Cambridge

Wednesday morning found us boarding a coach (driven by a gentleman whose first language sounded like Polish or Russian) for a trip to Cambridge.  It doesn't take long at all to pass from London centre--depending on traffic, of course--into the surrounding neighbourhoods, and from there into the countryside.  The trip is around two hours, but the time went by fairly quickly.

Cambridge is a little like Santa Barbara: they're both college towns, and so beautiful that it's a wonder students ever go to class.  In the case of the former, though, the college buildings themselves are a major part of the grandeur.

After a stop at a campus cafe to get a drink and use the loos we visited the English faculty library.  In part because of the university's organization, wherein there are a number of separate colleges to which students and faculty can belong, there are departmental libraries whose resources can usually be used by anyone, regardless of college affiliation.  The English faculty library has its own room devoted to Shakespeare and works related to him; it's smaller than you might expect, but then, the library itself, while modern, is on the snug side.  It also features stress-reducing services like a graffiti wall (which, according to the staff, was adorned with many Terry Pratchett quotes and pictures of daffodils this spring) and Tea at Three, where the head librarian makes tea and supplies cake for students.

Next we went to the Judge Business School, where we heard a presentation on user experience.  The important thing about the Judge is that the interior looks like a shopping mall designed by set decorators for "Doctor Who."

Our last visit before lunch and free time was to the Wren Library at Trinity College.  Getting there meant wandering among the back streets, and then behind the college.  The area where some of the colleges border the River Cam is called the Backs; Trinity's backyard includes a well-tended lawn.  Though we weren't able to walk around the college grounds, we did see the quad, which was surrounded by columned walkways and filled with immaculate grass in the middle.  As the name implies, the Wren Library was designed by Christopher Wren.  The library is beautiful, with a black-and-white checkerboard floor and dark wood shelves decorated with crests carved in lighter wood.  It also includes covered display cases that house things like Newton's first copy of the Principia and a manuscript of Winnie-the-Pooh.   Before we went in we were asked to be especially quiet, as there were two students taking exams in the library.  It struck me as not an ideal environment for exams, in part because of the distraction of visitors coming in and out, and in part because the grand surroundings must have been intimidating.  Perhaps the students become inured to such things over time.

Lunch was at a pub, of course, where I had shepherd's pie and a pint of cider.  I must admit that I'm not used to midday drinking.  That did not stop me from trying to adjust, though.
After lunch we had a bit of free time before meeting our coach and returning to London.  Whilst walking we'd passed by a few churches that I wanted to return to.  The first, very near the pub, was St Bene't's.  (According to the church's website, the wonky spelling is because the name is a contraction of Benedict.)  It's not only the oldest church in the city but the oldest building in the whole county.  Therefore, as you might imagine, it's on the small side, with thick walls.  Though there are plenty of later touches--most of the arches are Gothic, as are the present windows--there is one stained glass window high in the west wall that I assume is original to the Saxon architecture, mostly because of its location, which would have been more protected than the lower windows.  The interior is whitewashed, with dark roof timbers and painted angels supporting them; it also features modern suspended light fixtures that would be much more at home in the 1960s than the 1100s.

Next I visited the Church of St Mary the Great, otherwise known as Great St Mary's.  Nearly opposite King's College, its tower is touted as one of the best places to look over Cambridge.  I glanced briefly at the stairs before deciding against ascending, though it likely would have been worth the exertion and fee.  The present building dates from the 1400s and is the University's church; it was built to accommodate greater numbers than the other churches I visited in the city, and has a second storey of pews for seating.  Great St Mary's has plenty of stained glass windows, and figural finials, including a unicorn, on the ends of some of the pews.

I was most excited to visit King's College Chapel.  Despite the name, the chapel is large; it appears to be even bigger than Great St Mary's, or longer, at the very least, since its profile is long and tall.  It's supposed to have some of the best medieval stained glass and vaulting in England.  I walked up to the college gates, excited to see all of this, and asked the porters if this was the entrance to visit the chapel.  You can well imagine my dismay when I heard that the chapel had closed to visitors some fifteen or twenty minutes earlier.  I was told I could come back for evensong, though I couldn't, as our coach was leaving before then.  Not being able to see the chapel was perhaps the greatest disappointment of the entire trip.

