know that Lorca was captured from his home and executed in 1936 in Granada during the chaos of the Spanish Civil War. Great authors have a way of speaking too near the heart of things to be endured by some governments. I concluded the day with a visit to a pair of churches, San Juan de Dios Basilica and Santos Justo y Pastor Chruch. The former was stylistically Renaissance and the latter New-Classical--I wish I´d had my students there because the differences between the styles couldn´t have been more profound. At 7:20 in the evening, just as I came out of Santos Justo, mass ended around the city; I cannot successfully relate the din of chruch bells that surrounded me for about three minutes. Of course, I thought of E. A. Poe´s poem "The Bells"--¨the tintinabulation that so musically swells of the bells, bells, bells, bells . . .¨ but that´s only because I can´t escape being an English teacher.

Tomorrow, back to the bus and on to the cathedral town of Jaën. Don´t know if I´ll find an internet connection until I reach Córdoba. But tonight, I´ll just walk back to my hotel with a little more Poe in my head: ¨while the stars that over sprinkle all the heavens seem to twinkle with a crystaline delight.¨ Good night, Texas.

Granada

2007-02-26T15:00:00.000-06:00

Like most of my colleagues who teach English or history, I was that kid in my elementary school class who always won the spring reading award. It´s funny that both Jeff Nelms and Chuck Hope who teach at Tarrant County College have described to me reading the "Landmark History" books along with adventure classics like The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Man in the Iron Mask (abridged, of course) at that same age. I remember reading Washington Irving´s Tales of the Alhambra in those years sometime between elementary and junior high. Today, I was there--in the Alhambra.

Better known for works like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" or "Rip van Winkle," Irving traveled extensively later in his life, and in 1829 he wandered into little-known Granada. He took up residence on the hill overlooking town in Charles V´s abandoned palace which included parts of the 13th-century Moorish castle called the Alhambra. From there he wrote stories that are part history and part fantasy and all that a young reader could dream. Irving´s room is still there--with a plaque memorializing his stay. His book about the Alhambra excited such tourism that the Spanish government began to excavate the site in the mid-19th century. Today, it´s nothing short of spectacular. Situated on a hill overlooking a great, bowl-shaped plain that´s surrounded by mountains, 11th-century Moors began building first a fortress and later a town that would become a sultan´s seat of power. There are 13th-century baths, an network of streets, and an irrigation system that supplied not only the town and garrison but also a vast system of fountains and gardens. Remnants of the Roman occupation of the same hill are in the musuem, but even more amazing are the remains of Islamic crafts--the glass, wood work, stone carving, and pottery. The fortress itself is a system of six great towers that overlook the plain below and provide a perfect vista of the snow-capped peaks of the surrounding mountains. It was on the tallest of these towers that the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella raised the flag of Saintiago to proclaim their victory over the Moors in 1492. The Alhambra was the last Moorish stronghold to fall in Europe.

So, did I have a good day today? It took more than six hours just to walk the Alhambra and visit the museum. And, yes, I took pictures of Irving´s room in the Sultan´s palace. But Irving wasn´t the only artist to be inspired here. Claude Debussy wrote "The Wine Gate" after his visit to the Alhambra--at one of the gates during the rule of the Sultan, wine was sold without tax to the poor. The writer Garcia Lorca (whose works I teach in World Lit II) also lived in the city; tomorrow, I´ll visit Lorca´s house, now a museum. Additionally, I´ll be visiting several famous 16th-century churches and monuments below the Alhambra. Tonight, I´m going to dream about snowy mountains surrounding a Moorish castle--maybe Shahrazade will whisper a story as I sleep.

Italica and Ronda

2007-02-25T13:50:00.000-06:00

I arrived in Granada by train, and the hotel I found near the city center had an internet in the basement. The equipment is stop-and-go and the keyboard barely works, but here goes. The past couple of days have been the best of the trip thus far. Saturday morning, I visited Italica just northwest of Seville. Originally founded by Scipio Africanus around 209 BCE after his victory that concluded the second Punic War (the war between Rome and Carthage ["Punius" in Latin, thus the name]), Italica was originally intended as a place to retire faithfully serving legionares and as a way to hold the Spanish frontier. As Spainish possessions began to expand by the first century CE (AD), Italica became a home away from home for Rome´s rich and famous. Emperors Trajan and his son, Hadrian, were born there. After the Visigoths stormed through in the fifth century, the town was abandoned and eventually covered over with silt. Today, the Spanish government is excavating throughout the area and slowly unearthing the town. Thus far, they´ve found some truely spectacular, luxury villas, a theater, and a colluseum that might have seated as many as 25,000 people. I spent more than four hours walking the ruins and, of course, taking pictures. The mosaics still vivid in the floors of some of the villas were worth the trip by themselves.

Late Saturday afternoon, I took a two-hour bus ride to the small town of Ronda. Located at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains near the Rio Grande (no kidding!), this was a Roman town turned Moorish stronghold, turned Christian with a trail of history that testified to all three cultures. Roman artifacts, an 11th-century Moorish bath, and a 15th-century gothic church were among the highlights. Moreover, it boasts a two-hundred and fifty-year-old bull ring, one of Spain´s oldest. Hemingway visited there and immortalized Ordoñez, the bullfighter, in the novel The Sun Also Rises. Plus, the town has spectacular vistas--it is divided across a 400-foot-deep gorge with a Roman and an 18th-century bridge joining the two halves. An 8th-century Moorish wall surrounds most of the city and the mountains provide nothing less than a spectacular view from anywhere in town. PLUS, the town was the center of mountain bandit activity for two thousand years. There´s even a museum dedicated to the Spanish bandit in the center of town. PLUS, PLUS (I think), they celebrated Carnival that Saturday. Folks were in costume; bands played all over town; there were mock bull fights (the bull always being a somewhat hefty townsman); cotton candy, popcorn, and cooked chestnuts were sold in the streets; fireworks went off at random; and it was impossible to sleep until well after 2:00AM.

One more thing--I have the heart of a bandit. I was told so. Saturday night, I stopped at a local bar for dinner. They were serving the usual ham and huevo and queso and patatas dinners, but they were also offering the Andalus Bandit dinner! The owner swore that this was a traditional meal for the mountain bandit and that no one had ordered it all evening--he suggested (loudly, to everyone around) that such a big, German fellow (me) should want to be the first to try his stew. Well, I´m a sucker, so I went for it (also, masculine ego kicked in). Pretty good! It consisted of cubed potatoes, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, onion, and garlic in a thick tomato/olive oil sauce--all poured over five, halved boiled eggs. I ate the whole thing! Afterwards, the chef and the owner both actually came out and slapped me on the back loudly proclaiming that I was a true bandit and that people should watch their valuables.

Last Day in Seville

2007-02-23T03:14:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was so full of such varied activities, I can think of no other way to describe them all but to start a list:

1) Toured the city on the bus. Saw the tobaccoo factory that inspired the opening of the opera Carmen. Visited the Plaza of the Americas which was built in 1929--kind of late art nouveau with baroque touches. Visited the site of Expo ´92--the last World´s Fair of the 20th century. The Spanish government poured 8 billion dollars into this thing--what they have left is a huge complex of "modernistic" (to the eyes of designers in the 1980s) buildings and display halls that are seldom used. Saw the Church of the Macarana--no, really.

2) Toured the Royal Palace with a local guide recommended by Rick Steves. Her name was Concepcion, and she was full of information and great tales. Plus, she gave me additional information about how to access the local monastery for a tour and how to get into the royal chapel at the cathedral. The palace itself was built by both Moorish and Christian artisans and the different wings are Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque--all of which leads to a fanciful combination. Columbus was received here and delivered his reports to the king and queen in one of the reception halls.

3) Visited the local monastery, founded in the 14th century by Carthusian monks. Using my TCC connection, I was allowed to look at some of the 4,000-volume library collected by Hermano Colon--the younger son of Christopher Columbus. Quite a treat.

4) Tried the tapas dinner again--and really went adventerous. Ever had egg and lobster? Peas and spiced olives? Ox tail? Well, I have. These are not things you find on the menu at Texas Roadhouse.

5) Went to the Chapel of the Kings at the east end of the cathedral. This chapel is not open to tourists--only visiting clergy or members of the parish may enter. Concepcion told me to leave my camera out of sight and tell the guard that I was a member of the Confraternity of Saint James (I joined the American chapter before my last trip). I worked! It was sooooo cool--the remains of Fernando III, the conquerer of Seville, are mummified under the alter. Alphonso X--you know, Alphonso el Sabio with whom the Cantigas are associated--is also buried within. I sat right next to his crypt. Fernando´s sword and spurs are also encased in glass beside the alter; these are no questionable relics, but historic artifacts that are 750 years old--very exciting.

6) Having been properly spiritual, I decided to conclude the day with some additional corporeal pleasures. Namely, I went to El Palacio de Andelusia--one of the areas most famous Flamenco clubs. After a quick call home to my brother, I ducked into the night spot and watched colorfully clothed dancers whirl, stomp, and sing. Pretty pricey (about $32 American) but the ticket came with a free drink (vino tinto!) and lots of fun entertainment. Actually, have you ever seen Casablanca? Remember that female singer in Rick´s Cafe American who has that loud, piercing voice? Well, she was on stage again last night with the dancers.

And then I staggered home. I´m not certain when I´ll be able to make another blog entry. I´m leaving Seville this morning to see some Roman ruins and may be staying out of reach of the internet. Happy Trails.

The Cathedral of Sevilla

2007-02-22T03:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I spent seven hours in church. No, I´m not that devout, unless the combination of devotions includes history and culture. It´s not just a church; the cathedral is part art museum, reliquary, historical monument, and an unusual mixture of Christian and Islamic traditions.

First, of course, it´s big. In my previous blog, I remarked that the cathedral is the third largest church in the world. It also contains the largest alter screen--a huge golden wall behind the alter that depicts scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. Centuries ago, the city was Moorish, and these inhabitants had built a sizable mosque complete with a tall minaret, the Giralda, completed in 1184. When Christians under Ferdinand III reconquered the city in 1248, they began building a cathedral right next to the mosque. Eventually, the church subsumed the mosque and its tower--turing the minaret into an impressive bell tower. Inside the cathedral, there are three long (obviously) naves and a great transcept creating the traditional Gothic cross. The many side alters are filled with great art--much of it by the local artist and world master, Murillo. A Renaissance addition to the structure included an audience room for the cardinal that is most unusual; it is an elipse with an eliptically-shaped dome. It is the only successfully executed dome of its type from the Renaissance (two others elsewhere collapsed). The Seville cathedral did have its problems. In the middle of the cross where there should be a dome (as there is in St. Peter´s, St. Paul´s, and the cathedral at Burgos) the roof is decorated with tracery--no dome. Why? Originally, the church had a dome, but it collapsed in 1511. The main pillars of the huge structure simply couldn´t support the weight.

There was so much history--so many artifacts--that I can´t really relate all here, but I will remark on a couple of things. Ferdinand III who reconquered much of southern Spain in the 1240s carried a statue of Mary as he traveled. That ivory representation along with the keys that he received from the Moors on taking Seville are in the church. Among the many relics, the most important is a single thorn from the crown of thorns--it was delivered to Ferdinand personally by the king of France and placed in a huge silver reliquary. Even closer to my interests, the portable alter of Ferdinand´s son, Alphonso X, was also on display. This is Alphonso "El Sabio" (the wise) whose court at Santa Maria la Blanca along the Camino created the lovely Cantigas of Saint Mary. Again, if you´re unfamiliar, a link to the modern group ¨Cantiga¨ is included with this blog. Click and listen!

Last night, I attended Ash Wednesday service in the Cathedral. It was nice to see the structure transform from being simply a monument and a tourist attraction into a working church. No less than two Princes of the Church were there. The current Cardinal presided and a retired Cardinal attended. Very nice--but I hear that Ray Gager stirred up some good soup back at the home church. I would have enjoyed a taste.

Sevilla

2007-02-21T04:46:00.000-06:00

My Fromer´s guide to Spain says that if you can visit only two spots in Spain, see Seville and Toledo. Well, exploring the first is now a work in progress. Yesterday was my first full day in the city; I´m staying in a cheap ($40 per night) hotel--no TV or room service, but a clean room with a good bed and a private bath. I almost fit into the shower. Truthfully, though, if you´re going to complain about such things, you shouldn´t travel--I´m here to see the sights, not to critique the plumbing. And what sights. My hotel is in the old city, near what was once the Jewish quarter. Some of the "streets" are only wide enough for two to walk abreast. Obviously, it´s all foot traffic. The buildings range in date from 1100 to 1800 and are a mix of styles. Every now and then, a street will bring you to a lovely patio or small square lined with orange trees with a fountain in its center. And yes, the city does smell of oranges--the trees are heavy with fruit and local kids delight in pulling oranges from the lower branches. Then they face the decision whether to eat or to throw the furit. The old city is a contrast to modern Seville that I passed on the way in from the airport. Comprised mostly of aging concrete apartment buildings, new Seville is in the grips of rising unemployment and a crime wave. The Spanish government seems to be doing all it can to increase the tourist trade and to involve its people in this lucrative pursuit.

I walked around the cathedral twice taking pictures; begun in the 1400s and completed in the late 1700s, it´s the third largest Christian church in the world--just smaller than St. Peter´s in Rome and St. Paul´s in London. The great central nave is the largest gothic structure in the world. Attached is a great bell tower, most of which was actually built in the 1300s by Spanish Moors and used as the tower for a great mosque. At 6:30 every evening the dozens of huge bells in the tower begin ringing frantically--a tradition that began around 1500 not only to call the faithful to prayer but also to mock the former Islamic call to prayer that must have issued from the same source hundereds of years before. Today, I´m already on the list for a guided walking tour of the cathedral´s interior--including the art museum.

Last night, I spent an hour and a half in the historic Hospital in the old city. Built in the 1500s, today it houses an impressive art collection including 30 works by Murillo. The tile work (Seville is famous for its tile and other ceramics) that adorns the hospital´s interior is itself a work of art. Delicately painted or shaped, the tiles demand your attention--though I feel a little self-conscious about staring at the walls even when there is no painting hanging there. For dinner I had a mixed tapas plate. For those who don´t know, "tapas" could be anything--a little snack served in a plate the size of a bread plate. The specific nature of the tapas changes each day. A tapas dinner included all five tapas for the day. Last night, that meant that my waiter brought five little plates, each with a side-serving of a different food. My tapas included servings of tomatoes cooked in olive oil, cooked garbonzo beans, stewed anchovies, shrimp on flat bread, and small, halved potatoes fried with calimari. A little fishy, but hey, Seville is a river port connected to the sea. What a great taste of Spain. If I had wanted chicken-fried steak, I´d have stayed home.

P.S. Would somebody please do something about the exchange rate? When I looked last week, it was 1.28 dollars for 1 euro. Today, I exchanged half my cash, and the latest international rate was 1.398 dollars for 1 euro--my money is worth about 10% less than it was last week. Traveling in Spain can be a bargain, but OUCH!

