Diane & Paul Return to the UK Day 4, Cardiff Wales

DAY 4 - We Take Off for the Land of Welsh Cakes and Doctor Who

We head to Paddington Station, early as always, and so have time to track down Paddington Bear and talk to a Chinese family in London for the first time. The parents have come from China to meet their son, who is studying in upstate New York, and he translates me for them. They ask if

 there is anything famous they can take a photo of but nearby as they don’t have much time, and when I tell them about Paddington Bear, they are thrilled and head off. I go and snap a photo of the big-bellied bronze bear myself.

They only post the platforms at the last minute, and so I stood waiting and watching till they posted “Track 12,” at the far end. We hurried for it, to arrive at the barriers where the guard looked at our tickets and said, “Track 3.” I looked in disbelief and said, “No, they posted track 12,” and he said “Track 3,” and I said, “Are you sure?” (I mean, do I trust my eyes or the voice of someone I can barely understand, who is purportedly speaking English? He is pronouncing slowly, as though to an idiot, “Cardiff, track 3.” (Days later, an English woman in Wales told me they sometimes post the track, then change it.)

Now we REELY really had to run for it, and then had to find our car, D, at the end, and then the luggage racks were full, but we juggled them all with four youngish tall Asian men (speaking Chinese? Tibetan?)  traveling together, looking on, clearly having fun, and they sat across from us. At our station of four seats sat a young blond woman, laptop open like me, typing like me but looking too at a lot of edited paperwork. We learned she had been an English major nine years before, now working in marketing for “the building trades,” and clearly doing a lot of Tech Writing. We asked if she did the writing or edited others’, and she said, “Both, but I’d rather do all the writing myself. They write so badly.”  Paul smiled ruefully as he’d  spent the previous week “Writing by Committee.” It was like meeting up with one of our 1990s UF students now on the job.

We arrived at Cardiff Station and caught a taxi for the .8 mile to our hotel, The Premier, a “B” level sort of change, I imagined like Ibis, where we often stay (but it was full), more expensive than “The Big Sleep,” which was booked but I read on TripAdvisor had gotten groaty. Our first night was 79 pounds (about $120) but much more on the weekend nights. So all in all, one of the posher hotels we’ve stayed at. Color scheme purple. Toilets with two button to flush, depending on, uh, what one is flushing. Honey-colored wood, lots of hot water, and a relatively strong hair dryer (yay!) Twinings tea and Starbucks instant with the pot.

And with nothing till a concert in the evening, we took off to walk Cardiff, the Hays, which is the downtown area with no cars and all the shops and pub and cafes—oh, and the Castle, though we hadn’t see it yet.

There are many arcades, and Paul had heard of a good record store in the Morgan Arcade, and while he looked through Spillers there, I looked in the vintage clothing Oxfam shop, really a nice one. There we found a café called The Plan, which was wonderful, lots of local food options (Paul had potato and leek soup and I had a salmon salad baguette). At the table across from us was an older couple from Chester, who were in town for the four-day "Cardiff Singer of the World" competition, classical singing which has launched opera careers for many people. ****They said the American woman was a great favorite (and we’ve since learned she won: she’s on the TV in a long red dress singing something translated on the screen). On the elevator in our hotel, we met two couples going to the competition that evening, and I said to one woman, “Do you have a favorite?” “Yes, but I’m not telling,” she smiled.

After lunch, we found the Cardiff Market, which is a lot like Cleveland’s West Side Market, and I bought a Welsh cake, which cost 30p. (about 45 cents). It was wonderful, like a very dense sugar cookie or pancake, and small, about 2.5-3 inches, baked on a griddle instead of in the oven, so both sides are flat and golden brown.

And we went back for a nap. I still hadn’t shifted to time on this side of the pond and was only sleeping 3-4 hours a night and was a bit of a wreck. The hour of snooze I caught with my eye mask transformed me into someone bearable, and we took a taxi to Cardiff Bay, a newly- rebuilt up bay area with retaurants and attractions, only 3 miles from our hotel, but we are taking taxis a lot here to save Paul’s ankle, though unlike the woman from LA, we aren’t usually more taxi than Tube.

There, we roamed a bit. On a Thursday late afternoon/early evening, Cardiff Bay was pretty quiet. We went to Crafts in the Bay, the local crafters studios and store, but it had closed, and stopped to see the architecture of the opera house. Hoards of school children were finishing up their day at the Science Museum (and not, I imagine, at Dr. Who, as they might prefer).

We looked at the many good restaurants and settled on Cote bistro, where we had a plate of olives, a Kir Royale (me) and Meteor, a French beer (Paul) and then the 2-course Prix Fixe: me, ratatouille followed by sole and potatoes and Paul had vichyssoise, served warm with truffle oil and a risotto with asparagus and spinach.

At the table on my right were six young people, four men two women that I am guessing were from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. They had very simple but distinct clothes, the two women with their heads wrapped in kerchiefs, Caribbean Island style, one of the guys with a very ruffled distinctive hairstyle. They talked constantly, all at once, did imitations, and at one point, one of them did such a spot-on version of Tiny Tim singing, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” that I laughed and laughed and wondered where they heard it. The old couple to my left sat and read newspapers.  

We’d seen a very bright, medium-sized carousel with up and down horses with Welsh names (Rhianna, Fion….),

and when we arrived, a mother was riding with her very small son. We caught a ride for 2 pound, and then slipped off to walk to the Norwegian Church.