After choosing some postcards from a nearby shop I started wandering back toward the coach pick-up point.  As I went I passed a plaque that marked the former location of the White Horse Inn, where Luther's Reformation ideas were debated.  I also stopped in St Botolph's, another of Cambridge's many churches.  The church's website says that it was near the south gate in the city's walls, the one that led to London, and was the first church encountered by visitors crossing the Cam from the west; given that, it's no wonder the church was named for a patron saint of travellers.  Like St Bene't's, St Botolph's is old and smallish and somewhat plain, though it does have a carved screen before the altar that was installed in 1460 (though the paintings on it are from the 19th century).  I think the pendant lights in St Botolph's are even worse than those in St Bene't's; St Botolph's are just big frosted globes that look utterly out of place.  I understand that wiring and lighting a mostly-medieval church must be a challenge, but surely something can be done that's less jarring.

I've no idea which college this is; it's just a typical Cambridge view

As I walked back to the park where we were to meet our coach I passed a horde of schoolchildren, possibly high schoolers, speaking Czech, and wondered if they'd come by coach all the way--some of the EGT kids did, in my first year.  You could not pay me enough to sit on a coach with a bunch of students all the way from Central Europe to the UK.  I was glad to get back on ours and watch the pretty countryside pass by until we reached London again.

The Ship of Knowledge

I'd been to the British Library before, when I had a few hours before my train to Wales; if all you can do is go in and admire the Treasures, it's still worth a stop.  But, of course, being able to take a tour behind the scenes is much more interesting.

For starters, the building is rather large, and it's actually even bigger than it looks.  That's because there are four storeys of stacks belowground.  They don't extend the whole length of the building, because, with the Library's proximity to three major train stations, there's a lot going on underground in that area of London.  Still, there are a whole lot of books that visitors don't see.  (Alas, we didn't get to go down there.  I imagine it's fairly spare, though well-organized.)  On the first floor, to the right, there's a scale model of the building that includes the basement levels.

Before designing buildings, architect Colin St John Wilson served in the Navy.  This nautical background is reflected in the building's profile, which resembles a large ocean-going vessel, as well as in other touches like windows and openings reminiscent of portholes.  As you can tell, the building isn't very old, and the British Library as an institution isn't, either.  Until the early 1970s the contents of the Library belonged to the British Museum; the British Library Act, passed in 1972, created the new national library.  The building, which cost some exorbitant amount of money to construct, was formally opened by the Queen in 1998.

A dimly-lit rectangle rising through the centre of the building is the King's Library.  These books were originally in King George III's collection.  Since most of the stacks are underground, the volumes in the King's Library may be the only shelved books you can actually see.  This is also an interesting approach to rare books: they are often hidden away in rare book rooms, where few people might venture to see them, but here they are unmissable.  Of course, they're still secure, inaccessible to patrons, and in a climate-controlled environment, but everyone knows they're there.

This summer the Library has an exhibition on Magna Carta in honour of its 800th anniversary.  Photography was not allowed inside so I have no pictures of it; several copies, in whole and in part, in perfect condition and greatly damaged, from 1215 through 1297, were on display, along with other documents like the Charter of the Forest and artefacts from shoes to big swords.  There was a clip of a performance of a play about Magna Carta from the turn of the century, and part of a Horrible Histories episode that discussed the document.  Though my interest in the exhibition waned as I wandered further from the Middle Ages and closer to the present day, it was still a great display.  One of the things I found most educational was the seal press.  Authorities, including monarchs and popes, attached wax seals to documents rather than or sometimes in addition to signing them.  I knew this, and I'd seen plenty of seals before, but I never really thought about how the seals were affixed.  Apparently it takes a large wooden machine with a screw-press.

Then I spent a bunch of money on Magna Carta gifts and souvenirs.  Even so, I could not justify spending £3.50 for the ginger fudge, no matter how much I wanted to try it.

An exhibit related to Magna Carta but not included in the larger display was Cornelia Parker's 'Magna Carta (An Embroidery)'.  The piece is an embroidered representation of the Wikipedia article on Magna Carta as it appeared in June 2014.  Parker herself didn't complete all of the stitching; a number of people worked on it, from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to musician Jarvis Cocker to UK politicians, with most of the text stitched by prisoners.  The Library's website says that the project 'responds to Magna Carta in the digital era'; though I'm not sure what that response is, I thought it was an unusual and kind of cool piece.  It's also really weird to look at the Wikipedia page for the embroidery, since it's an article about a piece of art based on an article.

And lest you think the British Library is just a quiet, tweedy ivory tower, here's evidence to the contrary.

