You know spring is here when

There's so much to talk about that's related to the weather.  First, as much as I enjoy the other seasons, there's nothing like warm weather.  The photo this week is from Timmy in Mexico, who had gone camping with friends to a place called Mulege on the Pacific Ocean.  Looks nice.

You know spring is here when....

-- the lawn mower starts on the first try.

-- the barbecue starts up on the first try (burgers last night)

-- it's burn day (to burn all the brush from the previous year)

-- you clean out the garage.

-- you see the first crocuses

-- your friend in Maine says he still has a foot of snow on the ground.

All the above happened over the weekend.  How great is that?

How do you know spring is here?  Share on this blog by writing popsweeklyletter@blogger.com.

Some news: Joe ran into the London marathon this weekend; into, not in, as he was out for a morning run and ended up running into those hurting people running the marathon.  Margaret is finishing up some big projects for her coursework, as is Annie.  Annie has been arranging a bachelorette party for Margaret as well.  Mary swam in a meet yesterday, and has been helping the economy out, shopping for our trip to Florida to see John and Marilyn next week and for the wedding.  Me, I have crossed a couple of thresholds to finalize my thesis (defense and rough draft and revisions) but still can't say I am done.  Soon, I hope.  And, channeling John Boyle, if someone ever hears me talking about a PhD, I have a baseball bat that I want you to hit me over the head with.  Knock some sense into me.

This week we opened our website for our project to return to Gabon hopefully next January: encoredelapaix.org.  

Sports has been a big part of the past two weeks; heard from Andrew who was all over the March Madness with Daniel.  He almost won the Warren Buffet 1 billion dollars on his bracket, but I think he had Wisconsin beating UConn.  Go Huskies.  And baseball has started; it's too early to look at the standings, especially if you know your team is in last place.  Go Reds, please.

Here's a new one:  April 10 is officially Siblings Day.  Sorry David, Peter and Andrew, I totally missed that one, so happy belated siblings day.  

Speaking of siblings, David has been in the news quoted on a major fraud report.  And thanks for the updates from Germany Peter; sounds like a great trip.  And on Sunday, we'll see another sibling as Dan comes up to join us for our traditional Red Lion Inn dinner (fourth year!) along with Annie.

So, happy Easter everyone.  We made it.  Love from up here.

  

Oh, and ...

Here's a picture of me with my "house" at Canford -- I'm in the front row at the left in the lighter suit:

http://www.oc-photos.com/proddetail.asp?prod=ELR6906

my roommate and still good friend Paul Mitchell is on my right.

Here's a picture of the "Second IV" rugby team:

http://www.oc-photos.com/proddetail.asp?prod=ELR6826

I am at the far left front. My friend John Hoole is the captain; he did a year at Lawrenceville when I was a freshman at Princeton.

About those Mesopotamian sculptures in John's London post ...

John's post about London mentions some Mesopotamian sculptures, and thereby hangs a tale.

The school I attended in England, Canford, was housed in part in an older English manor house designed by Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament and also Highclere Manor, the site of Downton Abbey. (If you go to the school's website, you will see that the highest part of the back of the house is an octagonal tower; my study was at the top of that tower.)

Set at the end of a long cloister was the "tuck shop," English slang for a place where students can buy snacks, drinks, etc. On the walls of the shop were a number of plaster casts of Mesopotamian and Babylonian bas-reliefs, copies of sculptures collected by Lord and Lady Wimborne in the nineteenth century. (In one Downton Abbey episode, mention is made of a party hosted by lady Wimborne!) As they are wont to do, students had scribbled various graffiti on these casts. None of us knew or cared a whit about them.

Well, a few years later, a young assistant professor from Yale came to the school at the beginning of a quest to try to find out what had happened to the originals. He took a look at the casts, and – they weren't casts at all, but the ancient originals! Needless to say, the tuck shop was promptly relocated elsewhere and the sculptures carefully cleaned by a team from the British Museum. Over a period of several years, they were auctioned off, some to the British Museum and some to the Metropolitan in New York, and the abundant proceeds were used to pay for a large capital expansion of Canford, including the construction of several dormitories to house newly admitted girls.

Germanophiles

I have long wanted to go to Berlin and it was surely worth it. It's also one place where both of my children had visited before I did. We had a lovely week of short or no lines, decent but chilly weather and did a great deal of walking. This is my fifth time in Germany and I enjoy this country a lot.

