There is nothing like too much time in front of a computer just dealing with email to induce severe mind-body dissociation. The L.A. Times had a great story on just that today, but guess how I heard about it -- a daily email alert from them that leads to way much time reading their stories.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Doing that Cartesian rag
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 7:59 PM 0 comments
Friday, July 25, 2008
Birka
Today we took a ferry to Birka Island in Lake Mälar, about an hour and 45 minutes by boat from Stockholm. It leaves from right next to the city hall, which you can see it the first photo. Very striking place, the city hall -- we had our opening reception for the IAMCR conference there Monday night.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 10:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
Gamla Stan
I took off from my conference in Stockholm early this afternoon so Sandy and I could go play a bit. First stop was Gamla Stan, the old city. Walking in from the subway stop, we found this corner, which was on Sandy's list of things to look at. When the building was built in the 1400s, someone put in a piece of a genuine Viking runestone as part of the foundation. It is a busy corner, so someone in the 1600s planted an old cannon barrel in front of the wall as a sort of bumper to protect the building against the bigger wagons that were starting to use the street.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 2:32 PM 0 comments
Monday, July 21, 2008
Stockholm
We flew from Lisbon into Stockholm yesterday. I am here for the meeting of the Inter- national Association of Media and Communication Research, a wonderfully global group of scholars from all over. Sandy is here to stock up on things for her Astrid Lindgren course and generally catch up on Swedish culture.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 1:35 PM 0 comments
Saturday, July 19, 2008
To the furthest west point in Europe
This afternoon, a friend from Lisbon, Cristina Ponte, took us on a drive out to Cabo da Roca, the furthest west point in continental Europe. A breathtaking view on a peak high above the ocean, as you can see from this photo of Cristina and Sandy at the point.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 3:30 PM 5 comments
The arcades project
I am just enough of a cultural theory geek that I really could not resist this one. Sandy and I came down to Lisbon from Porto by train this morning and decided, for some forgotten reason, to walk from the train station through a very sunny and hot dock neighborhood to the main plaza and from there back to our hotel.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 3:02 PM 0 comments
Friday, July 18, 2008
And more Art Nouveau at one of the world's most amazing bookstores
The promotional magazines about cities you find in hotels are usually pretty useless, dedicated to really pointless but expensive consumption. Today in Porto, however, Sandy found a real gem in one: the Livraria Irmãos Lello, a family-run bookstore in the old city that has been in the same location since 1904. Here is the façade, which is pretty impressive as a neo-gothic confection.
It got even better inside. Here is Sandy in the front of the store, with an absolutely amazing staircase rising behind her.
Here is another view of the staircase, from above.
We loved the place. It made us think of all the Straubies back home who are big Art Deco fans, Julia, Kristy and Chris. It has a great collection of art, literature and travel books, too.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 1:54 PM 0 comments
Azulejos
The Portuguese are famous for making tile, mostly blue, often in pictures representing various scenes. They tend to be of religious figures, famous battles, but one restaurant in Lisbon preferred an exterior dedicated to cows, as you see here. Tile work goes way back to colonial times, but is still a live art, we saw a studio creating new ones in Lisbon.
Here is a much more conventional use, showing religious scenes on the side of a church in Porto. We wandered in an caught a lovely impromptu baroque organ music concert, which I hated to leave.
Here is another pretty frequent employment for tiles in Portugal, the celebration of big events in Portuguese history, in this case, the very beginning of Western colonialism in Africa -- O Infante Dom Henrique, known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator, conquering the Moors in Ceuta, to gain a foothold in Africa for a budding Portuguese empire. You can see this one in the main train station in downtown Porto, which has a very large lobby full of historic and folkloric tile murals.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 1:34 PM 0 comments
World's Largest and Most Misplaced Doily
This bridge over the Rio Douro in Porto, Portugal is one of my favorite sights in the world. So imagine my surprise when someone seems to have placed the world's largest lace doily on the middle of it. Probably an expensive municipal art project.
Personally, I prefer the art of the kids diving into the river in the summer heat. Looks like a lot of fun. We ate dinner here on the river bank tonight and enjoyed the view despite the vast doily.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 1:26 PM 0 comments
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The São Jorge Castle in Lisbon
Along with Jeremiah, one of my grad students from UT, Sandy and I went to the Castelo São Jorge (St. George Castle), which figures prominently on the Lisbon skyline and equally prominent in its history, when Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, took it by siege from the Moors in 1147.
It is interesting how widely revered St. George was across medieval Europe, not just England. Here is a replica of a stone carving of him in Portugal from 1398. And as most Brazilians know, he made it across the Atlantic, just in time to get syncretized with the African god Ogum in candomblé in Brazil.
We took a somewhat circuitous route to the castle. We walked to the base of its hill, then took a streetcar, which wound all over the place, including close to the castle, but the driver refused to tell anybody where to get off for the castle. So a bunch of tourists ended up at the end of the line, several miles away, by a nice park and cathedral (lots of those all over Lisbon).
So finally we took a cab back to the castle, where you can see us, at last in this photo.
The castle has a great view out over the Lisbon skyline. They are supposed to have commanding views, by definition, I suppose. Here is a view of the River Tejo, with what looks like a 16th or 17th century cannon in front. We walked all over the castle and then decided to park ourselves in a battlement cafe near this cannon to watch the view more at ease, since Sandy has a nasty bone bruise on her leg from a fall in York a couple of weeks ago that bugs her after a lot of walking.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 10:18 AM 2 comments
The Art Deco Tour of Lisbon
One of the things that makes Lisbon interesting is the remarkable number of Art Deco buildings it has, particularly along Avenida Liberdade, the main boulevard of the city. That is also a nice shady place to walk for much of its length.
