The Lady from Dubuque

We are off today to see Edward Albee’s play The Lady from Dubuque at the Haymarket. This production stars Maggie Smith. After previously seeing the Goat play by Albee and knowing this play closed in the USA after only 12 performances back in the 80’s, I am keeping my fingers crossed for something interesting!

The play's first act opens with three young couples playing party games. As the night progresses the main female protagonist is becoming increasingly angry and upset. (Trying not to give too much of the plot away here!) At the end of the evening, a fourth couple appears an older woman (Smith!) and her black companion. The new arrival asks the audience, "Are we in time? Is this the place?" and answers her own questions: "Yes, we are in time. This is the place." And the curtain falls. In Act One, the recurrent theme is "Who are you?" stay tuned for Act II when the questions get more intense!

The William Morris Gallery

Yesterday, a group from the SJWWC visited the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow in northwest London. William Morris (born March 24^th 1834), was a man of many talents. He was a designer, craftsman and writer (and not to mention Socialist!). The gallery is located in the Morris’s family home (the former Water House) from 1848-1856. It is a Georgian house dating from around 1750.

Morris and his life long friends John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb formed an artistic movement called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Simply put, this group of talented men disliked manufactured items and favoured a return to handmade craftsmanship. The Gallery holds a collection that illustrates Morris’s life and work. There are displays of printed and embroidered fabrics, rugs, wallpapers, furniture, painted tiles and stained glass. Morris died October 3, 1896 at Hammersmith, and is quoted as 'having done more work than most ten men'. The adventure to Walthamstow was short and sweet with very tiny gift shop!

Beckenham

Carrie, Jeff and I went in search of Beckenham on Saturday. Beckenham is the village (now a suburb in the London Borough of Bromley) where my great great great grandfather Edmund King was born to Thomas King and Zoe LaCorish? (foreign born frenchwoman!). The name of the town appears to derive from Beohha's homestead (Beohhan + ham in Old English) The River Beck was named after the town. The word Beck also means a stream in middle English. The trip was something to do on a cold March Saturday as much as a pilgrimage to ancestral lands. We didn't find the agricultural village where Thomas worked as a labourer at the beginning of the 19th century but we did find the George Inn, a nice pub founded circa 1647! After lunch we explored St. George's churchyard. I really didn't expect to find any family tombstones there, (thinking the family would be too poor to be able to afford one) but was hopeful and we didn't! We then drove around Beckenham and found Elmer's End where the King family is listed as living in the 1841 England census. We made it home in time for the England vs Isreal match and then dinner with the Vande Voorde's!

Also, today I have to share this bit of historic information. While searching around the Internet this morning, I discovered a new piece of information. Today is Lady's Day! It was the historic start of the new year in England, Wales, Ireland and the future USA until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. The British tax years still starts on 'Old' Lady Day (6 April under the Gregorian calendar corresponded to 25 March under the Julian calendar). In addition, there are Quarter days : the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, and rents and rates were due. They fell on four religious holidays roughly three months apart. The English quarter days (also observed in Wales) are : Lady Day (March 25) Midsummer Day (June 24), Michaelmas (September 29) Christmas (December 25). The English term cross-quarter days refers to holidays derived from the Celtic calendar and is a day falling approximately halfway between a solstice and an equinox. These days originated as pagan holidays. They are Candlemas, May Day (May 1), Lammas, and All Hallows,(November 1).

Ok, so I might be the only one who thought that was interesting! You might too, especially if you read Jane Austen and wondered about these terms!

the history boys

I went with the SJWWC to see Alan Bennett's The History Boys at the Wyndham Theatre the other night. I thought the play was well written and enjoyed it very much. It was however a long haul to intermission! The play runs 2 hours and 45 minutes! The story takes place in a grammar school in the north of England and I actually got the accent right away! I joked afterwards that I have been living in England so long that I got the accent, cultural references and the jokes! I am even turning that pasty white colour that English people have from the lack of sunshine!

Last Mosaic Class

Today is the last mosaic class of term. I am working on my Frank Lloyd Wright design for the bench! This is a picture of one of my first mosaic pieces and probably one of my favorites!

Bunco

It time for Bunco! Our monthly gathering for games, gossip and good food!

The Seige

Book club today! The Seige by Helen Dunmore will be up for discussion. The group is trying something new today. Instead of meeting in a members home we are going out for a Russian Lunch at Troika Tea Room in Primrose Hill.

Oh no, French!

Had a very nice Mothering Sunday dinner with Carrie & Dan also a chance to visit with Dan's lovely parents Janet & Michael! The apple crumble was marvelous! I had the sad duty to let Carrie know that she now has French blood in her veins. Her Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother on my mother side of the family was listed in the 1841 England census as being "Foreign Born!" Her name was Antoinette King (la Corish!). Dan mentioned divorce - but I don't know - is that grounds?