One thing that is very striking about the country and its capital city is that you are never far from its twentieth century history. While the reasons for this are mostly obvious, it is also noteworthy that in contrast to the other genocidal regimes of those times, the Germans are pretty much alone in memorializing their bad deeds for all to see and ponder. There is evidence all over the City of the Nazi era: the so-called Holocaust Memorial and the Judisches (Jewish) Museum (both designed by American architects), and the one remaining example of Nazi monstrosity architecture, the Luftwaffe Ministry, which is now (ironically?) home to the Finance and Tax Ministry. All over the City, and you have to look for them, are "stumble stones," small bronze cobblestone shaped markers which memorialize the names and life dates of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, set into the pavements at their former homes. One historical exhibit says that 92% of the buildings in the City were destroyed or badly damaged in the war, so there is a lot of newer architecture. We spent most of one day at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp about a half hour north of the city, a very moving memorial to those victims, but also used as a prison camp by the Soviets for several years after the end of WW II.

I was less aware of and prepared for the extraordinary suffering and dislocation caused by the Cold War divisions and the Berlin Wall. Huge swaths of the City – apartments, offices, churches, cemeteries – were demolished and removed to make way for the 100 yard wide path of wall, dead-man's land, and barbed wire put up to surround West Berlin to stop the exodus of East Germans – nearly two million by the time the wall went up. All over Berlin are strips of paving stones set into streets and sidewalks to mark the path of the wall. Life behind the wall was grim: one in six East Germans either worked for or informed for the secret police, the Stasi.

So it is in one sense a shame that this relatively short period is such a blot on an otherwise fascinating history and ample supply of marvelous architecture and culture. We saw lots of both, including a day trip to Potsdam to visit the lavish "summer palaces" of the Kings of Prussia and later the German Emperors. (Germany did not become a unified country until 1871.) We saw some extraordinary antiquities and art in several museums.

It's a nice place to visit. You can walk to much of what you want to see, the U-Bahn (mostly underground) and S-Bahn (mostly elevated) system covers the entire city and suburbs, the people are friendly and most speak excellent English, and there are lots of very good restaurants. We had great dinners. I don't know why, but in comparison to other major European capitols, especially London and Paris, Berlin is awfully cheap. That makes it all the more worthwhile.

Anglophiles

First, a weather report.  I just got off the phone with David and Paula, and they reported they had 7 inches of the white stuff, the heavy, wet version that he recalled Pop naming "heart attack snow."  While the temperatures here got up to the 50s yesterday, the ice was still so thick I saw 8 trucks on the lake yesterday.  The snow Rochestter got was pouring rain here, but not enough to melt the snow in the yard.  Not spring yet.

But, we did get a glimpse of what's ahead this past week when we went to a warmer climate.  Not south, but north (and east) where the Gulf Stream ends.  London was still chilly, but it was nice to be outside without a hat or gloves.  But, that wasn't the best part.  That was reserved for seeing Joe, and Annie who had arrived a few days before us.  Joe was a great host, and was able to take some time off from a busy work schedule to take us on some walking tours down to the Thames, Buckingham Palace, lunch in the Parliament, Greenwich Maritime Museum, Jack the Ripper's neighborhood (that I ad read about at UMass,) Trafalgar Square and St. Paul's Cathedral.  He has a loft-type apartment near a couple of local pubs!  We also met up with two of his mates, one from his boyhood days in Durban and one from Ottawa.  Mary, Annie and I also went to the British National Museum which climbed to to the top of our personal rankings of world class museums.  We saw there the Elgin Marbles (Parthenon), and incredible Mesopotamian sculptures, probably a little controversial now as those countries want them back.   

I should mention as well the soccer game.  I met up with members of the 1974 Princeton soccer team I played on, for the weekend which included a dinner and then a Manchester United football game.  I have been to World Cup games, professional and college games in the U.S. and outside, and to Mexico-U.S. games; nothing prepared me for these fans.  I think you could draw a direct line from the Roman gladiator fans to these guys.  I saw only a couple of women; the men sang songs, on cue, throughout the game, laced with obscenities, about the other team, about their own team, about the refs.  My real problem, though, was I was not sure they were singing or speaking English.  I had to ask one guy near me to repeat his request, which went something like "Make sure no one nicks my seat, mate" when he left to rid himself of a few of the pints he had been drinking before the game (no alcohol within eyesight of the field).  You can bet I let no one near his seat for fear of the consequences afterwards.  We lived to tell many tales and had many laughs. 

