Christmas 2014

Our first Christmas in Yorkshire is also our first Christmas in the UK

 Christmas Breakfast

 Christmas Dinner

Victoria Sponge

My cheeky wife taking a picture of me watching the Queen's Christmas Message without my knowledge...

Christmas in Yorkshire

In preparation for our first Christmas in the UK, we got a tree.

It seemed the logical thing to do

There is a Taoist story that goes like this: This farmer had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to console over his terrible loss. The farmer said, "What makes you think it is so terrible?" A month later, the horse came home--this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer's good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, "What makes you think this is good fortune?" The farmer's son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, "What makes you think it is bad?" A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer's son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. "What makes you think this is good?" said the farmer.

It is not a literal factual story. But it still tells a truth. I could throw a maxim at you instead like: things are not always as they appear. But that does not capture the truth in the same way as the story. We relate to the story better. It is richer and fills the multidimensional space of our existence better than a one-dimensional maxim. It feels like something that we have experienced.

Many leading the advance of science across Europe were deep religious thinkers. Their initial instinct to relegate myth to the space between scientific-logical fact led us to the path we are on today. That path sees literal facts as the only vessels for truth. So much so, that we now have religions that think that the only way to value their sacred texts of mythical truths is by claiming that they are literally true.

The past is in the past, and we have inherited the world we have inherited. We are missing out on lots of accumulated wisdom if we simply discard everything that is not literal scientific facts. It is up to us to reclaim the value of myth and transcendence to tell truths that are not captured by empirical formulas. Some may claim that reaching for the mythical is a waste, perhaps even evil. But I know what thoughts wander through this mind of mine, and I can say with confidence that you would not want to know the version of me that does not submit himself regularly to something beyond himself. I do not relish a world where there is no room for transcendence, whether that realm is led by new atheists or fundamentalist creationists.

Photo Credits

Sarek
Birth of Laozi
Phoenix

Other Credits

The title is Sarek from Star Trek's Journey to Babel.
The Taoist Farmer is a traditional tale.
My oversimplified twist on how we got here was heavily influenced by Karen Armstrong's The Case for God.

Touristy Weekends

We have sampled many delights since moving to Yorkshire. These include York Minster with loads amazing features including of intact tombs (in London, if these are present at all, they will have their heads and arms missing). They are restoring the east window, and it is covered at the moment. At first, you think this is a disappointment, but they have this awesome display nearby where they rotate individual backlit glass panels from the window as they are restored and you can see the amazing detail up close. Fantastic opportunity.

Also in York, we saw Holy Trinity Goodramgate, which has intact reformation box pews and a 12th chancel complete with hagioscope. It was declared redundant in 1971.

We visited the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, which is very close by. It was founded in 1152 and dissolved in 1539.  I am standing next to the pillar: it's big.

And also Brimham Rocks, a moor with interesting rock formations, which is a bit further away.

Photo Credits

York Minster Tomb: Wikipedia

Holy Trinity Interior: The Churches Conservation Trust

Kirkstall Abbey: My Beloved

Brimham Rocks: My Beloved & I

The Yorkshire Flat

Entry

 Living Room

Kitchen 

Dining Area

Toilet

Office

Bedroom

En Suite

Beauty in the Land

I drove to Skipton on Tuesday for a job interview and I saw the most beautiful country on the drive over.  I am highly suspicious that there maybe something in the water, or maybe some kind of bewitching, or maybe even a Yorkshire blood transfusion given me in the night without my knowledge.   Reason tells me that surely I have seen country as beautiful, I mean I've travelled the world!  But when I'm looking at it, my sentiment cannot conceive a landscape more magnificent.  I should have the accent by October then…

Photo Credit:
Yorkshire.com

Our first accidental discovery in Leeds

On Saturday, we head into Leeds to top up Dr. My Beloved Wife's teaching attire, and we just happened upon the St John the Evangelist's Church building having its 350th anniversary.  It is loaded with restored 17th century woodwork and has a very interesting double nave/chancel interior.  I have never seen anything like it.  My beloved pointed out that if it were not for the Great Fire and the Blitz, all those churches in London would have their interiors intact like this one... mind officially blown.  The stained glass is 19th century and includes a memorial of the man who financed the building of the church sneaking gold hidden in a tankard into Charles I whilst he was being held prisoner in Leeds.  Considering the circumstances, I wonder if he wasn't better off with the ale?

