Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The Wonder Blog


My cultural probe box greets me
A few weeks ago, a student at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (yes, it's a long name for a place to work - we call it DJCAD)  took to the email listserv asking for volunteers for his senior project on Wonder.  His methodology was the cultural probe, which, to my knowledge, is a little bit like anthropology in a box or an envelope; no ethnographer doing interviews, but a variety of materials to think about, and to respond to through various means.  I got a disposable camera to snap pictures of everyday wonder, a wee diary to record information about my "wonder camera" snaps and other thoughts, an instruction to write a letter to my childhood self about wonder, and a set of postcards with images to which I was to record my responses. The last bit, which I want to share here, asked me to put together a collection of images related to wonder.  The instructions for this were very object-focused, and as I tried to collect the images, I found out that I am not a terribly object-focused person (though Paul would disagree, given my pack-rat nature...I hang onto things but I don't really care about them, I guess). Below are the images I chose, with the prompt in the caption:

Evokes a sense of wonder (2)



Evokes a sense of wonder (1)












The object on the left is a glass block commemorating the christening of  a ship at the Newport News Shipyard. My dad gave it to me when I was 4 or 5. It is also a prism, and is currently on my daughters' windowsill to make rainbows when it's sunny.  The object on the right is a partly finished sock monkey. I make sock monkeys for babies - if you know me, your child may have one! This one is being co-sewn by Audrey and I for her teacher who's set to go out on maternity leave in December.

Environment that evokes a sense of wonder


East Sands beach, St. Andrews.  I like it because beaches are sources of rocks and shells (see later picture) and also because of the St. Andrews Cathedral in the background - wonderful architecture.

Object you do not tire of exploring: rocks and shells!

Object that brings you joy
 Paul made this for Valentines Day one year early in our marriage, a little sculpture with our initials.

Object you find beautiful for its aesthetics: part of my egg collection
Object you find beautiful for its intrinsic qualities: one of Claire's first recognizable drawings
Drawn just a few days before her third birthday, she says it's a bug eating an apple and darned if it doesn't look like that.

An object that inspires joy and discovery: books, of course!
I didn't include these in my image collection but they are a few more wonderful things:
Audrey trimming the Christmas tree, December 2013
A rainbow that ended on Magdalen Green near our house, October 2014

I hope you've enjoyed a peek into my Wonder Blog.  Please leave a comment about the things or environments you find wonderful!

Thursday, October 23, 2014

On the Road Again: Dundee to Bath and Back Again

It's the October holidays, so it is time to stop climbing the walls, and get out of town.  In Scotland, holidays mean 2 weeks off school for the kids, and though I usually can't take quite that much time, I did take a week.  This was plenty of time to drive down to Bath, meet up with my parents, tour around, completely wear them out, and send them back to the States.

I say "we" drove, but really it was Paul *now a licensed UK driver* who drove our rented minivan (called a "full size MPV" in the UK, reflecting that is a much larger car than you typically see on the road) from Dundee to Bath.  Now, the UK is a small country.  We drove across Scotland and almost down to the Southwestern corner, and it took approximately 8.5 hours (with stops).  Try THAT in the United States.  Leaving D.C., you'd still be in Virginia! From Tucson, you'd only make it to Albuquerque. It was still a long drive, and we laid down the law to the girls.  "Look," Paul said, "This is going to be a long drive.  It's going to be boring. I don't want to hear about it. This is part of the family vacation, the long, boring getting-there-and-coming-back part. No one will ask "Are we there yet?" Do you understand?"  To their credit, they mostly didn't ask.

And of course once we got to Bath and found Nana and Papa already there, all the long boring hours were forgotten.  The weather cooperated - mostly - which is to say it was mainly cloudy, with strategically timed rainstorms that coincided with our indoor activities. We even had a little sun, pulling off all out raincoats and sweaters to soak in the rays and the 17-degree temperatures (practically 63 degrees - considering it's already autumn in Dundee and about 10-11 (50ish) degrees there, it was balmy!)

Zipping about in our trusty minivan we hopped through history in and around Bath - back to Prehistory at Stonehenge (Paul: I can't live in the UK and NOT visit Stonehenge; he was suitably impressed) and Avebury (where you can actually get close to the stones, and the sheep...)