South Bank

On Monday we had administrative things to do on campus in the morning--getting our student IDs (good for concessions at places that charged admission), being briefed on safety procedures, things of that nature--and a general introductory talk.  In the evening there was a welcome party of a multitude of good British finger foods in the department's graduate common room, and the hours between were free to help us get over our jetlag.  For my part, I hurried off to the Underground to make my way to London Bridge station, on the south side of the Thames.

Southwark is one of London's boroughs, of which there are 32 (not counting the City of London, a strange beast with its own rules in many regards); of those 32 there are 12 Inner and 20 Outer boroughs, and Southwark is among the former, making it part of the core of historic London.  The borough is home to landmarks like the Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern, the Shard, and Borough Market.  Not far from the theatre is a replica of the Golden Hind, Sir Francis Drake's ship that sailed all the way to California during Elizabeth I's reign.  The ship is tucked into a small dock at St Mary Overie.  Golden Hinde II is parked between a few buildings and next to a pub, and may be toured for a fee.  In my brief perusal of it I was struck by how awful a position it's in for good photos, since the buildings around it must cast awkward shadows over it during much of the day, but more importantly how small it is.  I can't imagine that circumnavigating the Earth in a ship only 120 feet long was much of a picnic.

My main goal in Southwark was to visit the cathedral.  One of the first things I saw on the grounds was a monument to a Mohegan chief, Mahomet Weyonomon, who traveled to London to petition King George II for the return of his tribe's lands.  While awaiting an audience Mahomet died and was buried near the cathedral, then outside of the city boundaries. 

Though Westminster Abbey has Poets' Corner, one might argue that Southwark Cathedral has more authentic ties to some of the writers who founded English literature.  The cathedral includes a monument to Shakespeare, a sometime congregant, in which he lounges before a relief of the area's skyline, and the tomb of medieval author John Gower.  There are also stained glass windows with scenes from famous works, including the Canterbury Tales, and some of the stalls in the choir are named for authors associated with the area.  As if all of this literary glory isn't enough, the cathedral was also the site of the baptism in the 17th century of a boy named John Harvard.  A photocopy of the page that records the event hangs outside the chapel named after him, given by grateful alumni of his college in the other Cambridge.

Once again, the question of 'What makes a building mediæval?' reared its head on this trip, since castles and cathedrals especially often went through several stages of development.  I suppose the most accurate wording would be to call these things buildings that originated in the Middle Ages, but brevity's sake demands less precision.  I bring this up because several elements of Southwark Cathedral aren't mediæval, from the aforementioned Harvard Chapel to much of the stained glass--though it seems more common to see replacement than original stained glass anyway.  The eastern end of the cathedral features a few modern windows, including one commissioned to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.  It was designed by Leifur Breidfjord.  When the sun shone through it, it was especially beautiful.

The cathedral's grounds now include a café, gift shop, and conference centre in modern buildings.  The corridor between the old and new is covered a glass roof.  At its far end is a space where some excavation work was done, and labels point out everything from the Roman paving to the 19th-century lead pipe.

Near Borough Market you might notice a wall with the tracery of a rose window just below its jagged top.  I say might, because despite the rose window hanging out in the middle of nothing, you might also miss it while you're looking at other stuff.  This wall, along with some adjoining bits and the garden below, is what remains of the Palace of Winchester, once home to the area's bishops.  It's odd to see the window devoid of glass, and the stonework of the wall so much older than the surrounding ones.  The garden looks to be fairly new; I hope they've planted kitchen herbs and vegetables appropriate to the original building's time period. 

London Bridge has good views up and down the river; it might not be the best place from which to photograph Tower Bridge, though, because HMS Belfast is anchored between the two.  I thought of Neverwhere a lot while I was in London, from looking for signs of a floating market on the Belfast to expecting to hear Neil Gaiman's voice over the loudspeakers telling Underground passengers to mind the gap.

Instead of taking the Underground back the same way I came, I decided to cross the river and catch a train on the north side.  Using the Millennium Bridge was the obvious choice; I believe it's the only pedestrian-only bridge in the area, and it's so distinctive.  From either side it's difficult to see the bridge against the larger ones behind it, giving it an insubstantial feel.  The bridge lines up almost perfectly with St Paul's Cathedral on the north side of the Thames, so that the dome is framed between the buildings on either side as you approach.  It makes one wonder why there was no bridge in that location before.

