To tide you over

Yeah, I know we haven't been blogging so much recently (especially Danny!), but it's with good reason - our parents were here! Now that their excellent visits have come to an end we hope to get back to semi-regular blogging...but not before a quick trip to Denmark to visit Familien Jacobsen. In the meantime, here are some pictures of Beppe and Nanni, just in case anyone was worried about their well-being in our absence. I think you'll find that living with Sam and Katie suits them just fine :)

But on the other hand...

...it still is your grandfather's England.

(Slight divergence for RPOTD:


Mike was here! We met up in Salzburg where he was attending a prion conference, then we took a quick swing through Munich to drink beer by the liter, then he hung out with us (and my mom!) in London for a day. It was excellent!)

But back to your grandfather's England. In many ways, England still exhibits that quaint, slightly stodgy charm that Americans expect from the home of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. For example, last week I took a day off work to explore the southwest edge of London with my mom. First we explored the truly magnificent Kew Gardens, which features some of the oldest greenhouses in Europe, all full of flowering plants and other greenery from all over the world. There is also an excellent butterfly room. There is nothing that makes you appreciate the fragility of living things like looking at a butterfly up close.

What really struck me about this day, however, was the visit to Richmond, where we walked along the Thames and got afternoon tea. Here we were, sitting within the bounds of London, a city of 8 million people, and we had this view:
Okay, so it's hard to tell because of the glare of the window, but there are cows in that field. Cows! In London! My mom wanted to experience the English countryside, and it turns out we could get there on the tube.

Also amusing were the two men in suits discussing Somerset's unfortunate season in county cricket (despite another solid season from Trescothick), while enjoying coffee with biscuits. And they ordered the biscuits specifically. If there's one thing that ties all Englanders together, it may be a love of biscuits. All hotel rooms come with a small packet of these crunchy treats. At my conference in Oxford there was a break for tea and coffee every 90 minutes (!), which was always accompanied by a wide assortment of biscuits. The cafe around the corner served Danny a solo cup of tea, then came around to the table to offer him several fresh-baked ones when they came out of the oven. I've heard grown men grumble when their tea is served without an accompanying biscuit. And so on.

This is just a few small examples, but I think the love of biscuits and the proximity of cows to central London are good examples of how England has maintained a delightfully antiquated charm while still galloping along with the pace of the modernizing world. And just for the record, lest anyone think I am being judgmental, I love biscuits, too. I also love afternoon tea!

UPDATE FROM DANNY: For, perhaps, the best bit of biscuit humor I've ever seen, here's Rob Brydon on Would I Lie to You.

Sports-related pub discovery #2

It turns out that the Sky Sports feed at the Dartmouth Arms is German - straight after Chelsea-Blackpool finished, on come what appeared to be the Straubinger Tigers-Augsburger Panther game.  So for you forlorn Deutsche Eishockey Liga fans in London who can't get your fix, make your way to Dartmouth Park!

Not your grandfather's England

Today's random photo is a lead-in to the topic of today's blog:


This is from when Jessica was visiting last month! That evening we got pre-dinner at Harrods: an enormous gelato sundae at Morelli's, one of the many tasty eateries in their famous food hall. One thing that jumped out at me when as I scanned the rest of the people happily enjoying candy-covered ice cream, was that based on the dress of the women, everyone around us seemed to be Muslim. And there were interesting touches that reflected this Muslim predominance around the rest of the store, like the Arabic signs indicating which chocolates are alcohol-free, for example. One possible explanation for this is that Harrods in particular attracts a Muslim clientele. It was owned by Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed, an Egyptian businessman, from 1985 until 2010, when it was bought by Qatar Holdings.

But for someone who has lived the past 4 years in Brookline, Harrods is not the only place that the large number of Muslims living in and visiting the UK is apparent. As soon as I got off the plane at Heathrow, I saw more women in headscarves and varying types of Hijab at the arrivals gate than I had probably seen in my whole life up until that point. One of the Pope's assistants made a similar point before the recent papal visit, although his take was decidedly un-PC. For my research at the Trop I've been looking as some local public health reports, and was impressed by the number of websites (especially in places like London and Birmingham) that featured articles like "Guide to a healthy Ramadan" and "Controlling your diabetes during Ramadan." In many neighborhoods the streets are lined with Halal grocers and delicious-smelling kebab shops.

