Autumn is icumen in

Jami decided that nobody in the house still played with the wooden kitchen set we had in the sun room (cue sniffs from Thomas and Simon) and gave it away, thus clearing the way for repurposing the room as a knitting paradise. Now all she needs is a partner in crime...

Meanwhile, the temperature is dropping...

...so it's time for the first fire of the Fall!

I think this shot conveys the schizophrenic nature of the season:

Sick

Well, we've settled into a sort of routine. Jami is teaching two classes online and one seminar that meets on Monday. Thomas is in school in White Lake (about 45 minutes drive from home) six days a week (well, five and a half - see previous post) and usually whichever parent drives him there stays there, swimming in their pool and pretending to work in their libraries (there are three, all amazingly good, in a five mile radius). Frederick is going to Valley with his new "aide," JacQuelyn. Meanwhile, very much out of the routine, his previous aide, well, basically third parent, Emily, just became a mother this week to Ava Lynn!

We were hoping to visit Ava and parents today but this week a sickness has been ravaging the household and Frederick is the last and most serious victim and (shocking indeed) is even off his food! See below:

The leaves are starting to turn and there's a definite nip in the air. Air conditioners are being removed from bedroom windows and the pool is sitting unused, collecting leaves, soon to be drained. Further news as events warrant.

The Space Pool

As part of the International Academy experience, Thomas had to sign up for electives, which in the IA jargon are referred to as "enrichments". His first choice was for something called "Flash" which is nothing to do with speed or exhibitionism, but a type of computer animation. The bad part is that it's at 8 AM on a Saturday, at his school (of course) which is 45 minutes away. We managed to get to the building exactly on time, but found every entrance locked. Finally as a last resort we went in the pool, which turns out to be attached to the building he needed to be in and, in fact, the secret entrance. He made it to class 20 minutes late, but the instructor reassured him that they hadn't really got started yet. As usual I went for a swim, and this time I took snaps of the space-themed kiddie pool to show its awesomeness. Behold!

The slide (that Frederick keeps trying to pluck up the nerve to go down) even goes outside the building - look:

Oh, and Thomas LOVED his class, so that made up for losing his Saturday sleep in.

Home, Final Thoughts

And now I am back to the routine of taking one or the other kid to school and getting ready for MY classes, which technically started last week (the online ones did, and therefore the whining began as well--I was dealing with that all last week while in England: sigh) but my senior seminar on Hegel starts on Monday so I will have to gird my loins for that this weekend. Two final thoughts about the difference between my brief stay in Oxford and my life in Flint: Oxford's stores have no public toilets, drinking fountains and handicapped access was worse than minimal. Many's the time I was beyond distressed, looking for a toilet to use, parched to the point of being seriously uncomfortable and worried about the fate of people who were struggling with wheelchairs or physical impairments. I was shocked. The toilet situation would be against federal law in the U.S. Every store either must have a public toilet or allow a customer access to the toilet used by the shop workers or they can be sued by the customer. (I know this because I worked in a shop while an undergraduate and our manager DRILLED us on toilet access law weekly to make sure we never put the store at risk of lawsuit.) I kept thinking back to when I was pregnant have needing to use a toilet about every 20 minutes--where do women GO in England? If that country was invaded by Americans, the Americans would be pissing on the shop floors in protest, I guarantee it. The other was the safety of the city. Of course this WAS Oxford which I was starting to think was England's version of Disneyworld, not the grubbiest part of London, but I didn't feel at all anxious walking around back to my hotel after dark, and that was a stretch of well over a mile, maybe nearer 2 miles, and there have been times I have been worried about being shot through the walls of my house in Flint. It's interesting what civil rights people will demand get respected and others they will allow to be trampled.

Conference Day 3 (Last day)

Today was, as the title of the blog makes clear, the last day of the conference. I feel like I should earn a medal for surviving something but I am not sure what. This has been a surreal experience, that is for sure. These 30 people--barring the woman from Benin who strongly disapproves of all conceptual analysis and only accepts empirical data collections as representations of REALITY--are an impossibly chummy collection of people. Throughout the talks, most of the people were snapping pictures of people, like we were on holiday together. Today, after lunch, a few of us got back to the conference room a bit early and while we were waiting for the rest to come back (probably most of them were in line waiting to use the women's toilet), they were snapping pictures of the room we were in. I couldn't see the point of it all and said, "What the hell are you doing? What are you going to do with all these pictures when you get home?" They all started protesting, "Show our family! Show my boyfriend!" I said, "They don't care about any of us! They don't know who we are! You're being ridiculous!" But they insisted that these photos were priceless keeepsakes, treasures to be saved forever and ever!" BAH! I say. The organizers even made us stand in front of the college door for a mass photo (actually, about 20 mass photos because everyone kept passing around their cameras). When I groaned about having to put up with all this, one woman said, "Ah, come on, get on a bit of lippy and smile!" After the party broke up, my Aussie pal, Nycole, (who I could reduce to giggle fits when things got quiet--that was my party trick) got all weepy and hugged me goodbye, telling me we will meet again. I asked, "Is that a promise or a threat?" which just got her laughing helplessly all over again. Sheesh, these people.
According to one conference mate, an American named Frank, this street is named after the famous Plato scholar, Jowett, who translated his works so well. (I have his translations.) Now, if that story isn't true, blame Frank.