Tavistock and THE Library

2007-02-20T10:04:00.000-06:00

So, why am I just a little excited everytime I hit the streets of London? Let me illustrate. On landing a couple of days ago, I rode the Gatwick Express into London and took the tube to the Euston/St. Pancras station in order to register at my hotel and drop my backpack. Just outside in the square in front of the station is a ten-foot high statue and tribute stone dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson. Then, I stroll past the historic church of St. Pancras to Hotel Tavistock. Located on a lovely square, the hotel itself is named for the park that sits before it. Tavistock park was dedicated about thirty years ago to acts and people who contribute to world peace and diversity. Since one side of the square is the home of the British Medical Association (with a museum, of course), they thought a park dedicated to honoring life might be an appropriate idea. In the center of the park is a large bronze of Ghandi, legs crossed and still looking as if he needed a meal (he´d decline, of course). This is no passive site; each time I passed through the park, someone was kneeling at Ghandi´s feet or laying flowers on the granite pedistal on which the figure sat. Today, in fact, someone had covered the statue itself with yellow daisies. In one corner of that same garden is a bronze bust of Virginia Woolf--I´m happy she finally found "a room of her own."

Sunday, I attended eucharist and evensong (an evening service that´s mostly sung) at St. Pancras. Named for a young boy, Pancratius--a third-century saint, the church is built in neo-classic style after the form of a Greek temple and was completed in 1822. This is the second St. Pancras; the remains of the first, built in the eleventh century, are around the corner. I had never attended a Chruch of England (C of E, for future reference) service. It is much the same as an American Episcopal service; I enjoyed the homily very much. The highlight of evensong was a beautiful rendering of "Be thou my Vision" by the choir--certainly worth the visit.

And then there´s the library. Now, I know that there are some very good libraries in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, but the British Library was just six blocks from the hotel. I went in to register as a reader so I could order materials when I return to England in a few weeks. That was all. I had promised Dianna not to do too much looking around because we wanted to explore the exhibits together. I failed. I couldn´t help it! Right around the corner from the entrance was the first exhibit hall showing maps of London that were as old as the ninth century--AND the exhibit was due to end in two weeks--four weeks before Dianna arrives. I went in. Great stuff. But then that exhibit hall connected to another. At the very first glass case was a copy of Shakepeare´s First Folio (1623), three early printed versions of individual plays, a deed signed by Shakespeare, a hand-written manuscript of a play by Ben Jonson, and a document by King James requesting a masque from Jonson. That was it--I was hooked. I looked at the first and only original copy (9th cent) of Beowulf (Beowulf, people!), the original working copy of Seamus Heaney´s translation of Beowulf (it won the National Book Award a few years ago), illustrated copies of Chaucer´s Canterbury Tales from 1410 and 1415, and more additional illustrated manuscripts than I can relate here. These included, by the way, a collection of illustrated prayer books dating from between 1100 and 1500. And then there was the Magna Carta. Yep, in a room dedicated for that purpose alone, they had on display an original, signed and sealed copy of the 1215 version and a copy of the 1225 version that was actually enacted into law.

That´s why I get excited when I go to London. Nevertheless, when I write next, I´ll be in sunny Spain.

Flights of Fancy

2007-02-19T05:55:00.000-06:00

Well, here I go again. I'm in London again, on my way to Spain and more Medieval times. Arriving through Victoria Station was a little surreal. I had passed that way so often in the Fall that, yesterday, it felt as though I had never left. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After wrapping up a few things at the office Thursday, I was ushured to DFW airport by hordes of Coatses and one Powell (Elaine's boyfriend and arch-Bengals fan, Jonathan). It's always a little anticlimactic being dropped off for an international flight; no friend or family can follow you through security and you're left to sit around for two hours by yourself. I was pleased to have reserved a window seat on my British Airways flight--I know, some people find that nine hours pressed against the interior sidewall of a Boeing 777 can be confining, but I love the view. I've never quite understood the travellers who didn't want to see every bit of the trip. I always try to find local landmarks as we climb for altitude. On that clear afternoon, I saw Mountain Creek Lake, Lake Joe Pool and the TCCD Southeast Campus beyond--no kidding! I could make out Southwest Center Mall and Duncanville as we turned east. The next remarkable landmark was the Mississippi River--we passed right over Elvis's home town. By the way, I have my next FDL application. In seven years, I'll apply to float down the Big Muddy on a raft from Hannibal, MO to the Arkansas River, thus retracing the trip that Huck and Jim took. Like them, I'll probably never reach Cairo, Ill.

As was approached Virginia, the plane passed into night. I could see the lights of Norfolk and Washington DC, but more remarkable still was New York City. Outside my window on the starboard side of the plane (that's the "right" side to you lubbers) I could see the entire length of Long Island streatched out before me. Curiously, it didn't glow; the night was so clear that each little point of light seemed to burn with a singular, confined orange color. I was reminded of a pointalist painting like the works of Seurat where each individual point of paint seems meaningless, but when considered in context with the whole, a meaningful canvas emerges. I like to think it's the same with each of us. Sometimes our individual lives may seem to lack meaning, but taken from above, the whole of humanity mingles to create something approaching a work of art. Sappy stuff, I know, but liberal educators who hold out hope for the success of each of their individual students seem to cling to such saccharine optimism.

I held the view of Long Island and its millions for a long while out my window; I couldn't help but wonder what Walt Whitman would have thought (give me a break--I'm an English teacher after all!). Brother Walt would have added a few more stanzas to "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" or another canto or two to "Song of Myself." But the plane passed on over Canada and out into the bay that leads to the St. Lawrence Seaway. We flew over islands like Nova Scotia, with small towns that spoke in the darkness with their own spidery glows of mainstreet and sidestreet. Tiny islands had little dots of house lights or warfs, and I wondered who lived there and what lives they had--were they some mute, inglorious Milton or some Cromwell guiltless of their nation's blood (now I'm just being self-indulgent--those are phrases from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard")?

In the emerging dawn, we arrived safe and sound at Gatwick Airport. I rode the express into London and went on to my hotel, the Tavistock, near St. Pancras. But all of that's a story for another blog. Good morning, friends of home. I'm on my way.

Learning Lessons

2006-10-12T07:33:00.000-05:00

The physical challenge of walking the Camino always carried rewards that seemed to pick me up the next morning and carry my backpack once again to my shoulders. Walking brought me intimately close to my surroundings--and there was such history around me that I never lacked for stimulation. Few of us take the time to move as slowly through our lives as I did for five weeks. I'm sure that everyone is occasionally amazed at the rudeness of drivers on the highway. Wrapped in the protective anonymity of their cars, some people will tailgate, cut in front of other cars, cross lanes, and generally endanger themselves and others. I've often tried to imagine them outside of their cars acting in the same manner--do they shoulder their way to the front of the movie ticket line, or swerve back and forth with their shopping carts in the grocery? Walking reveals you to your fellow travelers, exposes you to the elements, and places you within easy contact of the beauty of nature. Yes, I was rained on. But I photographed a rainbow arching miraculously above the church of Santiago in Villafranca del Bierzo. Yes, I got hot. But I saw tiny blue flowers that broke the sandy soil outside of Hontanas. How often do you hear the expression, "I've got to run"? How about "I'm going to run to the store." It's an old fashioned lament to claim that there's too much "running" going on. Many years ago, I memorized a sonnet by Wordsworth that expressed these thoughts best; the first stanza is greatness:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

That moving slowly is a gift and a luxury was one lesson that I learned on the Camino. Here, have a few other, random lessons.

Limitations--in the month prior to leaving for my trip, I began to walk around my neighborhood. I started at one mile, and within two weeks, I could comfortably cover six miles in a morning. I pushed myself as far as almost nine miles, but that's where I stopped. Somehow, I always turned for home with the thought that I had gone as far as I could go before I had exceeded nine miles. So, how did I average almost 15 miles per day? I don't know. I didn't plan on it. In fact, twice the going was so difficult that I thought about just dropping my pack on the trail. On the first day, while trying to cover not only distance but also the long climb up 3,000 feet to Orrison, I remember collapsing on the path, rolling over onto my pack, and thinking, "I'm going to have to crawl the rest of the way." But I didn't. Somehow, and despite what sense would have told me back in Dallas, I always went on. As long as the road was before me, I would walk. In fact, some of the places I visited couldn't be reached any other way.

Distance--when I first told my wife that I'd like to walk this pilgrimage--that it was 500 miles--she thought I was crazy. Heck, I thought I was crazy. I couldn't conceive of walking that far. While driving down to Austin to visit my daughter one Friday, I imagined walking the 200 miles between my house and hers in 20, 10-mile stages. 500 miles seemed utterly out of reach. Yet, there I was in Compostella--one step at a time.

On Being Alone--Days walking with company--Mike, Neils, Derby--were nice. Other days I was alone--never lonely.

On My Needs--after a couple of weeks, these were pretty spare. Good socks. Dry clothes. Fresh fruit in my pack. It's illuminating how little I really needed to be happy. Spain provided all my entertainment needs.

A Definition Learned on the Trip: "Dry"--1. can't wring any more water out of it. 2. not so wet I won't wear it.

On the Process of Walking--Almost every trail we used was also used by goats, sheep, cattle, dogs, and wild animals--some of them people. I learned that there is nothing you step in that doesn't come off your boot eventually. I learned that everyone's feet blister, but that calluses don't begin to form until the flesh is stimulated to do so by use.

On Greeting the Unexpected--I expected to see the Valley of Roland, a piano that Hemingway played, a Roman road, and a cathedral or two. I did not expect to play like a kid on a Templar castle, touch the sublime at Santa Maria la Blanca, or get run over by a hurricane. Travel is fun.

On Burdens--I carried too much weight. This is a common fault of almost all novice walkers. I mailed stuff home twice until the walking became easier and my need to inventory my stuff each morning became non-existent. Even lightened, somehow the pack becomes heavier as the afternoon wears on. It is sweet to loosen your straps, to unclip your belt, and to lay your burdens down in the evening when the walk is over.

Lastly, I learned that for every journey, there is a time to go home.

Favorite Moments

2006-10-05T09:42:00.000-05:00

It's 500 miles from St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Compostella. To the best of my figuring, in 32 days I walked 472 miles. In order to make an appointment at the University of Leon, I did ride the train for about 30 miles. Twice, I hopped on a bus for about 7 miles each time in order to arrive at a particular historic site before the siesta closing at 2:00. Three times, however, I walked off the Camino, adding miles in order to visit sites--the chapel at Eunate, the convent at Samos, and the church at Vilar de Donas. So, 472 miles on foot. That's almost 15 miles per day. Some days and miles were harder than others. Here are 5 places I'd go back to in a second--these are places I carry with me in fresh and vivid memory.

Estella--I had been in the country for four or five days, and I'd already seen the beautiful city of Pamplona with its wonderful sites and splendid gardens. Nevertheless, Estella was the first place that I really encountered the people of Spain. I took a room on the second floor of a small Pension (locally run, low-cost hotel) that was located on the town plaza. That night, the people came out to walk and play. The inside-out culture of Spain was enticing--everyone emerged from his or her un-air-conditioned homes to socialize, and I was invited. The next day was a Thursday, and I saw my first plaza market. In Estella, Spain became more than old buildings and books.

Astorga--everything my academic heart could desire. It had Roman ruins--a villa, bath, Roman gravestones and markers, and old gates. It had been a medieval town with walls and towers existing since the 10th century. Three churches built in the 12th century and a cathedral in 15th-century gothic with a museum tantalized my interest in religious history. What about living history?--Benedictine brothers invited me to say the Matins overnight, a ritual they have kept for 1,200 years. Fantasy and Art?--it had the surreal palace built in the 19th century by the designer Gaudi. Mystery?--the brotherhood of the gonfalon is reputed to still have the 8th-century flag of Saint James . . . but no one has seen it publicly for nearly two hundred years. Plus it had the Museum of Chocolate! How could Astorga have been better?

O Cebreiro--the steepest climb of the trip. A brilliant, sunny day with the mountains of Galicia revealed in their full glory. And at the top of the climb, a village with stone, peasant huts remaining since the 8th century--a step back through time. A 12th-century church containing the chalice associated with a communion miracle validated by the Vatican. A Celtic bagpipe player piped old tunes while the stars emerged in a pristine sky; mountains became looming, dark forms all around, and villages glimmered as distant clusters of light in valleys mile away.

The Long Walk--Burgos to Castrojeriz. Possibly my most crazy day on the trip. I walked across Spain's high desert. It was just over 100 degrees, and the landscape was flat and brown and reminded me of home. I just kept walking down the narrow, dusty trail with the best company available to me--myself. I felt home. Hontanas emerged, a depression in the desert floor. All I could see was arid plain, and suddenly over a rise the trail sank into the town that seemed to lay like a mirage or an oasis in a depression. I walked on to San Anton, the long-deserted ruin of a great church dedicated to a 3rd-century saint of the African desert. San Anton had a huge rose window at one end of its collapsed sanctuary. It was a Tau window--once brilliant with stained glass, its framework was constructed from stones shaped like the Greek letter "T," a symbol of Christ and of the Knights Templar. By 8:30 that night, I finally came to Castrojeriz, too late to visit the old castle on the hill. I had walked 42 kilometers.

Santa Maria La Blanca--Frank Drenner was right; he commented in my blog weeks ago that this was my favorite day. I sat in the cavernous church that had been the 13th-century court of Alphonso X, El Sabio, and listened to the music of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. History, music, and literature were there, combined in sublime beauty. Whispers of three cultures blending in the spirit of an age. Even after three hours stay, the ability to leave Santa Maria was hardly within me. If you haven't had to opportunity to find the musical group Cantiga, my blog manager (my daughter, Kathleen, of course) has happily added a link to their site. Just look to the right under "Links" and click on "Cantiga: Renaissance Festival Band." Listen and imagine the music and the culture that created it being more than just echoes of the past.

I almost feel like apologizing for the sentimentality of rehashing my feelings for these places. Maybe I'm a little embarrassed at how much I loved some days on the trail. I miss the simple objective of walking down a marked trail and the joy of discovering the lives and spirit of the past revealed each day. Tomorrow, my last blog--I promise. I'm going to try to examine what I am bringing home--other than 1,200 digitally recorded photographs.

Globalism--Conclusions, pt. 2

2006-10-04T10:51:00.000-05:00

The Chancellor and the Board at Tarrant County College initiated a program three years ago addressing the need to infuse our classrooms with a greater understanding of the world community. Currently, the campuses are accepting applications from among the instructors for a summer seminar in globalism conducted, appropriately enough, in Salzburg, Austria. The idea is that in order to instruct our students in globalism, the teachers themselves might first develop a broader understanding of the issues concerned.

