Feed the birds

More London memories! A little convoluted this time, but, bear with me.

When I leave work on my early days, I often see this flock of pigeons gathering across the street from St. Mary's. They sometimes take off in an impressive mass flight, probably frightened by a wandering cat, which is how I first noticed them. I wish I could get a photo of that, but the camera will never be out and ready when it happens, so I settled for this shot of them feeding. And today I did happen to see someone in the yard of this house, a lady who must have just set the table for them.

Probably only a few of my readers will remember the song referenced in my title. (But it's really quite lovely; you can hear it here, straight from the movie.) And this little house on the west side of San Antonio is a far cry from St. Paul's. But the sentiments seem the same, don't they?

So when the song starts up on my mental record player, you can see where the London connection comes in.

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I can't, in all practicality, get a photo of the birds in flight. But I did see them waiting for their meal this morning on a wire over the lady's house. I wonder how many times a day she puts food out for them?

Go! Spurs! Go! [and a book recommendation]

How could I not be reminded of London when I saw this football supporters' flag on the wall in my daughter's Austin home?! She and her boyfriend are big fans of Tottenham Hotspur, the north London club usually referred to by a nickname familiar in another sport to folks here in South Texas. I mean, when you root for the Spurs around here, you're usually talking about basketball. But if you can be fans of both types of Spurs, that makes you a real citizen of the world, imho.

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I'd been thinking more than usual about London anyway, before last weekend's visit to Austin. I just finished a really nifty little book by Neil Gaiman entitled Neverwhere. It's a dark and disturbing, yet wonderfully-written urban fantasy set—surprise!—in London. In particular, a subterranean London reached by way of tube stations that are like, but also unlike, their real-world counterparts.

What really makes the story fun is the author's seizing upon the linguistic peculiarities that make up so many of London's place names, especially those of the tube stations. For example, there really is an Earl holding Court (Earl's Court was my local tube stop), a Smith that Hammers out metalwork to order (Hammersmith), a bridge over literal night (Knightsbridge), a group of Black Friars that guard an important secret (obvious, right?), and many more.

Plus some fantastic scenes are set in Harrods and on board the HMS Belfast ... it's just a great— if rather twisted— tour of London.

There is a lot of violence, some rather gruesome, so I can't recommend it for everyone. But I loved it.

Having all those wonderful tube station names brought back to mind made me work my London Underground puzzle again. It was a self-souvenir I bought at the fabulous London Transport Museum. Here's its current iteration, just beginning to be solved, on my puzzle table:

I'm not finished with the London connections, though! There's a BBC mini-series (apparently the first version of Neverwhere, actually) that's sitting in my Netflix queue. I can hardly wait to see all those wonderful, memorable, locations sent up in the service of Gaiman's fertile imagination.

And how did I find out about this book? A couple of months ago I attended a World Science Fiction Convention held here in San Antonio (see my blog posts about it here) and one of the panels was "Fantastic London." I got a lot of great book recommendations for sci-fi and fantasy stories set in my favorite city. Neverwhere was just one of them.

Finally, guess where next year's WorldCon is going to be? I don't need to tell you, do I?

Whole lotta history going on

At the risk of making this a blog only about museums, I was in another one last weekend that reminded me, quality-wise, of the great ones in London.

Although this monument is pretty firmly rooted in the land of e-pluribus-unum, and even more deeply, in the good old Lone Star State.

I have been meaning to make a trip up IH-35 to Austin with museums as the focus for some time, and finally decided that the last weekend of SxSW might be a good time to do it. I mean, South By hipsters don't frequent museums, do they? So the crowds should be minimal.

And, either because my cruel hipster generalization is true, or for some other reason (the nice weather?) there were no crowds in one of Austin's best museums: The LBJ Presidential Library, shown above in all its majestic hugeness. 

At first glance, one might think that's 'way overdone. But, after a 2-3 hour visit, you realize that the guy really was in the middle of a lot of mid-twen-cen history, and maybe all those red archive boxes really are full of important stuff. And maybe it's not such an over-the-top structure after all.

On the right you can see the archives themselves, like the stacks at the British Library (you can see some nice photos of those here; wish I'd taken some like that on my visit!) My son and daughter-in-law, who were on the visit with me, provide some scale. That's a lot of archives!

While those rows and rows of the raw data of history aren't open to the public, the Library's staff has done a great job of putting up public exhibits that can show you pretty much everything you've ever wanted to know about this son of Texas.

The timeline on the main floor is a wonderful overview of LBJ's life, accomplishments, and missteps (although, to be a fair critic, it's pretty heavy on the accomplishments; but it doesn't ignore the missteps).

