More London

I really enjoy going to London for research because I get to spend a little time sightseeing. I went a couple weeks ago and made my first stop St. Paul's Cathedral. Like every other impressive building I've seen here, part of it is always undergoing some kind of repairs (despite not having any workers on them, ever), and whether or not it's true, I'm told that it's because it makes them tax exempt while they're being worked on, so why stop? Still, most of it wasn't covered by scaffolding. Here's a gate with the cathedral behind it.



Behind me is Paternoster Square, which means Our Father in Latin and is another name for the Lord's Prayer. My guess is that's where the square got its name.



And the square has a nice sundial that clearly showed that I was there at the end of May.



St. Paul's Cathedral is a very impressive building, and it's a shame I couldn't take pictures inside.



A closer look at the statue of Queen Anne outside:



I did manage to take one picture inside, but that was before I saw the sign at the desk further on that you can't take pictures inside.



From there I walked to the Museum of London, which is not as great or large as the British Museum, but it focuses on the history of London itself. It had lots of human and animal fossils from well before the Romans, but I found the Romans and the Middle Ages to be the most interesting parts. Here's a floor mosaic from an actual Roman home from London from between 200 and 400 AD. It is from a wealthy person's home and while most of the room is reconstructed, the small trinkets and pottery around the room are authentic.



The remains from inside a Roman temple in London are on display:



From there it was on to the medieval section. Here are the weapons and armor of a soldier.



From there it was on to the British Museum which is always, of course, my last stop before going into the Senate House across the street for more research. I was happy to see that the Assyrian section and another section of Greek statuary had been reopened finally. The Assyrian section had a lot of good stuff, including this one of a lion hunt by King Ashurbanipal which was on display since the 7th century BC in Nineveh. It was under very controlled conditions, though, as the king's soldiers corralled the lions into an enclosure surrounded shoulder-to-shoulder by soldiers. The lions were released them one at a time, and you can see the dead lions who had been shot by the king. The king is aiming at another lion that had just been released, while one he already wounded tried to attack his chariot but was fended off by guards on the back of his chariot with spears.



In one of the newly opened rooms are many panels commemorating the siege and capture of the important city of Lachish in the kingdom of Judah by the Assyrians in about 700 BC. The siege is mentioned in the Old Testament in 2 Chronicles 32:9 (also mentioned in 2 Kings 18). It was a precursor to the fall of Jerusalem and removal of the Jews in around 600 BC. There was a whole room of panels, but this one shows a lot of archers firing on the city during the siege. The panels are from a palace in Nineveh.



Then I went to the reopened Greek section and saw ruins of the Temple of Artemis from Ephesus. I don't remember who is in this picture, though.



After that I went to two sections I hadn't been to before, the Islamic World and Central America/Mexico. Here's some 17th century Islamic China:



The Central America/Mexico section was mostly Mayan with a little Aztec. This Mayan panel is from a temple and shows Lord Bird Jaguar in about 500 AD.



I still have some things to see in the British Museum, mainly the China section that I've only seen part of and probably some other obscure parts. It's always great and has lots to see.

Camping

On May 14-15 I went on the priesthood commemoration campout commemorating the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood (May 15, 1829) somewhere near Reading. The scouts have a small lodge (not for sleeping in) with a couple of open fields surrounded by farmers' fields. A thin line of trees separated our campsite from the fields. When we got there on Friday evening we started off by playing soccer. Then Steve Holmes and I set up our tent while waiting dinner. We had a good barbecue and got the fire going.



Matt Evans, the young mens president, put on a good program in the lodge about the restoration of the priesthood. After that we sat around the campfire for the rest of the night and the young men kept the fire burning.



In the morning after breakfast we played rounders (like softball) and had a competition that the ward has been holding for 11 years. The teams are usually teams of two and matches up fathers and sons, but we matched up by age group pretty well for the rest of us (one "older" married guy with a younger guy) and I was with Rob Perry. We had a relay race, egg toss, push ups, and brick throwing. Unfortunately the brick throw was only measured by how far your brick made it along the measuring tape in one direction so even though mine went quite a distance it went well off to the right and so only made it about 50 feet along the straight line. It was fun, though, and then we packed up and left. It was good to get out and go camping again. Definite highlights had to be having no rain and no mosquitoes. It seems like every time I go camping it rains, and everyone here said it's always weird because it rains a lot normally but their campouts are always dry.

London 3

I actually kept busy for the last month or so because of papers that were worth a lot of my overall grade, so I didn't travel around or have anything to update here. But, now that the papers are in, I have more time to travel around.

Part of my research for my dissertation can only be done in the Institute of Classical Studies in London, at King's College (part of the University of London). The head of the classics department here at the University of Reading got permission for me to use their library for research, although I can't check books out. So, I've taken a trip to do research once each of the last two weeks. My plan was to study and do a little sightseeing as well. Fortunately, the building where the Classical Studies Library is housed, the Senate House, is right across the street from my favorite place in London so far---the British Museum. So every time I go study I take some time to look around. I still haven't seen the whole thing but I'm pretty close now.