Mothering Sunday

Today is Mothering Sunday here in the UK and I qualify! Lucky me, I am blessed with two of the best! I like the fact that it is not Mother's Day but a recognition of all those that nurture other humans to their full potential. Not to get too sentimental but they remembered! I guess it is every mothers fear that they won't! Mother's day is not only a single day of the year for cards, flowers and lunch (unless you're an expat - you get a second chance on American Mother's Day!) but an important reminder of one component of the village that help us to be part of the greater community. I always viewed my job as a mother to make good citizens of my children. To teach them how to live in the world, to do no harm and give something back to their community. I think I am doing OK. They are terrific kids! I hope today that they will stop and pause to think about the women in their village that have also nurtured them along the way to becoming the women that they are today!

St. Patrick's Day

Today is St. Patrick's Day, an Irish and Irish-American holiday commemorating the death, as legend has it, of Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, on March 17, circa 492. In many American cities it is time for celebrating Irish heritage with a parade. Among the most renowned are the Boston parade, which dates to March 17, 1737; the New York City parade, which dates to March 17, 1762; and the Savannah, Georgia, parade, which dates to March 17, 1812. In New York City in 1879, when St. Patrick's Cathedral was completed the parade was extended up Fifth Avenue in order to allow the archbishop to review the parade while standing in front of the church. On St. Patrick’s Day in NYC everyone is Irish!

As a consequence of Ireland's potato famine of 1845-49, which left more than a million dead of starvation many immigrated to America. Most of the Irish who came to the U.S. during this period arrived with little education and few material possessions. They encountered discrimination in jobs and housing searches, and endured the longstanding prejudice of many members of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority toward both the Irish and Catholicism. The US Civil War provided an occasion for Irish immigrants to prove their worth as U.S. citizens and they earned a reputation for bravery and sacrifice in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War! "these Celtic soldiers were fighting most of all for their own future and an America which did not segregate, persecute, and discriminate against the Irish people and their Catholicism, Irish culture, and distinctive Celtic heritage like the hated English in the old country.

ASL Auction

Today begins the ASL auction weekend. Holly and I are meeting Kellee this afternoon at school for the Friday Auction. We hope to bid on a dinner to share for about 8 couples. I think it is terrific that for the first time ASL Alumni can bid on line for items. The technology improvements over the years have been amazing! We are also very proud of our good friend Kathy V for all the time and hard work she has put into this event (glad it was her and not us)! Well done Kathy! This picture is from the 2003 Auction of two guys I know in a limo on the way to the Guildhall!

The Swan at Tetsworth

Yesterday, Kellee, Hollie and I drove out to the Swan at Tetsworth (near Thame in Oxfordshire) to have lunch and do a little antiquing. It was a beautiful sunny day. The type of day where you just keep saying it is a beautiful day! Too bad we spent alot of it going room to room looking for treasures! I think we must have looked in every room (about 40 in total)! Each room had some treasure that we would have bought had we the money to buy them and the space to keep them in our homes! I think my favourite was a candle type telephone made of brass that Kelle found. We spent a considerable amount of time trying to remember Lily Tomlin's character who was a switchboard operator (Ernestine!). Thank you Kellee for sending me the email this morning with the name! We had a very frou- frou lunch in the restaurant right on the premises!
What did I buy? Well, I bought three things. One was a french grape pickers basket made of wood (says something about my great grandfather Francesco who loved his wine and tried to grow grapes in his backyard in Brooklyn!) and the other a small victorian maid's box also made of wood. This appealed to me because my great great grandmother Lavinia was a domestic servant in the 19th century. The third thing I bought is a gift for Father's Day for someone I love, so I am not going to spill the beans on that one just yet!

St. John's Women's Club

Meeting today at 9:30 am

Commonwealth Day 2007

The Commonwealth of Nations, (usually known as The Commonwealth), is a association of 53 independent sovereign states, all of which, with the exception of Mozambique, are former colonies of the United Kingdom. Commonwealth Day is the annual celebration held on the second Monday in March. It is marked by a multi-faith service normally attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, The Head of the Commonwealth, Commonwealth Secretary-General and the Commonwealth High Commissioners in London. The Queen delivers an address to the Commonwealth which is broadcast throughout the world on the BBC. Commonwealth Day is not a public holiday in most Commonwealth countries and there is little public awareness of it.