 It’s a white wood structure built originally for the Norwegian sailors that shipped out of Cardiff and now is an arts center with an excellent café.

We were there to hear Terry Neason, a Scottish singer-song writer and also actress and all-round terrific performer. Paul found her and her listing before we left, and I wasn’t keen on going till I heard her U-Tube, “Whole of the Moon” (The Water Boys) which I loved: Terry Neason sings, "Whole of the Moon". The room was set up cabaret style, and we shared a table with a young man named Anthony, a Scot working in IT in Cardiff. He said the economy was bad and free-lance IT work was not plentiful, but he had a Spanish roommate who was a lawyer just trying to find secretarial work as the economy in Spain is a train wreck just now. Anthony had known Terry since he was a child as she had roomed with his parents, so we were three fans—but from the looks of the audience, everyone was, knew her songs. She began with Jacques Brel, which I have loved since the 1970s show, performed poetry (her own and Yeats and Hegley, the latter being pretty funny, and a very funny poem, “Fuck em if they can’t take a joke”), did a generous first set, with some Piaf, a Dylan we had never heard took a brief break, and then did a very generous second set too, with “Whole of the Moon” and her last song and her encore (can’t recall the order) were Carole King’s “Natural Woman” and Piaf’ “No Regrets.”) She was just incredibly energetic and talented, a winner of the Edinburgh Fringe competitions. If she is performing anywhere in the U.K. (the world!) where you are visiting, check out her act.

Afterward, we met her in the parking lot, and she was still filled with energy and generosity and we commiserated about having to do one’s own self-promotion as performer and poet.

They called a taxi for us, and we had a young driver of Yemeni heritage whose family had been in Newcastle for 50 years. His father was with an Englishwoman, and all went well, but he said after his father died, Newcastle became very racist for him, and he felt he had to get out. He felt Cardiff was not racist, that he was comfortable there and liked it very much. I saw many people of various ethnic makeup and detected no racism, either, tho next morning, an older man seemed upset that four young men passing him might be gay, and he asked me (with a hand motion) if they were. I walked on.

Diane & Paul Return to the UK Day 3; Stonehenge & Bath

 

Stonehenge Rocks, Bath Awash in Our Walking

THE RIDE

Up at 6:30, having shared half a whole grain bun and the horrid instant coffee everyone seems to drink here (I mean really? Instant? Pah!), we greeted a Premier tour guide outside the door, much to his surprise as he was five minutes early and often has to chase people down. We rode his bus to Victoria Station, where we had to get out and find our tour bus. A long line had already formed for ours, and I was feeling sorry for myself as I had read Trip Advisor complaints of being at the end of the line and getting crappy seats, when a short man in a seersucker jacket said to a handful of us, “Tour eight? Follow me,” and he led us to a second bus. Little did I know that we had won the lottery of tour guides, Paul Metcalfe.


Paul Metcalfe, our tour guide

Now Paul Beauvais and I are not great tour participants to begin with. We tend to do our own little side trips, and when we are on a brief tour, we feel pinched and rushed and stuck with unpleasant people and corny tour guides and when we are going through, say, The House on the Seven Gables, we behave badly, snickering with our own little puns and side jokes about Red A’s and ministerial veils. (“I gather you have read Hawthorne,” our Hawthorne guide snarled on a one-hour trip through the house.) Still, I wanted a day when we could do something outside London we had not yet done without juggling the Tube or the train or a car, or all the other vehicles that tax our brains the day after jet lag, or actually jet leap. Several tour with several companies included Stonehenge, which I was medium-interested in, combined with (in varying combinations) Windsor Castle, Bath (with and without seeing the baths), Laycock (something to do with Shakespeare and a glass of champagne), or one called “England in a Day,” a sort of horrifying idea, that. So I chose one that gave us the most freedom: an hour or so in Stonehenge, set loose with audio, and then three hours free in Bath. We could have had a tour of Bath and of the Roman baths there, but we were looking for other things. Three hours to walk on our own would be great. My intrepid second cousin Julie, who lives in Germany, did this tour with two young sons and recommended it

So we boarded the bus up front and met our bus driver, Lester, and Paul Metcalfe, our guide (referred to here as Paul M. and our Paul as Paul.) introduced himself with a patter I found charming, fast, quick, and fairly original (though it may not seem so to him). “So sorry we had to get you up at stupid o’clock,” he said, “And on the solstice, I am doing the sunrise tour and have to get up at even stupider o’clock, 3 a.m., be at Stonehenge by 6 a.m.” He promised to be quiet once we were on the road, but would point out sights for the first part of the trip. And he did: Buckingham Palace, various businesses and governmental buildings, and a pub called “The Three Great Kings” with its sign bearing caricatures of Chas I, Henry V, and, between them, Elvis. He pointed out Harry Potter settings, which he said he could field questions on, but he would refuse to talk about Harry Stiles (but not before ranting a bit good-naturedly about how he didn’t like Stiles.)

