Fountain & London

I have a friend who suggested to me with a tongue-in-cheek wink and nudge that perhaps the reason I'm posting non-current stuff in my blog (aside from the fact that I have not been all that active with my camera of late) is that I'm kind of subconsciously evaluating some of my past experiences in light of my current situation. Hmm, I said. I suppose that could be.

Fun pop psychology question, that.

And so, what is my current situation, you might ask? Good question. Make a comment or send me an email if you want to know and I'll either address it in a later post or deal with it on a one-off basis. :-)

Now, on to the question that I'm really interested in today. Look at this picture below before you look at any of the others. Try and figure out what it is. And then look at the next picture (which answers the question) and tell me if the two fit together. Here's what I mean. When I took this closeup, I thought it could be a very cool picture...and it is...at least in my mind. But standing alone, I think it's a little abstract. That is, the casual viewer would be like, "what the hell is that" rather than, "oh, that's a cool picture of a 'x'". Well anyways. What do you think?


Here is the source picture. It's a fountain/sculpture thingy that stands (or stood) in the center of the Salisbury Cathedral:

Shoot! I almost forgot one of the primary reasons we went to Salisbury Cathedral!! They have a copy of the Magna Carta there...which if you are a student of history at all, you know that it is an ancestor document to our own US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was quite a remarkable experience to look at this ancient piece of paper...just a piece of glass and some inert gas between me and history. Wow.

The last day of my 10 day trip was spent in London. I walked and bussed all over that city in one day...it was a bit of a whirlwind, but SO worth it. Totally fell in love with the place. If you walk out the front door of the hotel in which I was staying and make a couple of lefts, you end up walking out onto Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, which were just lovely in May. These two greenspaces seemed to me somewhat analagous to Central Park in Manhattan in that they are smack dab in the middle of city-ness. The below photo was taken on one of the city streets immediately to the east of Hyde Park. I noticed a traffic jam as I was walking toward my hotel, and then lo and behold what should appear:


Pretty cool, huh?

Decider...?

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense."

—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. April 18, 2006

...

God help us.

Stonehenge

I was just looking back through these pictures I'm about to post today & realized that really none of them are all that compelling...

I really like this one because of the moody sky:


The above picture is the scene you see across the street from Stonehenge.

Seriously though, how many of these have we seen? Bah. I'm posting it anyways. See what you can do about it!


On that same day we went to the "city" of Salisbury (no relation to the crappy cafeteria dish of the same name). Did you know that in the UK the designation of "city" is determined not by whether or not the area has a certain population density, but by virtue of the fact that it has a cathedral? Well, it's true.

So, here's my best Bono impression outside a pub in the city of Salisbury:


Which, in case you hadn't guessed, is the place from which the next batch of pictures is coming.

Corfe Castle Part II

So I was surfing some friends' blogs this morning, and ran across a new word. My "virtual" friend Erik referenced the word "defenestration" as he wrote about some music that made him particularly happy. Thankfully he provided a link to a definition for those of us intellectual midgets who find themselves regarding his tower of intellectual mastery...and I ended up laughing out loud when I saw the definition. My roomate said "what?" and I explained to him what I just explained to you. And he said "ah yes, as in the Defenestration of Prague!" And he proceeded to give me an etymological breakdown of the word just right off the top of his head.

I swear I am not making this up.

So, now, thoroughly humbled, I will take you back to our regularly scheduled programming of things I can actually do reasonably well...in this case taking pretty pictures of inanimate objects.

The very green spring of the English countryside from Corfe Castle:


A view of Corfe Village from the castle:


On the way back down to where we had parked our car, I came across this, which looks to me like it ought to be a postcard:


And here is a hint of things to come. Can anyone identify where these birds are perched?


Have fun & stay safe until next time....

Corfe Castle Part I

When I was in the UK a couple of years ago, I had a religious experience in a pub. A friend (new friend, but friend none the less) was playing with his blues band at a lovely little pub called The Greyhound Inn. At some point during the evening, after having had a couple pints, I went to use the loo (restroom). On my way back to the main room of the pub, I made a wrong turn and ended up on the back patio of the Greyhound. Looming behind the pub in the indigo darkness, was a monstrous shape...and I felt the pull in my gut that happens when there is something magical about to happen.

Here is a shot of the same silhouette I saw that night...during the daytime when we went back a few days later:

The place is called Corfe Castle. If you have any interest in its history you can find it here. The short story is that it was a royal residence that was destroyed by Parliamentary engineers in a fit of democratic zeal. I took three rolls of film there. It was a blast. My friends were *very* patient with me!


Check out how thick the walls are! You can see Corfe Village and the town church in the distance here:


Not only was it a phenomenally picturesque area...but it was also one of the most lovely days we had during the 10 days we were in the UK.


More pictures of the surrounding areas to come!