Current Members:

Australia, Canada (1931), Irish Free State (1931; left in 1949), Newfoundland (1931; became a province of Canada in 1949),New Zealand (1931), South Africa (1931; left in 1961; rejoined in 1994),United Kingdom (1931), India (1947), Pakistan (1947; left in 1972; rejoined 1989; suspended in 1999; readmitted in 2004), Sri Lanka (1948), Ghana (1957), Malaysia (1957), Nigeria (1960; suspended in 1995; readmitted in 1999), Cyprus (1961), Tanganyika (1961), Sierra Leone (1961), Jamaica (1962), Trinidad and Tobago (1962), Uganda (1962), Kenya (1963), Zanzibar (1963; merged with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1964), Malawi (1964), Malta (1964), Tanzania (1964), Zambia (1964), The Gambia (1965), Singapore (1965), Barbados (1966), Botswana (1966), Guyana (1966), Lesotho (1966), Mauritius (1968), Swaziland (1968), Fiji (1970; left in 1987; rejoined in 1997; suspended in 2000; readmitted in 2001), Samoa (1970), Tonga (1970), Bangladesh (1972, The Bahamas (1973), Grenada (1974), Papua New Guinea (1975), Seychelles (1976), Dominica (1978), Solomon Islands (1978), Tuvalu (1978), Kiribati (1979)Saint Lucia (1979), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (1979), Vanuatu (1980), Zimbabwe (1980; suspended in 2002; left in 2003), Antigua and Barbuda (1981),Belize (1981), Maldives (1982), Saint Kitts and Nevis (1983), Brunei (1984), Namibia (1990), Cameroon (1995), Mozambique (1995) & Nauru (2000)

The numbers really say something about the land that god couldn't trust in the dark!

Johnny Appleseed Day

Johnny Appleseed, was born John Chapman born on September 26, 1774 near Leominster, Massachusetts. He was an American pioneer nurseryman. He introduced the apple the to large parts of New York and Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, by planting small nurseries. An American legend because of his kind and generous ways, and his leadership in conservation.

Family History

Our friend Joe H accused me the other day of having too much time on my hands and he’s right. The kids have moved out, the cats don’t care, the house is clean, the wash is done and the husband is away! What to do with myself now that I am not really drinking anymore? Well, I have been watching documentaries. This week I was obsessed with the program Who Do You Think Are? Celebrities trace family roots with the help of some knowledgeable experts. It takes about an hour and there are always tears in the end and some profound words of wisdom about remembering the past. It has motivated me to pick up my own family history again. I became interested in genealogy after my mother’s funeral when my Aunt Rose said that since I was living in London, there were all these English relatives that I should find. So I started looking. I bought books and magazines and scoured the Internet. Through some dumb luck I found them!

There is a contest currently going on Ancestry.com that involves three questions. Where do your ancestors come from? How many generations you’ve so far traced? And what makes your family story exciting? Well, OK, I can work on answering these questions because I have so much time on my hands!

Where do my ancestors come from? Simply put they come from England and Italy. Since I am currently living in England and my dad has done a fantastic job of taking care of the Italians, I restrict myself to the English side. My story really begins in my hometown of NYC with my grandfather Thomas William King Bantin. Great name huh? The Bantins lived right here in London and one of the things that makes this story so interesting is that family members are all buried in the Willesden Cemetery less than 2 miles away from where I live. My grandfather “Bill” couldn’t wait to get out of London. He ran away from home (so I am told!) to the sea (the family ran a stationary store and bookshop near Marble Arch!) and here I am living in the very place he couldn’t wait to get out of!

So how many generations have you’ve traced so far? Not many, my wonderful cousins Carol & Eric (our grandfathers were brothers!) had already done much of the work by the time I got interested. How I met them here in London is also another fabulous story. There is still work to be done on the family tree, so I am off to the Records Office on Monday to look for Lavinia Moon Bantin, my great great grandmother. She has been eluding me for too long now and I am going to find her! I am intrigued by her because she has the same name as my mother and she was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. How did she wind up in London married to a coachman? I have convinced my daughter Beth to take a road trip to Leeds to check her out in May. Beth nods at me, looks sceptical and says OK, mom a lot!

I have never met my grandfather Thomas William King Bantin (TWK as he appears in so much documentation). He died in 1935 of stomach cancer. My Aunt Rose still has the telegram from the hospital telling my grandmother Belle that he died during the night. I will save the story of my grandfather’s grave near LaGuardia airport in NYC for another day – it is a good one! I have already bored some of my friends’ silly with the “family secret”!

Underneath the Lintel

Holly and I went to the theatre the other night to see Len Berger’s Underneath the Lintel. I am a long time fan of the program West Wing and wanted to see Richard Schiff, known to TV viewers as the White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler in person. I think I first noticed Schiff in the John Travolta movie Michael. In one of final scenes of the movie Schiff plays an Italian waiter who describes the menu to William Hurt’s character in a very charming way. We have angel hair pasta!