Out in the suburbs, he pointed out Chiswick with its Edwardian housing. In Shrewtown, he pointed out the smallest and oldest jail I have ever seen (& you know I have seen a lot), a concrete space the size of a phone booth. He pointed out a very large pig farm and said his parents got him a book on pigs for Christmas so he’d know all about them. He poked fun of his parents, saying that they thought he gave pig tours, but I suspect the truth may be more that he does study up on these things, seems to take the job seriously and his parents were supporting him. Many of the details he shared were not so shop-worn as the tales one hears in, say, the Tower of London, but about things he has dug up in a book (real or imaginary) titled, What Is It. Perhaps it is the lack of history, but U.S. tour guides don’t seem so professionalized in the U.S. as they are here. Ours tend to be kids, given a script they know by rote, or re-enactors, who do know specifics, but only at one place. All the tour guides we saw that day (from 5-6 different companies) were all grown men in suitcoats or jackets. Not a single woman in sight in the job, which is a shame. Paul M takes the job seriously, with a great deal of humor, though not the old corny stuff…though there were his sheep jokes on the ride home through through the Cotswolds:

1)      What do you call a sheep with its legs cut off?  (A cloud.)

2)      How do you tell a male sheep from a female one? (You look for its “Bah code.”) 

Canola (yellow) crops

My Paul noticed that Paul M pointed out a badge he wore that he said took him 18 hours to earn, and I have since learned it means he is a "Blue Badge Guide," a professional organization of guides formed in 1950. If Paul M is any indication, they are really professional. If you'd like to know more about him, see his Facebook site, Paul Metcalfe, Blue Badge Guide.

After pointing out fields of canola (which I had just told Paul B. were weeds) and going past Chiton, where the British film, Return to Oz , was filmed, we passed through Minster, where Paul G. gave us many of our etymology lessons: Cities with “minster” in the name had monasteries “before Henry VIII shut them down,” place endings with “set” (as “Soerset”) are Roman names. And then, near Cley, with its Celtic hill fort, he pointed out after Cley and its hill fort and the town of Wolverine (and a lesson on place named for animals),then further out, a spot in the road called “Dead Maidens,” he told the legend of the maiden whom two men were to dual for. One killed the other in the back as he walked in the woods with his black dog, but when he returned, he told the maiden that he had won the duel fair and square. And she immediately keeled over dead, clearly her Truth o’ Meter set pretty high.

STONEHENGE

On the way on the path

Paul G. gave us awhile of silence till we arrived near Stone Henge. Then he told us that Stonehenge was nearly sold off to an American business man in the 19^th c. but Dickens and others campaigned against it. Then there were decades where people arrived with picks and chipped off pieces to carry away, then in 1978, they shut it down. Now they actually allow visitors to get fairly close, but not close enough to touch. So we arrived, and got through fairly fast and picked up out accompanying audio cassette, and roamed amoung a hoard of bugs and people. The bugs were quite pesky and surprised even the people who worked there who said they had just attived. But constantly shooing them and dodging the crowd, I couldn’t really concentrate on audio and just heard, “Blahblahblah, lintel……mystery…we don’t know….blue rock….Brought from Wales, then dragged across land somehow….” I just looked, rather amazed at how open of a space it is in, how close we were, how many very different people were there. Most people were polite and everyone took photos of families and couples. I did hear a very British-accent say, “Of course, there isn’t anything to see in Ohio,” and I said, “But there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! I.M. Pei design!” but he was long past, left in the dust of ignorance.  

Out in the grass

I was surprised that after the path, we could walk to the back of Stonehenge by walking through the grass, which isn’t worn down yet. And what is most amazing to me, past the mystery of “what is means” and how it marks the solstice, is what a fat lot of work it was and how thought out, to have the uprights topped with a point and the lintels with a slot so it fits in there and stays upright for centuries and centuries. And you know it wasn’t the businessmen doing the work, all that quarrying and dragging and shipping and lifting. Whew.

We saved time to visit the gift shop, where we did not buy t-shirts that say, “Stonehenge Rocks” nor mugs nor bags bearing the Stonehenge official logo, just four postcards and stamps. We shared a cup of slightly better coffee and a raisin scone and climbed back on board.

I wish I could say more of Stonehenge, but it was sort of like being in Paris my first time, effing amazing to be there, but sort of boggling too, can’t make any original observation, just the photo of us together, saying here we are, together as the stones.

Most of our fellow passengers were bearable, some even nice, like the couple behind us from near Seattle with their two teenage daughters ahead of us. And a young couple from Houston who thought it was terribly funny that people kept saying it was the warmest day of the year (75 degrees or so) where they had left 90 plus degree weather. One 75-year old couple fro L.A. (who kept saying they were 75) held hands the old way out and fought the whole way back. When Paul G. tried to tell them to take the Tube to their tour the next day, she said, “We really are more taxi people than Tube people,” and I empathized because we have taken many more taxis this trip than ever because of Paul B.’s sprained ankle and two weeks’ luggage.

BATH

So anyhow, we got back on the buses and rode out to Bath, where I thought often of Mary Diaz, our former student who so loved Jane Austen. The approach is “quite lawv-lee” as they say here, as Bath is surrounded by seven hills and tons of limestone “And 90 percent of the buildings are honey-colored stone.” The bus set us down just a block from the Information Center, where Paul M. gave us an overview the option to go with him or mosey on our own, and Paul and I set off looking for Queen’s Square, where the Jane Austen Centre was, but unmarked, would be an apartment where Shelley lived.

Plaque, "Circus"

We found the Jane Austen Centre and looked over the gift shop but decided not to do the tour. When we headed up the street, we bumped into Paul M., who was pointing out the real Jane Austen house, privately owned (“by a dentist, couldn’t get him to sell,” so the Centre was not where she really lived. (WHAT would one see on the tour then???)  We followed Paul up the street to the Circus, which would be a Rotary in New England and a Traffic Circle in the Midwest, but in fact, is more amazing for 

circus trees

 the building erected around the whole circle. There Paul M. gave an excellent architectural lecture on its outside features: no signs of technology, all the doors painted white, and each floor marked with a set of columns: one floor Doric, one Ionic, and one Corinthian. In the center, was a circle of ancient trees.



