Punctuation

I'm sure most of you have heard of the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, which is all about punctuation. It's really pretty informative and entertaining at the same time, which is not something I expected from a grammar book. I read it about a week ago, and was struck by the amount of British examples... which of course makes sense, as Truss is British and would approach punctuation from a British view.

There were a few times, okay, there were many, in which she made a lot of statements I didn't agree with, then at the end of several pages wrote, "Of course, if you are in America, _____." Which, perhaps, struck me even more. It wasn't that she was incorrect, we actually have different rules of punctuation. Different spellings I can understand in a way, but the placement of punctuation?

I can't expound upon the differences here, but I do wonder what the American English versions of the book--if such exists--do about those things.

I also learned that we call punctuation marks by different names. Why? Beyond me. Still the comma , the semi-colon ; and the colon : but the rest...

British - Symbol - American
-full stop . period
-query ? question mark ---okay, so they use "question mark" too, but also "query"
-bracket ( ) parenthesis
-square bracket [ ] bracket
- that funny bracket { } has different names but I forget what they are
-inverted commas ' ' used for most speech
- " " not always called quotation marks
-stroke / slash ---this one is my favorite. Is the \ backstroke?

Art in the City

Today in my Urban Cultures lecture we discussed, very briefly and only at the very end, graffiti. Part of the discussion included Banksy, a graffiti-(um? maybe)artist turned artist. Everyone else seemed to have at least heard of him.

Take a look at his site, most of the stuff is pretty interesting.

I should warn you that a few things might be offensive, so do take care. Most of it is just commentary on modern society or current political situation.

Burns Night

Once upon a time in Scotland there was this guy named Robert Burns. Actually this was around the later half of the 18th century. Robert Burns was a poet, but not just any kind of poet. He mostly wrote his poetry in the Scots dialect, although there are some written in English.

Because no one else was creating literature in Scottish, Burns is seen as the one man who legitimised the dialect, who brought poetry to the average Scot, and is Scotland's national poet.

Some examples of his poems (the really famous ones):
Address to a Haggis
To a Mouse
A Man's A Man For A' That
My Love is a Red, Red Rose
Auld Lang Syne

I especially recommend this site, which has the complete works of Robert Burns:
Robertburns.org

Every year on or about Burns' birthday, January 25, Scotland celebrates Burns Night. This is a time to gather all your Scottish pals together. There are a set of rituals performed, beginning with a performance of "Address to a Haggis" and a few toasts, then a lovely dinner of haggis, neeps, and tatties, with whisky. After the meal, there are more recitations of Burns poems and finally every sings "Auld Lang Syne" together.
The fact that UVA's fight song is to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" is bothersome.
Also, once upon a time someone told me that "Auld Lang Syne" was Latin for "Happy New Year's".

Little known facts about Robert Burns:
-Abraham Lincoln was an avid fan of Burns' poetry and had much/most/all? of it memorized.
-There is a bust of Robert Burns in the home of Abraham Lincoln today
-There is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in a cemetary somewhere in Edinburgh.
I need to find this statue, maybe around February 12?
No one told me these things!

There is also a link between Burns and the Revolutionary War (known here as The War With America or.. something):
Ode For General Washington's Birthday

-----

Last night Physics Society had a Burns Night, where literally everything was delicious. I had the best haggis, neeps, and tatties I've tasted yet. The host was surprised I'd had haggis before, but I genuinely love it, and it was the first time I've been able to stomach neeps. Extremely good quality whisky, five kinds of dessert (nothing particularly Scottish about them though).
At the beginning no one wanted to perform the Address To A Haggis, so the eight-stanza poem was passed around with one person reading a stanza each. Those eight people were allowed first go at the food.
Theoretically the eight most Scottish people were to read, but I was handed the poem during the passing about. Maybe an American is less offensive to read Robert Burns than an Englishman? All the same I absolutely butchered it.

The things you take for granted.

The past few days I've been on an absolute brainstorm of UK-US differences.
I can't believe I've never mentioned any of this before.