One of my favorite items was this letter from the Smothers Brothers, apologizing for some of their "satirical jabs" at him before he decided not to run for re-election in 1968. A very well-chosen piece of correspondence from those red boxes, it really brought a whole era—complete with its sometimes overly-strong feelings—back to life for me, as I was a big fan of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour but thought it got a bit strident in its later years. (I think if you click on the photo you'll see a larger version that's just big enough to read.)

It's a reflection of how absorbing the more detailed exhibits were on the other floors that I sort of forgot about my blogging obligations and didn't take any photos there! But if you visit the Library, you really should take them all in.

The place is definitely monumental...

...but it tells the story of a pretty much larger-than-life figure, my favorite Texas president (although I can't help but say that the competition is pretty weak). They've recently spruced up their exhibits and the place is definitely worth a visit. And it's a lot closer than London!

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I'll be blogging over at Homeland Tourist about the rest of my Austin museum-ing and sightseeing. When I get that done, you'll be able to read about it here.

Good museums always take me back....

Whenever I visit a good museum (for example the Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas) it always reminds me of my time in London, where you are practically surrounded by wonderful museums all the time.

Last weekend I had that feeling again, when I got to visit Denver's wonderful Museum of Nature and Science, and their special Pompeii exhibit.

It wasn't my first trip to this great museum. A few years ago we saw a special Titantic exhibit there that still gives me chills when I recall it.

And its regular exhibits are first-rate, too. I'm sure that their Gems & Minerals area must have been under construction when I was there before, because it was new to me. And this type of stuff is usually what I head for first in a science museum.

I was particularly impressed with the quality of the scientific side of these exhibits. Not just a lot of pretty rocks on pedestals; they display a lot of chemical and geological information alongside. Really top-notch!

And, speaking of rocks, I did make a return visit to this "gem" of a room tucked away up on the 3rd floor, accidentally discovered on my first trip to the museum. It's a collection of carved gems, minerals and other natural elements that I find endlessly enchanting.

The artist is Vasily Konovalenko, and I can confidently bet that you've never seen anything like these pieces, unless you've been to the only other exhibit of his work, in Moscow. There's just one example on the right. Check out the museum web page that I've linked to for more, and much better, photos of these unique artworks.

But the main attraction for us on this most recent visit was the Pompeii exhibit. I'd seen one about Pompeiian artifacts a few years ago in a Houston art museum, and wasn't sure if this one would show me anything new. But it did! For one thing, there were a great many more of the poignant body casts, made by filling holes made when the volcano's victims were buried in ash and then decomposed. These casts make the human element of the tragedy so very real:

Another new item was a series of computer-generated videos that give you virtual tours of some of the buildings, showing what they must have looked like in Pompeii's glory days. The climax was a very well-done visualization of the course of the eruption. Wow! Not only was it exciting and scary, but it did a very good job of explaining how the tragic day unfolded, and why so many people logically decided to stay and shelter in the city's buildings rather than fleeing. When it became obvious that's what they should have done, it was too late.

Of course, the tragedy of Pompeii resulted, ironically, in a treasure-trove of Roman artifacts and artworks, better preserved than practically anywhere else. These artifacts made up a large part of the exhibit, and there were many fascinating objects.

Isn't it hard to believe that something as beautiful as this vase survived the conflagration?

And some of the mosaics were vivid reminders of our trip to another Roman city, Bath, in the fall of 2008. The mosaics were some of my favorite items in that museum, too.

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I'll be blogging soon about other activities during my quick trip to Denver in my Hometown Tourist blog.

Two rivers, two races

I know, there's not really much similarity between the little spring-fed San Marcos River in central Texas and the mighty Thames.

But about a week and a half ago the former brought me very pleasant memories of a big event on the latter.


Not quite four years ago I attended the Great River Race in London. My friends and I watched countless boats go by on the last leg of the race, perched as we were on the Jubilee footbridge. What fun it was on that gorgeous afternoon, watching both serious and silly paddlers heading downstream from the starting point 20-some miles away in Richmond.


Then, in 2012, I went to watch my first Texas Water Safari, a much more strenuous and challenging affair, which runs from the springs that begin the San Marcos, downstream past its joining with the Guadalupe, and ending up 260 miles away on the Gulf Coast.


As anyone with a head for math is probably thinking: that's a lot more than an afternoon's entertainment, isn't it? 


Well, yes, it is. We only watched the first day's action, following a couple of our friends' boats and cheering them on at several different checkpoints.