The Royal Crescent

From there, we walked to the left, up a short hill to the Royal Crescent,  another very old building of apartments in a big swooping crescent-shape. One good story there, though I most regret not getting a photo: As with the Circus, all apartment doors are to be painted white. One is yellow. It sees the woman there painted it when the city painted the edging bricks of the drive yellow because traffic had become a problem. She was told that she could not paint her door as it was a historical building with rules. She pointed out that the road too was historical and not to be painted. So far, both road and door remain yellow.

We walked to the Assembly Rooms, hoping to have tea where Jane Austen did, but the “tea room” was a snack bar, so we found some locally made gifts in the gift shop and a postcard for Mary and headed to find Shelley’s apartment—which we did, we think. Unmarked, and numbers do change, but I think we  were spot on. We went to the Sally Lunn shop for lunch, but we ended up getting Sally Lunn buns and tea and a very refreshing Elderflower drink at the Sally Lunn Shop. I was told it was sort of a brioche, and is was, a very large one, and then read that Sally was a Huegenott in 1680. I had one with lemon curd and clotted cream, Paul B had clotted cream and jam. In a bakery, I bought a “bath bun,” and I have to say the Sally Lunn bun (ahem) was much better.

We decided not to see The Baths. This may sound terrible, but after living in Segovia, I am sort of done with Roman architecture in general. So sorry! Paul B. and I separated to shop instead. I found a postcard of the “Pigs of Bath” for Paul G. I got fudge made with clotted cream in a box that said, “Thanks for taking care of my dog” for Judy in a wonderful wonderful penny candy shop and thought of Matt Lichter at the Tobacco Shop across the way. The Houston couple says smoking is illegal in any public place in Houston now, even the streets, so maybe Matt has quit with the cigars. I don’t think so, think I saw a mention of them on FB. Matt, keep the smoke out of Amanda’s lungs! I found two very cheap jokey things for Paul.

BACK TO BLOOMSBURY

We boarded the bus and rode back, with some of Paul’s patter, like pointing out when we were in the Cotswolds and telling his sheep jokes.



Cotswolds, meaning
"Sheeps' Hills"

The bus crawled back to London in a snarl and stop of traffic, and finally set us down at a Tube stop where we finally got an Oyster card and took the tube back to the Tavistock Hotel. Along the way, we saw another blue plaque marking the home of a famous person. Paul liked this one:


A Secret Agent lived here

We weren’t there long, got an address and set out for Ciao Bella, an Italian restaurant that the man in the pub told us about the night before. Let me begin by summarizing my review: some of the best Italian food I have ever had in the very loudest space I have ever sat in:

We got a table smack tight in a line of tables, on my right a pair of young women, on our left, a middle-aged couple so happy I thought they weren’t married (after the couples I had been seeing the past two days). I ordered tuna, sliced thin and fanned out on a bed of rocket (argula, to us Gringos(, Paul ordered pasta with an Arribata sauce so spicey hot I couldn’t even taste it & he sooo loved it.. We were both very happy with that. Finally, I turned to the couple on my left and said, “Is it always this noisy?” He laughed and said, “No, it’s usually louder!” Then we talked quite a while to them. They are foodies who had drive three hours to eat there and they occasionally fly to Italy just to eat. She had been to NYC twice and loved it. They have two teenage daughters, “Twins who share the same DNA but are so different. One is working as a waitress on Lesbos, the other has applied to get a job as an elf in  Lapland during the holidays.” The husband seemed more of the outdoors type and when I told him my sister had lived and taught in Antwick, he said he had bought his fly fishing rod there.  

I also got up and spoke to a table of six women, three young ones on my left, three older ones on y right, who were passing around two fans and waving them. I told them I had been working on a poem about the painting, “Woman with a Fan” and was curious about their using them. I learned the three young women (from the U.K., Indian, and Greece) were best friends who had brought their mothers to meet for the first time. Both the Greek and the Indian woman had memories of their mothers carrying fans everywhere, and they were all sharing stories about those memories. They said they would send me a photo of them, but so far, they haven’t.
 

Fed and full, our ears literally ringing still with the din and  with a train to catch by 10 at Paddington, we walked back to the hotel and went to bed right after that very filling supper.

Diane & Paul Return to the UK 2013: Days 1 & 2

We left Robbie in the hands and leash of Judy, the intrepid teen house- and dog- sitter and drove to the Akron-Canton Airport, where parking just went up $20 a week since I checked their website. But waiting and boarding were utterly uneventful, as were arriving in Chicago and getting to our second flight.

There, I was given less leg room than I have ever had in my five foot zero inch life for the 8 hour flight. All my plans to remove eye makeup and change into loose pants just disappeared, as I sat wedged in row 33, between Paul and a Londonian who was born and educated in Sierra Leone (in English and Sociology) and now works in IT for “The Home Office, sort of like your Homeland Security,” he said. He’d come back from visiting family in Ft. Wayne, IN and Fairfax, VA, with one stop in Ohio: “Defiance,” he said, not at all defiantly, but amused, like all of us who have been to Defiance.