The obvious presence of Muslims living in London got me to thinking about the US, and the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment running through the population right now. I don't have any data to back this up (but I'm sure it's out there), but it seems to me that most of the anger/hatred/fear stems from people who don't actually have that much contact with Muslims in their daily life, simply because they live in parts of the country where there aren't that many Muslims. I think a good example of this is that is wasn't New Yorkers who raised the crazy opposition to the lower-Manhattan cultural center. And because there are many people who don't see Muslims on a regular basis, the right-wing pundits that been able to convince them that all Muslims are dangerous and stand for the destruction of America. I'm not saying that the UK doesn't have any problems with anti-Muslim feelings - obviously simply mixing populations does not cause immediate understanding and acceptance. It's an incredibly complicated issue. I guess my point is just that if the pastor in Florida had seen more Muslim families enjoying ice cream sundaes and peacefully celebrating Ramadan, he might not have been driven to burn their holy book.

Academia, England-style

Random Photo that Danny thought was funny:

Oxford may only be the 6th best university in the world (thanks, Stephen, for posting the link), but it's still an amazing place for a weekend trip and conference! Thanks to my cushy connections at the LSHTM, I got to attend a Health Policy conference earlier this week, held at Madgalen College in Oxford. The conference was Monday and Tuesday, but Danny and I headed out on Sunday morning to see just how Oxford compared to Cambridge (which, incidentally, just leaped over Harvard for best university in the world). Although the hands-down verdict is that Cambridge is better (I mean, who punts from inside the boat?!), we had a great time. Highlights of the visit included:

- Visiting Christ Church (which is a college, not a church, although it does have quite a large church), where some scenes from Harry Potter 1 and 2 were filmed, and where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland. Alice was the young daughter of the dean of the college. Every night after dinner the dean would leave via a hidden door and back staircase - the white rabbit was based on him. Alice also had a cat named Dinah who would sit in a tree next to the library.

- Listening to bees. Just so you're assured that Oxford does have a hippy-dippy side, we visited a socio-ecological project where a guy has set up 2 bee hives, with a stethescope in each one so you can sit and listen to the bees doing their thing. It was pretty cool.

- Cream tea

- Dinner at one of Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurants. Tired of going to pubs and finding just one veggie option, we splurged for some home-made Italian goodness. And it was good.

- The Ashmolean museum: art and old things.

- The Museum of the History of Science. Lots of beautiful, hand-made astronomical tools that I don't understand, the original 1940 journal describing the use of penicillin (not that long ago!), several of Marconi's first radios, and a chilling display of the first anesthesia delivery system from the 1840's next to a bone-saw kit from the late 1700's. Ouch.


But it wasn't all fun and games and tea (although we did buy a new game, and we did drink a lot of tea). We were also there to learn. While Danny went to the Bodleian library to read the records of the conservative party, I began in earnest my foray into the social sciences. It was really great to think about the more large-scale aspects of health, rather than just how we treat diseases. Topics ranged from the fairly straightforward (do policies to include patients in safety efforts work, and what determines whether patients want to get involved) to the obscure-but-thought-provoking (focusing on social governance and the fate of all humanity rather than politial and economic gains).

The keynote address happened to be by Ted Marmor, on the recent health care reform in the US, and how we managed to get a "Republican style" plan that no republicans voted for (answer? US senate structure. and some other stuff). But he is hopeful that some of the new laws regarding private insurance may pave the way towards more universal, if not single payer, health care.

Another point that was driven home in this conference is that in the UK, health care policy changes all the time. Yes, the NHS has been in place since 1948, but they (politicians) feel the need to make some slight change every 2-3 years - changing the details GP contracts, changing public health priorities, changing the flow of money. All of which of course means that there's very little time to evaluate policies, and everyone does so under the assumption that they will just change in a few years away. And doctors have just gotten used to the idea that while the policies change constantly, once the dust settles they will go back to practicing medicine as usual. Whether that will be the case with the new White Paper, though, is anyone's guess. But more on that later. For now, it's off to Salzburg!

A day at Lord's

We had hoped to go to the 5th day of the England-Pakistan Test at Lord's.  You know, the one in which Stuart Broad cemented his place as a real Test batsman.  But as it turned out, the Test finished halfway through the 4th day, with the shadows of spot-fixing allegations hanging over the Pakistan team.  So our hopes to see Test cricket at the home of cricket were dashed.

