I'm off to play the grand piano

I have felt like quite the member of high society these last two days, as I have been two nights in a row to the theatah to see some Shakespeah.

But it was completely on purpose, and planned too by the acting company. The two plays I saw were done by the same all-male cast, and were performed on alternating nights. The situation provided an interesting window into what is expected of a good actor - the ability to fit roles which may differ like night and day...or in this case, comedy and tragedy. The plays put on by this theater company were The Comedy of Errors and Richard III.

Last night was The Comedy of Errors, which I had never seen but had always wanted to; I always thought the plot sounded quite clever. I was also looking forward to what is, for me, a new Shakespearean comedy - I may only be 20, but, thanks to the limited list of productions picked over by our local middle and high schools, I have had quite enough of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing for now. But I can never forget my first experience with Midsummer, performed outside at the edge of a forest, and how much I had loved it, so I went to the theater with high hopes.

I certainly got more than I expected. The cast was fabulous, and the entire production was very impressive. The actors treated their lines in a way I had never really thought about, putting so much expression into a language which I had only really experienced through reciting soliloquies monotone in front of bored classmates. The comedy, verbal and physical, had the audience laughing throughout, even earning a mid-scene round of applause after one particularly frenzied speech. I loved the play itself as well, but especially after seeing the cast in action for such an amusing evening, I was now looking forward even more to seeing them turn around and do Richard III tonight.

As much as I love a good laugh, I also love a good tragedy; in my limited experience with Shakespeare, I have found that my favorites so far tend to lie in the darker genre. I had seen Richard III before, as a high school production, but the only thing I really remember about the play was that a rather large percentage of the characters were killed off throughout. This memory was confirmed when, upon entering the theater tonight, I noticed that my ticket had a small notice reading, "Contains scenes of violence: Suitable for ages 12+."

Long story short, I expected many deaths, in the theatrical off-stage tradition.

I therefore was not expecting all of the deaths to be performed on stage.

So it turned out to be a bit...gory...perhaps, but thankfully not that bad; mostly it was creatively left up to the imagination. It was enough at least to get a few gasps and "ooooh"s from the elderly ladies sitting behind me. The silver lining, though, was that it clearly revealed how brutal a play Richard III really is. I found that I really liked the play itself, for a reason left up to some strange corner of my mind.

Once again, the acting was superb, especially after seeing The Comedy of Errors the night before. The actors' turn-arounds were great to see, especially due to the all-male cast. Thus a comedic Dromio turned into a vengeful wife, a butch officer into a grieving mother and, perhaps the most drastic change, an almost too flamboyant, fiery-tempered wife into the modest and heroic Richmond.

So yes, the performances were good. Also the theater was beautiful; it was very old, with ornate decorations, boxes, etc. Also, and I had noticed this at a couple of the other plays I have been to here, there seems to be a tradition of the selling of small cups of ice cream during admission. I didn't really pay attention to it, being the somewhat stingy person I am, but last night by the end of admission almost everyone in the theater had one except for me. So I decided to give it a go tonight. It was quite tasty. I believe I approve.

Castles and ghosts

Today I pulled another "old things are right near me and I can see them between classes" action.

It was extremely foggy today; I couldn't see more than a few yards all around. After going to my morning class, I realized, as I looked around at all of the old buildings emerging from the mist, that it was rather medievally and romantic. So I decided spur of the moment, in the hours between my classes, to finally go up to the Edinburgh castle. I ran home to get my camera, and headed off.


Although the view of the city is, of course, a major attraction to the castle, seeing it in the fog was fabulous. It had a mysterious feel to it, and felt just as old as it was. At first I practically ran around, trying to see everything at once, but eventually I slowed down in my excitement to actually be in a castle, once I had found the oldest building in the site, St Margaret's Chapel, from the 12th century. It's quite a nice little chapel, and one of the stained glass windows was even of St Columba, who has been the subject of two out of my three classes for weeks, because his hagiography is one of the only sources available for early medieval Scotland.