At 9:30 am London time, they woke us up with melon and croissant. I took an Advil that headed off a migraine, and we landed around 11, as scheduled, amused our Immigration examiner who asked where we were going, and when we said, “Stoke Poges,” we learned she was from Slough, just 4 miles down the road. (Stayed tuned to day 9). We caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station, then a taxi to our hotel, The Tavistock.

The Hotel was recommended by Millicent Accardi (of Wompo and LA) and Tamara Rooney (of Findlay), and we like it. “Not posh,” as Millicent said, but on the very grounds where Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s last house was before the Nazis blew it to ruins and she committed suicide. Across the way in the garden of Tavistock Square is a bust of her and a statue of Ghandi.

But we hadn’t seen it yet. We took off walking toward Byng Square, ended up in a lot of university buildings and cafes and ate in a Greek one called, I think, “Divine Goddess,” where we had great grape leaves with yogurt and olive oil and a bruschettiaon the hardest and tastiest of crostini (crostjon, really) Then we walked to Waterstone Bookstore. There I spotted a famous actor, but I’ll be damned if I know who. Sort of a blond Ben Affleck. Paul thought maybe Daniel Craig, but no. I’ll keep you posted because David Low and Robin Johnson will be interested if I can figure it out.too probably. We came upon the building where the Pre-Raphaelites first met and took a photo of Post-Raphaelite Paul there.    

Anyhow, I’ve noticed that bookstores and newspapers seem to be faring fine here. Maybe they are in all cities of 8 million, and it’s only in the hinterlands like Boston and Cleveland that they are threatened with extinction.

We walked back to the hotel for a nap, what with it being 10 am at home and 2 pm here and having had 3 hours sleep and feeling “like the wreck of the Hesperus” as we used to say.

We went out looking for food around 6 pm, tried “The Queen’s Larder,” where George III’s wife kept extra food and we could find none, though there was a charming list of great pub stuff on the wall and many happy imbibers about, “But we only serve food 11 am to 3 pm,” the bartender said, taking pity on us, waiting expectantly.

We went down the road to another pub, at the sign of a St Bernard's head. There I ordered a venison burger (of Scottish venison) and Paul ordered a vegetable pie, and we were dragged to the table of a pair of friends who work in fundraising at the nearby Children’s Hospital, a famous one which Dickens raised money for, as did Walt Disney, about whom they regaled us with stories, along with stories of the gentleman’s trips to Las Vegas and New Orleans and the woman’s stories of going to school with Angelica Houston and of her father’s restoration of Thor Ballylee. It is so great meeting strangers and hearing their stories, and we heard many more day 3, which I will tell you about when I get a good night’s sleep.

Diane and Paul Return to the U.K. 2013 : Itinerary

On the road again, this time not by boat

For this trip, we wanted to go back to the UK, decided to focus on day trips outside of London and Wales for the 10 days we have to spend. I hope to blog as we go, and I'll let you know through Facebook. Meanwhile, here is our itinerary:

 

Day 1

We are taking off from Akron-Canton in the evening, then to Chicago, both places I hope to walk and write and then board and sleep and arriving in London…

Day 2

...in the late morning. As I have sometimes had jet lag migraines, we are taking this day slowly, checking into a hotel in Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s last neighborhood, Tavistock Square and roaming the city: Bloomsbury, maybe the Dickens museum, maybe Chelsea (especially Cheyne Walk where Rosetti was barred from raising peacocks because they made too much noise), maybe I iwill be lying abed with a cold cloth while Paul does these things.

If we are really revved and not too worried about our 6 am wake-up call day 3, we’ll take in “We Happy Few” (http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/we-happy-few), an outdoor version of “Henry V” that includes puppets. If not, maybe tomorrow night.

Day 3

I wanted another easy day, so we are taking a one-day package tour to Stonehenge and Bath (http://www.premiumtours.co.uk/tours/tour/stonehenge-and-bath-day-trip.id229.html). We have only taken a package day trip one other time, to Roslyn Chapel, and this time for the same reasons. In both cases, the tours didn’t seem too repressively led (i..e., they mostly give you time to wander around on your own) and the places can be hard to get to on one’s own. Also this way, we could just ride for a day and not worry about train reservations and luggage and cars. I really never cared about Bath, not being a big Austen fan, but I am jazzed now. Still, I decided not to read Northanger Abbey or Persuasion but just eat Sally Lunn buns while I am there.

We get back at 5 p.m. (dios mediante, as they used to say in Spain), and if we haven’t seen We Happy Few, maybe we will, or maybe roam Cheyne Walk, where Mrs. Gaskell also lived.

Day 4

We take the train to Cardiff. Going to Wales is in part my desire to find out a bit about my ancestors’ homelands. Not much on this: my mother’s maternal grandmother was born here. We know little more about her except she died when my grandmother was only five years old, and my grandmother told me what she could recall about her, the main thing being that she was from Wales and sang in Welsh. A Massillon librarian genealogist has helped me find that she did come from Wales, in her twenties, but we can’t find anything else: not parents nor siblings nor what city. (More on this later.)

We are staying in the center of the city and hope to roam it that afternoon, the Cardiff Market and Craft in the Bay.  (Paul, the better shopper, bought a big suitcase to buy stuff on this trip.) I hope to find laverbread. In the evening, we are going to The Norwegian Church to hear Scottish singer, Terry Neason (http://www.norwegianchurchcardiff.com/), who has won an Edinburgh Fringe Festival Award  (Listen to her here http://www.terryneason.co.uk/). Paul has discovered that the Welsh language festival is going on too. And all I can say is, "Taliesen."