For more than six weeks, I have been smacked in the face with this critical need--but the need runs in two directions. Increasingly, Americans need to develop a better concept of the world as a community. Additionally, however, the world at large needs examples of Americans who help break the stereotypes that others have constructed about us. Concerning the first issue above, beyond all the historical, literary, personal gains that travel has offered me recently, one clear gift has been a better understanding of those little cultural anomalies that contribute to the national character of the many different people whom I have met. For example, walking is an integral part of many of the cultures whom I encountered. In a previous blog, I mentioned the grandmother from West Cork with whom I walked on the third day of my trek to Santiago. Her habit at home is to walk 15 to 20 km three or four days a week. Most of the Europeans talked of their joy--their need--to reserve a Sunday each week or a weekend a month for a long ramble. I could list a dozen similar cultural habits that separate Europeans from Americans--their ability to make a meal out of a hard baguette and cheese, their love of wine, their casual acceptance of the aged monuments that surround their lives.

But more than these minor cultural elements, no quality stood out more than the Europeans' broader worldview. Their geographical centrality provides them with an opportunity to reach out to other countries and cultures. Interested in my fascination with antiquity, many friends on the trips asked, "Well, you've been to Rome, haven't you?--or Venice?--Florence?--London?--Paris?" They had. These cities were all within easy reach of a train ride or a two-hour flight on Easyjet or Ryanair (the equivalents of our Southwest Airlines). Ads in subways offered $800, seven-day excursions to Egypt and $300 getaways to Moscow. Buses in Leon were plastered with offers of $30, round-trip shopping flights to Africa, and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates enticed travelers with low-cost flights to the world handball championships and tennis tournaments. Europeans have the opportunity to see a world that most Americans only read about but have trouble locating on a map.

These cultural elements are connected to the second issue that I raised--that they need to understand us by close contact. Their perception, for example, is that Americans simply do not like to walk; we are, in their estimate, great lovers of our cars. This perception is so strong that I always met with surprise when I revealed that I was an American. On the trail and in the alberguge, we and the locals played a kind of game that involved guessing nationalities. Just as I or anyone would walk up to a group of pilgrims or Spanish locals and before a word was spoken, someone would always guess a nationality. Time and again, I approached and someone with a knowing smile would say, "Alemania!"--Spanish for "Germany." With my fair skin, blue eyes, and size, that's not a bad guess--especially considering my English/Danish heritage. When that guess failed, the next was almost always that I was Dutch. When I answered a clear, "Nope, try again," they knew they had me--"Canadian!" In six weeks, no one ever guessed American.

On the journey to Compostella, I met hundreds of people; they came from every nation in the European Union and from Russia, South Africa, French Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. And exactly eight Americans. Europeans have come to expect Americans only at major tourist attractions--and for good reason. The Globalism program at Tarrant County College is an effort that the people of Tarrant County can be proud of helping to sponsor. In order to understand the day-to-day intricacies of being Spanish, Finnish, or French, we need opportunities to walk a mile in their hiking boots.

Tomorrow--five favorite moments.

Some Conclusions, pt. 1

2006-10-03T10:47:00.001-05:00

A few days have elapsed since a posting; I thought since I was really busy with the getting-ready-to-come-home part of my trip, few of you would be interested. Nevertheless, here, have some stray observations about these Europeans with whom I've lived for more than six weeks.

The European community is becoming more of a community than I had previously observed or imagined. Their sheer proximity to one another doesn't make them homogonous any more than the various communities in a large American city are homogonous. Yet, they are better informed about international news and concerns than most North Americans are--or, perhaps, have the opportunity to be better informed. Evening news in England, France, and Spain carry local stories to be sure, but they also feature events in Africa, the Near and Far East, and throughout the European Union. American news seems parochial by comparison. The obvious reason again, is simple geography. Paris is nearer to Jerusalem than Phoenix is to New York City. Time and again, for example, the pilgrims with whom I had dinner conversations expressed their concern for situations in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan. To a person (admittedly, only a sample of a few dozen persons), they believe that whatever America does, eventually, we will pull out of Iraq, and the country will fall to a state of civil war. I'm not reaching for a political statement here; I simply want to characterize their heightened concerns over what they see is the impending chaos on their doorstep--to Americans, a country half a world away. The day I flew out of Spain, a Compostella newspaper carried a headline story about the English and Australian service men killed in fighting in Iraq; I doubt that you could find that story anywhere in the "A" section of the Dallas Morning News.

Nor is war the only issue that we share with Europe. Having left some weeks ago when America's debate over Mexican immigration was still a hot issue, I was most interested to find that news agencies in the three countries I visited addressed their own concerns about immigration. Following the recent threats against international flights on British Airways, the United Kingdom is not only engaged in a renewed search for terrorists within their borders, but they have also raised concerns about immigration from Islamic countries. One story from the Times indicated that illegal immigration from those countries may have increased four fold over the past five years. Additionally, Parliament is debating what measures to take when Romania and Bulgaria enter the EU. It seems that illegal immigration from those countries has already climbed to an alarming high, and when the borders fall next year, a general flight from the former communist nations is expected. In France, immigration concern includes these issues along with mounting apprehension over the rising tide of immigrants from Africa. The Bordeaux newspaper admitted that former French possessions in Africa are now pulsing their populations into Europe, and the loss of jobs and drag on public services (sound like familiar arguments?) is intolerable.

The Spanish, however, took the prize for disquiet over immigration; they worry about Islam, Romania and Bulgaria, Africa, AND the Far East. Yes, because of the low cost of living and easy entry, Spain has been the European country of choice for Asian immigrants. In Pamplona, there was a genuine rant against their presence in the country. The particular complaint had to do with the jobs that Asians took and how they performed. Every little neighborhood street in Pamplona had a bar, a pandalaria (pastry and bread shop), and a small grocery store. Asians had taken to owning and operating the mom-and-pop grocery. The particular offense that drew the attention of the evening news while I was there was that the Asians were not observing the siesta--the customary closing of shops between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon. In fact, many of those hard-working Asians chose to open an hour earlier than their Spanish-owned competitors (9:00 am), to work through siesta, and to close an hour later (10:00 pm). In the eyes of many locals, this amounted to unfair competition. In Compostella, the entrance of Asians into the lucrative souvenir trade drew the complaint that they shouldn't be allowed to sell memories of Spain since they weren't "really" Spanish. Of course, the fact that many of the souvenirs had been manufactured in Hong Kong didn't enter into the discussion.

The ideas that conflict has ramifications that reach beyond the borders of the participants or that population movements cause stress on indigenous communities are not new--look at the history of American immigration between about 1890 and 1920. However, the truism that "the world is getting smaller" brings me to the conclusion that world communities share common problems and could well be advised to seek common solutions. Tomorrow, I'll add another word on this topic--then a last word on a favorite moment. Cheers.

A Coruña--The English Road

2006-09-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

I couldn´t resist one more little trip today. I took the train an hour north to the port city of A Coruña. The 100 km distance between A Coruña and Santiago is called the English road because after 1339, this would have been the way the English pilgrims would come to Compostella. In the 12th century the English king, Henry II (didn´t you see the movie "Lion in Winter"?), traveled to Compostella along the same road that I took beginning in his French possession of Aquitaine. However, the English subsequently lost that territory and with the onset of the Hundred Years War with France in 1339, the land route across France and northern Spain was closed to English pilgrims. Consequently, Chaucer´s Wife of Bath and the autobiographer Margery Kempe would have boarded a ship in southern English (usually Portsmouth) and landed in A Coruña.

Today, the city is quite large, and full of monuments to interest the historic/literary minded. The medieval English pilgrim´s first sight would have been the great lighthouse on the point of the harbor. There has been a lighthouse on that point since pre-Roman times. The current impressive structure is called the Tower of Hercules; built in the early 1700s, it actually encases the 13th century structure that English pilgrims would have seen. Rounding the point, ships confronted the fort--Castille San Anton. Yes, another castle! It´s a 13th century fort that guarded the inner harbor. In the 16th century they began adding cannon that are still in place. Interestingly, the fort houses a museum of Celtic artifacts--there was (and still is) a considerable Celtic community in and around this harbor. The Englishman William Wey took the pilgrimage along this route in 1456, and he wrote that there were more than thirty English ships in the harbor on his arrival. This was true for me today--A Coruña is a favorite excursion cruse for English tourists. There was a huge luxury liner in the harbor that had landed hundereds of tourists from the British isles. Medieval pilgrims would have visited two important churches: the Church of Santiago and the Church of the Maria del Mar (Mary of the Ocean). The former was a great, square construction typical of the early 12th century--about 1120. The Marian church dates from the early 1200s and was a particular favorite of English travelers. William Wey and others remarked in their travel narratives that services in both Latin and English were available in the Chruch of Maria del Mar because a group of English Franciscans had built a residence beside the church to serve the many pilgrims from their native land.

Okay, that´s the history/literature lesson. I´ll just add that A Courña was an unexpectedly beautiful city. It is much larger than Compostella and the port was busy with trade and tourism. The massive and aptly named Tower of Hercules was fun to climb--yes, you can go to the top of this giant lighthouse and look out over the Atlantic (actually a little scary from its height). The sea breeze was fresh and salty, and with the endless horizon of the ocean on one side and the mountains of Spain on the other, the view was spectacular. It´s likewise amazing that this area has been constantly inhabited for more than three thousand years. My interest in medieval pilgrimage is only a moment in time to this place.

Well, lots of fun in A Coruña, and I´d recommend a trip there, but this evening I´m packing for my flight on Ryan Air to London. I will offer a few conclusions to my pilgrimage in my final few entries. ¡Hasta Luego!

Rituals--A Little Santiago History

2006-09-26T13:56:00.000-05:00

I admit I´ve been lax in giving you Texans a sense of the actual spectacle afforded the pilgrim in the city. First, many of you know that the Compostella pilgrims are "Concheiros"--we even enter the city on a street so named. The reason, of course, is that every pilgrim walked with the sign of the Compostella pilgrimage--a round, flat sea shell ("concho" in Spanish). Not only is St. James reouted to have arrived by sea, but also, according to some legends, he carried such a shell and used it as a plate. Medieval pilgrims would beg for food using the shell. Additionally, they hoped that carrying the shell would ward off robbers who would be reluctant to steal from a person on a mission from God (okay, I borrowed that last phrase from the "Blues Brothers" movie). You Chaucerians will remember from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that Chaucer calls attention to the "palmeres"--those pilgrims to Jerusalem who carried the palm branch or wore little palm leaves on their clothing. The Compostella shell is a similar signifier. Entering the old city, you walk past the monastery of San Pedro de Fora--in the Middle Ages it was actually a pilgrim hospital (much needed). The Cathedral itself is a church within a church. The Romanesque building was erected in the latter half of the 12th century with Maestro Mateo overseeing the four entrance doors and their famous statuary. The church that Chaucer´s Wife of Bath (a fictional character who is supposed to have visited Compostella) or Margery Kempe (a medieval English woman who narrated her biography) visited would have had one tall, square tower, and one shorter one. Early in the 17th century, there was concern that Mateo´s treasures were being destroyed by the elements; plus, artistic tastes and expectations of grandeur had changed, so they built a shell around the original cathedral. Today, three of Mateo´s doors are recessed within an ornate, Baroque facade. The towers have been extended to be equal in height and are covered with similar ornamentation typical of the Baroque period. The Wife of Bath probably wouldn´t have recognized the place from the outside.

There are lots of traditions about being in the church itself. Pilgrims are supposed to place their hands on the pillar of St. James at the south door and make a wish. They rap their heads on a statue of Maestro Mateo in hopes of being similarly inspired. Then you walk behind the great alter and place your hands around the neck of St. James figure that stands just above the vault holding his remains. Pilgrims are supposed to whisper a desire or need or utter the reason that brought them to Compostella. So much for personal rites. At the pilgrim mass, the Botufumerio is the ultimate moment of spectacle. The world´s largest censor, the Botufumerio is filled with incense. At the conclusion of the mass, eight priests lower this huge, silver censor, light the incense, and begin swinging it back and forth across the great trancept of the building. I can only say that it´s amazing--this great smoking thing being hauled back and forth in a great arc just above people´s heads. This tradition began in the Middle Ages as a way to lessen the stench of we stinky pilgrims--many of whom had failed to properly wash in Rio Lavacola.

Well, today I visited Pardón, the place where James´s boat is supposed to have landed. The church there still has an L-shaped stone at the alter that is reputed to be the very landing place of James´s remains. Pardón might have been the center of Jamesian veneration, but a bishop ordered the remains transferred to Compostella in the 1040s. The priests of Pardón have jealously held on to the landing stone. Tomorrow, I´ll either go to Finisterre or to A Coruña--and visit a couple of last churches here in Compostella. Then, London on Thursday. I can just about taste the home-cookin´ now.

Albergue Nights

2006-09-25T13:18:00.002-05:00

I ate breakfast, as I have the past three days, with a fellow pilgrim I first met at dinner in Astorga, Neils Andreasson. Neils and I are a lot alike; we´re both solitary walkers who enjoy the company of our own thoughts, but we both like a little company at meals. Neils speaks only Finnish and English, so he felt linguistically isolated in some albergues where French, German, Italian, and Spanish are the dominate languages. I have more Spanish than Neils, but we were both happy to find each other whenever our paths crossed. A retired homebuilder, Neils is a strong, wirey man who speaks very quietly but always with good humor. He´s looking forward to seeing his grandson who has already started in his first indoor soccer league back home in Finland (yes, the Finns are crazy for soccer like the rest of Europe). Today, we shared our last meal. Neils always has a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast--it´s not a real preference, but he learned to say "sandwich--jamon y queso" early in the walk and just went with what worked. We talked a little about the cathedral and our trip. After breakfast I walked him to the bus stop where he would catch the bus to the airport, fly to Madrid, then change flights home to Finland. We shook hands--and then, yes, exchanged a man-hug.

Saying good-bye is part of this trip. Tomorrow, five of us--Yvon and Minnon from France, Roberto from Italy, Christina from Ireland, and I--will travel out to Finisterra together. Wednesday, Yvon and Minnon catch the train back to St. Malo in France and Roberto takes his flight to Italy. Christina and I are on the same Ryan Air flight for London on Thursday. It feels like a high school graduating class splitting up. More pilgrims came walking into Compostella today, but I didn´t recognize many faces. You get to know people for a day or two ahead or behind you, but one by one, we´re all going back to our lives. So here, have a couple of albergue stories that I hadn´t told before--the reason why you can become good friends in the space of a few days or weeks.

WORLD CUP REMATCH
One night in Burlada, a group of us were having the pilgrim meal in a small albergue when the subject of the recent World Cup final came up. Two Italian men were happily reliving every moment while two French guys contested the entire affair as suffering from inequities including refs who were paid off to Italian players who shouldn´t have been allowed to compete. Over dessert, the Italians bet the French that they could beat the French right then and there--if they only had a ball. The manager of the albergue, a Frenchman who was a member of the Society of St. James, reached behind a counter and pulled out a soccer ball. That was it--they insisted that we all head up to the local school to play the official World Cup Rematch. Now, I´ve tried to express in past blogs that after hiking 24km, NOBODY is in any condition to play anything other than cards. But we went. One of the Italians was pretty drunk, so we put him in a goal. The French used two goalies--a woman from Austria and a woman from Australia. One of the French suggested that these two should work together since they came from practically the same place (he may have been a little drunk too). I was an Italian for the evening. I don´t really have to describe the match. Everyone was in sandals or socks. None of us could run. Long John Silver would have been a better striker than any of us. The Austrian woman literally had a bandaged foot, and the Australian´s idea of defense in goal was to shout, ¨"No, No, No!", whenever the ball was successfully nudged in her direction. I think the Italians actually scored more goals, but as darkness fell, the Italian men graciously proclaimed that the French had triumphed. The World Cup Trophy (an empty wine bottle) was awarded in the middle of the field, and the victors were paraded back to the albergue. Every international conflict should be so easily and amicably resolved.