Though I didn't know it at the time, it turns out that in searching for a Tube stop whose line would take me close to UCL I walked through Vintry Ward, where Chaucer was born.  I arrived at our party only a few minutes late and very satisfied with my afternoon's exploration.

Arrival in London

It's hard to know where to start after two jam-packed weeks.  I suppose where and why would be the best place: I was taking part in a graduate seminar in London hosted by the University of North Carolina and University College London.  In the course of the seminar we visited many cultural institutions, but also had enough free time to pursue our own interests.  A bank holiday Monday helped in that regard by giving us a three-day weekend in the middle of the trip.  Even so, I hadn't run out of things to look at by the time I had to leave, and the only reason I needed to come back to the US was because my knees were suffering.  Given better shoes, I could easily spend a year or more exploring the UK.

The other problem is that I don't feel up to the task.  It doesn't seem possible that I could really convey what it was like--I could easily relate where I went and what I saw, but that wouldn't help anyone understand the giddiness of walking out of a Tube station to see the Tower of London opposite bathed in afternoon sunlight, or the tranquility of a garden built in the ruins of a medieval church, tucked away on a back street not far from City workers enjoying their after-work pints.  And I'm afraid that if I try my hardest to describe everything it will sound soppy and foolish (and will take so long that I'll run out of steam).

I arrived at Heathrow on Sunday morning and encountered no major problems with immigration or my luggage, though several of my classmates said later that they'd been grilled by the immigration agent over the length of their stay in the UK.  I figured since I'd said I was there for a seminar, rather than summer school, that that allayed any of my agent's suspicions that I might be trying to stay for an extended amount of time.  The Piccadilly Tube line runs from Heathrow all the way into London, and even with a large suitcase it's a fairly easy journey, at least provided you don't need to change lines; it's also reasonable price-wise, and almost certainly cheaper than any other transportation into the city.  My stop was Russell Square, where I hauled my things up a short flight of stairs before getting on one of three large lifts to street level.  Then it was a few blocks' walk to the hotel, with a few more stairs to the entrance.  Because it was around 11 when I got there and check-in wasn't open until 1 I stowed my bag with several of my classmates' things.  One of them happened to be there at the time and joined me on a quick trip to the British Museum.

Like many museums in London, the British Museum is free to enter, and huge.  (I would later learn that the cylindrical structure, at right in the picture above, in the middle of the Great Court is the former reading room, which was emptied when the British Library was established.  Though the room is currently only being used as a temporary exhibition space, the museum is trying to come up with a better use for it.)  It was a short walk in the opposite direction from the Russell Square station, which meant that it was pretty easy to find, though finding our way once inside was a bit more difficult.  Still, we managed to see the Rosetta Stone and items from the Sutton Hoo hoard, though I realised later that I missed the Lewis chessmen.  Since the Museum was so close to the hotel, I thought maybe I'd get a chance to return later and explore some more.  Spoiler alert: I did not.  It's okay, though; I am content with what I saw.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped into the Tesco Express opposite the station for some sustenance.  Several supermarket chains have smaller shops around the city in places that can't accommodate full-size stores; the three I remember seeing were the Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local, and Little Waitrose.  I learned later that there was a full-size Waitrose in a shopping center near the station, though you could hardly tell that there were any stores inside, since from the outside it just looks like a modern block of flats.  When we returned to the hotel and got our keys I found that my room was on the top floor.  It was bad enough getting my suitcase up the first few flights of stairs, but the last was narrow and steep and curved at both the bottom and the top.  The room itself was unremarkable, with two beds, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, a TV, and a small bathroom; it was at the back of the hotel, which meant that the view was not of the park opposite the entrance but of other buildings.  I liked it, though, and there was construction going on in the park anyway.  After I'd caught my breath I enjoyed my sandwich, or rather three half sandwiches of cheese and onion, cheese and tomato, and cheese and pickle.  I love cheese sandwiches.