Day 5

Tentatively, we plan to take the train to Swansea for the day (if not Day 7). We’ll see the Dylan Thomas Center (http://www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1629)  and Dylan Thomas house (http://www.5cwmdonkindrive.com). This is the closest I may get to my great-grandmother, who was named Gretta Thomas—though no relation, sorry to say. Maybe have tea here with a Welsh poet and editor who has published me and was a great friend of Thomas’ daughter Aeronwy, whom I met in Salem, MA four years ago and who has since died. Maybe get down to the water at this beach town. Maybe it will remind us of Old Orchard Beach. We’ll go back to Cardiff at night.

Day 6

It’s the start of the Folk Dancing Festival in Cardiff. They will be dancing all over town from 11 to 4:30 (http://gwylifan.org/en/events). If we can get to the Museum of Welsh history, where they have erected a whole 16^th century outdoor village, we will, to see how my ancestors lived, and then, in the evening we will have dinner in Cardiff Castle (http://www.castlewales.com/cardiff.html) , to see how the other 2 percent lived. Both Prince Charles and Matt Rhys have been at the Castle recently, so now the crowds  may have died down and we can have it ourselves.

Day 7

Train to Bridgwater, then taxi to Nether Stowey, to see where Coleridge lived(http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/coleridge-cottage/)  and wrote and Wordsworth wrote, hike quite a chunk some of the path that Coleridge took, including the road that the man from Porlock would have taken. A walking day.

Day 8

We’ll leave for London, go back to Tavistock Square, and try to check a few London things off the list: revisit the library (love that place) next to King's Cross and Harrod’s, say.  In the evening, we’ll be seeing Pinter’s play “Hothouse,” (http://www.trafalgar-studios.co.uk/The-Hothouse.html) with Simon Russell Beale and John Simm.

Day 9

Today, we set out for Stoke Poges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke_Poges), the closest train being Slough, from whence we will walk or find a taxi to this town which holds the graveyard (and grave) of Thomas Gray and his poem, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.” Another walking day as the church has a garden (probably the cemetery)  and a coffee shop that has fair trade coffee and snacks and handmade gifts. A downhome sort of day, I imagine, in a cemetery sort of way.

We may go to see Tennessee Williams’ play,  Sweet Bird of Youth this night or tomorrow or never.

Day 10

Today, our last day, we go to Thorpe Abbotts, the town where my father was stationed in the 100^th Bomb Group during WWII and where the air base has been turned into a museum, The 100^th Bomb Group Memorial Museum (http://www.100bgmus.org.uk/) . We’ll take the train to Diss, then bus or walk or cab the four miles to this small town. My mom and dad visited here in the 1990s when Daun lived in England, and I have met the directors at Dad’s reunion two years ago. I look forward to reporting back to the 100^th BG Facebook folks and Dad's great 100th BG buddy in Texas, Joe Urice, another former tailgunner..

Day 11

We leave London in the afternoon, maybe  time to squeeze in some running  around in the morning. Stay tuned!

I don't have a solution but I have ideas: The Adjunct Issue, part 3

I do not think that any one action or group can solve “The Adjunct Issue.” I wrote this week that full-time faculty had to be a part of it. People have written to say, “The adjuncts have to do it alone.” In fact, I think there is a role for everyone: full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, administrators, unions and professional organizations,and  parents and students. Below are some ideas of how each group might be a part of making the situation better. I don't present them as well-formulated plans, just lists of possiblities I have been thinking about all my academic life as well as recently when readers have posted comments and emailed responses to the problem.

Full-time faculty

If they haven’t already, they need to speak out on the issue at faculty meetings, get it on the agenda at every meeting, faculty and union and meetings with administrators and talk about not only salary (a primary concern) but also travel money, office space, and collegiality. And they should let their adjunct colleagues know how they feel about the issue. They should include adjunct faculty in as many meetings and social events as possible but not require them to come. They should know adjunct faculty’s salary per course as well as they know their own. They should stand with the adjunct faculty if those members choose to demonstrate. I know many full-time faculty do all this. Others think that adjunct faculty just aren't as smart, well-educated, or deserving as they are. I am not speaking to them. Here. Maybe anywhere.

Adjunct faculty

Adjunct faculty need to be professional, by which I mean they should not just be excellent teachers but they should be aware of professional standards in their own field and to be as professionally and locally active insofar as they can be. If they do not care about benefits or salary because they already have them, they should put their carelessness away and get out or get on with helping their adjunct colleagues who cannot be that cavalier about basic work conditions.

Administrators

Upper-level adminstrators, such as vice-presidents, need to get right with God, or whatever they are out of touch with that is enabling them to enforce such egregious practices. Unless they are actually proposing more humane alternatives, in which case please tell us about it.  

Administrators at the department level need to behave insofar as possible as concerned faculty members and to bring the adjunct concerns up to their superiors at every opportunity, suggesting innovative alternatives to unfair practices that they are having to oversee. That may mean seeing that full-time faculty actually teach first year courses, for example, or seeing that adjunct faculty get a laptop in the university computer initiative, or harangue for full-time lecturer appointments to replace adjunct positions. I have to say that most of the departmental-level and program-level chairs I have known have done yeo(wo)men’s duty trying to make inroads, often without anyone knowing and often without getting far if anywhere. Some of them have taken real hits, even losing their positions and often the adjuncts don't even know. Find out. Thank them.