STONE SOUP
Evelyn Tanner loves the story "Stone Soup." It´s a children´s tale about a guy who comes to town, tosses a rock in a pot, then convinces the rest of the populace of the goodness of gravel. Well, it works with adults too. One night about 10 days ago, we´d just about had it with eating out. There was a grocery right next to the albergue, so a German couple bought a bag of potatoes and just wanted boiled spuds. They were complaining that they´d had to buy too big a bag--they couldn´t possibly eat all these potatoes--when a French cyclist spoke up, agreeing that he had had to buy a big bunch of carrots, his favorite snack on the trail. Just then a young couple from Franch enterted carrying their bread and cheese, and another German woman said that she´d go buy some lamb if we could put everything together in a stew. Smiles went all around as we began to get excited about a little home cooking. Now, Dianna will attest that I love to eat, but I don´t like to cook, so I suggested that I buy some wine. Yvon, my French pal, spoke up saying that he would go along, "To help Jerry spend his money wisely." Yvon had previously made fun of the fact that I rarely drank wine and clearly had no understanding of the fruit of the vine. I bought a couple of bottles (under his close direction), and Yvon bought another with a bottle of lemonade ("For the Germans to mix with their wine--they know just a little more about wine than you do"). Eleven of us sat together and shared a meal to which everyone had contributed something. No dinner tasted better. And don´t worry, Evelyn--we remembered to take the stone out.

Yes, Santiago

2006-09-24T09:49:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Dianna, Kathleen, and Jonathan for posting the news that I arrived in Santiago de Compostella. I love the picture from the camera taken last night. The walk in was soggy and difficult, but exciting. I saw friends with whom I´d been walking along for the past couple of weeks. We strolled easily at first through more of that verdant forest we have come to expect in Galicia. I thought of my colleagues and friends back home who would be waking to a Saturday after a week at work--wondered a little what I´d been doing this time in a couple of weeks. We passed the Lavacola River. Okay, so I have to tell you that ¨Lavare Collium¨ is actually a Latin phrase that means ¨to wash the privates.¨ Pilgrims were supposed to stop and wash themselves before entering St. James´ holy city; even St. Francis is reputed to have washed at the crossing of the river. I had taken a shower the night before, so I did not feel so compelled (but I took a picture, of course). After crossing the Lavacola, we started the climb up Mounte do Gozo. From the mountain´s top we could just make out the cathedral for a moment before it was swathed entirely in a fierce rain storm. Fifteen minutes later, driving rain covered us. For the next two hours, pilgrims struggled into the city in a nearly blinding storm.

But we made it. I entered the Old City, walked through the cathedral, and waited in a line of pilgrims for nearly an hour to receive my pilgrim certificate indicating that I had walked the long way. I found a cheap hotel in the Old City (a dive, but dry with hot water), took a nap, and, as you can tell from the picture, went back into the cathedral. By the way, I hope you like the outfit. Almost every bit of clothing I had was wet, and it was in the 50s last night. If you look closely, you´ll see I´m wearing a pair of shorts over my long-johns. Since my boots were wet, the outfit is complimented by a pair of thick hiking socks with my shower sandals. I expect this look to sweep the European fashion scene. Today, I attended the noon pilgrim mass during which all the newly-arrived pilgrims heard their names read aloud. I was the only America to have arrived yesterday who started in France; there were 22 of us who had walked from St. Jean Pied-du-port.

So, here´s a little story about my arrival yesterday. I staggered into the cathedral, still half-blind with the rain, and I immediately saw Christina, a woman from Ireland whom I had last seen in Rouncevalles on the second day of the trip. We had eaten dinner with a couple of Italians and a Frenchman all of whom had wanted to blame me personally for the war in Iraq. Christina had arrived ahead of me, and the two of us went to the information desk to ask directions for the pìlgrim certificate. As we approached the desk, a man heard us talking and came up asking, "Do either of you speak Spanish?" I said, "A little--and I have a dictionary." He was Canadian and explained to us that he had made a promise to his wife eighteen months ago--just before she died of cancer. She was a devout Catholic, and he had promised to make the walk to Santiago and that his first act on arriving in the cathedral would be to light a candle for her; he was desperate to make the receptionist understand that he wanted to buy a candle. He began crying halfway through his explanation, and Christina was no help at all--she just started crying and hugging the man. I pull apart the wet pages of my Spanish/English dictionary to find the word "Vela"--"Ah, Vela!" the woman at the desk responded, and for one euro, a candle was produced. We all exchanged damp hugs, and the Canadian disappeared into a crowd of pilgrims.

There´s a saying on the Camino--"Everyone walks their own Camino." In part, that means that we all started with our own reasons. On my Camino, I think I´ve learned a little about history, literature, culture, and perhaps more. Some hikers came along just for the exercise, others rode the busses, while still others carried burdens that were not visible on their backs. I´m going to spend several days here--visiting museums in the area, traveling to Perdon where St. James´ boat is reputed to have landed, and visiting Finisterra--the end of the land as the ancients knew it. I will be continuing my blog for at least a week or so. Then, as Christy Drenner commented a couple of days ago, I´ll find a new Camino to walk.

Santiago!

2006-09-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

Whoop, there he is!

Today, Jerry made it through heavy rain into the City of Santiago! Dad asked us to make this entry because he is in the old part of the City and Internet access is not available. We had talked about there being webcams in the Santiago Cathedral (thanks Uncle Lloyd), and Dad was able to find one at the Alter of St. James. He called us so we could see him LIVE in Santiago! He hurried back in just before the Cathedral closed for the evening, and you can see him at the bottom left of the picture.

He hopes to make an entry sometime on Sunday, so stay tuned...

One Day Away

2006-09-22T06:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I arrived in Arca Do Pino about half an hour ago; the albergue doesn´t open for about 20 minutes, and there was an internet connection available at the grocery across the street. Arca is the last pilgrim hostel before Santiago--19 km, or about 12 miles, or about 5 to 6 hours away.

Last night, those of us in the Pension, about 14 pilgrims, gathered around the TV in the lobby to watch the news. They showed radar of the hurricane coming ashore. The actual number of injured has been lowered to about 50, but the damage is fairly extensive. While we watched, thunder rolled across the valley and heavy rain still pelted the area. Fortunately, this morning at about 7:00, the rain subsided to just a pleasant patter, and by 10:00 I was walking in sunlight. Have I mentioned that I love Galicia? It´s late September, and the countryside looks like East Texas or the piney woods--down around Huntsville--in the spring (not that I´ve done a lot of time in Huntsville, you understand). The walk today was bittersweet; it´s difficult to figure out if I´m looking forward to seeing Santiago or if I´d like the walk to go on another week or two. It´ll take a while to assess all that I´ve seen and learned. Walking has certainly placed the region within my intimate understanding, and it has given me a good deal of opportunity for contemplation. I suppose that it´s usual to say that I can´t believe that I´ve done this. But don´t worry--there´s not an ounce of pride in that statement. Waiting outside the albergue are three men who began their Camino on June 24. They left their town in the Netherlands and have walked every step of the way. The truth is that I feel greatly humbled by both distance and all that I´ve seen.

Tomorrow, I´ll climb to the top of Monte do Gozo--the Mountain of Joy--about 5 km outside of Santiago. Its western slope affords the pilgrim a first glimpse of the city and its cathedral. I´ll let you know how that feels. I suppose for the last time I´ll sign my entry, ¡Buen Camino!

Still Walkin´

2006-09-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

I don´t know how closely American news sources report European weather, but last night Hurricane Gordon came ashore at A Coruña, about 38 miles northwest of me. It packed winds in excess of 100 mph and did considerable damage to the harbor along with injuring more than 60 people. Additionally, it spawned several tornadoes. One touched down about two miles north of me, and another knocked out the water and electrical services in Ribadiso--my destination for today. The prediction this morning was heavy rains for the next three days. The only hint that I had of anything were the heavy winds battering my windows last night; I had opted for a "Pension," an inexpensive tourist hotel, in order to get a night´s rest away from the sometimes hectic albergue. At about 7:45am and in a driving rain, I rounded the corner from my pension to pick up the Camino, and I was suddenly confronted by a crowd of more than 70 people spilling out of a hotel lobby at the local bus stop. A German couple I had seen several times told me about the night´s tumult and the day´s dismal predictions. Apparently, most of the pilgrims had decided to ride directly to Santiago that day. They encouraged me to do the same since the bus was due at 8:20. Well, I grabbed a cup of coffee in the hotel lobby and waited. When the bus arrived, there was a crush of people that I just couldn´t be a part of. There were only 40 avaliable seats, but the driver promised that another bus was being sent and would arrive in about one and a half hours. That was my cue to hit the trail. I did, after all, come to walk, and to be honest, there´s a little too much of my dad in me sometimes. He´s what American Indians would call a "contrary"--if everyone else says "Yes," his answer will inevitably be "No."

And what a wonderful day. Since Sarria, the trail had become crowded; Sarria is the final town in which a pilgrim can be certified as such and qualify for a certificate (suitable for framing) of pilgrimhood on arrival in Santiago. Busloads of people join the trip--and I mean that literally. A tour bus forwarding your luggage from hotel to hotel allows pilgrims to walk burden-free. The bus even meets groups and supplies lunch. If a pilgrim gets tired, the guide calls the bus and arranges for a pick-up when the trail crosses the road. The towns themselves reflect the comercial nature of the Camino the closer we get to our destnation. There are shops on every town square that sell momentos and trinkets. I saw a plastic, cross-eyed statue of St. James pointing in both directions--very amusing. Although I shouldn´t have been too surprized; as evidenced in the many available, historic narratives, commercialism has been a part of the pilgrimage since the practice began. Just have a look at Chaucer--why do you think that the Merchant and the Pardoner are along? For the indulgence?

Did I say it was a wonderful day? All the fair-weather pilgrims, all the bus-riders, all the kids just out for a hike were gone. I walked almost alone, recalling those days outside of Castrojeriz when I couldn´t see another person for a km in either direction. I stopped at the Church of Santa Maria in Melide--it was locked. After a half-hour search led by a local woman, a neighbor who had a key was found and I was treated to a private viewing of the detailed, 14th-century paintings within. Have I mentioned that I love Galicia? I walked through forests of oak, pine, and eucalyptus trees--some of the latter rising more than 100 feet high. In the little town of Boente, the parrish priest of the Chuch of St. Rocamador was standing outside under his umbrella, waving me over. When I came inside, I found that he´d already grabbed three others. He wanted to offer a special blessing to the pilgrims who had continued their trip in the weather. He spoke from a little notebook, calling for safe travels in French, German, and English--the languages of we four. Then, the German pilgrim asked if he could sing a song. For the first time, I really looked at him through my rain-dimmed glasses, and noticed that it was Jon--the Lutheran choir director who sang at Portomarin. I didn´t recognize the tune, but sometimes, the force of a moment is carried more in the emotion than in the understanding. It was a wonderful day.

Tonight, I´m clean, warm, and safe in Arzua, the town past poor Ribadiso. The albergue was full to overflowing with pilgrims who bused ahead. I was sent to a Pension that charged me 30 Euros for a single room--even though the sign behind the desk indicated the charge for a single was 22. And they demanded cash--no credit cards. But it was okay--nothing could dampen my sprits after such a day. ¡Buen Camino!

A Mighty Fortress

2006-09-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

After yesterday´s blog entry, I went out to explore the town of Portomarin. On the banks of the Rio Miño, the ruins of a castle, church, and walls of the Order of St. John are still visible. The town´s most impressive, and complete, site is the Templar church of San Nicolas. Sitting high on a hill, the church appeared from the perspective of the trail into town to be some sort of fortress. Its walls rose straight up--all the support for their height was interiorized in the church´s structure. The four corners of its great rectangle were topped with towers, and the entire building was ringed with ramparts. There is little doubt that the Templars intended this 12th-century edifice to serve both as a church and as a defensive keep. Inside, the nave consisted of a single, great rectangle. The walls still retained a little paint from the 14th century--a tribute to the artists who painted on the still-wet plaster. That´s the history lesson--and you could probably have seen and learned as much on the internet. Now, why traveling is an essential human pursuit. I was studying the painting at the front of the church when someone began singing. One of the visiting pilgrims was singing out in a beautiful, resounding baritone a familiar tune in an unfamiliar language. It was "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"--in German, of course. At the end of three verses, the half-dozen of us in the church broke out in applause. The docent of San Nicolas asked the singer if he would mind a repeat performance for the pilgrim mass that night at 9:00. It turned out that Jon is choir master of his Lutheran church back home in Germany, and he and his wife had been walking the Camino since Pamplona. He was overcome by the combination of the shape of the church and its fine accoustics and just felt compelled to break out into this seminal Lutheran hymn. Luther--at a Catholic mass? Amazingly, the Camino accomodates many blends of history and spirituality. No need to ask where I was at nine that night.

Today, on my way to Palas de Rei, I took about a 9km detour to see the remains of the monastery of Vilar de Donas. Built in 1184, it was under the protection of the Order of St. James and was a location where some of its knights were buried. The chruch reflects a change from the early to the late Romanesque styles, incorporating more rounded curves, for example, than the church of San Nicolas. The entire alter area still retains its stucco paintings--one, a spectacular image of Christ rising from the tomb. Other images included early patrons of the church in full Medieval dress--a treat for the fashion historian. On the remainder of the road into Palas de Rei, we passed a 10th-century cross that was decorated on one side with the Madonna and Child and on the other with the Crucified Christ. The decoration at the base of the cross clearly reflected Galicia´s Celtic heritage. Just another day on the Camino. I am currently in a cafe and the "65km to Santiago" sign is right outside the door. ¡Buen Camino!

Galacia

2006-09-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

Today, I walked from Sarria to Portomarin across the heartland of Galacia. Even an early morning rain couldn´t dampen this day that was full of those little moments that I hoped to find in coming to Spain. Galacia receives more than twice the rain that Texas does, so there are no Texas-brown farmlands; I was confronted with shades of green mixed with the grey granite--the hard bones of these hills. The clouds themselves are full of surprises. Sometimes, they would settle right on top of the trail, and I´d find myself walking entirely in a white mist. Other moments, the cloud would distain the hill to reveal a valley below and hint at the coming sunlight. Once, as I was topping a ridge, a cloud rose just above my head. Long, white streaks seemed to race down into a crevasse giving me a sort of vertigo, inviting me to fly with them. I raised my walking stick high over my head, and whisps of cloud swirled in little vortices around the slender shaft.