At around 2 everyone who'd arrived met up for introductions and a walking tour of Bloomsbury.  Our guide was a PhD student at nearby Goodenough College and an Australian who's lived in London for the past five years.  She pointed out more things than I can remember, but one of them included the blue plaques on buildings that note what famous people hung about them in the past.  True to its reputation, Bloomsbury has been host to loads of famous writers over the years (and the Waterstones pictured at right is a great bookshop that sells everything from new bestsellers to used Penguin paperbacks to signed Terry Pratchett first editions; I was very tempted).  One of the public parks in the neighbourhood is on land that used to be a foundling hospital; nowadays adults are not allowed in some of its playing fields without child supervision.  I can't say that the tour was terribly successful in orienting me to the area on a geographical level, but I'm sure I absorbed some of its history, and it did help acclimate us to the time zone (a mere five hours ahead for me).  At the end of the tour our guide left us at the Marlborough Arms, a pub near UCL's campus.  Some people ordered food, but having eaten my Tesco sandwich earlier I wasn't hungry, so I got a pint of cider.  After chatting with my new classmates for a while several of us headed back to the hotel, where I settled in and got ready for the coming days.

To be honest, I don't remember what this building is; I think it belongs to UCL.  But I wanted to include it as a counterpoint to the older architecture that is the usual fare on this blog.

Present but Not Voting

At the outset I feel obliged to say that I am not making any of this up.

University College London has quite the interesting campus, with a mix of architectural styles in such a warren of buildings that I was never entirely sure how to get to anywhere but the DIS offices.  There's even one building, snug amongst several others, that if I recall correctly doesn't even belong to the college, even though it's on their grounds.  UCL has several collections in its main campus, including the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.  To me, though, those pale in comparison to UCL's oddest oddity.

Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher, most widely known for utilitarianism and the idea of the panopticon.  He invested the not insignificant sum of £100 in the university as it opened.  Had that been his only connection to UCL, it would hardly be worth mentioning; as it is, he still maintains a presence on campus.

Rather than a traditional burial, or even cremation, Bentham wanted his corpse to be dissected and then made into an 'auto-icon,' wishes his family and friends carried out upon his death.  Bentham's skeleton was mounted and dressed in his clothes, which were stuffed with straw.  All of this was topped with a false head.  Today Jeremy Bentham sits in a handsome wooden cabinet, fitted with a glass front and a pair of doors that can be closed at night, in the South Cloisters.  On occasion he leaves his box to attend important functions, like a celebration of the school's sesquicentennial in 1976, and a more recent dinner during the 2006 John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Conference.  Urban legend has it that at such meetings of the College Council Bentham is recorded as present but not voting.

Jeremy's real head was on display along with the rest of him for a while.  Unfortunately, it was once kidnapped by students of rival school Kings College, London, and held for ransom, and upon its return was secured in a vault.  (If you consult UCL's auto-icon page, be warned that clicking on the link titled 'Bentham's head' takes you to a page that includes a picture of his real head.  It's not something I would recommend.  You can, however, spin him around using the Virtual Auto-Icon.)  Given all this, I'm sure that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, Jeremy would not become one of the undead, since his head is already missing.

I waved to him every time we walked by.

To see the view from slightly above Jeremy's head, check out the Panopticam.

The Great British Onomastic Challenge

To prepare for our upcoming posts, try your hand at pronouncing these British names.

Beauchamp
Beaulieu
Belvoir
Bicester
Colquhoun
Cholmondley
Culzean
Dalziel
Featherstonehaugh
Gloucester
Kirkcudbright
Leicester
Leominster
Mainwaring
Marjoribanks
Menzies
Salisbury
StJohn
Strachan
Wodehouse
Worcester

An Educational Day in Boston

A few weeks ago was my mom's annual trip to the East Coast.  This year I was able to meet her and her students for a short time--if only their trip hadn't been right before one of my final papers was due, I would have been able to stay with them for another day.  As it was, I was happy to see my mum, and I got to see some new and interesting things in Boston.

Too excited about seeing Mom to get much work done, I left on Monday afternoon, even though I knew they wouldn't be arriving at their hotel until 8 or 9 that night.  It rained the whole time I was on the turnpike, and there were plenty of people ignoring the new "wipers on, headlights on" law.  I ate pot roast in a diner somewhere around Quincy before heading on to the hotel; by that time it was getting dark, and, knowing that the destination was on a narrow peninsula, I had the distinct feeling that I was going to drive right off of the world and into the ocean.  That feeling wasn't lessened when I parked outside of the hotel, where, beyond the railing, the beach was invisible in the dark, but the white crests of the waves were moving out in the water.  It was also satisfying to think that the Bluebird had now gone almost completely from one coast to the other.

When they arrived and got settled in, Mom shared some chocolates she'd bought earlier that day at Ye Olde Pepper Candy Company in Salem.  The cordial cherry was especially delicious.