Professional Organizations, including Unions

So far, most of these groups have done a good job at making statements. College Composition and Communication has an excellent list of standards for best teaching practice, and I quote it back often at administrators who would like me to teach outside those standards. MLA and AAUP have articulated standards and practices. However, we need to get beyond statements.

I have been reminded this week by my friend Brian (a union organizer) how difficult it is for unions to make inroads on this issue. He told me that in Ohio, it is illegal for  professional unions to help adjunct faculty organize. Fortunately, it isn’t illegal in Vermont, where an adjunct agreement has been reached recently. So let's hear it for Vermont, find out what they did, and talk it up. The recent demonstration at Akron U was worth the effort if just for the fact that it raised the issue in the local media and among students. Now if the national media would pick up photos of faculty demonstrations as readily as they did the sign-wielding McDonald’s workers....

Parents and Students

Recently, the “Adjunct Issue” came up in my dentist waiting room with a woman who asked me where I worked. She basically got my 10-second version of “My Resignation Letter.” I mentioned that while part-time faculty could be excellent instructors, students were just getting short-shrift when the majority of their teachers (especially for courses their first two years) were part-time professors. One of the places I saw them getting short shrift, for example, is in the area of academic advising.

Whew! I didn’t have to tell her. First, she articulated how she had seen it with her daughter's profs.  She trotted off and away at the total lack of faculty advising one of her daughters experienced at the mother’s alma mater, compared to the total faculty engagement her other daughter experienced in academic advising by faculty at another college. She could see the difference in the difficulty her daughters had wending their way through their academic course of study, though both were excellent students. (Certainly academic advising—or the lack of it—is one area I have seen really decimated by the lack of faculty advising on many college campuses. Student academic advising is not academic advising: it’s just in-person “Rate My Professor,” an amusing and unreliable site.)

And so, as the 17 and 18-year olds I know are heading off for their college visits this year, I have suggested the parents ask administrators (and not just the student tour guide) what percentage of their courses are taught by adjuncts. AND what percentage of first-year courses are taught by adjuncts. They might even ask how much adjuncts get paid. For years, parents and their students asked about better dorms, and they have definitely gotten them—along with lavish athletic workout centers, greatly expanded food choices, and more and more technology. Maybe it’s time to ask about the faculty beyond the student to teacher ratio promoted by the collegiate rating systems and inflated by teeny faculty wages.

And most of the students I have had, verily even the very business-focused Bentley students I taught 2003-20011, have a strong sense of money and injustice. Akron U students who were interviewed during the recent Akron U demonstrations were quoted by the media as being shocked and disappointed to learn of the adjunct faculty’s wages. I think they need to know if their campus is following the ethical employment practices, given that the students are taught about ethics in academic honesty lectures and in their own fields of study.

In conclusion...for now

Ignore any of these ideas you think  are bad. Suggest better ones. Tell me what you are doing. You can remain anonymous.
 

My Letter of Resignation from Kent State: The Adjunct Situation Part 2

Dear Administrators at Kent State University,

It is with sadness that I write to say that I will not be teaching for Kent State next fall.

When I returned to Ohio in the summer of 2011, I so looked forward to coming and teaching at home, and my year at Kent was wonderful in many ways. I liked the writing curriculum, and I loved my College Writing II students, several of whom have stayed in touch in the intervening year. In fact, I deeply love students and teaching anywhere. Recently reading Mark Edmundson’s advice to college freshman (“Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?”), I was most struck by this sentence: “Education is about finding what form of work for you is close to being play,” and though I would say that the play of teaching is exhausting, I think I found my form of work in 1972, when I began my career, or even before, when I lined the neighborhood children up and assigned reports to them.

Some aspects of adjuncting can be discomfiting, as I learned when I was an adjunct at Cleveland State in the early 1980s, but being a tenure-track and tenured professor at The University of Findlay involved big swaths of discomfiture, too. However, none of that prepared me for the discomfiture of the salary at K.S.U. in this decade. I honestly did not pay much attention to the salary when I interviewed here—my bad, I know, as the kids say—I so wanted so to continue teaching as long as I could.

But then it hit me mid-fall semester. I was making less than $8000 a year for half-time work—or if you prefer, 40%-time work (figuring 80% teaching and 20% administrivia a full load for those who teach 8 courses a year). When I left my adjunct position at Cleveland State in 1984, I was making $10,000. Even if I could teach two sections of composition in 16 hours, which a dean suggested I do by not correcting papers, that’s not much over $7 an hour. Now, I spend way over 16 hours a week when I teach two sections of writing. I prep a lot, attend professional events, keep up with the latest technology, publish a fair amount, and spend eons responding to student work, but let’s ignore them and stick to 16 hours a week work for two sections of writing: it is still less than minimum wage.

So I took the past year off to think about it. I miss teaching more than I ever thought I would. However, I am not willing to be abused by Kent State University.  I trained too hard, worked too long, and received enough recognition for my effort to now be disrespected this way by the institution and by some full-time faculty who assume their part-time colleagues are less qualified than they, though I have many publications, fellowships from the Fulbright Association, NEH, Yaddo, and the Ohio Arts Council, national and local teaching awards and reams of positive student evaluations and colleague observations. 

I have worked decades on the issue of the over-use and underpayment of adjuncts, who constitute 43-67% of KSU’s teaching faculty (depending on whether we count courses or faculty), so I am saddened to have seen nothing being done on the issue at Kent State. Here in Ohio and elsewhere, other universities have managed better models of employment in the area of Composition, for one, and I would highly suggest KSU faculty and administrators educate themselves about these other models. Meanwhile, I am not willing to work under such a sorry lack of leadership. 