I took an opportunity to stray a bit from the path in order to see a small, 12th-century church, Iglesia de Ferreiros. There wasn´t all that much to recommend the building except that I´ve enjoyed looking at these local Galacian churchs, most of which were built in the pre-plague years of the 12th and 13th centuries. All have been built half buried in the ground--their walls rising hardly above my head. The storms and winters of Galacia are famously harsh, and these churches were obviously built to endure the environment. You step down into a sanctary and stand surrounded by the rough-hewn, granite blocks. Each church, however, has some little touch that makes it unique--you can just imagine the parishioners wanting to make their church different by adding a bell tower, or laying the path to the alter with valued pink granite, or by elevating the alter on carved, stone blocks. Iglesia de Ferreiros had lions carved into the tympanium, the archway over the front door.

After seeing the church, I stepped across the dirt road to have a coffee at the only cafe in town. Just as I had the hot cup in my hands, a church bell began to ring. The woman who owned the cafe explained that it was Tuesday, and on that day each week, the curator of the church rang the knell--the death bell. On that past Thursday, a 69-year-old church member had died, and the curator had driven over from his farm on his tractor and began slowly to toll out the 69 strokes to honor this loss. Even as the bell was ringing, two Spainish National Guardsmen dropped in along with a local farmer. The Guard patrols the countryside much like our own state troopers. They ordered their coffee, while the local man opted for a liquor that was thick and yellow and served in a small, cold glass accompanyed by a hot cup of tea. They talked about the politics of the Camino, the owner of the bar complaining that the Spanish government had laid out the path through some larger towns just to make some powerful politicians happy. She very kindly complimented me for tracing out the way to their church, a long-time sanctuary for pilgrims. At about the same moment, the two guardsmen and I rose to leave, but the owner wouldn´t hear of it. She remembered that her daughter had made a cream tort the night before, and she wanted all of us to try some. Before we could object, little plates were produced, and mom went into the back of the bar and come out with the leftovers--little squares of congealed cream covered with chocolate. It was wonderful. She was so pleased by our compliments that she called her daughter away from the laundry to receive our thanks. We tried to pay for the treat, but neither would hear of it. I think it would have diminished their joy in sharing a bit of their lives with us. One of the guardsmen came away with the recipe for his wife.

The curate was just driving away in his tractor when I came out of the cafe. Mom, daughter, guardsmen all wished me a ¨¡Buen Camino!,¨ but I came away with far more than their good wishes.

Odds and Ends from Sarria

2006-09-18T12:27:00.000-05:00

Hey big brother, hope the coffee is on because I´ve got a few stray thoughts and descriptions from Spain.

First, I took the long way around from Triacastela to Sarria in order to visit the Monastery of Samos. Since the 6th century, it has been constantly in use for monastic observance--for the last thousand years by Benedictines and an associated order of nuns. One building actually dates from the 8th century, but the extensive complex underwent major additions in the 16th and 18th centuries. There are still over 100 nuns and brothers in the facility. They venerate, among others, Saints Julian and Basilisa; they were a married couple who observed strict chastity. Some historians have suggested that the saints were meant to inform this mixed-sex facility.

Now for just stuff:
EVENINGS--every day, you walk until two, three, or four o´clock until you reach the hostel. After showers and clothes washing, a strange ritual takes place. We hold an informal, de facto Walter Brennan walk-alike contest. You remember Walter Brennan--Grandpa McCoy--"To Have and Have Not"? He had, as he described it in "The Real McCoys, "a hitch in the git-along." Everyone staggers around, favoring one knee or another, or trying to nurse a blister on one foot or another. The result is a comic display of silly walks--to say nothing of the groans to get into or out of a chair. Well, you try walking 13 to 15 miles a day for a month and see what happens.

BEER--is cheaper than Coke. No, really. A 12 to 14 ounce glass of beer costs 1 euro. A .20 liter Coke (I´m not sure what that is in ounces, but it´s less than 6) in a glass with one cube of ice sets you back 1.20 to 2 euros. Additionally, they drink beer with lemonade in it here. No kidding; lots of folks order a beer/lemonade mix that comes in a huge glass for about 1.50. I haven´t been brave enough to try it, but my Danish friend, Hans, says it´s the only way to drink beer.

WAITERS--have a kind of strange ritual of pretending not to want to be paid. The first time that I bought lunch in a cafe, I immediately held out a 10 euro bill, and the woman at the bar looked shocked and offended. She took the money, but handed me change along with a hurt expression. The second time that I tried the same thing, a man simply refused payment. I wandered to a table a bit confused and ate a rapid, unsettling lunch. Here´s how it´s supposed to work. You´re supposed to sit down. Eat. Relax. Talk. Go to the bathroom. Sit some more. Then, and only then, you suddenly remember, just as you´re leaving, to offer payment as an afterthought.

I´m on my way to visit the church and monastery here in Sarria. Tomorrow, 22 km and Portomarin for a Templar church. ¡Buen Camino!

Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro

2006-09-17T09:10:00.000-05:00

I haven´t had an internet available for a couple of days. I made the walk from Ponferrada in good shape--still thinking about that Templar castle, of course. But these towns have a way of demanding your attention. Friday and Saturday in Villafranca del Bierzo were fiesta days; their patron saint is Christ del Espiranza. They depend on Christ at the moment that his spirit left his body on the Cross. Literally at that moment, Catholics believe that Hope came into the world--thus, the Villafrancans call upon Christ of the Hope. They had a parade in front of the 16th-century chruch in which church elders carried a large image of Christ on the Cross--a depiction of that moment of perfect hope. Later, there were fireworks, a fair for kids (including bumper cars, but the guy who ran the ride said that I was too big!?), and another parade led by drummers and celtic bagpipe players. Yes, bagpipes--I´m in a part of Spain once inhabits by those same Celts from the British Islands. A group of people wearing tall costumes of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, a Templar knight, a Moor, and others followed the band. I did tour the town; it had a very nicely decorated 13th-century church and a 17th-century, Jesuit seminary complete with a statue of its founder, Ignatius Loyola. The real gem was a small 12th century church dedicated to St. James. In the 15th century , the pope proclaimed that any pilgrim too sick or infirm to make the entire trip to the city of Santiago could receive the same plenary indulgence by standing in the doorway of the Chruch of Santiago in Villafranca. I, of course, did this, so don´t worry about me, folks, I´m covered.

On Sunday, I made the 30km hike up to O Cebreio. The climb up the mountain, the steepest on the pilgrimage, was difficult, but the glistening sunlight and fresh, cool breeze were only eclipsed by the stunning scenery. These are the mountains of Galacia, and they are granite hard, but covered with lawn-green fields broken only by stands of pine and oak trees. At the top of the mountain, you are afforded a spectacular view across mountain and valley. Additionally, there is a village, Cebreio, that hasn´t changed in 800 years. There is an 11th-century church surrounded by round, stone houses with thatched roofs. The church holds two great treasures: a 12th-century image of Mary and the Christ Child, and a communion cup and planten which are associated with a miracle. According to legend validated by the Vatican in the 15th century, a priest and pilgrim saw the wine in the cup literally turn to blood. The original cup is one of Galacia´s most treasured artifacts (its image is on the Galacian crest and flag).

Today, I´ve had a slogging-wet walk to Triacastela. Everyone on the trail is beginning to build a slow sense of excitement--only a week to Santiago!

p.s. No, Frank, I did not find the Holy Grail in the Templar tunnel; I did, however, find the Maltese Falcon behind a false wall.

Ponferrada

2006-09-15T11:12:00.000-05:00

Indulge my rememberance. When I was eleven and living in Virginia, my family took a little trip up to see the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, PA. Like most boys my age, I was fascinated with anything having to do with the Civil War. We visited the Lutheran Seminary near where the engagement began, and we went to the park headquarters, but then, to my horror, a cold, light rain began to fall. My parents made a crazy decision that I´ve never forgotten. They made button up my sweater, then put my older brother´s sweater on over it and told me to go out a have a good time. I saw Little Round Top where Chamberlain won a Medal of Honor with the 20th Maine. I saw the unrelenting boulders in Devil´s Den where so many died. But most memorably I watched in my mind as Pickett´s broken lines crossed the terrifyingly flat field where Virginia died.

Today, eleven-year-old Jerry showed up in Ponferrada. Yes, the adult in me visited the museums and looked at the prehistoric and Roman artifacts. I photographed the churches. But people--there´s a castle here. The Knights Templar! Imagine them returning home in the early 1100s having won Jerusalem back to Christianity. What secrets did they find in the Holy Land? As the castle walls rose, they offered protection to the pilgrims walking to Compostella. Somehow, that same cold rain began to fall, and I just couldn´t help myself. A sensible adult would have sought out a warm cafe, but I raced across the walls--stopping at every slit to check for seige towers or attackers. The remains of the old chapel and the knight´s hall called up ancient ceremonies, lost since the order was excommunicated by the pope in the early 1300s. For goodness sakes--there were even ramps to roll large rocks down on the heathens, and a great keep, and a secret tunnel that led down to the river. What boy could want for more?

Okay, I´m back to my fifty-one-year-old self. I´ve walked all the way to Villafranca del Bierzo, and I haven´t even found a place to stay for the night. I guess I´ll go and do the sensible thing--now, at least.

Over the Top

2006-09-15T04:13:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days have been more rewarding that I can adequately record here. First, the walk from Astorga to Rabanal del Camino was glorious--a bright beautiful day, temperatures in the 60´s, a 20km stroll that continued slowly upwards through rolling hills and past mines dating back to the Romans. Rabanal itself is a spiritual respite. It sits halfway to the climb over the highest elevation on the trip--almost 5,000 ft. Benedictine monks run one albergue and the Confraternity of St. James operates the other. The monks offer Vespers, the evening prayer, each evening with a liturgy that is 900 years old. In fact, the small, old Templar church there has been under their continual care for that period of time. At 9:00 the townspeople--about 20 or so--came out an led a prarade from one hostel to the next to the church. A couple of men played flutes--one looked a little like an Irish penny whistle, while the other was more like a recorder, but had only six stops. They played a high-pitched, frantic dance tune while another man banged out a rythm on his drum--bang-bang-bang, bang, bang--over and over! The women clacked along on castanets, and the rest of us just danced behind them. We locked arms and kind-of skipped our way through the narrow streets while temperatures fell into the 40´s. The parade came to a halt at the church where the locals had us line up in two lines and do a whirling dance to another high-stepping tune. What a time! Then we went into the church again at 9:30 for our final pilgrim blessing and for the blessing of our rocks.

Rocks? Yes, the next day´s hike took us past Cruz de Ferro--the highest point on the pilgrimage. Since the time that the pilgrimage began, pilgrims have been leaving a stone at this point. In the 12th century, the hermit Gaucelmo, a guardian of the trail like St. Dominic of the Walkway and San Juan de Ortega, placed an iron cross on a tall pole at the site. For hundereds of years, walkers have left a stone as a symbol of a burden they want to be rid of--a weight that they want to turn over to God or to St. James for their keeping.

The climb up and up to Cruz de Ferro was made easier for me by good company. At the albergue operated by the confraternity, I met Mike, a maritime insurance man from Alaska and Seattle. Instantly likable and a great talker (Jim he really did remind me of you), Mike is an ex-Marine turned businessman, and he did have some great stories to tell. Walking through fog and cold rain, we were at Cruz de Ferro before we knew it. We took our pictures and left our burdens in the mist--we exchanged what would have been a fine view for the magic of the being wrapped in clouds. On the walk down to Molinaseca, we broke into sunlight that revealed magnificent rolling mountains and steep, granite drop-offs. We finished about 25km together with dinner that night.

This morning, Mike and I strolled along for 9km into the city of Ponferrada. I had a little work to do at the museum and at the Benedictine monastery, so we parted company. One of the miracles of this walk is how quickly, literally in the space of 36 hours, you can meet and become friends with strangers. ¡Buen Camino, Mike!

Spanish Reporter

2006-09-13T04:34:00.000-05:00

I´m walking along at a little past 11:00am, and what do I find but a working internet in a bodega. My brother, Lloyd, says that I´m his ¨morning cup of coffee,¨ so I decided to give him a report from Spain for his early entertainment.

THE MATINS--very interesting (if you don´t recognize this, read the previous entry). I´m afraid that my flesh, however, was weak. I was supposed to spend the time between midnight and 3:00 reading or in prayful contemplation. I tried reading, but the light was poor, my eyesight was failing, and I was tired from the day´s walk (enough excuses?). So, yes--I fell asleep. I think the brother who had to awaken me before 3:00 was a little irritated, but hey--I recall that Peter, James, and John also fell asleep, and I have nothing like their virtues. Nevertheless, a memorable experience.

SOCKS--yes, the great sock question has been answered. If you recall from one of my first entries, I had been told to buy three different kinds of socks by three different experts. Here is the correct answer: Smart Wool. The silver blend socks do not help reduce odor--after an hour in my boots, they stink. The magical synthetic socks are fine, but they take two days to air dry after washing. One night last week I became frustrated with them and lay them across a lamp shade. Five minutes later, I smelled something burning. Yep--synthetic fibers melt. They had little holes melted in the middle, but--get this--they were STILL WET! I didn´t even give them a funeral--I just threw them in the trash.

HATS--you´ve got to have one to protect from the sun. Lots of walkers have a sort of ball cap with a neck shade attached. Cowboy hats are very popular--especially those straw hats with the broken brims. I, however, wear a Genuine Tilley Hat. When I was looking for headgear, I wanted to buy the cheap, broad-brimmed canvas hat (which would have been destroyed the first week). Kathleen and Jonathan bought me an early birthday present by giving me the Genuine Tilley Hat. It floats; it repels rain; it keeps its shape; it is fully washable; it has a lifetime replacement guarantee. It´s even recognizable--other Genuine Tilley Hat wearers come up to me and ask if I´m from Canada (it´s made there). When I say, ¨No,¨they guess the UK or Australia. We have a club--a conspiracy of knowing that we have the best hat on the trail.

SECOND HAND SMOKE--it seems as though everyone here smokes. There are few ¨smoke free¨ areas, so you just have to submit to it. Some days, after an arduous walk or on a hot day, you walk into a cafe hoping for a cool drink, and a cloud of smoke envelops your face before you can say ¨¡Hola!¨ I´m stting in quite a fog right now; hey, Mark--you could save on ciggs just by taking a deep breath. Well, it´s the culture (and it was, afterall, a gift from the New World).

That´s it for now--I want to get back on the trail. If you didn´t read the entry on Astorga that I made about 14 hours ago, scroll down. In the mean time, good morning, big brother--and ¡Buen Camino!

Astorga

2006-09-12T14:26:00.000-05:00

Beginning with the walk, this day has been an inspiring one. The path from Hospital de Orbigo to Astorga took we pilgrims over a rise that opened to a grand view of the Leon Mountains and Astorga sitting nestled on a hill in the valley floor. The star on the map below marks Astorga, my current location.