..through Roman times (the Roman Baths, in the city of Bath itself),



 the 12th-15th centuries (Wells Cathedral) in Wells,



the 17th-19th centuries (Bath Abbey) back in Bath,

and finally to the 1960's at Longleat, with trippy murals by Lord Bath (not pictured, but see here for examples), a hall of mirrors, and the first drive-thru Safari park outside of Africa (opened in 1966).

   
 











When it was finally time to go home, it was an even longer drive, as we did it all in one day instead of splitting it up.  What I appreciated about the British motorway system on the way home, however, was its optimism.  Every time they posted a sign, they only told you about the nearby towns. "Preston 25 miles" it would say, cheerily. Anything further away than about 30 miles just fell into a large category, with a helpful arrow: "The Midlands" "the North."  This would never fly in the United States - what do you mean, The North? I want to know how far it is to Minnesota - never mind that I'm in Mississippi! When we finally started seeing the arrow marked "Scotland" we knew we were nearly home, back to our life in Dundee.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

One Year in Scotland: 3 Reasons to Think Again

1. Being Far Away Sucks.
Far, far away Soria Moria Palace shimmered like gold: painted by Theodor Kittelsen, 1900.
This is the number-one reason we are thinking again about staying in Scotland. It is far away from family, from friends, and from events (like, for example, birthdays, anniversaries, my 20th high school reunion, American Anthropological Association conferences where friends gather, and of course the Orioles finally going for World Series).  We're also too far away to help - for example, as family members recover from surgery.  People ask me if we traveled back to the United States over the summer holidays.  The answer is no, of course. Trips for all four of us are too costly to even consider.  We have TIME, but not money.  One day, maybe we'll have both.  Which brings me to the number-two reason we are thinking again...

2. It Costs a Lot to be a Foreigner.
Scottish Pounds. Yes, Scotland has its own money, they are equivalent to English pounds, but with more character.
This is actually in two parts, the first being the actual costs of coming to and staying in the UK.  Although the University hired me, and paid for some relocation costs, they did not pay for even my visa costs.  And it was not just me who needed a visa.  In order to come work here for 2 years, we (okay, full disclosure, my dad) paid $800 for each of us - including the two year old! - to come here. While I'm here, I also don't have a pension plan that transfers back to the US ( I opted out, after reading the fine print that said, in essence "we'll try to get your money into an account you can use in the U.S."), and there are also certain benefits that people in the UK get that we do not qualify for as US citizens - for example, Child Benefit.  If you have 2 children in the UK, you qualify for approximately $55 per week to help with their care.  It may not sound like a lot but over a year it amounts to almost $3,000. The second reason it costs a lot to be a foreigner is the desire to do stuff.  It's the "Hey, we're in Europe, when will we get here again, let's take advantage of it!" Except it really is not that cheap to go to Europe for 4 people - even cheap flights add up.  Even just traveling around Scotland is not so cheap if you want to stay anywhere for any length of time during the times you can actually go (i.e., when kids off school).  When thinking about "living overseas" in the abstract, there's sort of a  myth of an eternal vacation - but I'm at work, the kids are in school, and we're trying to travel at peak times just like everyone else in the UK. And of course, there's also...

3. The Weather.
View from the 7th floor of the building where I work, toward St. Peter's Free Church, the River Tay and the Tay Rail Bridge.
Dundee advertises itself the sunniest city in Scotland.  And, it probably is, given what I've heard about Glasgow.  Even today, perhaps in an effort to make me change my mind about Point 3, it was sunny and clear.  But the truth is that it's far more likely to look like there pictures than to be beautiful and sunny.  This past Monday it was rainy and so windy that the rain was like little daggers trying to stab Audrey and I as we walked up to her school.  Umbrellas were useless (as they often are) and the wind was trying to whip our raincoats away from us.  When Scotland is clear, it's gorgeous, and I love taking the atmospheric cloud picture (see below).  But when it's rainy, it's just Scottish weather.

Tay Rail Bridge with atmospheric clouds
If you enjoyed this post, why not visit Part 1 of my One Year in Scotland series: One Year in Scotland: Five Reasons We Love It.