The adjective "dear" is used to mean "expensive". Often at the shop the comment will go along the lines of: "I marked this jacket at five quid, but is that too dear?"

Putting maple syrup on anything is pretty much unheard of, and probably more American than peanut butter or the two-party political system.

On my derive last weekend I went through an entire pair of AA batteries for my camera. When I mentioned this to a Scottish friend, he asked why I didn't use rechargable batteries. I tried to explain why buying UK electronic products is a little silly, but I think most people don't know that electric plugs are shaped differently in different parts of the world. I know I didn't.

The European way to write dates is date/month/year, so you would read today at "the 26th of January, 2008", rather than month/date/year ("January 26th, 2008").
So someone looking at my driver's license will assume that because I'm born on an eleventh, I'm actually born in November.
This is part of why I really hate getting carded. No one can resist expressing confusion/distaste/amusement at my driver's licence.

The calendars I've seen here start the week on Monday and run through Sunday, so the weekend is at one end rather than thought of as "book-ending" the week. Something I'm used to, but when British friends try to read my monthly calendar, which is American, they've gotten dates wrong. Another thing most people assume is the same everywhere, although I knew that continential Europe treated Monday as the start of the week.

Picked-up pennies are still lucky here, but only if you pass it along to someone else. Only Americans frown if the penny's heads-down. (And yes, a 1p coin is still called a penny.)

Yesterday I saw a one-pound bank note.
Seriously.
It confused me. Until yesterday all the banknotes I've ever seen have been fivers and up, and the pound coin and two-pound coin prevail. I'm not sure that UK is the right setting for a one-pound note, just as the Sacajawea one-dollar coins never caught on in the States.
It's a good question: what cultural differences lead to those distinctions?

A set of new banknotes were released recently, all more brightly coloured than the previous ones. From an American point of view, anything that is not off-white and dark green looks a little bit fake, but these were just too colourful, and I've heard them derided as looking "like Euros!"

If something costs $1.50, I think we would usually say it costs "One-fifty", but at the shop I've found that is understood but not common to say. Rather it would be "one pound fifty".

Also, the different coins are not given names, other than the penny. Where America has the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter, the British have the penny, and then 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, and 50p coins. Not to mention the one-pound and two-pound coins.
Suddenly I understand why Mr. Weasely cannot figure out Muggle money.
Now imagine being in UK before the adoption of the decimal system, during which there were 240p to the pound.
My imagination does not stretch that far. But that was as recent at 1971 or so.

I was asked how much a quarter was. On several occasions.
Once I made mention of paying a dime, and that was not understood.
The things you take for granted.

headphones

oh yeah.

Yesterday my left headphone died. Which means soon the right will be on its way out.

British headphone jacks are smaller than American ones, and I can't go running without music.

Amazon.com wants me to pay $35 to ship them across the Atlantic. I don't think so.

the things you never knew you never knew

Recently I've been thinking of a lot of things that have since become normal but I realise do strike as very different.
In the UK, there is no such thing as jaywalking. Out walking with a group of Brits, I have on several occasions been asked, "Is it true that in America it's against the law to cross the street when you're not supposed to?"

I guess when you think about, if that's how you've always had it then you don't think about it. But for us, we have rules about when you're not allowed to cross the same way you have the "right of way", or more accurately the "necessity to yield". Still I think most people have the impression that jaywalking is enforced when I have never heard of anyone actually being fined for such an action.

I have on several occasions been asked, "Why does America have so many stop signs?"
Until those moments I forget that a stop sign is a rare sight on British streets. They just know to stop or not to stop, depending. Many intersections that might be governed by stop signs in America are replaced by the roundabout.
I hate roundabouts.

A lot of things are not as refrigerated than at home. Grocery store eggs are typically located near the milk and cheese, but on the opposite side of the aisle where they are not refrigerated. You would not believe how often I see unrefrigerated margarine and milk, for that matter.

I was once asked, "But I thought Americans didn't drink tea?"
I was once told, "Americans don't understand how to make tea." I think that if your standard of tea is so low it requires the universal addition of milk then you can't judge. Not to sound judgmental myself, of course.
The electric kettle is a bit of a strange invention, if you ask me.