Instead, we opted for a rather less significant match: a Pro40 one-day match between Middlesex and Derbyshire last Saturday.  Last Saturday was a pleasant day, so why not spend it outside?

The match itself was a pretty tame affair: a 7-wicket win for Middlesex, with little sense of any other possible result for most of the afternoon.  So rather than you a rather boring recap of the game action, here's a series of observations about watching a domestic cricket match at Lord's, the home of cricket on a Saturday afternoon in late summer.

But first, evidence that we were there:

Becca with the Media Centre.





Danny with the Pavillion.



- Beer is cheap.  Well, cheap by pub standards.  You're going to pay £4 for a pint of ale, whereas I think the priciest pint in a pub I've had in London is somewhere around £3.60.  But given that you're at a professional sporting event, £4 is dirt cheap.  Those of you who have been to Fenway recently know how much beer at a baseball game will set you back.  And remember, here in England it comes in pints.

- People dress up to watch cricket.  I suspect that this is much more common at Lord's (with its connection to the Marylebone Cricket Club, a sort of old-fashioned gentleman's club with a special interest in cricket), but still, it's rather striking to view to see dozens of men dressed in blazers and ties while drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon.

- Some of the best players in the world play before small crowds in domestic matches.  I can't find any attendance figures for the match we went to, but I'd say that there were no more than 1,000 fans in attendance, most of them clustered together on one side of the pitch.  This, in spite of the fact that England captain Andrew Strauss turned out for Middlesex.  It was a bit of a shock to see him fielding, rather anonymously, at square-leg, just 15 meters away from us.

- Speaking of close contact with England players, we happened to find ourselves just a few steps behind fast bowler Steven Finn as we wandered around the stadium.  At first I thought it was just a fan wearing the Middlesex kit.  But we quickly realized that there aren't many fans that are 6'7".  So there he was, just walking back to the dressing room as we wandered back to our seats.

- Pimm's and Lemonade on tap!

If you happen to be in London this weekend and want to see English cricket at its amateurish best, the final of the Village Cricket Cup is at 11:00 on Saturday morning at Lord's.  Shipton-under-Wychwood versus Sessay for all the marbles.

Historians' quest for context in the archive

What do you do when you find the same sort of letter over and over again in the archives?  Like, say, this one:

I'll return to this letter in a minute.

Historians are big on context.  When teaching undergraduate students, this can be as basic as developing reading skills: Be sure to read around the passage or phrase you're interested in to make sense of it.  Be skeptical of claims based on quotations that seem too good to be true.  Things get more complicated when you consider the full document that a quotation is drawn from.

At another level, historians are interested in the circumstances in which events occur and ideas develop.  Unlike scholars in some disciplines who seek out "master factors" that explain everything, historians are suckers for making sure their stories incorporate lots of contextual information.  At its worst, this can degenerate into mere description and lose any analytic rigor.  But at its best, this "quest for context" (as I've heard Robert Self describe historians' project) helps us gain a richer understanding of the complexity and diversity of the human experience.

Now, back to that letter (go ahead, click on it).  On first reading, it doesn't seem that promising a source for the historian of religious education.  It's on a rather mundane topic: who should pay for particular educational materials, the Local Education Authority (think school board) or individual "voluntary" schools (schools that received some state funding but remained under the control of third-party, typically religious organizations).  Letters that contain the phrase "requisitioned in the usual way" aren't exactly the sort of thing that inspire excitement.

If you read a bit more closely and realize exactly what sort of education materials are at issue, the letter becomes more interesting.  This isn't a letter about math textbooks or art supplies.  Instead, what the letter-writer wants to know is whether the LEA is allowed to buy prayer books for local church schools.  Now things are starting to get juicy, right?  You'd never see anything like this in the United States.  State funds going to purchase explicitly religious materials for explicitly religious schools?  Welcome to post-WWII England.

So far, so good.  But this is just one letter.  Perhaps the Isle of Wight education authority was just super-careful and wanted to make absolutely sure that they could pay for prayer books requested by voluntary schools (as the law in fact permitted them to do).

