London 2010 Day 11

9-14-2010 0800 Baker Street Internet.
So, yesterday was a return; The British Museum and The Science Museum.
A kind of victory, on my part, to break through the 'not enough time' barrier that usually means I dont get back to things I want to. I bought my anti sniffle medication, took my Wellness formula, and otherwise girded up my metaphorical loins and went out touristing.
Noticed at both museums exhibit cards referencing damage in the Blitz.

"10 May 1941

At around 11pm, air raid sirens were heard across the city and the first explosions occurred. Another assault was launched claiming 1,486 lives and destroying 11,000 houses. More than 500 aircraft dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs that changed the face of the capital. Almost all the major stations were damaged as were 14 hospitals. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and Waterloo station were also hit. "

(From 'The Independent' Website)

The London Blitz, from the German 'Blitzkrieg', one of those words that are coppiced* out of several others, is being...well, not celebrated but ...noted these days because it's generally regarded as having started on Sept 6 1940. So it was relatively late in the long hellish process that the British Museum was damaged. There's even more reference to such damage at the Science Museum...a number of fossil exhibits are replicas made, luckily, before the originals were bombed.

Its a reminder, along with 911, Dresden, and for that matter Baghdad, that if you make enough decisions based on trying to force someone to do something, you will end up with hellish loss of life and even, yes, property. And then there is Gaza.

Walking around the museums yesterday, I found several exhibit cards that referenced damages, but there is little apparent now, as in all of London. That wasn't the case in 1954..most of Petticoat Lane market was held in front of bombed out sites, with the walls of the remaining houses held up by wooden groins and buttresses. And even in the the late 60's, there were still many sites with significant trees growing through rubble..Pretty much all reconstructed now. And with house prices well over £2 million in places like Notting Hill Gate and almost that in the East End, who would expect one scrap of usable and unoccupied open ground?

The self assigned mission yesterday (yes we do love to have missions don't we?) was to view evidence of Mary Anning's fossil collecting, as in the historical novel 'Remarkable Creatures' (and it turns out, a number of other historical books). The exhibits in the fossil hall at the Natural History museum do not have specific attributions, although there is a nice large illustrated reference to her contributions. But in the exhibit on the 19th century in the British Museum there is one of her icthyosaur skulls..you have to search it out in the cabinet underneath...and so I attach a photo of that. Satisfying, those 'mission accomplished' moments.

I received some great cyberdialogue on Norwich...so I will without permission quote this from Joan. who shares notes on the subject of the rather massive but still fluted columns of Norwich Cathederal. She had been to a talk on 'Neuroarchitecture'..and doesn't note the lecturer's name:
"One example (of many) is the slender shafts of pillars (massed together in one big one for strength) in the Early English period of Gothic... . These differ from the single thick French Gothic. He asks us to consider the kinds of trees people saw in each country. In England, often many small trunks grew from a main trunk which had been "coppiced"*. Eng. had smaller trees. These massed slender shafts are seen in Wells, Exeter, Lichfield, Salisbury. (I went on to take photos of coppiced trees and arrow pointed ironwork (English archers used long arrows -- the French used fire and firearms early on -- he connects it to the Flamboyant style.... We must combine the “period eye” with the “place eye” and consider what developed neurologically... "

I'm attracted to this last particularly because one of my students has been working with the idea of 'place' in her effort to better analyse what factors contribute to whether a physician will choose a rural environment for work. The idea that a sense of place develops from visual exposure is great...but what about the smell of cathederals, or the taste of Toad in the hole across from Canterbury after a night in the Youth Hostel.

Anayway...the museums were as always amazing, and full of people projecting lexemes with the speed of sound. I met a long term friend for a walk and talk, and then went home to minister to the remains of my cold.

And last but not least:

" You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone. Forget what you have in your mind and just listen to what he says. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will undersand what he says. But if you have some idea to compare with what he says, you will not hear everything; your undrstanding will be one sided; that is not naturalness. When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. "
Suzuki Roshi page 109, 'Naturalness' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.

Aloha, alan

*Ok, so perhaps its a misappropriation to use 'coppice' as a verb to describe the German practice of assimilating many smallerwords into a larger one...I think the right terminology would be 'compound lexeme'..although I like 'zusammenfassung' better....

AS