I had haggis for the fifth time tonight!
Several times I have heard with surprise, "Wait, you don't have haggis is America?"
Once I was asked if I knew what a baked potato was.
Several times I have been confronted with foods cooked "American style" and they never taste right.
I have learned to stay away from ketchup this side of the ocean.

Sultanas are raisins.

Yes, Virginia, there is "snow" in Scotland.

Just when I thought I'd figured out Edinburgh weather patterns, I am thrown for a loop. Yesterday had a high of 12C (about 53F) and was sunny and glorious, until some nasty rain in the late afternoon. This morning started just over freezing and never rose higher, but the promise of sun I saw walking towards breakfast changed into big fat snowflakes by the time I walked down to KB for my morning lecture.

During this walk the snow changed to icy sleet-like drops, then rain, then stopped completely by the time I made it to the physics building. So I actually walked in the worst half-hour possible. It drizzled a little bit this afternoon; the rain drops changed into snowflakes and then back again.

Brilliant.


This reminds me of a poster by the JCMB library, advertising need-based scholarship money. Today was not the first time I saw it, I just haven't mentioned it until now. I think it resonates with me because the phrase is so short and so profoundly Scottish:
"Clever but skint?"
Roughly translated, this means "Smart but broke?", yet has a much better ring. Every time I see it I marvel. Perhaps other phrases don't sound as good as in American English, but this one "clever but skint?" is a work of art.

holidays

Oh yeah...

so if I hadn't talked to my parents yesterday afternoon, I would have no idea that today was the observation of MLK Jr's birthday. Not that it surprises me, but it is a little strange to think about going my day as normal knowing that back home everyone has the day off.

In fact, the placing of "bank holidays" confused me for a really long time before I realised that the US has them too... we just give them fancy names to commemorate something. The UK has these bank holidays scattered throughout the year at regular intervals, I think it's one every two or three months.

The difference is, all through this term (just like last term) I have no days off. None, zero. No MLK Jr Day, no Presidents Day, no spring break thrown in the middle of term, no reading days after a month of classes. Just eleven straight weeks of lectures, tutorials, and practicals, then that awkwardly-placed break before exams.

Different countries, different systems.

grading scales

At some point recently the grades for Musical Acoustics were posted, meaning in the past 48 hours.

This bothers me.Edinburgh Uni has a student population just over that of UVA's, the EU exams were earlier, and it was three weeks into the second term before I heard back about ONE of my grades. I am "unimpressed".

However, for an exam in which I studied the absolute minimum amount, I must have done well. The grading systems are not directly relatable between the two, somehow the same work will get a different mark between the US and UK grading schemes, and I'm not exactly sure what each looks for.

For comparison, 70% is an A, and 40% is passing.
I think that the UK grading gives an "actual" percent. If there are ten points to cover, and you only successfully explain half, that's a 50%; my experience with US grading has been that you might get full-credit for those half and then some amount of partial-credit on the rest, for maybe 70%. Good estimations I suppose in retrospect, those are both C's... I think.

Point is, I'm just as baffled about grading after a full term as I was when I first began. I guess everyone else is too, which is why my grades don't transfer back home, only the credit earned.

"Taking me to parts of the city I rarely think of and never visit..."

Derive. Pronounced dur-eve... It's French.

Last week's lecture in Geography was about derives, in part. It was a method of walking developed in the 1950's by the Situationalists Internationale in Paris (where else), who objected to certain developments they saw in cities. A little bit Marxist, they disliked the materialism of the city, the constraints people experienced to space and time (people seen as chained to the clock), and what they saw as the city planner's way of manipulating the pedestrian's view, impression, and culture of the city by deciding what things would be nearby to one another, what could be seen from how. And one of the more interesting this that hit me was the idea that the planner/developer molds the way people move by designing entrances/exits for masses of people.