In fact, there are dozens of letters just like this in the records of the Ministry of Education.  So many, in fact, that you get a clear sense of just how exasperated ministry officials were getting with these information requests. After reading a few of these letters, I could practically write the replies myself, "The local education authority is required to provide the funds for regular education expenses for voluntary schools, including religious education, as long as the costs are reasonable."

It wasn't just the Isle of Wight, in other words, that was unsure about the regulations surrounding religious education in the 1944 Education Act.  Across England, education authorities pestered the Ministry of Education about what sort of religious education they could and couldn't pay for.  In some cases, it's clear that the LEA wanted to support the denominational voluntary schools but were uncertain if the law allowed them to do so.  In others, like the West Riding of Yorkshire, the education authority, more secularist in outlook, had to be leaned on rather heavily by the Ministry of Education to fulfill its statutory obligation.

But there's a thread that connects all these letters: the question of "denominational" education.  In letter after letter, you see the phrases "denominational instruction," "distinctive of any denomination," and the like.  A phrase that seems technical or mundane in just one letter assumes far greater import when it's inescapable. 

So I would argue that this letter only makes sense in the context of the dozens of other letters raising the exact same issue.  The existence of so many letters on one topic reveals something deeper than any single letter on its own can suggest: that there was widespread confusion and anxiety about what constituted "denominational" religious instruction in the immediate aftermath of the 1944 Education Act.  This claim can also be spun into a larger discussion of denominational conflict in the immediate postwar era (of which there was plenty).

The historian's task, then, is more than just collecting a series of texts and reporting on their contents.  Historians have to look for connections across documents.  And it is those connections that allow the historian to transcend the particularities of any given piece of evidence to make broader claims about the past.

Bank Holiday Weekend

Finally took a photo of a Vegetarian Full English Breakfast. The lighting is weird because we were eating outside!



Last weekend (August 28-30th) was a bank holiday weekend. Why? Because, as my boss put it, "In the UK we actually get holidays, though not nearly as many as Continental Europe." In addition to the expected public holidays (Easter, Christmas, New Years Day, and the Queens Diamond Jubilee to be held in 2012), there are three Bank Holiday Mondays - two of which are inexplicably held in May (Early May Bank Holiday and Spring Bank Holiday), and one on the last weekend in August. How to celebrate? It was too late to make reservations to take a true vacation, since most of England plans a weekend getaway, but we did take a day trip out of London to the New Forest National Park.

The New Forest is a good example of the difference between natural beauty in the US vs. UK. While some parts of Northern England and Scotland and North Wales are impressive, much of English beauty is more...subtle. The New Forest would never be a National Park in the US. It is mostly open grass pastures with grazing cows, horses and ponies, interspersed with pretty forests and small towns with thatched roofs. But the great thing about the New Forest is the cycling trails - many miles of cycle-only trails, and plenty of pubs and tea rooms to keep cyclists refreshed. Just an hour and half train ride from London, it's the perfect day trip! You just have to be careful, because there are often ponies on the road, on the cycle trail, and just outside the pubs...









Sunday was unimpressive in terms of what we did, although we did check out a new farmers market, which is always exciting. On Monday we ventured down to the famous Notting Hill Carnival, which is held every August Bank Holiday. Apparently it's the "largest street festival in Europe", and I'd believe it. It's an impressive West Indian cultural festival, with a parade and some of the most spectacular costumes I've ever seen. It's also an impressive display of young Londoners' eagerness to get drunk in the middle of the day (you could buy shots at tables set up on the sidewalk), and their ability to tolerate huge crushes of people. We left relatively early to go play ultimate with Curve - we hadn't been in over a month! Then we came home and made Shakshuka. All in all a great weekend!

Best discovery of the week

Our local pub, the Star, has an upstairs room with 1) a comfy couch, 2) a big-screen TV with the football on, 3) a fireplace, and 4) no one else there tonight.  Throw in beer from the bar downstairs and it's like a cozy second living room around the corner from us.

Why has my only post in the past week been about cricket?

To answer that question, I present a photograph:



This one should be self-explanatory. So minus mailing a transcript request form and sending in a photo, my residency application is done! Which is just in time, because the next 6 weeks are an exciting stream of visitors (parents! friends!), vacations (Salzburg! Denmark! Glasgow!), and conferences (Oxford for me, Rennes for Danny). Throw the high holy days and my birthday in there, and it's looking pretty busy. But busy with awesomeness, and hopefully with blogging about that awesomeness!