Tuesday started a bit gloomily, with somewhat foreboding weather.  That soon changed, though, and by the time we reached Boston (after a circuitous shuttle journey to the nearest T station and, for me, a big loop around Quincy attempting to find a place to park followed by a power-walk back to the station) the weather was practically perfect.  I'm sure the visitors may have thought it a little cool still, but I was comfortable walking around without a jacket for the first time in years a while.

The first stop we made was Fenway Park.  Though I'm by no means a baseball fan, I enjoyed visiting the park; it's part of American cultural life, and the tour revealed things most spectators there for a game wouldn't be able to see.  The tour took us through the stands and to the newest seats, behind the Green Monster in the outfield (from which the picture below was taken).  We were also able to go into the press box, the vantage point from which reporters watch the game.  The park as a whole struck me as fairly small for a major sports venue; unlike the one I'm most used to driving by back home, Fenway Park isn't surrounded by acres of parking lot, but by businesses.  The produce truck parked outside of a restaurant just outside of the park's gates added to the feel of the place and the sport as old-fashioned and part of the community, rather than just a commodified pastime. 

From there we made our way half a dozen subway stops and a few centuries back to the Old North Church.  On my previous visit, we'd gone into the sanctuary and heard a short presentation about the box pews, the organ, the clock, the angels, and of course the lanterns.  This time, though, we started by going into the tower.  Up the first flight of steps is a small room, all paneled in white-painted wood, lined on one wall with bookshelves and displaying a print of the church made (if I recall correctly) by Paul Revere, as well as two replica lanterns.  Then we ascended a second, even narrower and steeper staircase to the top of the brick portion of the tower; above is the wooden section that houses the bells.  The brick room is where the bell-ringers do their thing.  There, with the ropes looped overhead, safely out of reach from curious tourists, our guide told us about the bells and showed us a short video on how they're rung.  I liked the round windows, and the fact that they showed how thick the tower's walls are--they must be a good two feet of brick.  From the top of the church we descended to the bottom, to the basement crypt.  Portions of it are still used for internments today.  The first commander of the USS Constitution is buried there, as is Major John Pitcairn.  Walking through the crypt is a bit of a strange experience, as overhead you hear the creaking of floorboards from people in the church, the corridor is filled with pipes and bits of plaster are missing around some tombs, and, if you're taller than average, you have to do a lot of ducking.  We ended the tour inside the church, where I missed the opportunity to sit in the box Teddy Roosevelt sat in in 1912.

Since the marathon had been run the day before, the city was still dotted with people in brightly-colored jackets from the Athletic Association, or even with finishers' medals around their necks.  We saw the most of them between Old North Church and Quincy Market, where we ate lunch (expensive but filling calzones for Ma and me).  After our stop there we hurried to the Old South Meeting House, where the group had an appointment and where I left them.  I would rather have stayed than driven back to the west, but the only thing I dreaded more than the idea of leaving was the idea of leaving in rush hour traffic, so I said goodbye to my mother and went.  

By some fortuitous circumstance, my route from the Meeting House to the nearest T station took me by a graveyard.  It was across from a hotel and enclosed on three sides by tall buildings, some of which seemed to contain apartments--it hardly needs to be said that I would be thrilled to live somewhere overlooking a colonial cemetery--and I wasn't so pressed for time that I couldn't cruise through.  The plaque at the gates named it as the Granary Burying Ground, home to several leading personages in American history, including Benjamin Franklin's parents (theirs is the large while memorial in the center), the victims of the Boston Massacre, Samuel Adams, Mother Goose, Paul Revere, and John Hancock.  Many of the tombstones were well-carved and deeply, and are still quite legible for their age--if they're reproductions, then they're good ones.  I was glad to go, but I'll need to return to spend some more time there.

In Quincy I had a similar opportunity, since to get back to where I'd parked I had to pass Hancock Cemetery.  The Adams presidents and their wives were buried there, but have since been moved to the crypt of a nearby church.  Though smaller and less impressive than the Granary, and though nearby road construction detracted from the ambiance somewhat, Hancock was nice for a brief walk through, and, like the Granary, was graced with some strong carving.

While I wish I had been able to spend more time with Mom in Boston, I was glad to see for the little while I was there.  And we were blessed with good weather and safe travel, for which I was thankful.

In conclusion I'd just like to add that Blogspot has changed the way you can position photos in relation to text and I hate it.