So they developed this system of walking, ideally unconstrained by time---so no bounds of going to work, to class, of avoiding rush hour---in which the walker puts himself outside of the preconceived views of the city. The idea is that by seeing the city from different angles we experience it in a different way and can glean a sense of the psychogeography.
To do this you walk through sidestreets, through the small passages between places instead of the wide ones. With a great variation in ambience, very quickly. By ignoring the bird's-eye view (as this is how cities are planned) in favor of the ground-level view. By leaving yourself open to encounters with fellow city-dwellers.

Interesting reading from one of the original derivists: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/314

Anyway. So make up your own mind about it. The political aspect is a little fuzzy to me: how exactly can walking be a political protest? For yourself, but I doubt anyone else looking at one of these SI blokes actually thought, "now there's a protesting chap if I ever saw one!"

Right. So I had an assignment to go on my own derive through Edinburgh and document it in a way I saw fit---photos were easiest, and in fact I put up all 135 non-fuzzy/-duplicate photos to my photobucket, see links above and to your right. Not all of these made it into my powerpoint, and many were not meant to demonstrate the experience of the derive but rather were interesting things I saw.
Of course those are too many to go through and give titles to all, so forgive me for not doing that either, but if you're interested, a lot of photos are up from my one-day excursion.

All told I was only out for about five hours, but I walked a circuit all around the edge of Edinburgh, roughly skirting the edge between "urban" and "suburban" the time, though of course the suburbs are different here than what we (at least I) expect for a 'typical' American city.

It gave me a lot to think about too, this idea that what we see, what we notice, is designed that way, intentionally so or not. Everything has some story behind it, and for some people those stories of location are the fabric of their lives.

IKEA

Thursday found me shopping at the local IKEA. I say local, but it is really only accessible by city bus, one that goes out of the city (in the southbound direction). The closest busstop was at a roundabout which, if not for its relative proximity to IKEA, would have been the middle of nowhere.

I have only once before been inside an IKEA store. The display rooms in this one were so much cooler than the ones in Woodbridge, there were so many model kitchens, all of which I wanted to keep, followed by the model bedrooms, followed by... and so on. It was great.

I intended to buy just a birthday present, which I did, a very healthy-looking purple orchid. However, I also bought things for myself. Included in this was:
-orange-flavoured Pepparkakor (sounds like "pepper-ka-ka"), mmm delicious.
I first had pepparkakor on Scorraig, and it was delicious
-my very own vacuum flask ("Thermos" as we know). 0.5L. I tried it out on Friday and it was amazing! I drank half a litre of tea in the space of about thirty minutes, then spent my next lecture wishing I had more tea.

We had two gigantic bags of IKEA goods on the bus home. Definitely a problem.

Dalkeith Park

Sunday morning was actually pretty nice looking... warm, not raining... and so I decided it was a good day to give the uni conservation group a try, Dirty Weekenders. Every Sunday they go on an all-day workday in a local park, or sometimes a far-away park.

This week they/we went down to Dalkeith Park, a quick busride south out of Edinburgh. It was a lot of fun, some of us recobbled the plaza area while the rest trimmed back rose bushes that encroached into the path and liberated ivy-covered trees. We got back late afternoon, so it really was all-day, and we got a lot of work done out there---it helps to have 40 or 50 volunteering, I suppose.

Lunch and a plethora of biscuits were provided. Delicious!

Mmm, sandwich!

Ever since coming to Scotland I've found myself eating foods I never thought I'd eat, or at least not until becoming a little more of an adult than I am. This is either because: A. I am now an adult, or B. When confronted with limited options I actually will eat anything.

The past year's list has included such foods as: peanut butter, copious amounts of tea (I was never a fan), scrambled eggs, tomato (toe-MAH-toe), corguettes (cucumbers), aubergine (eggplant), beans, onion, peppers, haggis, oats, mincemeat, "spaghetti bolognese" (this requires an explanation all of its own), wine sauces, chicken salad sandwiches, vegetable soups, chick peas. Etc.

Most recently I have discovered jam. Never before have I eaten jam, nevermind liked it. Even as of a month ago I wouldn't eat jam. I'm still working on marmalade.