Enough of London. I am looking forward to hearing of Peter and Janet's trip to Berlin, which we saw a few pictures of on facebook.  We also saw a few photos of Jeffrey on the road, in California I believe again. We've seen a number of photos of Auden as well, including this one with her Aunt Claire, who was home from college for spring break

Speaking of travel, Margaret and Andrew went to Miami for a long weekend, and Margaret was ready to move there.  That's what happens on a good vacation,  Their wedding plans are proceeding, even if she is plugging through school and work at the same time.]

Annie had big news at school; she and a few classmates had entered a consultant cybermetrics competition on recruiting and selection procedures for Teach for America, and her team was chosen as a finalist to present in Philadelphia this past weekend at a conference on "People Analytics."  Sounds like applying Moneyball type statistics to the field of talent selection  She said her team presented for the General Manager of the Philadelphia Eagles, Google and others.  Different world (I'm not sure I got all the terms right Annie.)

So, we hope everyone is doing well, and getting ready for green.  And I'm not talking tax rebates.

Love from up here.  

Not spring yet

But almost there.  And I'm so excited I had to share it with Pops Weekly Letter.  I just got back from a walk and see signs, little ones, that are hopeful.  Just the fact that I was out for a walk, was one, and joined by at least two other people.  And there's more.  I saw bicycles and heard the pounding of a basketball outdoors.  Even some birds, other than crows. This week we saw the temperature climb above freezing for the first time in weeks.  And we were even able to go outside without a coat or gloves.   And, of course, the fact that it's light later helps a lot.  It means it will be dark when we leave the house, but I think I can say with some confidence that that won't be lasting long.

Of course the fact that there were 13 trucks on the lake tonight means we have a ways to go, especially with snow scheduled for later this week.  But I'm ready to mow some grass!  We have been so eager for that moment, that we have started to fill up our summer with plans, and they all have a common theme: water.  Assateague, Green Lake, Lake George.  What's wrong with the lake across the street?  Nothing, but it's missing you all.

Mary had good news on her tutoring front as the young boy she's been working with has made great progress, getting close to grade level in math and reading.  Looks like she will be able to pick up working with his two older brothers as well.  

We have a couple of late birthday wishes for Daniel and Lur.  Hope you each  had spectacular days.  

A short one this week, but had to share with you our springtime feelings.

Love from up here.

And the award goes to

12 Years a Slave, Matthew McConaughey, cate Blanchett, Lipita N'Yongo, and Jared Leto.  Place your bets.  I'm out on a limb here, hours before the ceremony.  Just like my bets before the Super Bowl, when I correctly called the Broncos defeating the Seahawks by 35-13.  

At least it's March, even if the signs on the New Jersey Turnpike were all about an impending snowstorm.  March is supposed to come in like a lion.  Maybe not like a roaring lion, attacking every antelope within a 100 mile radius.  We set a record for heating consumption and bill for the month of February.  Not a surprise at all.

You may ask why we were on the New Jersey Turnpike. Or, you are probably not asking at all but guess what!  I'm going to tell you.  Tell you that we went down to DC for a meeting on our Gabon project (we're trying to go back next year to fix up a school Peace Corps built in the 1960s).  While there, though, we met with friends from Peru, from Mary's school, from the State Department and, best of all, with Margaret and Andrew.  They are busy with work and school and with preparations.  They had been up in Lancaster the week before scouting out the court where they will be married.

On the way home, we stopped in NYC to see Annie who is also very busy with school.  She is about to start another internship with a program called the Fortune Society, an organization that helps prisoners re-enter society.  Annie will be doing some mediation work there.

Last week, Dan Boyle came up for the weekend, and we had a dinner with the Michael Boyle family and John and Marilyn.  We set a table for 15, which was kind of hard, but it was a wonderful get-together.  John and Marilyn left this weekend for Florida, and with any luck we'll visit them in April.

A nature note:  we have seen many animals in our yard, but Dan spotted a big fox walking gingerly over the crusty snow across the yard.  We wondered if he was looking for the kitty.  He looked pretty healthy for such a tough winter with so much snow cover.

The news from Dundee, and pretty much everywhere, is all COLD.  Daniel is closing out a great basketball season, and Claire was able to secure a position as an RA for next year.  Way to go.

Has this ever happened to you?  I was driving home from Amherst the other day, and I got a text saying "I'm in front of you."  Turns out it was Robbie, Colleen's son, who had spotted me pulling out of Dunkin Donuts.  I am pretty sure he has voice activated texting.

Mary told me today that in two weeks we will be in London, to see Joe. On the one had, it's wonderful we'll see him soon.  On the other hand, it means the first draft of my thesis will be done.  Yikes.

And on that note, back to the studies.  Happy March.

Love from up here.