The castle is very cool; there's so much to see, from the Scottish Crown Jewels to the apartment of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Great Hall. There was a section open for the foundations of a tower built in the Middle Ages and destroyed later by cannon fire, which is underground. Apparently it was also the place where the Crown Jewels were hidden there during WWII, so there was an interesting touch of history. There was also a small exhibition regarding the prison, which was interesting, and a rather large one on the history of the Crown Jewels - they had quite a turbulent one, and it was a neat exhibit.

I also happened to be there for the 1 o'clock gun, which I hadn't been specifically been planning on, but was happy to witness. It was loud. There was also an exhibit on the history of the firing of the 1 o'clock gun, so it was fun to see that directly afterward.

There was so much to see, that even though I was there for a long time I didn't get to see everything; I had a feeling that I might have to come back twice. But that wasn't the end of my day...

After class and some studying in the library, I headed out in the evening to the Royal Mile. There are a few boards by St Giles Cathedral for ghost tours, which in themselves sound fun, but also they take you to historical places which are normally not open to the public. So, interested in the history mostly, I thought it would be fun to go on one of them. I went on a double tour - we went to two places, first to the vaults in the South Bridge, and then to a section of the Greyfriars graveyard.

The tour guide was fantastic. He really knew his history and was enthusiastic about it; he also created great atmosphere while bringing in some good humor. That alone made the tour worth it. I learned a lot about the history surrounding the South Bridge and the graveyard, as well as some of the city's history. The vaults and graveyard were very cool in and of themselves; the vaults were lit with candles, while the graveyard was lit only with what appeared to be a full moon.

The guide mostly focused on the history, and didn't tell too many ghost stories, which was probably good because there were certainly a number of nervous people on our tour. The places themselves were spooky enough to do anything to the imagination. But, being a ghostly non-believer, I didn't find the tour that scary, which made it probably more pleasurable. I loved seeing the vaults and the graveyard, while hearing more about what they were used for and what happened there; although the history was a bit dark, as can be imagined, it was still fascinating. So I would recommend these ghost tours! It was a lot of fun. There is another tour which goes to different places with different stories, so I may try that in a few weeks.

Cabin fever

So today, at last, I got hit by cabin fever. Enough of the library, enough of my room - it was time to go see the city.

My first stop was another play, this time a one act, two actor play from Venezuela. It was quite good, and also only 45 minutes long, the perfect length. I really enjoyed it.

My second stop was a spur of the moment visit to the National Museum of Scotland. Apparently they are doing some kind of renovation on the building, which is a block long, and only a fragment of the museum is open right now. But I spend almost two hours in there, and I barely got through one floor, so I think they have plenty on display! It is also completely free, which both I and my wallet appreciated.

I saw the lower level, which was the early inhabitants of Scotland. They had an interesting layout: There is a separate room for the prehistoric peoples, but once you hit the early historic period, all of the factions present in Scotland are mixed together - the Romans, the Picts, the Scots, and, my favorite as always, the Vikings, even though they came a lot later than the Romans. But it ended up being a great exhibit, because it showed how much each of these peoples influenced each other, either by trade or gifting, or just cultural assimilation. There was a whole section on items worn to distinguished elites, and a number of areas devoted to the methods of craftsmanship, from ceramic to stone to metal, and even textile.

There were some very cool items as well - seriously, an archaeologist's dream. My favorite was an ornate, probably ceremonial Viking sword hilt. But there were also a number of hoards, which were cool to see; the Falkirk coin hoard, which is a rather famous image. They had a few other item hoards too, which was neat to see because my first tutorial for Archaeology of Scotland was on hoards. They had all different kinds of hoards at the museum, and after reading so much about them, I was finally able to see them and get some physical evidence that what I had read was true. There were a lot of axes, for instance - apparently axes, being a chief symbol of power, were very common to find in hoards.

Mostly I was interested in seeing what are defined as the two kinds of hoards. One is the votive hoard, in which the items were buried as gifts to the gods. These hoards are often found in places which are hard to get, because they were not intended to be recovered. The museum had a few of these, one of which was of particular interest because almost all the items were broken, a somewhat common occurence - the hoard's contents are considered an "item sacrifice," and are broken to represent their "death," or end of use.

