Posts Tagged ‘Oxford’
There *will* always be an England…
From Offbeat Earth:
As both books and classic red phone booths are becoming a thing of the past, a village in Somerset, England has merged the two rare commodities.
The bright red old phone booth was purchased for just 1 pound and remodeled as the smallest library in the world. Residents line up to swap their already read books for new ones left by other patrons. Over 100 books and a variety of movies and music CDs are available at this tiny library.
As we cull our collections, we might recall that, though teaching is known to have been done there since 1096, it was on this date in 1214 that the University of Oxford received its charter (and the head of the University, until then “magister scolarum Oxonie,” became the Chancellor). The document, delivered buy a Papal Legate to end a dispute between the school and the town, legitimized the institution, provided for the appointment of the Chancellor, and commanded the town to feast a hundred poor scholars annually.
The Charter (replete with Papal seal)
Source: Oxford University Archives
Happy Father’s Day!
Life begins at 65 (or so)…
Meet Ted Wilson.
I’m an artist, musician and good friend and widower. I started drawing at a young age because my dad did it and I got really good. All the other kids in school always liked my drawings of Dick Tracy and Krazy Kat, so I stuck with it. When I was 15 I got a job as a ghost artist for the syndicated strip “Kingsley Masterson and his Pirateens.” Then, after high school I started my own strip called “Jungle Hustle”. I plan to put some pictures of it up here some time soon.
I gave up being an artist when I met my now deceased wife Rosie because she thought it was childish. Instead, I got a job as an accountant and worked for over 40 years at Rockville Insura-best, Inc. I retired soon after Rosie died because i didn’t need as much money anymore.
Now I’m a musician in a fun band called the Ryan Montbleau Band.
Ted is also a journalist, a reviewer of… well, everything.
In each week’s edition of The Rumpus (an online zine your correspondent heartily recommends), Ted tackles an aspect of existence… This week, he gave 3 out of 5 stars to “Forest Fires.”
… There are benefits to forest fires even to those not responsible. For instance, a recently contained forest fire is a great source of freshly cooked meat. Free meat is important in today’s economic climate. Not only can one find all the regular woodland creatures, but there is also the possibility for less legal and culturally unacceptable meats. I like to keep a picnic set in the trunk of my car, ready at a moment’s notice.
On the downside, the loss of all those trees might mean hundreds of pieces of Ikea furniture the world will never be able to assemble and enjoy temporarily before discarding on a sidewalk or giving away through Craigslist to someone else who will eventually discard it on a sidewalk.
It’s also a sad time for people who live near the fire and are forced to evacuate their homes. But at least it causes them to really evaluate what’s important in their lives by reducing their belongings to the essentials. It’s a great way to purge.
While forest fires can be bad, they’re not nearly the dire experiences Smokey the Bear makes them out to be.
Next week he’ll be reviewing Garth Brooks.
And while at The Rumpus, Dear Readers, do check out the resident cartoonists, among them the delightful Lucas Adams…
As we look again at the elderly gentleman in the seat next to ours, we might recall that it was on this date in 1829 that the first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge was rowed. (Oxford won).
The tradition began with two friends: Charles Merivale, a student at Cambridge, and his Harrow schoolfriend Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth), who was at Oxford. Merivale and Cambridge sent a challenge to Oxford –and so the practice was born which has continued to the present day, by which the loser of the previous year’s race challenges the opposition to a re-match.
The first Boat Race took place at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire; contemporary newspapers report that a crowd of twenty thousand traveled to watch. Shortly thereafter, the race was moved to Putney, where it has become an annual tradition. But the first fixture was such a resounding success that the people of Henley later decided to organize a regatta of their own, the event now known as the Henley Royal Regatta.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery…
Sarah Johnson, a reference librarian at Eastern Illinois University, and keeper of Reading the Past, began to notice some striking similarities in the cover art of books she was reviewing. She began to collect examples, and viola– Reusable Cover Art, from whence, the example above.
Click through for many other striking (and often, amusingly ironic) resemblances– and all the way to the bottom of the gallery for a nifty set of links to even more.
(Thanks to reader NM)
As we contemplate Shepard Fairey’s predicament, we might recall that it was on this date in 1884 that the first edition of The Oxford English Dictionary was published. Edited by James Murray (“The Professor” in Simon Winchester’s wonderful The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary), it was originally a project of the Philological Society of London, devoted to cataloging the English words that had evaded inclusion in then-current dictionaries. The first edition had the benefit of 27 years of work, by dozens of contributors; it sold 4,000 copies.
James Murray in the Scriptorium, the home of the OED,
on Banbury Road in Oxford (source)
Ground Control to Major John…
Centuries before Neil Armstrong and crew made it– and indeed several years before a falling apple set Isaac Newton to the description of gravity– John Wilkins, a founder of The Royal Society (and a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell) drafted plans for an expedition to the moon.
Wilkins believed that we are held on Earth by a form of magnetism. His observations of clouds suggested to him that if man could reach an altitude of just 20 miles, he could be free of this force and be able to fly through space. So he drafted plans for a real “spaceship,” a flying machine designed like a ship but with a powerful spring, clockwork gears, and a set of wings (covered with feathers from high-flying birds such as swans or geese). He planned to use gunpowder as a primitive form of internal combustion engine.
His plan was materially less costly than NASA’s. He reckoned that ten or 20 men could club together, spending 20 guineas each, to employ a good blacksmith to assemble such a flying machine from his plans. Another area of economy was food: Wilkins was convinced by suggestions that people could go long periods without eating, and imagined that in space, free of Earth’s “magnetism”, there would be no pull on travellers’ digestive organs to make them hungry.
Similarly, breathing presented no problem. It was known that mountaineers suffered breathlessness at high altitude. Wilkins said this was because their lungs were not used to breathing the pure air breathed by angels. In time his astronauts would get used to it and so be able to breathe on their voyage to the Moon.
Records show that Wilkins did in fact experiment in building flying machines with another leading scientist of the age, Robert Hooke, in the gardens of Wadham College, Oxford, around 1654. But by the 1660s, he began to realize that space travel was not as straightforward as he had imagined.
Readers can find the whole story at SkyMania.com…
As we raise our sights, we might we might smile to recall that this is the birthday (1844) of another notable Oxonian, William Archibald Spooner, an Anglican clergyman who became Warden of New College, Oxford… Spooner, the personification of the addled, absent-minded professor, gave us the concept of “Spoonerisms”– the reversal of the opening sounds of words on a phrase– as he (allegedly) uttered such immortals as:
(In a sermon) “The Lord is a shoving leopard”
(To a callow student) “You have hissed all my mystery lectures, and were caught fighting a liar in the quad. Having tasted two worms, you will leave by the next town drain”
(At a high table dinner) “Let us raise our glasses to the queer old Dean”
(On preparations for a patriotic occasion) “We’ll have the hags flung out”
Spooner (again, supposedly) once invited a faculty member to tea “to welcome our new archaeology Fellow.” “But, sir,” the man replied, “I am our new archaeology Fellow.” “Never mind,” Spooner said, “Come all the same.”
Spooner (by Leslie Hart, for Spy); source: Art.com
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