The main entrance to the British Museum:


The first time I went to the Classical Studies Library I checked it out first and did some research for a few hours, got my access card, and then headed back to the British Museum.

The Senate House:


Apparently the British Museum really does get its hands on everything from everywhere. They even have a chunk of the Sphinx that was part of the beard.



The doorway to the Egyptian tomb of Tjetji from about 2500 BC:



This two-part wall panel is from Assyria in 860 BC. It shows the god Ninurta on the right panel (not very clearly visible in the picture or in person anymore) and some monster on the left that he is fighting. There's no mention of a monster like this so they don't know what it is.



And here is what the entrance to another ancient Assyrian (castle or something) from around the same time looked like, at least part of it. The two horses with human heads were taken from their place guarding the entrance, and behind them is a replica of the ancient gate.



Something tells me this guy, Pavaya, was important and I think you'll agree (and that something is not historians, they aren't sure). It was taken from an ancient Greek colony from southwest Turkey, and they just know from the writings on it that it's from about 360 BC.



Well, I took a lot of pictures but there are too many to have up here, really. Still, the last I'll show you from the British Museum is an artifact that shows an ancient Roman chariot race with some related trinkets below it. I found this personally very interesting because I wrote my Capstone paper for BYU on chariot racing and how the factions (the Blues, Greens, Reds, and Whites) became political parties.



After researching and then visiting the British Museum, I went to the Tower of London because I hadn't been able to see inside the last time I went. This time, I got there while they were still open but after the guided tours had finished and, knowing I would be back the next week, decided to wait till next time. Some friends recommended the guided tour, and it's the same price whether you do a guided tour or not, and at the end of a guided tour, or before, you can look around all you want anyway. The next week I went to the Tower of London first and took the tour, which was well worth it. Very interesting and a very entertaining guide. The Tower of London is a castle that was first built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century after conquering England and kings and queens added more and more to it over the years, with most of it built in the 13th century. Here's the original castle of William the Conqueror, called the White Tower:



The tour guides are called Yeoman Warders, and their responsibility is to guard the tower and the crown jewels. They are basically just tour guides nowadays, but they are former soldiers. They are required to have served in the military for 22 years with an excellent record. This was our Yeoman Warder tour guide, and behind him is the river entrance known as "Traitor's Gate", because quite often the prisoners of the Tower were brought in by boat through this entrance.



The Tower is famous for its prisoners and its torture. While torture could have gone on anywhere, there was a part of the White Tower that specifically was for torture, and here's what it looks like today:



Yeah, they turned it into a gift shop. Weird.

On the tour we got to go inside the normally-locked church, seen here, where Anne Boleyn's ghost supposedly roams (she's buried there). In front, where all these people are standing, is where the executions took place inside the Tower. Only six ever happened here, though, because the executions almost always took place up on the hill outside of the Tower where the public could see.



This cell is famous because so many famous prisoners were kept here and etched messages into the walls. The messages have been left and are now protected behind the plastic around the room.



This part of the castle is the Bloody Tower:



A catapult in the moat of the Tower:



The base of an old entrance to the Tower:



And a monument to Emperor Trajan outside the Tower that sits in front of the remains of London's original Roman city wall. The top part was added after the Romans, but over half of it is original and has the characteristic layers of red brick mixed in with the regular.



After the tour and looking around some on my own, I went to the British Museum again (this time for a much shorter look) and then headed to the Classical Studies Library again for more research. It made for a couple of pretty good trips, and now I'm planning my trips, including trips to the towns that my ancestors came from.

Cambridge

To finish off my lectures at Britain's top 3 museums (top 3 according to my professor, anyway), I went to Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum. I had heard that the British Museum in London was the best, followed by the Ashmolean in Oxford and then the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. After going myself, I'd have to say that the British Museum is the best, then the Fitzwilliam, and then the Ashmolean, but it's pretty close between the last two. The British Museum blows the other two out of the water, no contest. They all are pretty amazing though. As far as cities go, I'd say London, Oxford, then Cambridge. Cambridge just didn't impress me as much, although I didn't have much time for anything else since I got to Cambridge much later than I wanted to, and it's a longer journey because you have to travel to London first. So, unfortunately I didn't take many pictures. There were, of course, some nice old churches, like this one:



This is one of Cambridge's many colleges that make up the University of Cambridge. All around the city, including at the colleges I saw, bikes lined most of the fences.



Another college, which I couldn't quite get a full picture of. Apparently it's a nice hangout for taxis.



And finally, the Fitzwilliam Museum. The building looks much like the British Museum on the outside.



I tried to get the whole front in this shot but this is the most I could get, I already had my back to a wall.



Like the Ashmolean Museum, the Fitzwilliam doesn't allow pictures inside unfortunately, except in the entryway but the British Museum does. It was very dimly lit.



I'm glad I got to go check out Cambridge at least once. It's similar to Oxford, and it's worth a trip at least once.

Zombie Time!