The other kind of hoard is one which was buried by someone for safekeeping, with the intention of recovery, but they never came back for it. The museum had a coin hoard found at the monastery of Iona, which was thought have been intended for recovery. The sign theorized that this hoard was buried by a monk who was then killed during one of the many raids on Iona by the Vikings. A story like that puts a whole new perspective on these kinds of artifacts for me; I could just imagine that anonymous monk, hastily digging a hole and tossing in his entire fortune while dragon ships bore down on his monastery, not knowing he wouldn't survive the attack, or that his coins would remain lost until over a thousand years later, when they were discovered by archaeologists.

I also, as could probably be predicted, really enjoyed the warfare section of the museum...there were a lot of very cool swords and axes, and there were even fragments of a Roman tent recovered from one of their military camps. How cool would it be to find part of a 1700-year old tent!

After the museum, I went to see The King's Speech, which I really enjoyed. I saw True Grit earlier in the week, so it was interesting to see them close together, as they are both receiving such good reviews.

Puppets and Valentines

So it's been a while, but I haven't really had anything to say; mostly I have been studying in the library (I had my first two papers due today, a source analysis and a source commentary) or not studying in my room. The papers took me a long time, mostly because I was trying to figure out the British system of paper-writing and citing sources, and to be honest I have been a little overwhelmed by being in a strange place. So I just focused on the papers and didn't do all that much.

I did see a very strange puppet show last Friday night though. The first half was kind of meta, but the second half was a man who creates fantastical stories about crazy characters and puts on shadow puppet shows about them, while narrating these tales in song with his live band. The stories were all very strange and also quite humorous, so it ended up being a lot of fun.

Today is Valentine's Day too, which was nice.

Glasgow

Tonight I went to Glasgow! I didn't see much though, as it was dark. It was a bit of a fiasco getting there, but I finally figured out the train schedule and was safely on my way.

My reason for going was the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which I have been going to every year back home for years. I was sorry to be missing it this winter, but I was thrilled to see it would be playing in Glasgow, so I made a bit of an effort to go.

The films this year were really good; it was the best year in a few, I think, I liked them all. In particular there was a good one about a Swiss alpinist; it was pretty inspirational. He seemed, on the outside, a very modest and quiet man, but the film showed his intense drive to achieve his goals. There was also a good one about fishing in Kamchatka, which I think the whole audience was a bit apprehensive about, because it was the long film for the night - generally there are a number of short films with a long one, 40 minutes to an hour, in the middle. But it turned out to be really great. Also, the first film, only about five minutes long, was a series of photographs which this man had taken of himself every day for about 7 months as he walked across China. It was a neat idea because, even though it was just one photo a day (3,000 in 5 minutes, so they went by pretty quickly), it told the entire story of his journey, perhaps even better than had he filmed it.

All in all it was a great night, and I'm glad I made the effort and got to where I was going. I'll have to go back and see Glasgow in the day sometime.

Hill forts

I went on a long walk this morning in Holyrood Park, a large park behind my dorm area. I had been wanting to explore it before, but I hadn't gotten around to it, even thought it's practically out my back door. But in my Archaeology of Scotland course, our lectures had been on the Bronze Age, and yesterday's class was all about hill forts, structures built during that time. Remembering my experience at the Register, I realized that, for once in my career as a college student, I didn't have to assume that all the sites I was learning about were thousands of miles across the sea; that was why I was here, wasn't it?

So after class I went up to the lecturer, a Bronze Age archaeologist, and asked him if there happened to be any hill forts nearby that I might be able to go take a look at. And his enthusiastic response was that there were in fact three of these hill forts right in Holyrood Park. So this morning I thought it might be nice to go see what this park is all about, while also looking for what he said was the biggest hill fort, unusually large for such a structure. I had a feeling that it might be hard to spot, being perhaps more than two thousand years old, so I did some reconnaissance on Google Earth before I left, and did in fact see a large raised area on top of the Salisbury Crags, right where our lecturer had said it was.

The jist of this post is that I ran out between breakfast and class to go look at a Bronze Age hill fort. And it took me two whole weeks to realize I could do this.