The Art Deco façades also combine in a lot of other things. This first one is a building with a corner relief that celebrates cinema and arts. It has been taken over by a Hard Rock Cafe. So all the nice socialist realism, in the Portuguese fascist version, in figures of dance, music, etc. want you to now join Planet Hollywood. Sitting duck for some snarky comments about global hybridity, but too easy.
Here is another example of a cinema arts palace, that has been repurposed. This one is now a sleek apartment hotel with a pool on the roof. Little kids in bathing suits kept appearing at one edge.
The last one is a train station that is still a train station, but its doors are really interesting. They combine what seems like a classic Art Deco rounded door with a much earlier rounded, decorated arch that mimics a 16th century church door, with the kind of carving that you might have seen on one of Lisbon's cathedrals or monasteries.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 9:37 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
On the trail of the Pastel de Belem in Lisbon
We got into Lisbon this morning, stood in line a lot to get into the country and then get a cab. But never let lack of sleep get you down! I went off to a lunch meeting with Rui Cadima and Joao Grillo at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, then met up with Jeremiah Spence, pictured at right, who is working with me on his doctorate at UT, met up with another Nova professor, Cristina Ponte (second from left) and Lidia, who had been my student at UT last spring, and went off to a bar by the river, at the spot shown here, to have a meeting, to plan a research project. (Honest, we really did -- got a great outline done.)
Here is Sandy, enjoying the breeze and kibitzing in on the research planning.
Then we finally got down to more serious business, ate at a Brazilian steakhouse called Picanha, which served exactly that (the best beef cut in the known world). Then we walked across the street to where the mothership awaited, the Pastelaria de Belem, named after the neighborhood, not the original Bethlehem, but the home of one of the world's best pastries, the pastel de Belem. There is a huge cafe right alongside the factory where they make them. It looks very modest in the next photo, but that is part of its charm. Pastry perfection does not have to advertise or use really hideous clown mascots or anything like that.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 3:06 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
London calling
The last part of our three week journey around the British isles was London. It called to us.
Here are Sandy and Chris in the classic tourist view along the Thames. A bit wider here than it was at Oxford.
We strolled along the Thames several times day and night. All three of us are art fans and fans of Salvador Dali in particular, so it was fun to run across this massive elephant of Dali's along the Thames.
After walking up the Thames quite a bit we got to the neighborhood of the Globe Theatre where we had tickets to see King Lear. I had always wanted to see Shakespeare at the Globe, so it was quite a thrill. Here are Sandy and I in the third floor balcony. It was an excellent production, too.
The next day we went to the Tower of London, which I had somehow or other never been through before. The Yeoman Warders really are pretty amazing as guides go. (And we had seen a lot of museums and guides at that point.) Here is ours who had a fine sense of humor and drama, and crowd control that I can only envy when I teach 450 freshmen next fall.
More London later. Now bed is calling.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 9:09 PM 0 comments
Dancing fool
You just have to love the Web for its ability to throw up really random, but delightful things. Below is a video of Matt Harding, from Australia, doing a goofy sort of chicken dance in all sorts of locations around the world. You can see some of them here, including Austin, by the statue/shrine to Stevie Ray Vaughn, which sort of vouches for his taste in music if not dance moves.
Part of the fun of the video is the sheer joy the guy seems to get out of it, as well as the way people, particularly kids, get into it with him. Part of the fun is thinking about those places he dances where you might have been to yourself.
If you want the old school treatment, here is a link to a New York Times story about him. I guess I am still a bit old school myself, since that is how I heard about him. But then I kind of like a nice blend of old and new.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/arts/television/08dancer.html?em&ex=1215662400&en=1c9425dc6d0eb3c2&ei=5087%0A
To quote the Times:
"The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus."
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 8:36 AM 0 comments
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Oxford town
We spent a day in Oxford between York and London, about ten days ago (I am still catching up on blogging about that trip.)
It was great fun, starting with a nice restaurant on the side of the Thames where we had lunch and watched people who had rented punts trying to make them work.
We walked all around town, looking in on a couple of the more famous traditional colleges. Here is Christchurch College.
And here is a courtyard at Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis was on the faculty. Sandy and I are both long time fans of many of his books, particularly the Narnia series (despite the less than stellar movies). Sandy in particular attributes much of her childhood sense of morality to ideas from the Narnia books. I only encountered them as an adult, but I still like them.
Here is the River Cherwell seen from Addison's walk, in back of Magdalen College, where J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson reputedly convinced C.S. Lewis to become a Christian at 3 a.m. on September 20, 1931.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was very magical for both Sandy and me as teenagers. I was wowed by the breadth of the saga, the heroism and goodness of the main characters. Very inspiring stuff. I can't really say that either Tolkien or Lewis directly affected my own evolving sense of morality or my decision as a late teenager to really embrace the Mormon Christianity I had grown up with. But it has been fascinating to learn about how these men thought it through for themselves and talked about it.
On that same theme, here is the pub where Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson used to meet: The Eagle and Child, sometimes known as the Bird and the Baby.
And here is a picture of Sandy and Chris inside the pub.
Posted by Joe Straubhaar at 9:13 PM 0 comments