tree_and_leaf | To do before Friday evening

*Finish organising word nets for section of thesis
- on a related note, work out why, exactly, wordle isn't working for my computer, and fix it (I do actually have a semi-legitimate academic use for this, it's not just playing!)
*Trail out to teacher training college, extract interesting sounding article from volume of feminist theology (and how much do I hate the local library policy of not duplicating holdings across institutions? It's one thing not buying several copies of volumes for department libraries down the hall from each other, but when you need to travel half an hour by tram to use the library of a university you're not even a member of...)
* Re-wax Grönland jacket and hat
* Give brief presentation on Barlaam and Josephaat manuscript; explain how the Buddha ended up becoming a Christian saint.
* Wash Scout uniform and sleeping bag inner
* Book flight home
* Work out what I did with those blank CDs, and burn some files
* Cancel Spiegel (which has had some headdeskily daft articles recently, anyway, including the latest Batshit Insane Theory that Goethe was having an affair with Anna Amalia rather than Charlotte von Stein†, cancel internet contract
* Sharpen knife
* Sort out tent issue, given that I now can't borrow the one I was going to
* Attempt to prevent assassination of Charidisch prince (OK, this is an RPG goal rather than a real one)

... I have the strong feeling I've forgotten something

† Because C von S wasn't intellekshul enough, apparently. I would counter (a) Goethe seems to have had a habit of wanting people to show off to (b) C v S may not have been as intellectual as Anna Amalia, but the evidence of his wife suggests that Goethe didn't primarily go for academic competence in a woman (c) assuming he'd dumped the Dowager Duchess to run off to Rome, how likely is it that he'd have been allowed back to Weimar on rather improved terms?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I remember you saying that you had used London City Airport. Considering the ease of getting to them by public transport with suitcase, and of the place once you're there, how do you think it compares to Heathrow for convenience? I am flying to Geneva in September and weighing " Only 1 hr 20 minutes on the bus to Heathrow" vs. "Heathrow is horrid". Price for both is similar.

It partly depends on whether they'll still have works on the DLR, because if they are, that means a slightly confusing change round Tower Hill (though thinking about it, it's more confusing getting back from the airport than getting to it, when it's less critical) I think the works were scheduled to be finished at the end of this month, but that means nothing.

Getting to LCY does involve changing from bus to Tube and changing again into the DLR, but the airport is much easier to deal with, being smaller, and you don't need anything like as much time to clear security or to find your way from the platform to checkin. I think it's worth it, but I suppose it depends on whether or not your case has wheels or not....

It seems that Tower Hill is closed until Spring 2009, which means Bank. And train, tube, DLR is a lot more complicated than coach. So I'd potentially add on quite a bit of extra worry there. On the other hand, I wouldn't be waiting in the absolutely vile lounges at Heathrow. But it'd be more complicated when coming home tired. Hmm. I think I may have to weigh flight times v. carefully.

I tend to get the train rather than the coach to London

The train is on the whole better, unless you want Victoria, which I generally do, as my trips to London generally involve visiting a friend in Pimlico! (But the train is actually cheaper if you need the tube, once you weigh up the additional cost of the Tube day ticket against the Travelcard you get for the train)

I think the works at Bank-Monument have finished, but as

nineveh_uk says, Tower Gateway on the DLR is closed for rebuilding (two platforms and a single track being now thought a better use of the limited space than the current single platform and two tracks).

Aargh!

All part of the DLR three car train project (http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/2008/03/dlr-three-car-project.html). I think the idea is that trains will unload and load quickly, then head east to reach the double tracks just before the next train approaches the station.

explain how the Buddha ended up becoming a Christian saint.
Can you explain it to me? I never heard of that.

Re: libraries - I know. I hated dragging books around the city, too.

ST.Jehosaphat, IIRC, the protagonist of a book of Buddhist stories (as the Bodhisattva, that is the last stage before Buddhahood) which somehow reached Christian Syria, where they were Christianized and eventually translated into Greek and Latin. Am I right,

tree_and_leaf?

Yep, dead on!

Oddly enough, the story is also the source of the 'three caskets' motif from the Merchant of Venice, although England and Scotland are the only western European countries where the story didn't really catch on (there's even a saga version).

I'd not heard of it either - a fascinating Christianization.

I didn't either, until relatively recently. It's extremely obscure for something so fascinating!

You just wait till I prove the connection between Ferdawsi's Book of Kings and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. And I am not kidding: it is there. It's a bloody wonder nobody noticed - I know that Celticists and Medieval Latinists don't often trouble their heads with Persian literature - or vice versa - but crikey, Indo-Europeanists at least ought to be a bit quicker on the uptake!

That would be quite something! (I must admit I don't actually know any Indo-Europeanists; they seem to be a dying breed, at least around here.)

I know next to nothing about Goethe, but personally I have always found it amusing that John Keats - who, it must be admitted, knew a nice word when he saw one - was desperately in love with someone called Fanny Brawne. When did love have anything to do with intellect?

Well, indeed!

Someone else who wears a waxed jacket! Ours have just been re-proofed, ready for Norway (although ours are Barbours).

I eventually succumbed to the lure of Fjällräven's stuff (as a result, people keep thinking I do Scandinavian studies). It came with an alarming drawing of how to reproof in the field, with the aid of a gas stove. I will not be trying this, strange to relate!

My Barbour is long overdue a rewaxing...

I spent yesterday evening attacking my coat and hat with a haridryer. My flatmate thinks I've lost it....

I guess that for some people just admire the greatness of Goethe was never going to be enough. One has to go "behind" things, to "discover" the "truth" about said greatness - otherwise, what share does one have in it? And yet it is my firm belief that high achievement in any area reflects on us all as human beings.

I agree with you; although there's an odd tendency even with in respecatble Goethe criticism to put a lot of weight on the biography (well, Werther rather invites it, I suppose); of course, there's also the element of simple egotism. Having read an interview with the chap proposing the theory, he seems to be deriving most of his motivation from showing up professional Germanists; he sounds quite unlikable, even by the standards of conspiracy theorists. (I suppose I might be a bit biased against people who make general statements about the laziness of Germanists, though Goethe's not exactly my area...)

And talking about intellekshul - isn't it the case that all the Bacon/Oxford nonsense is based on an obstinate belief that the leather-merchant's son from Stratford upon Avon was simply too ordinary a person for the loftiness of his work? Evidently the overrating of intellekshulness is a feature of Batshit Insane Theories.

Yes, although there's the additional factor of social snobbishness with Shakespeare.

To do before Friday evening

Quick travel question

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Aargh, I don't know!

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