Helen arrived home safely!

I arrived home safely last night about 5 PM US time and 10 PM UK time. Geoff took me to the airport but as we went, we had a lot of traffic and so there was not much extra time once there. I was able to check my luggage very quickly and go through security and then headed to the gate. We left on time at 11:15 AM.

My meal choice was a VERY DELICIOUS fish pie! It was so good!

Tom met me at the airport and drove me home stopping for fresh milk on the way.

It is so good to be home! Shell was absolutely correct (SHE ALWAYS IS!) - I was home about 5 minutes and I missed all of my friends in the UK!

I will put more photos in the blog when I get unpacked. As Shell says, "Watch this space..."

Published in the World's Oldest Newspaper: Established 1690!

Today, the Berrow's Worcester Journal arrived and I opened it up...




...to see that they had published two of my photos of the hoar frost of December 31, 2008! Barbara had urged me to send them to the paper last week and when the attachment did not go through, the Editor e-mailed me asking me to send them again. So, I knew that it was a possibility.




Today, Anne came up from London. She is here from NY for two weeks and it was great to see her. We had lunch by the river and I took lots of photos of the swans --- but they kept moving! This was the best of the lot!




Yesterday it was snowing when I got back to Worcester so I tried to take a photo of the cathedral in the snow. This was the best I could do.

Tomorrow Debbie returns to her home and Saturday I go back to John and Shell's and Tuesday I fly home. Due to my busy schedule for the next few days, I am not sure when I will be able to make the next post on the blog but I will do my best.

Farewell to Trinity College ...

After my last day in the Wren Library today, I walked through the Great Court and was delighted to see the moon over the apartments to the left of the main gate (second floor) where Sir Isaac Newton lived while at Trinity. Do you remember that the astronauts talked about the fact that Newton was flying them to the moon on one of their lunar flights? It seemed appropriate to put a large sun dial in the foreground of the photo. Newton was most interested in sun dials and made countless sun dials when he was a boy. So there you have it - Newton's apartment with "the bookends" of the moon and an sun dial!




Inside the entry way to Trinity College Chapel is this huge statue of Newton holding a prism. The prism was one of my most favorite items at Mrs. Martin's Kindergarten when I was I child! I loved to look at the light as it was separated. I was so fascinated with the order of the colors that from kindergarten days to the present day, I have had to put my crayons in THE CORRECT ORDER! I do not know why Crayola sends out boxes and boxes of crayons with the order all mixed up!




If you have your back to the large statue of Newton, you are looking into the chapel at Trinity College.

King's College, Round Church, St. Catherine's, Cambridge

Saturday I took the train from Lincoln to Cambridge. Yesterday I worshipped with Cambridge Presbyterian Church and today I worked at the Wren as long as I could stand the cold. The temperature inside was 59 degrees and after about 4 hours, I was FROZEN! So, I went to get some lunch and HOT coffee! As I left the Copper Kettle, I snapped this photo of the beautiful winter sky over King's College.




Last week I took this photo of the Round Church. This Round Church, as everyone calls it now, was built in 1130 AD by the 'Fraternity of the Holy Sepulchre' and was known as the Church of the Holy Sepluchre. The 'Fraternity' consisted of Austin Canons and crusaders who were returning from the first crusade to the Holy Land. They had seen the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built by the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena.

The church is currently ministered by Christian Heritage. It has a copy of the Canterbury Gospels, the oldest illustrated Bible manuscript in the world. It also has exhibits of the Christian heritage of Cambridge. I hope to go see it tomorrow. Last week when I took this photo, I tried to see it but it was closed.




I took this photo of beautiful St. Catherine's College last Monday as I walked 'home' from a day in the library.

Remember THAT clock from Cambridge?

Yesterday, I returned to Cambridge to my favorite B&B and this morning Nigel told me about THAT clock! It is known as the Corpus Clock and a man named John C. Taylor invested five years and £1 million to construct the Corpus Clock (after Corpus Christi College where John Taylor studied) and the chronophage. It uses a principle which Harrison developed about 300 years ago when he devised a way to measure longitude. The mechanism of the clock goes back to 1725 and John Harrison's Grasshopper Escapement and shows time in a new and unique manner.




To learn more about it, go to YouTube and see it functioning. I do urge you to go to the site below and watch it as it is VERY INTERESTING!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cCqGtvTA36k

Eels, Tennyson and Mischievous Students

On the way to Lincoln on Thursday. I took this photo of Ely Cathedral, 'the Ship of the Fens.' The first Benedictine monks appeared in the area in the seventh century and founded Ely monastery in 673 AD. The whole region was made up of islands known as the Fenland islands. The area was not completely drained until the seventeenth century. Ely used to be known as the 'Isle of Ely.' Ely is from an old Saxon word for the natural breeding ground for eels.




Lincoln Cathedral is on a very high hill overlooking the current city of Lincoln. It is beautiful at night and also in the daylight. The statue is that of Tennyson, who was born in Lincolnshire. In 1072, William the Conqueror ordered that the cathedral be built. The cathedral holds one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta.




I spent most of Friday examining a little math book dated 1654.




I was trying to learn more about education in the seventeenth century and I came across this parish record which I found interesting and it confirmed Ecclesiastes 1:9b, "there is no new thing under the sun." It seems that the boys in the local grammar school had the habit of shutting the master out of the school. So the governors of the grammar school of Gainsborough ordered the following:

"That if any boy or boys shall offer to shut out the master he or they shall be publickely whipped by the mastor in the presence of the governors.”

Over the centuries, how many teachers had students who thought it would be funny to lock the teacher out of the classroom? While I was teaching at Unionville High School, I recall one period of time, when EVERYDAY SINGLE DAY when I returned from lunch someone had jammed chewing gum in the lock of the door. I quickly learned to carry tools and solvent with me to lunch so that I could clean the lock and open the door quickly. When the students learned that I was always prepared, they stopped and I never did learn who the culprit was.

The Lord asked Job, "Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?" Job 38:29

Today, I took the train from Worcester to Lincoln. I had to change first at Birmingham, then at Nottingham and finally arrived at Lincoln, about four hours later.




The hoarfrost was so beautiful...




If we have it in Pennsylvania, it usually melts in a couple of hours. Here it stays for days and covers hundreds of miles.




There are no words to describe the beauty.




I finally arrived at Lincoln. The Cathedral was lit tonight. It was quite dark when I arrived at 4:40 PM. Due to the fact that we are much further north than Philadelphia, the sun set tonight at 3:55 PM and arose at 8:16 AM. Lincoln is at 53 degrees north latitude and Philadelphia is only at 40 degrees. Tomorrow ... Lincoln Archives!