I have seen no one here, including the union, doing much about it. Today’s Inside Higher Education has pointed that fact out on a national level:

 

Why have so few outside these ranks [ of adjuncts] taken up this cause? While non-tenure-            track faculty have been vocal in advocating for change, virtually no institutional, foundation, 

or policy leaders have acknowledged the hard realities of these conditions or expressed concern. In fact, in private, a few postsecondary leaders will note that they feel bad and think the model is morally bankrupt. In public, though, they often show no leadership, nor do they voice their objections to a model that surely cannot be sustained -- nor should it be.

In researching what has been done at KSU faculty meetings on the issue, I would say this statement seems particularly true of the KSU faculty.

 

I will say that I understand the difficulty of making inroads into the problem. My partner, who is also an academic, has worked on this issue in every situation he has been a part of, since his grad school days in 1982, and it is very difficult, even dangerous work. I also have been involved in the issue since my grad school days and as an officer in our local AAUP when I was a tenured faculty member. I believe that objection must come from the leadership of the faculty and not the sharecroppers, to use University of Cincinnati English faculty member Catherine Wagner’s term for adjunct staff. [Note to blog readers: I should note that Wagner has been a sharecropper before she landed her tenure track job, and she is not being disrespectful but accurate. You can read her terrific blog on sharecropper faculty here.]

Until then, much as it pains me, I will not be teaching at Kent State University. In leaving, I want to send many thanks to [names deleted to protect the innocent] assistance to me—terrific colleagues all.

I Quit Teaching and Why: The Adjunct Situation Part 1

My first year home again, I taught part time, and I planned to teach part time here for several years. However, I have had to quit, and I hate that I have had to.

I have taught since 1972, still have a lot of love and energy for students and learning, and my previous 10 years as an adjunct in Massachusetts were good, and previous to that, my 18 years tenured at The University of Findlay were, great, too. When I returned to Northeast Ohio, I interviewed with Cleveland State, Kent, and Akron, and though Akron seemed perhaps the best fit pedagogically, the curriculum required many more days on campus, so it was prohibitive in commuting and parking costs.

I chose Kent Stark, with some warm feelings for teaching at home. I didn't think too much about salary, though I recognized it was abysmal, less than I was making when I left adjuncting in Northeast Ohio in 1984. I loved the students who reminded me of all my Perry High '68 classmates, 45 years previously, who went to Kent Stark, waiting till the last minute to do everything, there by duress or lackadaisical but not disinterested attitudes to education. But my students were in a much worse economy than most of my friends faced in 1968. I read up on the history of Kent Stark and Kent State to work the material into my College Writing  II Course, "Writing About College Student Culture."

 A first year at any new institution has a learning curve, but having done a LOT of teaching, I was fairly well-prepared and rate it a very good year, from an educational point of view (mine and and my students'.) One of my students got a version her last essay for my class accepted for publication in The Chronicle of Higher Education and others produced publishable work and everyone produced one excellent piece of writing. Final presentations were wonderful with the students speaking with power points on what they had learned about Kent State and its students in their weeks of research. Many of those former students shout out to me now and wave across parking lots. I don't allow students to friend me on Facebook until the semester is over, but I have lots of Kent Stark facebook friends now.

Byy the end of the year, however, the salary issue was really hitting home. On the one hand, I would be willing to teach for free. On the other, it just isn't right. I told my chair that I was taking a year off for a sabbatical, but I was actually trying to step back to think about it all. Then, I didn't think about it. I missed teaching so very much and wanted to return. And then, at the end of the year, just as I received a letter from my chair asking for my schedule preferences, I saw online the photos of the New York McDonald's workers striking over wages that were as much or more than I make at Kent.

Now I don't mind McDonald's workers making more than me. A friend always says we should be willing to pay more for work we don't want to do, and I don't want to work at McDonald's..However, the idea that McDonald's workers were striking, while acadmia is doing nothing over the "Adjunct State of Affairs" was too much for me to bear.

And by nothing, I don't mean that the adjuncts were doing nothing. Here in Northeast Ohio, they held  demonstrations in the month of April over new changes to adjunct hiring practices that will make it even worse for adjuncts. And in New York and Massachusetts, similar demonstrations were going on. What I mean is that the full-time faculty and unions and professional organizations have done next to nothing over the "Adjunct State of Affairs."

And what is the "Adjunct State of Affairs"? Statistics are very hard to get, but some estimate that 70% of the college courses are taught by adjunct. (One source I have found says that 65% of Kent's courses are taught by adjuncts.) In most cases, adjuncts receive no benefits and their salaries are teeny. At Kent State Stark, I made less than $8000 a year for teaching four courses. A full-time load on that campus would be eight courses. So if I had taught a full-time load, I would have been making less than $16,000 a year and no benefits. Meanwhile, full-time Assistant Professors at Kent State make over $60,000 a year and benefits.

Tomorrow, I will publish the letter of resignation I sent to Kent State, and then after that, to discuss why this state of affairs is bad not only for adjuncts but for institutions, full-time faculty, and most of all, for the students. Meanwhile, I cannot tell you how much I miss teaching. But I am not going to step back into the harness of indentured servitude that is "The Adjunct State of Affairs" in most of the college education system of Ohio.