Spring in York

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious spring by the sun in York. (Or something like that).  It's frosty in the mornings, but it hasn't snowed for a month and our neighbors have hung out planters filled with jonquils (daffodils).  Our green grocer has congratulated us on "coming through the winter alright," which seems an odd thing to say during the week that is the coldest of the year in Minnesota.  But here, the trees are budding up, and some are flowering.

Witch hazel at the Merchant Adventurer's Hall garden.

The sun is noticeably higher and warmer but the night is still a whole lot longer than the day.  We're almost able to dry laundry outside.  February, just two days away, is "lambing season" as far north as Scotland, so there is probably lambing going on in the Vale of York at this very minute.

Burns Night

For the first time in 15 years, we had the opportunity to feast on a Haggis this Burns night. A Macsween's Haggis, no less, bursting with offal and oats.

Haggis neeps, and...gratin dauphinois (the auld alliance)

BBC Scotland has just completed the recording of all of Burns' poems.  Here's the link to "To a Haggis," the poem read as the haggis is presented and stabbed.  A great reading.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/works/address_to_a_haggis/

Selby

Just 15 miles to the south of here,  along the Ouse as it becomes tidal, lies the town of Selby.  The town has been around since the Romans, perhaps before, but its heyday was in medieval times when it was dominated by prosperous monastery founded by Benedict of Auxerre in the 1069.  While William the Conqueror was subduing the North, his wife Matilda gave birth to their fourth son in Selby in 1069, just as Benedict was arriving, watching three swans land on a lake, and thinking, "this is the place."  That baby went on to be king Henry I, reigning from 1100 to 1135.  William and Matilda jointly chartered Selby Abbey and consequently it had a cathedral sized church, much of which survived the dissolution in 1539.  (The Abbot in 1539 was a friend of Henry VIII, so maybe got off easy).  The architecture is mostly Norman, like Durham, and it bears its age with dignity and pride.  A beautiful place.

Stars and Stripes

The glass is mostly gone, victim to fires or iconoclasts, but there's an interesting (mostly replaced) Jesse window at the west end and, in the choir clerestory, a remarkable coat of arms, that of the family Wessington, later Washington, ancestors of our dear George.  The coat of arms features stars and stripes.

Ruth and I rode our bikes down to Selby, about an hour and a half mostly along a converted railway line (so straight and level).  The Vale of York is beautiful at this time of year with the fields very green with cover crops and forest muted but budding up.  The ride back north was complicated by a northerly wind, but we still completed the whole trip in four hours.

The Oxfam Charity Shop

There are 750 Oxfam charity shops in Great Britain, 100 of which are bookshops.  In York, we have two bookshops (Micklegate and Low Petergate) and at least one shop specializing in clothing, on Goodramgate.  Joy did her internship in two of these last semester; Adam will be alternating between the two bookshops this semester.  Oxfam shops, depending on donations and volunteers, raised 17 million pounds last year.  Oxfam is the largest retailer of used books in Europe.  I love to stop in at the Micklegate shop on my way to town.  There are three small rooms with floor to ceiling bookcases.  The stock turns over fast; you can visit weekly and expect to see new things every time.

Bookshop on Micklegate

Oxfam was founded in Oxford in 1942 to raise money and awareness for famine relief in Greece, then under blockade by the Axis powers.  

Ouse in Flood

The Ouse floods regularly when there is a lot of rain in the hills to the west and north of us.  Right now, it's flooding because the snow has melted and the ground has unfrozen in the near Dales.  York residents are blase about it, citing REAL floods from the past that they've witnessed, but to those of us who have limited Ouse experience, the river suddenly going up by eight to ten feet is exciting to watch.  The King's Arms pub, shown below, is a popular place to have a pint sitting outside on the riverfront.

The King's Arms Pub, King's Staith, closed for the day.

Spring in northern England; Durham Excursion

Our spring term group is here and have settled in well in their first week.  We had the typical phone purchasing trip to town on Monday and a rushed tour around the historical city on Saturday.  Meetings with lecturers tutors and internship contacts also took place.  So they're off to a great start.

On Sunday then, the first out-of-York excursion to Durham, founded posthumously by Saint Cuthbert who appeared a monk and told him to lay his body to rest on a nearby "hill island," or "dun helm."  This was in 995 or so.  The cathedral and castle that we toured extensively today were built spectacularly atop the dun helm just after William the Conqueror visited the city a century after Cuthbert arrived.  A beautiful city nearly surrounded by a graceful meander in the useful (defensively) river Ware.