After I managed to pry myself loose from the weepy women (another weeper, Liz, works at the University of Northern British Columbia, CA and invited me up ANYTIME--it's a 10 hour drive north of Vancouver (!!); can you imagine those Januaries?!?), I set off to buy various goods for The Boys. First to Blackwells because I was told to go there. Here it is, just as everyone said it would be.

Thomas requested a present, something "that better be good" and Peter suggested that I might have a chance of finding such a thing at the History of Science museum, which is here:

Once on the steps, if I turn the other way, I see this:

Or, I see this:

I DID find such a thing. But the cashier was not there and the person standing there near the cash register would not take my cash. I asked what time the museum opened tomorrow, and he said noon. I said, "SHIT!" very loudly, as I need to be on the bus by 10. I tried not to glare but he obviously felt ridiculous. "Where," I asked, "IS the cashier?" He didn't know. It seems that there were two issues: he didn't know how to work the cash drawer to get change and he didn't know where to find the item I wanted to buy. Finally, he couldn't take the stress anymore. So, he gave me change from his pocket, promising me he would restore the drawer the next day. I assured him I didn't care one way or the other what he did. "Let your conscience be your guide" was what I said. He then took the item I wanted from the display shelf because he didn't have the key to unlock the under-cabinet to get a sale item. He also promised to restore a new display item tomorrow. "If that helps you sleep at night," I said. He was clearly racked with guilt about breaking the rules, but also visibly relieved when I left. Exhausted from being up until about 2:30 last night, I then headed back to my hotel (it's about a 45 minute walk) and to eat there. I was very much hoping to have the place to myself, since it wasn't very late and I know most people in this part of the world eat later, but a massive gaggle of old men in dog's collars came in to the restaurant--about 30 of them. What the hell? Then they started singing in German!--German priests!! I didn't even think there WERE German priests anymore! They were really rowdy, too, guffawing during the whole meal. I wonder if they are going to some sort of conference in town.

Day 2 of Conference

Here are the gloves and the earrings. But, now that I look at them again, I think they are socks.

Here is a closer view of the earrings:

I put both near the door this morning, where you are supposed to put room service dishes to be carried away. The bed was made up so I know someone was in my room, and the towels all straightened, but the socks and earrings still there. Very strange. Anyway, after leaving my room this morning, I had to attend the conference from 9 until 5. It was a long and grueling day. I was also obligated to chair a session at 11 and then present my paper at 2. The chairing business is annoying, because you have to hold up a little sign 5 minutes before the end of their talk, giving them the 5 minute warning, then 3 minutes later a 2 minute warning, then a 1 minute warning and then we have to hold up a STOP sign. Besides feeling part fool and part asshole, I couldn't concentrate on what any of my three presenters were actually saying in their talks because I had to stare at my little clock the whole time, worried that I would lose track of time, run over my minutes and ruin the whole session. Then I had to manage the Q & A session, which means I had to both keep track of calling on people who were asking questions, at the same time making sure no one dominated the question sessions to give everyone a fair chance, and also make sure that questions got asked of all the people who gave a paper. It's too much!! But the worst part came when, right in the middle of it, a woman just announced, out of the blue, that everyone had suddenly gone wildly off course (and she was staring at me while she said this, as if it was all my fault), with all our talk of vague ideas and OPINIONS, when what we SHOULD be doing was presenting FACTS and HARD RESEARCH. Well, given that many of the people were analyzing poetry, film, photography, law, history, architecture, novels, philosophy...I'm not to sure what HARD FACTS they were supposed to be offering up, so that little tirade was strange. When she ended, the room was completely silent--it was very uncomfortable. A conference organizer just happened to be going through the room at the time and said something to box up and toss that comment by the wayside and then everyone moved on as if nothing had happened. But I felt it cast a bit of a pall over the event. I felt like I wore the stigma of "worst chair." (Or, I should say, I did feel that until I heard about the chair from the other conference--the "Space Conference" (which is not what you think it would be about, astronomy, but is about the use of public spaces)--that is running parallel to ours in the room next door and apparently a chair in their 9:00 session today fell asleep right in the middle of the first talk. Now THAT is a bad chair!) My talk today went well enough, though I had to compete with a raucous strimmer just outside the building. Given that all the lawns here are immaculate, I don't quite see the justification for the enthusiasm that we had to endure today but, I suppose, that is precisely how those lawns get to such a level of perfection. Fortunately I have many years of lecturing to large groups of bored students, even competing with jack hammers drilling in rooftops as they have done building repair and renovations/remodeling to French Hall, so a strimmer is nothing to me. Tomorrow, I am very glad, is the last day of this conference. I think this was a much chummier group of people than the one I met in Prague (there were some really flaky people there) but, perhaps I am just getting to old to travel, but I am still just exhausted from getting here and would really just rather be at home.