I just ate the best sandwich ever.
-Wholemeal bread (wheat bread: Another term that mystifies the average Brit)
-Peanut butter
-apricot jam
Yes, apricot jam!

more elections

Just as I was thinking about the response to the American primaries here, I browsed Washingtonpost.com this morning and found an article on the world response. U.S. Political Drama Compels -- and Baffles
Of course, these sorts of articles are difficult to generalise from, for one thing the number of interviews sounds very few, but this article hardly mentions the Republican candidates at all. Is this a fact of the world attention on the elections, or of reporting bias?


-Overused word: "unimpressed".
-gammon for ham. Not sure I've ever heard a British person call food 'ham'
-fussed, usually "not fussed"---not concerned, not worried about
-sussed. Suspicious of, surmise that

elections

I feel it's pretty common for most people to feel isolated from the outside world while at college. Sure, we have student newspapers but of course it's not like reading a real paper. Add to that the distance of an ocean, and it's difficult to keep in touch with US news. So now that it's primary season, anything I hear I have to log on-line and find, it's not a hot topic in most conversations.

While travelling I overheard a lot of conversations about the upcoming American presidential on the train. I 'spose that's a likely place. While at the B&B in Salisbury I read The Times (assume it's London Times) every morning, during Iowa caucus time. Most of the articles focused on explanations of the political process. When they keyed in on candidates the focus was primarily on the Democrats.

I can see how a news-following person in Britain might be more interested in the presidential race than one in America. For one thing, I can only imagine how inundated y'all are with adverts.. it is blissful being away from mudslingings!
At the same time I find it hard to form an impression of the candidates, when all I can do is look at their webpages and read summaries in news articles.

Stat Mech

Yesterday we received problem sets for Statistical Mechanics. While for the most part StatMech doesn't warrant any comment, one problem in particular was... wow.

"A drunk lurches from one lamp post to another on his way home; at each lamp post he pauses for reflection before starting out again. Each time he starts he is equally likely to move towards or away from home. If the posts are separated by a distance a find the mean and the standard deviation of his displacement d from the starting point, after N steps."

One of the tutors' comment: "I was walking down Grassmarket last night and realised how typical this question is of Scotland."

I'm pretty sure that problem wouldn't see the light of day in UVA.

a few scattered notes

Oh yeah, so something I forgot to mention about the Salisbury Cathedral:
all the wooden supports have been around so long they have essentially fossilised into rocks.
So maybe once they had to worry about insects burrowing in, but no longer.

Sunday night it rained, and at some point snowed. All that was left on Monday morning was slush, which was really gross. Now I understand why it's best that maybe Edinburgh stay snowless. In any case, it was an opportunity to wear the wellies I bought in the post-Christmas sales!
Wellies
Likewise, sometime last night the temp dropped below freezing again, and so thin spots of ice greeted us in the morning.

Classes began yesterday. This first week is pretty light because the tutorials don't start until next week (an extra four or five hours a week) AND one of my courses doesn't start until the end of January.
Still, I think this term might prove to be something of a challenge. For the first time possibly ever my coursework will be completely, entirely new. None has the least amount of review, and all are at the third- or fourth-year level. Eeep. Sounds like a bit of work to stay on top.

Salisbury Cathedral

The Cathedral completely dominates the town of Salisbury. It's hard to imagine how a town so small could support a cathedral so huge, but I suppose without it the tourism industry would be a lot smaller, since there are plenty of other towns in the area to use as a base for moving on to Stonehenge. And anyway, without the cathedral, the history of the area would have been a lot different.

When the cathedral was originally built over 700 years ago (I think it just celebrated its 750th anniversary?) it did not have the gigantic spire on the top, but that was added in almost as soon as cathedral construction finished. The plan is not the usual cross shape but a Lorraine cross (has two transecting parts), which was interesting to see.