All my dad needs to know about Astorga is that it is the chocolate capital of Sapin (Edit--Spain). When the uses of cocoa were discovered in the New World, the Spanish began shipping the beans back to Astorga for processing. They´ve been making chocolate here for 300 years, and there are chocolate shops every block to prove it. And yes, Dad, I began my stay in Astorga with a tour of the Museum de Chocolata--complete with samples!

For the chocolate-uninterested among you, Astorga was founded in the first century as a Roman provincial hub; the remains of the Roman bath, walls, western gate, and villas are revealed in the city through tourable excavations. Additionally, there is a museum dedicated to the many artifacts found here--coins, statuary, funeral markers, mosaics, pottery, metal objects. Then, of course, there are the old churches--the 11th century church of San Bartolome is a highlight. Sitting next to a monastery founded by St. Francis of Assisi, San Bartolome is not only beautiful, but it houses (in the deep, secret recesses of who-knows-where) the Gonfalon! If you don´t know what that is, then perhaps you can reach Chuck Hope at TCC--or read ¨Sharpe´s Company,¨ a book by Bernard Cornwell. Okay, the Gonfalon is a kind of flag or banner--supposed to be the one that led the Spanish Christians to victory over the Moors during the Reconquista. Aside from these elements of the obscure past, Astorga has a 15th century, Gothic cathedral, Santa Maria. Nevertheless, the real gem of the town (and the one you´ll see on the web site or tourist brochures) is the Episcopal Palace built just about 100 years ago. It was designed by Antoni Gaudi (yes, the guy who helped design the Barcalona neo-Gothic unfinished giant that is either the world´s greatest church, or a useless eyesore--depending on your point of view). The Palace looks like a fairyland structure--a kind of Boris Villejo dreamscape. The Cardinal was supposed to use it as his residence, but the cardinal moved, so this fantasy building is the Museum of Los Caminos, housing priceless Christian art from the past nine centuries on four decorous, art nouveau floors.

Finally, I should mention what I´m doing tonight. I´ve been invited (though prior arrangement with a monastic brother) to say the ¨Matins¨ at the monastery. Matins, or the ¨Night Office,¨ are prayers, hymns, or psalms performed at midnight and/or at 3:00am. They have been saying the Matins on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays for 900 years here. Tonight, they´ll have a novice participant. Rest well, Metroplex; I´ll say a prayer for you.

p.s. On a difficult climb today, I started humming hymn number 340 with each step I took. Okay United Methodists, get out your red hymnals, and see which one it was (do you think it´s okay to hum a Protestant hymn in such a very Catholic country?).

Just Another Perfect Day

2006-09-11T13:58:00.001-05:00

Now I have to define ¨perfect.¨ See if this works. I started at the rare book collection at the University of Leon. They set out early editions of Cervantes just to impress me (it worked), but the heart of the collection was in Incanabula (that would be books printed between 1455 and 1500) and in medieval manuscripts. I had e-mailed ahead my interest in medieval music, so 20 manuscripts of music, complete with notation and illustration, were waiting for me. I spent hours--I could have spent days. These are works of art in themselves, representing years of veneration and careful preservation. The single most impressive manuscript was a 14th century collection of music, fully illustrated on magna-folio; that is, it was hand written and drawn with four colors of ink on sheets of vellum (calf´s skin) cut to large size--about 22x29 inches per page. Simply perfect.

Then I cheated. I rode the Leon city bus to the very edge of the city so that my walk to Hospital de Orbigo would be only about 12 kilometers. I was anxious to see the 19-span, medieval bridge that links the towns of Puente de Orbigo and Hospital de Orbigo. I arrived by 6:00, found an alburge, showered, and came right back to photograph the bridge. Here´s why. In 1434, Suero de Quiñones was in love (all together now--aaaaawwwwwww). But, of course, his lover rejected him. Don Suero decided that the only way to overcome his unrequited love was to purify himself through manly contest--specifically, he and eight of his squires posted a challenge to all knights passing the bridge over the Rio Orbigo to joust. His goal was to break 300 lances in knightly contest. Over a period of a month and a half, 63 knights did indeed take up the offer. Afterwards, Don Suero and his squires made the pilgrimage to Santiago where he left a gold bracelet commemorating his higher love for God. That bracelet is, in fact, still in the cathedral in Santiago. Evern more alluring for me, the stories surrounding the life of Don Suero de Quiñones are reputed to have inspired the character of Don Quixote.

So, try your best to imagine this. I´m sitting at the end of the long, eleventh-century bridge, right across from a fifteenth-century church and an Atlantic cool front has just rolled over the Leon Mountains into Hospital de Orbigo. Night is falling, and I survey the field where Don Suero fought to wrench tortured love from his blighted heart. I have an ice-cold coke in my hand. Isn´t that the end of a perfect day?

Sahagun and Leon

2006-09-11T03:04:00.000-05:00

It has been three days since my last entry--you just try to find a working internet connection or an open Internet Cafe on Sunday in Spain. I´ve traveled the long, flat road from Sahagun to Leon and spent a day in the big city.

Sahagun was once an important stop on the Camino. It was home to more than 50 monasteries and societies, most associated with an expansive Cluniac complex. The French monastery of Cluny sent priests in the 12th century to begin building in the area. What remains today is historically interesting, but also a sad, sagging sight. I say sagging because the buildings weren´t constructed from the same material as buildings farther to the west. Due to the lack of suitable stone in the area, the locals here built out of baked, red bricks. Consequently, what remains is slowly melting in the elements--you can literally see walls bowing and roofs sagging. Two large church sanctuaries remain, and the gates to an expansive complex still stand as traditional pilgrim passageways; otherwise, little remains. Interestly, because of the inferior building materials, the sanctuary walls do not rise as high as eleswhere, nor do they have vaulted, stone roofs--even today they have timbered, thatched roofs.

The road into Leon follows the highway and the train track through fields of wheat, oats, and other grains. You enter through an industrial area and the western rail yard--not the city´s best features. Nevertheless, the city itself offers 2,000 years of history to consider. Originally an indiginous village, the town began to take shape in the first century when the Roman VIIth legion founded a camp here--the city´s name ¨Leon¨ literally comes from ¨legionem,¨ or the word for legion. Impressive round towers and the remains of walls still mark the original Roman quadrangle. Aaaah, but the cathedral. It is Leon´s gem. Anchoring one corner of the ancient quad, the cathedral was built on top of the old Roman baths and on another, earlier Christian church. The current structure was built entriely in the 12th century and represents Gothic style at its best. More than 20 soaring panels of stained glass and three rose windows fill the interior with colored light. Somehow, this feels more like a church than Burgos´ cathedral. Burgos, although filled with material and artistic treasures, was almost a cacophony of styles and expressions--all polished to a high gloss. Leon´s uniformity of idea and simplicity of height and color speak more directly to the human spirit.

I heard mass Sunday morning in the 900-year-old Balilica de San Isidro, then had a good day museum hopping. This morning, I meet with the kind folks at the University of Leon´s rare books collection for a few hours with the written word. Then, down the road. ¡Buen Camino!

Cantigas

2006-09-08T02:52:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an abiding passion for Medieval and Renaissance music. Among my favorite compositions are the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Songs of Saint Mary, written in the 13th century in the court of Alphonso X of Spain. A few years ago, Dianna and I visited Scarborough Fair for the first time, and we fell instantly for the music of a group called Cantiga. They perform, among other works, the Cantigas, taking the themes from the original text and extemporizing as modern jazz artists might--as they might have nearly 800 years ago in Spain. Alphonso, called "El Sabio" (The Wise) because he blended Christian, Jewish, and Islamic cultures, wanted to venerate Mary at the height of what is called the Marian cult in the Middle Ages. The the words to the Cantigas narrate not only the life of Mary, but the more than 400 songs also describe miracles attributes to Mary throughout 1200 years of Christian history. In effect, they are a portrait of Marian veneration.

Why the history lesson? One of my goals for this trip was to visit the place where the Cantigas were first performed--to absorb the atmosphere in which these works of surpassing beauty were engendered by artists so long ago. Yesterday, I spent nearly two hours in the village of Villalcazar de Sirga--just a little Tierra del Campos town now, but home to the 12th century church of Santa Maria la Blanca. This was home to the Cantigas--the church of "Mary of the White"--where Alphonso X first heard many of the songs. It´s as much a fortress as a church; El Sabio was a Templar knight, and the chruch doubled as a Templar chapter house. A great, squarish building, it has a beautifully decorated porch and double transept interior repleat with images of Mary throughout. When I entered, the curator was playing a CD of Gregorian chant--it´s what most visitors expect for mood-music, I guess. I just sat and--okay, I´ll admit it--looked a little awestruck until he came over and asked if I had any questions. His demeanor changed entirely when I mentioned the Cantigas--he ran into a vestibule where the CD player was and immediately put on a CD of the Cantigas. He invited me into an area off limits to tourists and showed me a 14th century copy of 76 of the songs. He discussed an image of Mary that is reputed to have been Alphonso´s favorite. Then, he just left me alone to listen and imagine. Truely, I could hardly bring myself to leave Santa Maria la Blanca--a little repository where the discerning visitor may still hear as well as see the vestages of European history and culture.

I walked the long, rising hill out of town, humming my favorite cantigas to the rhythm of my steps. As I reached the top of the hill, two miles distant from the church, I turned around for one last look. Silly, I know, but I raised my hiking pole as a farewell and thanks, and at that very moment a lovely breeze blew up from the direction of the church. Another Marian miracle--worth a song? Oh, probably just a thermal or a wind blowing across the top of a rise . . . probably.

p.s. A special thanks to the members of Cantiga--Bob, Charry, Michelle, Mark, Max, Jamal and Martha--for keeping the music alive (visit them at www.cantigamusic.com). And especially to you, Martha, for helping to inspire this trip. I think I heard your harp echoing in the church yesterday.

Burgos and Beyond

2006-09-07T11:17:00.001-05:00

They may call it Tierra de Campos, but this part of Spain looks like West Texas to me. This is the first computer I´ve found in three days--I haven´t even been able to call Dianna by phone for that time (found a satellite phone, but the calling card wouldn´t work). Anyway, Burgos! I felt like I was strolling through history. I had no idea that the cathedral was so beautiful--polished marble and limestone. The great dome was, in my opinion, more beautiful than Westminister Abbey. And the Cid´s are buried there! You know, El Cid (Charlton Heston) and his wife Jimena (Sophia Loren). The cathedral also houses an impressive collection of religious art in the cloister--I mean, they have a Da Vinci for goodness sakes. I really had no idea at the nature of the exhibit. Additionally, I toured the remains of the medieval castle on the hill (used by the French between 1808-09 during the Peninsular Campaign), and I followed the old medieval wall around as it was met on four corners by different churches (12th to the 16th century in construction). I do have to say that I felt a little un-nerved by a museum collection of gold artifacts used in private and public liturgical practice. There were dozens of works of art--tri-folding alter pieces and communion chalices--all made of gold in the 16th century. What concerned me, of course, was that the gold was wrung along with the blood of the Aztec and Inca peoples of the New World. How could such an object with such an origin have been used with full devotion?

Since Burgos, I´ve been walking. Spent a great night in Castrojeriz--a little town that failed to grow as Burgos did. All that remains is the ruined castle on the hill and three impressively large, if dilapidated, churches. One of them even houses a collection of more than 20 paintings by Spanish artists of the Renaissance. The church is rarely visited now, but the local church authorities won´t part with their prized collection. Tomorrow--Iglesias Santa Maria la Blanca!

p.s. Mom, Dad, Dianna--you guys will be amused to know that as I was climbing 1,000 ft. up a mountain outside Castrojeriz, I started singing ¨Cool Water¨ (¨Keep a-movin´Dan, he´s the Devil not a man, and he spreads the burnin sands with water!).

p.p.s. Thanks to all who respond--sometimes it keeps me going. Vicki, a double thanks for the kind words when I was a little down--yer a pal.

p.p.p.s. Dad, you´d have enjoyed the walking the last couple of days--dry and hot. Miss you.

The Builder Saints

2006-09-05T04:18:00.000-05:00

The past couple of days--from Santo Dominico to San Juan de Ortega--I have been walking on roads and passing over bridges built 900 years ago by two local men who were good friends, Dominic and Juan. According to his hagiography (saint´s story), St. Dominic was born around 1040 in a small town on the way to Santiago. He twice applied to monarseries for study, but they found him to be illiterate (modern scholars believe he may have had a learning disability). Dominic became a hermit, but as years passed, he noticed the trouble pilgrims had with local hills and rivers. This monasterial reject began building a bridge near his cave to help pilgrims on their way. He dedicated a chapel for their use--this grew into a church. With the help of Alphonso VI, he opened a hospital, improved the roads for miles to and from his buildings, and started his own monastery. Juan became a convert to Dominic´s cause, and from a location about 35 miles away, connected roads, built more bridges, and opened his own church and hospital complex. Between them, these two men reached out over more than 50 miles of the Camino.

Today, we still use the bridges. The crypts of these two saints are part of the large churches they helped establish. Of course, modern roads have succeeded the crude ones they helped build. The hospital complex of San Juan is little more than rubble outlined in the arid desert. Dominic´s hospital was nationalized by the Spanish government several years ago and is today a swanky tourist resort. Most of the pilgrims I know couldn´t or wouldn´t afford a night´s stay (170 euros--over 200 bucks!), but they do let us poor pilgrims into the lobby to take pictures.

I don´t know how you assess this information. Percy Shelley´s poem "Ozymandias" uses as its theme that the works of men are short-lived and will be subsumed by nature. I know it´s true. Nevertheless, it seems too abstract to frame our lives in such a historic perspective. Dominic and Juan saw needs and reached out; I´m not sure that they were concerned with longevity or later judgments. As an educator, I know that many of the things I say or teach in class will soon evaporate from the minds of my students--sometimes before lunchtime. But we´re still out there building bridges and roads and even mending ignorance from time to time. Will it last? Most of my colleagues just see the immediate needs of the community and reach out, leaving longevity to take care of itself. I teach with a lot of builder saints.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

2006-09-03T13:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I borrowed the title from Mark Twain´s trip through Europe to the Holy Land. This is certainly my most self-indulgent entry to date, but it´s Sunday night and I have an hour or so before the nuns in the convent lock all the pilgrims in and I´m a little homesick. I miss my friends at TCC, and I miss you guys in Duncanville and at TUMC (Dianna forwarded pictures from that last Sunday). I wonder from time to time what Frank would make of some of the things I´ve seen--wish I had you here. I miss hugs from my kids and parents and wifey (I told you this was entirely self-indulgent!), and I miss Texas food.