Anyways, I took a nice walk up into the park; it was a little drizzly, but not too bad. The park is quite beautiful; it consists mainly of the Salisbury Crags, which slope down into a valley with a small lake, and then abruptly up into a large hill called Arthur's Seat, which is a rather prominent feature in the city. It extends back a ways too, but I only went up onto the crags; I intend to climb Arthur's Seat another time soon. Apparently there is another smaller hill fort on top, as well as terracing on the far side, remnants of prehistoric farming.

Because it was slightly raining, it was also slightly muddy, so the narrow earthen tracks leading up to the crags were a little treacherous. There were a few people out and about, a number of runners on the main track through the park, but mostly dog owners. I walked across the large field making up the back of the crags, keeping an eye out for mounts that would represent the hill fort. I went back and forth two or three times, in the end, but came up each time with nothing. The hill fort was no where to be seen. There were a couple of workers on the very edge of the crags who I briefly suspected of being archaeologists but were probably something else; one was rappelling down the cliff face. They probably thought I was crazy, as well as the hooded person perched on the edge of an outcrop looking out over the city.

But I was determined to find this fort. I had plenty of time before class, so I took a break from my hunt to approach, from a safe distance, the edge of the crags and take some pictures of Edinburgh. It started to really rain at this point, but I was able to get some nice overview shots of the city.


After looking out for a while and taking some more pictures of the park itself, and watching some of the dogs romping around in the wet grass below, it occurred to me that maybe I was going about this fort search the wrong way. Of course, it was only a raised area in the meadow, according to Google Earth, and although it was quite large, perhaps approaching it horizontally wasn't the best way to see it. I looked down from my position on top of the hill, but still saw nothing. So I thought, if I can't see it from the sides or from above, maybe I can see it from below?

Yet again I found the track, and made my way down to a little outcrop of rocks quite a ways down the hill. Upon reaching my destination, I turned around, and voila! There was the hill fort, perfectly laid out in front of me, and perfectly visible. The outcrop turned out to be the bottom edge of what was a vaguely elliptical raised section of the meadow - clearly not a natural feature. Needless to say, I was pretty excited, and spent a while more walking around the entire fort, trying to imagine how many people could have fit inside, how thick the walls could have been, etc. I'm sure the workman on top thought I was completely mad by this point.

I got the same thrill I had experienced when seeing the remains at the Register: here I was, standing on top of a fort which had been used by people thousands of years ago. Of course, there is history of this kind in America, but it's not visible, and even less is known of the history of the Native Americans than of the Bronze Age Britons. The people who lived in this hill fort were also the predecessors of the people I have been studying right next door. Of course this is why I am in Scotland; not only can I study medieval Scottish history, which isn't frequently taught in America, definitely not at Smith, but I can also go and experience these kinds of places, places for which I am devoting four years of my life, and, I expect, many more after that.

I also saw a large flock of crows as I left; I was really hoping they were ravens so I could take them as a sign from Odin. Maybe next time.

A night out

I had my first official seminar today. I was looking forward to it, but also a little bit worried as it is a more advanced course and I didn't really know what to expect. There was a lot of reading, which led me back to the library - it is very large and modern, as I said before, and a little intimidating as a result; fortunately I found my way around enough to print things out, take out books, make copies, and check them in again. There are machines where you can check things in and out on your own, which I thought were very cool. The library cafe is very nice too.

Anyways, my seminar...I did the reading, but I ended up having no idea what was going on. I realize it's a topic I've never even heard about until this week, but obviously I missed some important things, because I could barely follow the conversation, let alone participate. Better luck next time, I guess.

Tonight, I went to the theater, thought, so that made things alright. Because I am now a part of the theater appreciation society, I can get discounted tickets, so my first stop was a little up in the air, but it ended up being fine: Swan Lake on Ice. I had never seen a play on ice before (I didn't even know they did plays on ice) but it was apparently the premier theatrical ice company in the world, and all the skaters were obviously quite talented. The choreography was well-done, and over all I enjoyed it. I love Swan Lake in any context anyways, and that was my main motivation for going - that and curiosity. The music gets to me in an unusual way, more than a lot of other things; I mean, I don't have a heart of stone, and I've only seen the ballet a couple of times, but for reasons I'm not even too sure of myself, the music of Swan Lake is, to me, quite special.