Letter from Cambridge |
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Town
The city is beguiling, a good walking town with a scale that does not overwhelm, but remains interesting at every corner. Like most older European cities, it takes some getting used to as a wide-eyed American. Streets change their names as they go through the town (in one case eight times from one end to the other, which makes location problematic when using street addresses or verbal directions) and numbering is haphazard. Of course it turns out that lots of times a place is named for something that used to be there, but is no longer. Then you get issues of more than one St. Mary’s church, both built around the same time in the 14th century so they become Great St. Mary’s and Little St. Mary’s. And so on.
Like most university towns it has its characters and camp followers, and strangely enough, some of them seem awfully type cast and familiar and get tiresome fairly quickly. Others are right out of a Dicken’s novel (do great beetling eyebrows have some sort of genetic root in the lands nearby?) Each college seems to have a small army of uniformed wardens, estate keepers, turf and arbor specialists, cooks, cleaners, window wipers and brass polishers, with the happy result that the colleges themselves usually look stunning, probably more dazzling then when new many centuries ago.
Every once in a while I stumble upon some grand celebration, for example last Saturday King’s College was having a graduation ceremony (which seems to occur at the beginning of a new term rather than at the end of the last) and flocks of graduates in King’s college robes and colors mobbed about the premises downtown, signs posted indicating “private ceremonies, please keep out.”
There is a “newcomer’s” meeting for tea once a week where us auslanders are introduced to civilized society here and shown the lay of the land in town. Mostly elderly well intentioned types are the greeters, and really a very nice courtesy. First two non-locals I meet? A young pair from the GTU just across town in Berkeley: he’s taking classes at Emmanuel College in the area of medieval mysticism, she is finishing up a book on non-violent catholic activists. Other Americans are from Virginia and Maine, along with a goodly contingent of international scholars: New Zealand, France, Japan and China are represented. There are weekly tours with good introductions to the town, a nice mitzvah.
My Project
As all who do research know, this sort of thing is always a two steps forward, one back affair, except certain days feel like more steps back than one or two. The enormity of my goals are beginning to weigh on me, and every time I start to investigate some area for which I will need some understanding (at the moment, the evolution of the medieval curriculum) I see I will need to know much more about something else too. To understand why certain of Aristotle’s works were required, for example, I need to know more about Gratian’s Decretals. I should also refamiliarise myself with Anselm, and also Abelard. How carefully should I read John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon? When did nominalism become a challenge and who were the main protagonists in the debate? Where will all this stop, I cannot do it all.
The library is proving harder to use than was first apparent, as well. Lots of material is buried away in their “rare books” and “manuscripts” area, and I have not steeled myself properly for an assault on those districts. I will need documentation, articulated specific needs, and people will finger my garden variety “reader’s card” dismissively, without a college or university affiliation to authenticate my interest. Like many research collections, it operates more as an archive than a friendly library with open arms to its users.
The classification system appears to be a modified Dewey (not a UDC but something more, ah, customized.) Yet it is inconsistent and large parts of the collections have entirely non-intuitive “classmarks” as they are termed. The catalog itself is a nightmare of home-grown and peculiar design, hard to search, cumbersome, Byzantine and frequently inaccurate. Luckily, they have created a proper Endnote filter and connection file so at least my own bibliographic utility works well with it. In order to ask a question here, you need to know most of the answer already.
Access
Always an amusing challenge, this one. One of the first was in regards to paying rent, oddly enough. The university would vastly prefer that one have a local bank account so they can automatically deduct the rent every month, automated and fail safe. Until I get such an account, and this is proving more difficult than could possibly have been imagined, I need to pay in cash, as they decline to deal with a check from an American bank. So I trotted off to the address listed on my invoice of the accommodation service downtown, only to stare up at the office entrance, a good dozen steps up from the street. Short of some Romeo and Juliet sort of thing involving tossing pebbles at the office window (and I didn't even want to try to imagine the newpaper headlines on this if it went awry: "Crazed American Academic on Window Smashing Spree") I was not to going to get anyone’s attention easily. No passers-by on this grey rainy day were about, or even would have been likely to run a detour for a stranger. Strike one.
So I called up the office the next day, offering in sincere terms my desire to pay rent promptly and ethically, and explained the situation. The office manager suggested my visit to another flavor of the accommodation service’s offices, where my “access requirements” would more easily be met. It is clearly my problem I cannot pay rent properly.
I went by the next day to discover they were closed for staff training that afternoon. At least I got to visit a new part of the city. The day after, I went by again, barging into a tight office which required a chair or two to be moved before I could enter. I explained my situation to the assistant, who brightly indicated that “John” would be just the person to handle my needs. She rang him up and he dashed in from somewhere upstairs, young, smartly dressed, professional. After initial pleasantries, he continues:
"Well, normally Mr. Fielden, we suggest you pay at this address" (pointing to my bill,
which clearly says 74 Trumpington Court.)
"Yes, I went by last week, but couldn't get to the office since there are quite a set of steps up from the street and my wheelchair won't make it up."
John looks a bit taken aback and gazes at me for a few moments, realization finally dawning.
1st Assistant: " 'e 'asn't got a good comeback for that one, does 'e?"
2nd Assistant: "Not like ‘im to be stricken silent,
either."
John, a bit shamefaced, "I'd be glad to take your payment Mr. Fielden."
I didn’t have the heart to mention I had been by the day before.
It also turns out that getting into the library is not always a straightforward event. On the weekends they frequently forget to unlock the “special” door, since wheelchairs cannot make it through the revolving door. Then I have to send some kind soul in to ask they unlock it. During the weekdays when this happened, I used to be able to go around the building to the loading dock and use the “back” elevator, but when I tried that the other day when the front lift was broken, I noticed that it too was out of service.
“How long is it down for?” I inquired.
“Oh, a few months,” the guard mentioned off-handedly, “due for its cyclical maintenance.”
I suspect that I may end up having some days when I just won’t be able to get into the building at all in the next months.
Access, access, access. The books I need within crow’s flight of a well aimed Frisbee throw and I cannot get to them.
Reunited
Lucy, Heather and Aaron arrive from Heathrow yesterday midday, totally wiped out from their ten hour overnight flight, the kids two limp dishrags of protoplasm we pour into their beds for extended naps. But they have come for the next month, an eagerly awaited moment for me. Within a day my well ordered place is turned upside down, with toy cars lurking behind doorways and crumbs of potato chips in the corners of the kitchen. But the kids are here, making noise and lively energy. And Lucy and I are able to exchange news face to face, and talk and rehash all the multitude of living observations that go into a mature relationship, and it feels good and nice and entirely appropriate they we are all together again. They will be here for February, then gone again till the summer. In the meantime, while my work routine will need to be adjusted, it is great to have them here, and be able to watch them discover the city through their own senses over the next weeks.
Cheers from the Enchanted Isle
February 2007
Ned