Day 1 of Conference

I slept for about 5 hours yesterday afternoon, and then was wide awake last night from starting about 10 pm (this time) until about 2 in the morning, killing time, watching various things on my computer. I wasn't really even tired then, but knew that if I didn't get SOME sleep, I would be a real mess in the morning. Then, of course, when it was 8 in the morning and I wanted to get up so I could find my way around town (to try and find this mysterious conference and see if I could find things to buy for he kids--Thomas gave strict instructions to buy him lots of things, "And they had better be good!" were his last words to me before I left, perhaps to never see him again) I was exhausted. Nonetheless, being the trooper that I am, I soldiered on and made my way around town and managed to find the bus station that I landed in yesterday (it stank more than I processed yesterday) as well as the conference site. We were given strict instructions to NOT show up early, so I went BACK into town and did find a few things to buy, none for Thomas (I am sure he will be happy to know). Finally, the hour tolled and, as when the gates of Wonka's magical chocolate factory open, excited, specially chosen academics from all over the world were allowed into this place, Mansfield College:

You can look at that grass, but don't even think about touching it, as some found out when they walked across and an old biddy came flying out of a secret recess, screeching, "Keep off the grass!" Very twee.

These friendly reminders of how to navigate the road crossings have already saved my bacon at least 8 times and I've only been here 24 hours.

How many foreign corpses had to be scraped off the roadways before someone got the bright idea for writing these words into the road?

Yesterday I mentioned that this is a city of tourists; no one actually lives here. Today I entered the culture of resident tourist and began giving out directions to lost people as if I knew what I was doing. One couple, I suspect Chinese, asked me where the river was. I had no idea, never having seen a river since being here and tried to talk them out of trying to get to a river. I had seen a greenhouse that I had just walked past and thought that was a nice thing to see and talked about that. But they insisted on finding a river. I did figure out that they were holding their map upside down, and did tell them that I knew where my hotel road was, and suggested that, if they walked in that direction only farther, perhaps they might run into some water. Who knows? They seemed happy with that possibility and set off in that direction. The conference went well enough, though by halfway through I did get very sleepy. My one serious complaint is that the "gents" get access to a rather spacious bathroom and the women (who outnumber the men in the conference by 4 to 1) have to share a single-seater, which is also the only handicapped access bathroom in the entire college. (On a side note, I did come back to my hotel room and found a pair of strange, gray gloves--or are they bizarre socks? I can't tell) laying in the room on one of the chairs. They look like woolly opera gloves. Or, as I said, socks. What's that about?) Postscript, 1 hour later: I just looked over to my left at the bedside table and noticed two little gold butterfly earrings on it that were not there when I left this morning. I would wonder if I went into someone else's room except that (1) I see all my stuff in it and, of course, (2) my key got me into it. What went on in here while I was out all day?