Zoltan at Westerfield crossing

John & Kevin after the Staples Dam portage

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The Safari starts at the springs but the first good place to see a lot of the racers (130+ boats this year) is the Rio Vista Park a bit downstream. The top picture in the post is looking back at the park from a nearby bridge. In addition to giving our friends a send-off, we got to see some of the bigger expeditions' boats in action. The long 6-man boats, which are taken for the advantage they provide on the long flat stretches that come on the second, third and fourth (!) days of the race, have to execute some fancy maneuvers to get through the rapids at the beginning. Like these guys:

Two of the team stay with the boat and shepherd it over the falls while the other four, deemed extra weight at this point, run along the shore and catch up some yards later. These folk are serious!

As you can imagine, especially on a nice day like this, there are lots of spectators at various points along the river. Here are two of my crowd shots:

Westerfield crossing spectators

getting a good seat at Cottonseed Rapids

Spectators need to know, though, that this is a very serious macho race and they can't help any of the racers in any way. If someone loses a paddle in the rapids you can't fish it out and hand it to them, or they'll be disqualified. The only people who can give anything to the racers are their official team captains, and they can only give them water and ice. Everything else—food, medicine, boat repair supplies, everything—has to be in the boat at the beginning.

Did I mention this is a serious race?

Of course, there are racers who take the experience much more lightly than others (although about 100 of the boats did finish, which I find quite astonishing). Some of them, it seems, might mainly be interested in showing off their creativity:

creative boat names like "Blazing Paddles"

creative river fashion (note the pants)

creative paddling style (does he think he's on the Cam?! )
this guy finished with the distinction of being the first stand-up paddler to do so

And there were beautiful boats for the cognoscenti to admire:

Many of the teams were color-coordinated:

And I still can't get over those long boats. I've paddled these rapids and I surely wouldn't want to have to maneuver something like this through them:

Watching this part of the race was a very entertaining way to spend the day. But when we bid our friends adieu in Luling (which is as far downstream as we've ever paddled on the San Marcos) we were pretty glad to be headed home to air-conditioning and beds instead of trying to snatch naps in the boats.

The teams that really go for the win complete the race in 30-40 hours. Which means, of course, that they don't sleep at all so the lack of beds isn't an issue. However, they have to navigate logjams, lengthy portages, and braided channels, often in the dark. Kinda crazy, imho.

Our friends turned in very respectable times, getting to the finish line in Seadrift in the early (one of the them in the very early!) morning hours of Wednesday. You have to finish by 1 p.m. Wednesday to get into the record books.

Like a marathon, finishing is a fine reward. But watching it is much more fun.

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I must mention a sad sidebar on the race. For the first time in its 50-year history, there was a fatality this year. A young man died of an apparent imbalance of electrolytes; he had drunk enough, and perhaps too much, water, without his body absorbing the corresponding required salts. So sad. He sounded like a great guy. You can read about him here.

Echoes of London...

...in Llano, Texas, of all places.

I do think of London often (even though I've seriously neglected this blog of late, I know). But small town Texas courthouse squares might seem pretty far removed from London's bustle and sophistication.

However, they have one thing in common: war memorials.

And this one in Llano in particular made me think of the many I'd seen in London and in the UK as a whole. As doesn't always happen with monuments around here, this one was originally built, apparently, to honor the local dead from World War I. That's the plaque you see on the rock underneath the figure. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) Of course, in the UK, these WWI monuments are the big boys in any collection, given the horrific losses from that conflict.

Then, off to the side (on the right in the photo above) there's an additional plaque for World War II. Which is how a lot of UK memorials are constructed. For instance, the Avebury church memorial I featured here.

One type of memorial they don't have in London, however, is the ubiquitous Confederate memorial. You see these in almost all Texas towns.

(I was able to include the Llano County courthouse tower, a very lovely structure, in this shot)

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We visited beautiful downtown Llano at the end of a canoeing and camping trip that I've been writing about over on Hometown Tourist. Getting to spend some time in their photogenic courthouse square was a bonus treat: we've become something of connoisseurs of county courthouses in Texas, as we get out to little towns often on our paddling trips. This is one of our favorites.

Window dressing

London has some of the most amazing store window displays. Harvey Nicks and Harrod's are world famous for theirs.

But you can find some pretty cool ones in the most unlikely places. Like a little town in the middle of Colorado.

I neglected to make a note of the name of the store where we saw this present-bedecked mannequin, but it's on the main street of Salida, Colorado (pop. 5200+). We were walking around downtown waiting for their Christmas parade.

When I saw this display I couldn't help but be reminded of other strolls down London streets. I'll bet the windows there are pretty dolled up for Christmas by now, too!