When first laying the foundations, they dug some four feet into the ground, hit the watertable, and laid foundations right on top. Of course in modern times they would have been able to get around the watertable, but not in the 13th century. The roof was originally a very rounded shape, but it was discovered later that the distribution of weight was pushing the tops of the walls outwards, and so the roof was reshaped from the inside to make a taller, pointier shape. On the Tower Tour I took, we actually went inside the roof, and saw the supporting beams. All were wood, but required wood of such thickness as cannot be bent, so the supports are cut out of massive branches--some a lot curvier than others. Also in the space above the arches lies the pipes for the sprinker system, in case a fire should hit the cathedral. Another English cathedral had a fire and the water became trapped in each dip between the arches, and the resulting weight brought the roof down. To avoid a similar fate, valves were installed at the bottom of the ones in the Salisbury Cathedral, which open if the sprinkler system turns on.

The spire itself was added on after the rest of the cathedral was finished. It actually lies off-center, as we saw inside the spire: the supporting cross beams met several feet along a diagonal in the square "tower" section, and of the balconies at the halfway-point up on the spire, one was extremely narrow and its opposite was much wider. The weight of the spire lies more heavily on the columns on the nave side of the tower, and down there one can see the half a foot or so that this side has shifted into the foundations.
Construction of the cathedral and the spire primarily relied on windlasses... and there was one actually inside the spire, original. It was so well-balanced that a nudge with one finger set the wheel moving, no need to act as a human hamster.

Going up into the spire was amazing. We saw the clock that operates the bells... I could have watched that thing run all day! there is no face to the clock, just a system of gears that lifts levers every quarter-hour to the same chimes as recognised from Big Ben. When the lever is lifted, it pulls down on the rope attached to the bell above. We watched the clock when it rang the hour, then watched the bells on the quarter-hour and the half-hour, then the clock again when the bells rang for evening prayer service.

The climb up into the spire involved a lot of narrow spiral staircases, so small I couldn't get half of my foot on them, most without handrails and made of stone. Up and up we climbed, and we could only actually go halfway--about 200 ft of the 400 ft spire. Above that only two can go at once, attached by harnesses to ropes and climbing a series of ladders connecting small platforms.

As mentioned before, the tour took us onto each of the four balconies, affording views of the cardinal directions. On a warmer day it would have been beautiful to behold. This day was below freezing, and the winds were 25-30 mph (they don't allow tours into the spire when the winds get over 80 mph).

The rest of the Salisbury Cathedral was of course fascinating. There was the original clock which rang the bells, dating no later than 1360, and is the oldest working clock in Britain--or anywhere, or something. A set of flags flown by the Wiltshire army regiments, the first two of which were about 200 years old and almost nonexistant, just a vague outline of a crown on what could have been fishing nets under other circumstances. The center of the nave had a Christmas Nativity scene, featuring the creepiest Holy Family and angels I have ever seen. The back stained glass window was dedicated to "Prisoners of Conscience", done in dark blue with scenes like the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

But this was one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen..
Of the original Magna Carta copies, only four remain, and one of them is housed in Chapter House! Somehow the entire Magna Carta was squeezed onto a single piece of velium, about 18 in wide and 24 in long (my estimates). Of course it was completely unreadable... not because of poor condition (the condition was excellent) but because of the shorthand used to get it all onto that size. The document could have been almost anything.

Also while I was there an archaeological team was just beginning work excavating an area in the center of the nave, where a new fountain was to go. It's the sort of thing we learned about in Archaeology. Just before new construction can begin somewhere, they send in an arch team to excavate it and make sure that the building project won't destroy unknown evidence, and so rescue any artefacts before the work begins. Amazing to see that kind of work in progress.

Old Sarum

I walked up to Old Sarum the second morning in Salisbury. It lies about 1 mi north of my B&B, and about 2.5 mi north of Salisbury Cathedral, which is just south of the City Centre. So by my reckoning, Old Sarum is about 2 mi from the heart of Salisbury.

Old Sarum is a large, prominent hill, the only one in a very flat area of land. According to the information on the site, it was originally revered in some way by the mesolithic peoples who lived nearby. In the Iron Age to Bronze Age it was used as a defensive fort, converted to a Roman fort when the Romans came about 65? AD. After the Romans left Britain it was used by the British against the Saxons. Around 1070 or so, William the Conqueror brought his army there. Shortly after, a Norman castle was built on the summit of the hill.