That´s my subject (such as it is) on this installment of ¨Home Thoughts¨--food. I miss chili and Dianna´s home-made turkey soup. As my good friend John Shumaker knows, I like a hamburger every now and then (whenever I can sneak one from Dianna´s notice). Now, I don´t mean a Whopper or a Big Mac--I mean a big ol´Fudrucker´s hamburger or something like that. Everything in Spain seems to have ham--¨jamon¨--on it, or there´s cheeze, or there´s egg--never beef. Well, you won´t believe it. After exploring the town and looking at the shrine to Saint Dominic, I found a restaurant called ¨Hambergerer and English Pub.¨ The spelling of hamburger was a little suspicious, but I ran excitedly in and asked,¨¿Tenes hamburgers aqui?¨ (¨Do you have hamburgers here?¨ ¨Si!¨was the answer, so I ordered one with a Coke. I could hardly wait. Beef. And Dianna didn´t have to know. What did I get? A long French baguette. When I lifted the top off, I found white cheeze and egg topping two thin, fried pork chops. It was a ham-burger. Sometimes even the food loses a little in the translation.

Take care of each other back home.

One Night in Najera

2006-09-03T05:38:00.000-05:00

The walk to Najera yesterday across the rolling hills of this part of Spain was quiet and easy. The town itself offered several special attractions. Perhaps I should give you an insight into the daily routine. Wake up at 6:20 or so, pack, get whatever is available for breakfast (always buy a piece of fruit in a market before going to sleep), and hit the trail. Walk, walk, walk. Then get into Najera and go to the albergue (the pilgrim hostel). Unfortunately, it was full by around 1:00, so I had to go to a local hotel--they gave me a ¨pilgrim price¨ (about a 25% discount--28 euros for a single). Strip off your clothes; take a shower; wash stinky clothes in the sink and hang them up. Take a nap. Now, it´s 2:30 and you´re ready to see the town.

Najera contains the mortal remains of many of the 11th and 12th century kings and queens of Navarre. The hotel itself was named for Fernando III who united the crowns of Leon and Castille in 1216. Passing the 9th century ruins of an early church, you´d see the Monasterio Santa Maria de la Real--a great fortress of a church and monastery that holds the amazingly beautiful tombs--carved stone coffins--of not only the royalty but also of their children. The church itself is built into the side of a cliff incoporating a cave where Sancho the Great is said to have see the Virgin Mary. The length of one wall is devoted to those children who died at early ages; one incredible stone box is carved with the 12 apostles and a relief from Revelations and holds the 12th century remains of an 18-month-old boy. In the cloister--a lovely collonade of carved stone--are the two crypts of Pedro ¨the Good¨ and his wife; they died four years apart, and their crypts are decorated with scenes taken from their lives. The writing and the carving on some of the crypts have melted away with time.

There was a wedding at the church in Najera that night. The wedding party set off fireworks, and the townspeople gathered for their usual fun and relaxation in the plaza. Najera is special because the plaza sits astride the Rio Najerilla; people strolled back and forth across a couple of foot bridges. Few even raised an eye to the long-abandoned hermit caves in the hillside. The wedding celebration went on into the night as I went to bed.

Today, I went to early mass in Najera and took to the road for Santo Domingo de la Calzada--and it all starts again.

Logroño en La Rioja

2006-09-01T11:46:00.000-05:00

One day isn´t always like the next on this trail in Northern Spain. The 14 mile hike from Estella to Los Arcos took me across country that, in a way, revealed its history at a glance. The Camino takes you from hilltop to hilltop--sometimes climbing 200 meters (that´s over 600 feet for you conversion deficient). Every small town has its own church--usually built between the 12th and 14th centuries (for those who don´t know, Europe suffered a series of plagues during the 14th and 15th centuries that limited collective building projects). From one particular hill, I could see seven churches, monasteries, or convents situated to overlook the landscape from various points of high advantage. Only three of these were still used or inhabited--the others had generally fallen into disuse after the 18th century. Certainly, the overwhelming influence of the church in a past age was on display. This area is also noted for its active hermit ¨communities¨--I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but many of them gathered in common locations, but lived apart. Dotting hillsides, are fallen piles of rubble that may have once marked a hermit´s cave--some, a local pointed out, were used as late as the last century by shepherds for shelter. Now, shepherds live in campers with attached tents. Welcome to modernity.

I said not every day is the same--I met my first American on the trip! I was just walking into Los Arcos at the end of my hike (looking forward to photographing a 12th century crusader-style church) when I saw a little commotion at the pilgrim hostel. Three other pilgrims had just helped Christina from Minnesota into town. Poor Christina said that she had been walking along when her knee popped as she stepped from stone to stone. They suggested taking her on to a clinic in Viana (about 8 miles), and this 24-year-old compatriot asked me to ride along to keep her company. On the way, she explained that she graduated from the University of Minnesota (go figure!), and that she wanted to do ¨Something important--you know, really important¨--before entering the business world. The doctor in Viana really couldn´t tell anything from an x-ray and suggested treatment in Logroño, or a flight home. It looks like a tear of the outside, lateral ligament. Christina cried. She couldn´t believe that she´d managed the mountain stage at St. Jean only to be brought down on the plateau. I hugged her--she cried a little more--and then I rolled her wheelchair over to a phone so that she could call her parents.

Today, I walked the last 6.5 miles into Logroño. A big town (130,000) with three great cathedrals. Hope I´m doing something important.

Estella

2006-08-31T06:03:00.000-05:00

I´m in love with Estella, but first, the walk here. It was long (14 miles) and hot. This is certainly an agricultural area with hazelnut trees, grapes of more varieties (some ripe!--a farmer handed a bunch to several of us who passed). I bought a vine-ripened tomato that was tangy and full of juice--not exactly your grocery fare. An observation: siesta is a wonderfull civilized custom. In the small town of Lorca, I was taking a break, eating an apple, and watching a grandmother harvest ripe tomatoes from her garden. The chapel bell rang two, and that was it--she stopped, walked over to a folding chair, unfolded it, put a scarf over her face, and went to sleep. This is going to be my office routine when I return (don´t ask how this´ll be different from my office hours before I left!).

Anyway, Estella. Not only does it have a great museum and three historic churches, but it was the 12th century Palace of the Kings of Navarre. I spent an afternoon just touring and taking pictures. At night, I stayed at a Hostelia on the Plaza de los Fueros. It turned into a Rick Steves moment--by eight o´clock, the plaza was alive with walking couples, kids playing soccer, babies on display, toddlers trying to escape from their parents, and older men arguing or playing dominoes. The cafes were bustling, an ice cream booth was busy, and one guy just strolled around playing his accordion and singing. I went to bed, but the party went on. In the morning, the plaza was transformed. Thursday is market day, and the entire square was filled with farmers, vinters, florists, honey gatherers, baked goods, and candy makers. I strolled though the tight lanes being offered tastes of everything good in Navarre (I could have bought jar after jar of honey). I wish I could stay until next Thursday--the town hosts an annual Ancient Music Festival starting one week from tonight. But I´m walking on.

High Plains Drifter

2006-08-29T14:58:00.000-05:00

I know, that´s the name of a Clint Eastwood movie, but it seems appropriate. I walked from Pamplona to Puerte de Reina today--and from one geographic world to another. I climbed 240 meters to the top of a hill that looked backward to Pamplona and the Pyenees and forward onto Spain´s arid, high plain. The ridge was lined with hundereds of giant wind mills (the small ones aren´t much good). Walking down onto the floor of the plain, I immediately noticed the heat of Spain´s bright Mediterranian sun and the wind whipped swirls of dust around me. I couldn´t help myself, Jeff; I broke into song: ¨A-way out West, they got a name / For wind and rain and fi-re . . . .¨ No kidding. Well, I´m-a singin´cowboy! They grow almonds here--I´d never seen almond trees. They look like stubby, long-leaved, peach trees you´d see in Mineral Wells, but there are little fuzzy, green bunches of almonds at the ends of branches. Dianna, there were fields of giant sun flowers--apparently a variety of nuts are grown here (some just walk through). With the sandy soil, this is also the heart of Spain´s northern wine country, so there were lots of grape vines, but the grapes were still young--like little green peas still forming on the vine.

One really notable stop. I had to take a 2.5 kilometer detour to see the chapel at Eunate. It´s a small, stand-alone chapel that was built perhaps in the 12th century in the ¨Crusader Style¨--that means it had eight sides and was domed rather than vaulted. It´s attributed to the Knights Templar who came about that time to begin guarding the Camino. Small, but really an amazing place with polished alabaster windows rather than stained glass (colored glass wasn´t in style yet). Frightful, carved faces overlooked the alter--would have put the fear of God in anyone (even Mark Coley). Now I´m in another hostel where the showers are good, but the computer screen is fuzzy and barely readable. I hearby renounce all mistakes, spelling or grammar, on this installment. Pressing on tomorrow.

¨. . . and they call the wind, Mariah!¨

Pamplona--No Bull

2006-08-29T03:44:00.000-05:00

Aaaaahhhh, now this is why I came. I spent an entire day exploring the city. I fed my penchant for history by visiting the Museo de Navarra and touring the city´s old northeastern fortifications (against French incursion) and its centralcitadell (built in 1666 in the "modern" style like a pentagle) which today is a beautiful park. I visited three churches ranging from the medieval to the cathedral, the porch of which was only just finished around 1700 (practically new!). For my literary self, I followed the footsteps of Hemingway. I went to the Plaza del Castillo where he loved to sit. His hotel, the Gran Hotel, was undergoing renovation, but the Waldorf bar is just next door. I ordered a wine and toasted to his memory thus:

I sat in a chair warmed by the afternoon sun. The day was bright, but the breeze was cool. I ordered a light red wine with water. The water came with little cubes of ice clinking against the glass. I mixed the wine with a little water. It was sweet and fine. Old men strolled quietly by, phantoms of the past. Two chipeddlededaled frantically on small bicycles. One older girl, too old to play, was turning round and round a nearby lamp post. There were no bulls.

How´s that for my Hemingway imitation? Anyway, I walked from the Plaza del Castillo to the Plaza del Toros and had my picture made beside the street named for the guy. There´s a huge bronze bust of Hemingway near where the bulls are run down the ramp into the ring. To say that Pamplona is beautiful doesn´t even approach the grand vistas of the foothills that surround the city of 200,000. The city is wonderfully provincial; that is, unlike London, there isn´t a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut, or a Burger King in sight. Each little cafe carries its own menu. I had lunch off the Plaza de Vinculo where a corner cafe offered three choices for "tapas." I took the one that had turkey--what I received were two little buns piled with potato salad, lettuce, a slice of turkey, and a sliced, boiled egg--sooo tasty! It was served with a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Just before two o´clook, I stopped for a chocolate treat in a pastry shop. At two sharp, all the little shops roll their gates down and don´t reopen until four (or 4:15). Pamplona is a lovely city with gardens and plazas and just the right mix of bustle, charm, and relaxation.

This morning, I´m on my way Puente la Reina, 24 kilometers away. I hate to leave Pamplona, but the Camino calls.

Ups and Downs

2006-08-28T05:37:00.000-05:00

I have two days of catching up to do. I left Roncevaux (Spanish, Roncesvalles) with the expectation of enjoying walking down rather than up. Sure. A topographical map (that I didn´t see until I arrived in Zubiri, 23 kilometers away) indicated that I had indeed walked downward more than 3000 meters; however, I also walked upward 1500 meters. And these paths are just not fair--you have a long, hard upward climb with the expectation of a similar downslope. Instead, you get a percipitous fall, down a water-washed slope on which you can barely keep your feet. Then you go up again.

Nevertheless, the way is fun. I actually fell into a group whose pace matched mine--a couple from French Canada and a 67-year-old woman from West Cork, Ireland. We stopped at a bar in Burguete so I could have a drink (just water) in a bar in which Hemingway stayed while writing part of The Sun Also Rises. He actually signed and dated (25/7/23) the piano in the bar; when I tried to take a picture, the woman behind the bar threatened to set her dog on me. I settled for a snap of the bar outside. Outside of Burguete, we entered one of the only beechwood forests remaining in the world. The beech trees closed hard upon the trail--their bark was white, dappled with spots of brown and green. The latter half of the trip to Zubrini really was treacherous. It drizzled most of the morning, so by afternoon, the downslopes were dangerous. We came upon a trio of cyclists, one of whom had fallen and destroyed his bike (to say nothing of the fact that they were trying to wrap several places on his body). Going into Zubrini, you cross over a medieval bridge called Puente de la Rabia. According to legend, crossing over the bridge prevents rabies--my students are now completely safe from my bite.

On the next day, I walked from Zubiri to Pamplona. I stopped to see a 12th century chruch in Larasoaña--very beautiful. In fact, the walk itself was "fine"--to use Hemingwayesque verbage. The Pyrenees began to tire and fell more into a series of hills. Every now and then a granite outcropping on a peak seemed to represent the mountains still showing their teeth. I stopped for lunch (and apple and an orange) on a high pasture and watched the sheep. Coming into Pamplona, the trail had one more surprize for us--the Montes Nerval y Miravalles--two hills that wore everyone out until we finally staggered into the city´s western suburb. Tomorrow, I´m taking a whole day just to visit historic sites and the museums of Pamplona. ¡Buen Camino!

Soy en España!--Orisson to Rouncevaux

2006-08-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

So, I was talking to my friend Jim Lawrence a couple of weeks ago, and he asks, ¨How high are the Pyrenees?¨ I mentioned that the first day´s climb will be over 3300 feet--going over 4000 before I start back down the next day. Jim looks at me agog: ¨Have you ever hiked elevations!?¨ ¨No,¨ I casually reply, ¨but I´ve been practising on Camp Wisdom.¨ Boy am I stupid. Jim, you were right. I nearly died in the climb to Orisson--beautiful scenery aside. I ran out of water, and the final couple of kilometers (the hike was about 8 miles) nearly killed me. But the scenery was beautiful. Rolling hills and sharp granite peaks were dotted with cattle and sheep. Corn grew on nearly impossible downslopes--and everything was lush and green. Why? Because it rains at least once most days. Of course, it started just when I was a mile or so from Orisson--and it got cold; I could see my breath before me as I climbed. I was never so happy to find a bed in my life.

A brief aside: before you think that I am heroic in making the climb despite the elevation and the weather, consider that I was outpaced by a grandmother from Canada. And by a couple from Germany. And by a group of kids from France. Oh, yes, and by just about everybody else. I don´t know if it´s just me, or maybe Americans should get out and walk a little more often.

The hike to Rouncevaux was nothing short of tedious. While yesterday I at least had the beautiful scenery, today we had heavy fog and a steady, frequently heavy, rain. I couldn´t risk taking out my camera when I passed the frontier marker into Spain. Nevertheless, the 11th century chapel and the 13th century church of Saint Mary at Rouncevaux are beautiful--even in the persistent drizzle. There is no town here--only the buildings associated for 1000 years with the pilgrim trail; Rouncevaux was the junction of several other trails from throughout Europe. I managed several pictures of the monestary and of the stone commemorating the death of the French hero, Roland, in 788--they claim to have the very stone on which he broke his trumpet, Oliphant (see the Song of Roland, folks). The hostel here is in a part of the old church buildings. All very historic, but the truth is that, right now, all I can think about is DINNER!

p.s. Everyone is so wonderfully caring. We help each other completing little cleaning chores, lifting backpacks onto bunk beds, or with uplifting words of encouragement. The world should be so nice elsewhere.