Finally!! I've been promising it for a while and I finally found a way to get it to work. So here it is: All the zombie videos we made! Works for me, so hopefully it will all work for you. I suppose I could give some background. Over the course of about a year, many people helped make a zombie movie. It kept changing but we kept filming, and eventually it died. This is what Scott Clarke and I finally put together in the end, although it belongs more to Scott than it does to me.

The times making these movies, and the movies for Olde Zoobynews, were some of the best I had at BYU. Good times. And MARCH MADNESS!! GO BYU!

Unfortunately, some of the scenes were lost in a Mac hard drive crash... twice. Scott has the raw footage somewhere. Still, this was what we came up with after deciding that, while this is not the "definitive version", we needed something to show everyone so that they could see what a year's worth of hard work went into (seriously, I'm amazed at how many hours so many people put in). So while further versions may still happen eventually, this is just to tide us all over until then. Enjoy.

First, the Trailer:


Night! As the zombie apocalypse reaches Provo, our brave hero returns for his ex. Occasionally seen are other people in vehicles trying to outrun the apocalypse.

Starring and Asenath Rallison, with Cavan Helps, Scott Black, Kevin Black, Mary Wagers, Emily Mathusek, Mike Law, W. Alexander Haig, Hannah something, Steve McFarland, Steve's friends, Paul Olson, Susan Kearl, and a few whose names I'll get later and update here.



Day! A few years later on the outskirts of Provo, a group of survivors has fortified themselves in the Provo Amphitheater. Two guards protecting the entrance spot a nearby group of zombies hungry for brains.

Starring Seth Huyett, Crazy Pirate Zombie Dude, Kevin Black, Scott Black, Susan Kearl, W. Alexander Haig, Paul Olson, and Paul's sideburns.



Special thanks to Greg Jeffs, Matt Heder (yeah, Jon Heder A.K.A. Napoleon Dynamite's brother), Jessica Embley, Christian Pieper, and the others whose scenes were lost but which still remain in small part in the trailer and will hopefully be edited again, along with those whose names I forgot, and to everyone who laughed at what we intended them to laugh at and not just our acting.

Oxford

A couple weeks ago I went to do some sightseeing in Oxford with some friends. Lindsay got her masters from there last year so she was able to take us into some of the colleges that we might not have otherwise. A friend of hers came down from Scotland and we discovered that I used to work with his sister for about a year at BYU. We ate a full traditional English breakfast at The Three Guineas pub in Reading before heading to Oxford. It was the first time I'd ever had it and it was really good, and for some reason the deep fat fried bread was amazing. Oxford has a lot of things to see. One of the first things we saw was an old burial mound.



Not sure what this used to be, but now it has a shop in the bottom:


And my latin's not the greatest, but under the clock it says "Fortis est Veritas" which I think means "Truth is strength".



At the entrance to Christ Church where Lewis Carroll studied and lectured while he wrote Alice in Wonderland, is this sword in the ground:



Lindsay, Grant, and Andrea inside Christ Church:



This is also in Christ Church and was used to film part of the inside of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. The stairs lead into the Hall they used as Hogwarts' Great Hall. Unfortunately the Great Hall was closed the day we went:



Stained glass inside Christ Church:



Then it was on to Merton College, where J. R. R. Tolkien taught for part of his time at Oxford:



And my personal favorite, the tree at Merton College that Tolkien is said to have sat under to write:





Stained glass inside the Merton College Church:



The exit from a church C. S. Lewis used to frequent in Oxford has a couple of interesting things to see. This is the view directly from the door of the church looking at a building just a few feet away across the alley:



And this is a view of the alley from near that exit of the church (you can't see the church in the picture):



Maybe it's all a coincidence, but you'll notice the door has two fauns flanking it and a lion right on the door. Down the alley is a lamp post. It might not be true but this is said to have been the inspiration for some of C. S. Lewis' Narnia ideas.

Before we saw where C. S. Lewis taught, we met up with some more friends and went to have lunch. We tried to eat at the Eagle and Child but it was full. The Eagle and Child is where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and others met as members of a group called the Inklings. In the picture are Andrea, Rachel, Diego, Lindsay, Diego's brother, and Grant:



After lunch we made our way to Magdalen College, where C. S. Lewis taught. Rachel tried to get Grant to stop messing with the gate to the college but soon gave up:



I don't know if it's got the same name, but this is the church at Magdalen College:



Another view of Magdalen College:



Grant in front of the building where C. S. Lewis taught at Magdalen College. You can't see it here but the three windows to where he taught always have flowers in them:



And behind this building is a herd of deer. We think it's probably intentional that one is white:




We got to climb up the tower of University Church for a great view of the city. Here are a couple shots of the city:





There's a lot to see in Oxford, but I'll be back again. Last week I actually went again, this time for a lecture at the Ashmolean museum, one of the three main museums in England they say (the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean, and the Fitz-William in Cambridge are the three). I didn't have time to see much as the lecture took almost 3 hours and since part of it was an actual tour and discussion of the museum I didn't take pictures. On my way out I did stop by the Oxford castle and got a quick shot, and when I have more time I'm going to go and take a tour inside.