It Should Not Be That Difficult To Get To This Place

A very long time ago, Simon pointed out to me that there was a conference at this mysterious Mansfield College (this college whose only purpose seems to be to host these sorts of conferences every 4-6 weeks) on punishment, which is something I published on many years ago and said that, once my sabbatical kicked in next winter I wanted to get into again because I had a bunch of things hanging around that should either be published or perished. Since Simon is on sabbatical now, and I am teaching two courses on line, it seemed like a really easy time to go--even though it would be during Frederick's first week of school. "We'll have Emily to help!" we said! So I sent something off, managed to get $2,000 worth of research funding (which is almost impossible these days) locked myself into flights, hotel reservations and ridiculously expensive conference reservations. And then, of course, came the news that Emily would NOT be able to help with the first week of school. So either I had to pay back $2,000 to the office of research or go and leave Simon to his fate--which is what I did. Meanwhile, not really even wanting to go to this conference (I HATE flying, and I really don't like "interdisciplinary" conferences), I set off yesterday with no enthusiasm at all. We didn't have any terrorist attacks or horrific weather. That was the good part of the trip. Either my legs are STILL getting longer or they are incrementally shrinking the spaces between airplane rows every time I fly--never mind the space between the passengers within the rows. I remember flying when I was a teenager and LIKING the experience, and it seems to me that my legs would have been the same size, if not longer yet I don't remember getting off the plane then in excruciating pain, kneecaps shoved half-way up my thighs from being bent backwards for 7 hours, because I had to tuck my legs underneath the person's seat in front of me. Never mind that the guy next to me was a giant of a man. His hands were the size of my head. I thought only Americans came that large. But all became clear when we landed and he started speaking Russian (or some other Eastern European language--he was trying to be very secretive--as if I would understand!) into his cell phone. So he was oozed halfway into my seat most of the trip. The only consolation was that he was probably in worse pain than I was. After that warm up, the real adventure begins, of course. Because unlike in the real world where everyone owns their own car, here people have to use public transportation and everyone in London suffers from a serious case of mumble mouth. I do have to say, though, that all the public officials I talked to in London (and I think it was most of them) were extraordinarily helpful, getting me from the bus stop (what was I doing going to a bus stop when I should have been going to the subway? What a moron!) to the subway where I should be (to a new station stop--newly created just for THE OLYMPICS--did everyone notice, we had THE OLYMPICS HERE! Can you tell? THE OLYMPICS were IN TOWN! HERE! In LONDON!!), over to Paddington, up out of the bottom, back over down into the the hole, over to Victoria (lots of Kinks songs going through my head by this time--the only thing that kept me going), THEN I could get onto the bus. By then I was sick of my luggage and was ready to ditch it and buy new things when I needed them. But I figured that, since I was on the damn bus going to Oxford, all was well. NOT! I did fall asleep on the bus and had a horrible dream that I was still on the plane. It was good to wake up and realize that that wasn't true. So when we got to Oxford, which was gray and dreary and sweaty yet locals wearing many layers (only tourists have the sense to wear short sleeved shirts--maybe locals have a deep shame of upper arms?) I had to walk to my hotel. Before leaving I had the sense to print up a google maps of Oxford (which is surprising for me, I usually don't do things like that, figuring I'll just kind of smell things out) so I thought that this part would be a piece of cake. Not one single person in this town claims to know a single street name (and the streets are very badly marked) or even general directions. It doesn't help, I think, that 95% of the people here are tourists, it seems (or claim to be) but how are THEY finding their way about? Unless they are all with guided tours. Again, I resorted to asking a policeman, who said I was so sorely off route that my best bet was to go back to where I started and head out again, this time getting it right. It took about 2 1/2 hours to walk from the bus stop to the hotel, but I did find it. Here it is, tucked into a neighborhood, strangely. It's near the Dragon School. (I walked passed that as I was stumbling along with my detested luggage. I expected to hear Latin verses being sung, but didn't hear any. Slackers.):

Although I had been up forever, it was only midday, so I couldn't check in yet and so had to sit, idle. The receptionist said (trying to be helpful, "You could walk into town!" I told her I just walked FROM town, so NO THANKS, I didn't intend to walk anywhere anytime soon. They do have a restaurant attached that serves pretty good food. (I had a fruit plate that Thomas would have loved: two little strawberries, cut in half, four raspberries, and a honeydew melon, sliced and fanned out on the plate, drizzled over with raspberry sauce--very fancy presentation.) And if I pretend those are dollars and not pounds I just paid for the food, the cost wasn't too bad! (When I paid for it with my credit card--which, to my relief, works--the receptionist asked me, "Do you want to pay in pounds or dollars?" I was so confused--20 hours with no sleep didn't help--that I couldn't figure out what he meant. I now know he meant, did I want the bill stated in pounds or converted to dollars. But why would I care? VISA will convert it, anyway. But if they are going to keep the numbers fixed, I'll pay in dollars, please.)

Here is my room, in which I now sit. And, in which I plan on spending much of my time since the other papers at the conference look pretty stupid. Though, I am delighted to discover that the bar in this hotel is showing the paraolympics 24/7--which is great, because they aren't showing ANY coverage of those games in the U.S.

Tomorrow's task will be to attempt to find the conference. If I can't, well, it wasn't meant to be. I'll console myself with room service, web surfing and watching the games.