FRANCE!

2006-08-25T05:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally found internet access. Yes, I´m in France. I landed in Biarritz about 4 o´clock, and caught a bus to Bayonne. I bought a train ticket to St. Jean Pied-de-port, and had three great hours to hang in Bayonne. I visited the Cathedral there--very beautiful on the interior, but the exterior facades had been destroyed during the French Revolution (you may know that the revolutionaries didn´t take kindly to the church´s support of the aristocracy). Bayonne sits astride a river with a beautiful river walk (a real river--not exactly like San Antonio). I wish I could load pictures, but so far none of the computers allow access.

Anyway, I road the train into the Pyrenees and to St. Jean, arriving a little after 10 at night. I was very lucky to find a hostel still open and with one spot left. In the morning I awoke to view a small, Medieval town. It´s really astounding--this town guarded the pass (the Pas du Napoleon!) between France and Spain for 1,000 years. The four town walls were erected between 1100 and 1200. All four gates still exist; one even still has the original timbers and iron work. One wall traces along the river Nive; the first bridge over the river (12th century) served pilgrims for 900 years. There was a citadel that sits within the walls overlooking the pass. Its original walls and building were 14th century, but they had been improved in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Hey, Chuck and John--you´d have loved touring the citadel--the ¨new¨construction was added to funnel attackers down walled corridors where they would have been vulnerable from both sides. It´s just like a citadel described in a Sharpe novel! The church, that is part of the actual wall and pilgrim gate, was built in the 14th century. It was simple, but beautiful with three panels of stained glass mostly in red. I lit two candles during the pilgrim mass--one for myself and one for my family.

Finally, I have to add a word about my first hostel--wonderful! Two Dutch brothers ran the place (very new--built in 1696), and one, Klaus, gave me lots of much-needed information (I sent 3.3 kilos of unnecessary junk home at the post office). Klaus was kind and helpful; he won my instant affection when at breakfast he was playing a CD of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. No one leaves Klaús´hostel without a hug, a little card with a devotional poem, and a sincere ¨buen Camino!¨ I´m making the first mountain stage to Orisson.

A Moonlight Night in London

2006-08-22T15:19:00.000-05:00

One final day in London--just one day. What could I possibly do? Well, I went to Parliament, saw Big Ben and Victoria's Tower, walked around the Tower fortress and across the Tower Bridge, spent two hours in the National Gallery and an hour at the Tate, walked from the Queen's guard past Admiralty Arch to Trafalgar Square (got a picture of Nelson, Chuck--he's still up there!). After visiting the National Gallery, I went across the street to duck in to the Church of St. Martin-of-the-Fields--a pilgrimage to classical music lovers everywhere. While there, I noticed a posting that they still had tickets to tonight's concert--only 8£ (that's about fifteen bucks!). Thus it is that I have only just left a piano concert by Sam Haywood. He began with Mozart's "Sonata in A," then moved to Chopin's "Polonaise in A flat." As he played the "Nocture in C Sharp," the house lights began to fade. Ushers went around lighting candles, afterwhich Haywood concluded with Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." The cliche "it was a magical evening" only begins to touch upon my joy to sit in St. Martin-in-the-Fields and listen to a little Beethoven by candlelight. Well, I'd better catch a bus back to my hotel and get ready for a travel day. By this time tomorrow, I should be in St. Jean Pied-de-Port in Southern France.

I'm in LONDON!

2006-08-21T11:21:00.000-05:00

The title says it. I endured a 10-hour, overnight flight on British Airways and arrived at 8:10 in the morning on Monday fortified by 45 minutes sleep. I found the Gatwick Express train to Victoria Station and booked a room in a dive of a hotel that is just a block from Hyde Park. Now seriously, can ANY hotel be that bad if you're in the center of London. On my Underground trip over, I passed Notting Hill Station--Hugh Grant was not available. I caught a quick two-hour nap, and now I need an early dinner and I'm off to explore. Can't wait! Can't write any more! Two days--so much to see before my flight to Biarritz!

Saying "Thank You"

2006-08-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm packing today, and I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks to Chancellor De la Garza and to the Board for offering this opportunity. Thanks to my colleagues Chuck Hope and John Perkins who sent me to study at UNT, and to my professors at UNT--Drs. Morris, Stern, and Turner--who informed and inspired this trip. Thanks to good friends Mark Coley and Jeff Nelms who supported the effort and to campus administrators Dr. Judith Carrier and Josue Munoz who advised on the application. A special thanks to Ivan Mino who taught me a little Spanish over the summer.

And, of course, a thank you and farewell to all my family--especially to my parents, and Elaine, Kathleen and Jonathan who helped get me ready. And Thanks to Dianna who is letting me go on this trip--you toiled over all the details. Wherever I go, you are always with me.

I'm a pretty thankful and lucky guy to be surrounded by so many people who share their gifts with me.

Getting Ready for Santiago

2006-08-19T01:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I needed some stuff. How hard could it be?--some boots, a pack, a sleeping roll. You know--stuff. Well, I had no idea. Consider this: boots. The first sales guy I visited said, "Well, you have to have all leather boots for such a long trip." Another said, "You got to get the 'vibram' sole." Another said, "Get the Gortex GTX--it breathes better." And, of course, another cautioned, "Whatever you do, don't get the all leather boots." I was shown three different ways of tying the laces on the boots by three different people--all of whom insisted that their way was the only way to tie laces. Packs. You can't get just any pack; you have to get a 55 to 80 liter pack with a padded waist strap. I went to three different stores. Everyone agreed, the best pack was the Osprey--made in Utah where the mountains are. So I asked them each, "Do you own an Osprey pack?" All three replied "NO!--they're too expensive!" ($390) All three owned a "Mars" pack from REI outfitters ($199). I bought one. I'll just give you one more taste--socks. You can't just wear plain, white gym socks. You have to have special hiking socks. But it doesn't stop there. Some people swore by "Smart Wool" socks. Others claimed that acrylic is the only way to go. Still others advised "Thorlo"--a blend, of course. A guy at Whole Earth on Mockingbird confirmed that only a fool would walk without socks woven with silver threads--no, really--silver. And you have to have sock liners to "wick" away your sweat. By the way, everything has to "wick"--your outer clothing, your socks, your underwear--no kidding, your underwear. Including my Canon 7.1 megapixel camera (don't ask about the other suggested cameras), I've spent close to $2000. Do you think the Medieval pilgrims needed so much stuff?

Surely the walking won't be this confusing.

Walking 500 Miles

2006-08-19T01:17:00.000-05:00

For those of you who got bored reading the previous posting, here is the short version:

Basic Fact Sheet

1. Pilgrimage is a primary motif in all literature—additionally, every major world religion includes a pilgrimage as an element of worship or ritual.

2. In order of numbers of Medieval pilgrims, the four most visited pilgrim sites were
i. Jerusalem
ii. Rome, Italy
iii. Compostella de Santiago, Spain
iv. Canterbury, England

3. The popularity of pilgrimage soared in Medieval Europe when the Pope offered special Indulgences (release time from Purgatory) in the Jubilee Year of 1300.

4. Santiago is named for Saint James, whose relics are interred under the cathedral located there. According to 2nd century belief, he visited Spain early in his work.

5. Saint James is reputed to have been martyred in Jerusalem, but according to local legend, his bones were returned and buried in a secret location in Spain.

6. In the ninth century, a local Spaniard had a vision of a star over the plain (in Spanish, compostela, “the plain of the star”) indicating that Saint James was rising to fight off Moorish occupiers—Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor Slayer) is supposed to have subsequently appeared at the battle of Clavijo (844 BCE) that led to the reconquista of Spain. And yes, Matamoros, Mexico takes its name from St. James.

7. The 12th century confraternity of the Knights Templar claimed to have discovered secret documents in Jerusalem concerning the exact whereabouts of James’ grave in Spain. They began the cathedral and opened the camino to pilgrims.

8. In 1307, the Catholic Chruch banned the Templars and the Hospitallers of St. John (a French group associated with the French papacy) took over operation of the camino.

9. In 1987, the Camino was declared the first European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe and is traveled by thousands of mostly-European travelers per year.

10. I GET TO GO!

Why Santiago?

2006-08-19T00:53:00.000-05:00

When I first heard about Tarrant County College's Faculty Development Leave (FDL), I was interested, but skeptical. After all, could a school really pay an employee to take a semester or two just to explore specific elements of a discipline, travel, or investigate teaching methods or ideas? Well, the answer is "yes." After talking with Pam Benson and other friends about their FDL's, I began working on my own idea. Below are excerpts from my FDL application describing the intent and scope of my trip to Santiago.

Brief Description
In the 12th century manuscript called Codex Calixtinus, Aimery Picaud outlines the journey from England to the third most important religious shrine in Europe, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. I plan to retrace the steps of Medieval pilgrims who traveled by the tens of thousands each year to religious shrines usually associated with saints’ lives, relics, or secular spiritual advisors called anchorites and anchoresses. I will visit sites in England, particularly the church of St. Julian in Norwich which is the location associated with the 14th century author, Julian of Norwich, whose autobiography is the first book written by an English woman. I’ll trace the steps of the Canterbury pilgrims in their ride from Southwark in London to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury as described in Chaucer. Then, I will cross over into France and use the route suggested by the Association Normande des Amis de Saint Jacques—from Dieppe to Rouen to Charters through Bordeaux to St. Jean Pied de Port at the foothills of the Pyrenees. From there I will walk as did the medieval peregrinos (pilgrims) the 500 miles from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela.

Objectives of Proposal
I teach the sister disciplines of literature and history. This leave is intended to allow me the opportunity to explore, first hand, several literary and historical sites—to experience some of western writers’ most profound influences. The objectives fall into five clear areas:
1) Explore sites associated with world and British literature that are represented in the texts I use in class. Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Geoffrey Chaucer, the stories of El Cid, the Song of Roland, and many other works are indelibly attached to the locations on my itinerary. The pilgrimage was the quintessential experience of the lay piety movement in Europe. Major works in the British and World Literature texts relate experiences from this movement, including the first works by women writers in Europe.
2) Gain an understanding of the hardships associated with traveling the sorts of distances endured in the past. By reenacting the journey along the Camino de Santiago, I hope to place myself more in contact with the every-day world of the ancient and medieval people who took these trips, wrote travelogues, and developed the stories our students read in class. I want to better understand the motivations of medieval pilgrims and to relate to the journey as a literary motif. Almost every epic, from the Odyssey to the Song of Hiawatha, has the journey as an integral element; clearly, in an age of rapid transit, understanding this motif becomes increasingly difficult.
3) Research original materials available in European repositories. I plan to access medieval sources unavailable in the United States. Specifically, I am working on early works by women writers whose pilgrim experiences form the first efforts at developing biography and narrative. This should be a unique opportunity to review several travelogues and diaries held at locations along my trip.
4) Compile a usable digital photographic record of historic/literary sites. I want to develop power point presentations using photos of the trip to enliven class discussions of literature. Sites along the route range widely from Roman to Medieval to Early Modern. Indeed, I teach literature in World Lit. I and II and in British Lit. I and II that ranges equally from Silver Age writers in ancient Rome to Medieval writers to modern.
5) Familiarize myself with the joys and rigors of European travel. I would like to lead student groups on trips to locations that have clear application to the material covered in my classes. I would like to explore the tomb of El Cid, the valley of Roland, the Canterbury cathedral or the Moorish castle of Calavijo in order to access the viability of bring students to these locations to augment their understanding of literature, history, and world culture.

Proposed Activities
1) Fall Semester—I will actually complete the second half of the trip first in order to avoid the spring rainy season in Spain. On Sunday, August 20th, I will fly into London, explore the city for a couple of days, then take Ryanair to Biarritz on the Atlantic coast of France and take a bus to St. Jean Pied de Port in southwestern France where I will apply for my official credencial—a document that must be stamped at each stop along the way. From there I will walk the 12th century route of the Camino de Santiago; the actual trip should take about 45 days. Literally, every day will involve a stop at a historic site. The first stop will be at the Capilla de Santiago, a 13th century Romanesque chapel in Roncesvalles (see Chaucer’s description of the Pardoner in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales). From there I will follow the route Napoleon’s armies also took into Spain during the Peninsular Campaign by traversing the province of Navarra (Basque territory and the home of Pamplona—made famous in America in the stories of Ernest Hemingway). There is not adequate space here to summarize the historic/literary sites available as I cross the Roman bridge over the rio Ebro, though Burgos, Sahagun, Leon, Ronferrada and into Santiago. Sites vary from the via Trajanos, the 2nd century Roman road, to 8th century Moorish castles to 18th century English monastic exiles’ dwellings. After exploring the shrine of Santiago and visiting the cloisters for research, I plan to sail, as did many English pilgrims, back to Portsmouth via the ferry from El Ferrol.
2) Spring Semester—I will essentially explore the first half of the journey. I’ll fly into London and spend some time at the British Museum. I’m interested in researching medieval pilgrim journals and 17th century women writers whose works are available there. Next, I plan to visit central and eastern England, following a trail that leads through Oxford to Norwich in Norfolk. As time allows, I’d also like to go the Lincoln and York; the cathedrals and university libraries there house significant legal documents dating from the late 8th century. Then, I’ll return to London for the trip to Canterbury, cross the channel to Dieppe where I’ll pick up the traditional pilgrim trail from Rouen to St. Jean Pied de Port. Again, as time permits I’d like to take a side trip to Mont Saint-Michel as suggested by the Association Les Chemins de Mont Saint-Michel.
3) In the time between the two trips, I will develop power point presentations for my use in class instruction. Additionally, I will be editing a pair of papers for submission to conference and publication. One paper concerns the development of English vernacular literature as a bi-product of pilgrim experiences and as a reaction to the sale of indulgences. The second is a more ambitious project exploring the development of a writer’s voice among English women who validated their writing by placing it in the context of religious narratives.

Immediate and long-range benefits.
Immediately, I expect to develop a new level of expertise and an awareness of global issues that I can bring back to the classroom. Additionally, the pictures and descriptions that I will make available not only to my students but also to my colleagues should augment the experience of merely reading words from dry pages. I want to enliven these narratives by mixing in my own narrative. Of course, I also expect to complete two papers worthy of conference presentation and, hopefully, publication.
Long range, I expect to lead student groups to Europe. I am well aware of the recent interest in expanding classrooms to incorporate global interaction. There seems no better way to excite interest in such matters than by devoting time to leading students to experience life in other countries first hand. Also, of course, my academic research in English women’s writing is strongly tied to the pilgrim experience; women develop as writers only as they relate to religious ideas and often in spite of the “advice” of men.

2006-08-12T19:15:00.000-05:00

This is my opening entry to my blog. My elder daughter, Kathleen, who is responsible for setting this up, is far more excited than I am. What I am most excited about is that my departure for London, France, and Spain is a week and a day away. Tarrant County College has entrusted me with a Faculty Development Leave that brings me close to sources I have only researched from afar.