Even just the walk up the hill was fascinating. There were two moats, both extremely deep, and had normal-sized trees growing on the lower banks that barely came over the mound on the outside. The inner plateau was the site of the original Cathedral, used from 1080-1180, abouts. What lies in its place now is only ruins, the base of the walls, marks where the columns were in the nave, a little more structure on the basement side, underneath what was once the library. Just to one side stood the Bishop's Palace, but all that remains of that is a single wall, about six foot high and twelve feet wide.

Crossing the inner moat and up onto the very top of the hill brought more ruins in sight. On the north side were two connecting chapels, and behind them the location of the privvies and entrance hall to the castle that lay on the west. The area in the center was left pretty well open. To the south and east were functional rooms: a bakery, kitchens, that sort.

Old Sarum was used for about two hundred years. It was 1220 or so that the Church decided it wanted a Cathedral away from military influence and began building what is now Salisbury Cathedral 2 miles south of Old Sarum, around which the city, markets, and economy of Salisbury grew. Kings used the defensive castle on Old Sarum less and less, and in the 14th century it was considered uninhabitable. It was 1550 or so that whoever was king at the time allowed for the buildings on the hilltop to be dismantled for use as construction materials elsewhere. What remains on Old Sarum are the parts not taken away at this time.

The foundations left were buried by soils and sediments and it was only in the 1830's that people noticed the grass pattern that belied hidden structures. An excavation took place 1909 or so to uncover what is seen on Old Sarum today.

A shame that the buildings had been dismantled---imagine what a rich resource they would have provided to modern archaeologists.

Stonehenge

The first morning I was in Salisbury I knew I had to go to Stonehenge, before exploring the town of Salisbury. Higher priority.

It was decently chilly in Salisbury when I caught the first bus to Stonehenge, which is about eight miles from town (I would have considered walking, but there was zero shoulder on the roads so I'm glad I didn't), and about two from the wee little town of Amesbury, which I did not see. Taking the first bus was a great idea, as it wasn't that early in the morning and the crowds were smaller as a result. When I left Stonehenge around noon there were so many people taking pictures that it was difficult to feel the site.

So, Stonehenge. It was somehow smaller than I expected. I know my pictures are hard to tell size from, but even with a person for reference... the rope keeping tourists out was too far away to help in any appreciable way with the scale.

What remains of Stonehenge are three concentric circles of large stones, the outermost were the largest and easiest to make out, on the inside they looked like a confused jumble of stones, but the circles are easy enough to make out when viewed from above. The outer stones were absolutely massive, and looked even more so for how tightly they were constructed together.

What most people don't look at at Stonehenge (or so I assume) is the earthworks. Around the flat area of the stone circles is first a ditch, then a raised mound, which both encircle the site. As we learned in Archaeology, this is the exact opposite of a defensive formation, designed to keep people in rather than out, or else to block an outsider's view of the ceremonies within. To the south was a small burial mound, small by my standards anyway. I took a picture of this but it didn't turn out well. Along to the east was a standing megalith separate from the circles, but archaeologists aren't sure as to its intended purpose. Between that megalith and the stone circles were a series of small mounds and pits, with a few large-ish rocks lying flat on the ground. They called the biggest stone the "sacrifice stone" but I'm not sure that this is its original purpose either.

What amazed me: bordering up on the north of the site, separated by a weak rope fence, was a huge flock of sheep. I guess someone has to own that land. I only hope archaeologists excavated that area before allowing sheep to run rampant.

Back from Salisbury

I really do not have enough energy to do justice to my fun, short little jaunt down to Salisbury. So look for a post on my travels shortly.

In the meantime, a preview can be seen! New photos are up. One album ("Salisbury") is devoted exclusively to my post-New Years trip. I also updated my Nov-Dec album, and just barely started a new album for the second semester, which currently holds six pictures from Hogmanay fireworks here in Edinburgh.

Happy New Year to all at home!