Photo Credits

The Churches Conservation Trust

Car

We are no longer in London and I am going to need a car to work, so I went to a Jaguar dealership...

and got a Vauxhall Corsa!

Photo Credit: Tasker & Lacy

Tavares

Back in 2012, I passed a kidney stone.   Almost to the day, I was booked for a routine kidney scan 2 years later.  In the waiting room was playing SmoothRadio… the Tavares version of More Than a Woman came on and whoosh, I was in a space-time wormhole. Anyone old enough will be aware of the requisite forcefield around memories from the late 1970s: it's there for everyone's protection.

The string of Tavares pop hits were unremarkable for me at the time.  It wasn't until almost a decade later that Tavares became an anchor to my hometown of New Bedford, when a schoolmate made a casual mention of the group while he was tuning his ham radio into a transmitter on The Azores. He warned that if Tavares were rehearsing, we would have to do the radio some other time. The perplexed look on my face prompted the response: they live next door and when they rehearse, all you can hear is them.

Three decades and 3,200 miles away from that moment all I can hear is Tavares again.   And they highlight so much about where I am and from where I came.  In the wormhole, I am in multiple places and times at once:  I'm in New Bedford, that city full of Portuguese immigrants from various island communities, mine The Azores, theirs Cape Verde; I'm in a metropolis on this giant island by way of my Portuguese heritage; I'm in my teens; I'm in my midlife; I'm in a room agonising in so much pain I could not even contemplate fear, I'm in a hospital gazing out of a wormhole compromised of sonorous tethers of an American family of Cape Verdean descent.

Lisboa!

I got to Lisbon to present at a conference for work.  It was fantastic.  Here are some of the sites my colleague Dante & I saw.  He took all the photographs except for the last one, which was taken by one of the conference volunteers.

…all but the recollection that such things had been.

The next stop on the adventure is   Leeds. It all happened in the blink of an eye. My wife interviewed on Wednesday, secured the job on Thursday… and just like that we are off to Leeds. 200 miles north of London, Leeds is in West Yorkshire and is home to my favourite English accent (until we move again, anyway). Sadly, Leeds is famous for shopping, banking, and the start of this years Tour de France (somebody apparently needs a geography lesson).

But all is not lost because according to an Holiday Inn Express website, the top 10 Leeds attractions are Pole Position Indoor Karting, Tropical World, Harewood House (a Georgian mansion), Leeds Kirkgate Market (an Edwardian building), Diggerland (an amusement park), Charlotte's Ice Cream Parlour, the National Coal Mining Museum, Xscape Yorkshire (rock climbing and skiing???), Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Ilkley Toy Museum.



...Farewell, London, for the present; is that all?

Photo credits:

Leeds Skyline
Sculpture Garden
Kirkstall Abbey

Suffrage

I voted in my first election on this side of the Atlantic on Thursday. EU citizens get to vote for MEP and in the local government elections. I was shocked how low key it was. It was in a free church hall and even with the huge polling station sign strung up next to the open door, I was in serious doubt I was in the right place until someone walked out.… no campaigners… no signs…. No convoluted machinery, just a very simple paper ballot that you mark with an X in a large square box with a pencil. A simple act, probably makes no difference especially as I am in a political stronghold. But it filled me with buzz to join the political process and it made me smile.

Photo Credit: Welwyn Hatfield Times

What I saw one Wednesday in April on my way to work

Lots of blue today in the garden to our block of flats

The pathway out of the block feels a bit like an air shaft

The hedge separating our garden from the footpath

Graffiti on the railroad bridge

What's left of a roof on a railroad building next to the railroad bridge

Information display I keep looking at to see if my 1st train will be on time

A person sleeping rough in a subway exit from the station of my 2nd train

View of St George Wharf from the platform waiting for my 3rd train

The train blocking my view of St George Wharf, almost

RIverside building of a property bubble seen from inside a train

Clapham Junction Railway Station seen from inside a train

Waiting for a bus outside the railway station

And another one rides the bus

A blossoming tree not quite concealing the church on the corner

The subway to cross the street