Underneath the Lintel is the story of a Danish librarian who goes in search of a book borrower who anonymously returned a Baedeker travel guidebook over 100 years late to the library. An ancient myth is unlocked when a clue is scribbled in the margin of the book and an unclaimed dry-cleaning ticket begins the journey to track the person who returned the book. The quest takes him on a life changing journey across time and the planet.

Richard Schiff comes on onstage so casually and so much like a librarian that I was not sure the play has started. Apparently, we are in a lecture hall as the librarian begins to take evidence out of a suitcase one by one. He is showing the audience what he has collected about an unseen man and begins his narrative of his travels. As the play goes on we learn the myth of the Wandering Jew, a cobbler who denied Jesus shelter "underneath his lintel'' as Jesus stumbled on the way to Golgotha. The cobbler is condemned to wander without rest, without contact with other human beings and without any name or identity.

For me, Underneath the Lintel is about identity and how we leave our mark on the world. What is my purpose in life and how will the world know I was here and lived? Thought provoking questions! I love it when I leave a movie or a play with something to think about in the days that follow. A sign of a quality production! Go see this one!

International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women's Day. A much better idea to celebrate than Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day. The idea behind IWD is to celebrate the achievements of women around the globe and inspire them to greater things! I am lucky enough to know so many great women and I will think about them today. Some of those outstanding women are here in London and others are in Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Indiana, D.C and New York. I have learned important lessons from them, shared sorrows and frustrations, laughed and been cheered by each of them over the years. Who could ask for anything more? Each has brought something unique to my life and I will be forever grateful. I know they have made this world a better place and I know that the generations that follow after them are going to achieve greater things as a result of their wisdom, guidance and love! Today is a small reminder of your wonderfulness!

Selma

On Sunday March 7, 1965, over 500 people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by an state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies. When footage of the violence in Selma was shown on tv that night, demonstrations in support of the marchers were held in eighty cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Pettus Bridge where they knelt and prayed. America was waking up!

Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day

Ok, it is Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day! I have no idea what this means or how to celebrate! I spent a good 30 minutes on the web trying to find out (I know this was pretty silly!). Who decides these things? Congress? No one seems to know out there in cyberland! Not a single mention on Wikipedia or Google! Who came up with this idea of Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day? Hallmark? Macy's? Is there a ceramic pottery day also? What about Mosaic day? How about Glass appreciation day? I am wondering what else should we be appreciating? Is there a calendar out there for these obscure appreciation days? Do I have the time to celebrate all these events? I guess sitting back with my favourite mug (ceramic - from Stoke on Trent- that says Venice) will forever more be a reminder to me to appreciate the little things in life!

The Swans

Jeff and I spent a lovely early spring Saturday visiting two Swans in Pangbourne and Streatley. We were accompanied (and driven by!) our precious friends Holly & David. Holly and I had done our homework from the travel tome Historic Inns along the River Thames by Richard Long and picked out a luncheon destination north of Reading. During World Wars I and II the river at Pangbourne (Pangbourne means 'Paega's People's Stream’) was used to train American, Canadian, Australian as well as British Royal Engineers in the skill of building bailey and pontoon bridges. Prior to D-Day many bridges were built across the Thames and then dismantled. Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, retired to Church Cottage in Pangbourne. He died there in 1932. I mention this because our daughter Beth played Badger in an excellent ASL middle school production of the play!

The Pangbourne pub Swan is an old establishment dating from 1642 and was at a time a grain store and riverside barge stop. The building once lay in two counties (Berkshire and Oxfordshire) and because of two different licensing laws, regulars would change bars for an extra half hour of drinking! We had a very nice lunch though Holly and I disagreed about the worthiness of the Bloody Marys!

We drove on to Streatley and visited another Swan for coffee. Apparently, Keira Knightley and Donald Sutherland chose this 18th century Swan at Streatley as their home away from home during filming of the recent version of Pride and Prejudice. We had overpriced coffee overlooking the river and then went out for a walk. There was a restored 1890 barge docked outside that I thought very picturesque.

The Thames Path follows the river over 180 miles from the Cotswold’s, eventually to Greenwich. We crossed over two small bridges to the village of Goring on Thames. Did I mention that Holly had been here before walking? Anyway we crossed the Goring and Streatley Bridge where I apparently forgot to take a picture of the lock! We had a quick look around the village (nice clock on the village hall!) and walked through the cemetery of St. Thomas of Canterbury to the river path. Here we came upon the third swan of the day – (pictured to the right!) that offered no refreshments at all, so we walked a short way along the very swollen river, returned to the car and back to London!