Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

pilgrim path to Santiago de Compostela

Originally uploaded by Nós da Montanha

Like the medieval scholar on pilgrimage (”And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche”), Frank is spending time with a whole new group of scientists. And Chaucer would have loved our current location in one of Spain’s loveliest cities, Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela.

A long pilgrim path winds all the way from France to the plaza in front of its glorious Baroque cathedral, next to a hotel established by Ferdinand and Isabella as a refuge for needy pilgrims in 1492.

Our kind hosts are putting us up in that very hotel, where we have spent some time wandering semi-lost among various fountained courtyards and huge granite corridors. After a lonnngg day of travel yesterday (it began with a 3:45 a.m. wake-up call in Dublin), we especially enjoyed the silence and darkness made possible by granite walls and huge wooden shutters that let us sleep until almost 9 a.m. today.

Many thanks to you, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!

Just home from Storrs, CT, the safest place in the US, according to Slate.
It’s a tiny college town ringed by stone-walled meadows. At this season, apple trees hang down heavy and fall colors are starting to paint some leaves.

The University of Connecticut has morphed from ag school into a powerhouse of science and basketball. The Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture Series honors their first physics Ph.D., Henry Katzenstein.

I recommend Storrs not only for beauty and safety but also for warm hospitality, a pretty B&B called Still Waters (no website, alas, but it does have good wifi), and legendary ice cream at the Dairy Bar.

We raced home this morning right after breakfast, however, because Hurricane Ophelia was threatening Storrs with flash flooding. Eek!

Now it turns out that Ophelia skipped Storrs, and all the rest of New England.

We should have listened to Slate, not the weatherman!

The waitress with a British-y’all hybrid accent who just got back after 10 years in Memphis. The elegant housekeeper who has “managed” historic houses around the world. The taxi driver with 4 ads for his new book decorating the back of his high-topped London cab.

“It’s a book of racing stories, each one with a twist,” Roy Granville told us. “No sex, no violence. No four-letter words–well, no four-letter words for swearing.” Of course our friend Naomi now owns a copy of Baxter and the Bookies (its BBC review)–it is delightful.

When I first came to London, a friend told me his theory that many apparent “Londoners” had in fact been hired from Central Casting to play the parts of typically English eccentrics. I wouldn’t discount that, based on my experience.

Some of us were playing a silly game over dinner last night with the portraits of Trinity College notables (including Newton and Macaulay) who watch over the dining room of the Master’s Lodge:

If they were CEOs of modern companies, which modern company would you select for each portrait? A long-haired Isaac Barrow won ”Microsoft” (he looks surprisingly like a young Bill Gates), while a nearby notable (who shall remain nameless here) suggested “Enron.”

For “Google” both Frank and I picked a serene, mild Elizabethan who turned out to be Lord Coke. If he is in fact Sir Edward Coke he was famous for his savagery as a prosecutor, his extension of the Magna Carta principles, and the catch-phrase “a man’s home is his castle.”

People are more complicated than they appear.

I love this photo of Frank at work in the Masters Lodge of Trinity College, undistracted by

• finding out that our bed was slept in by Queen Victoria, whereas for my part, I think sharing a bed with Queen Victoria’s memory will make it seem even smaller tonight than last night
• two days and counting of losing all his luggage
• being mostly dressed in a purple Tshirt and other stuff we bought at Heathrow

This inspired me to seek out some earlier photos of Frank working happily under earlier trying circumstances, now here and here.

Gorgeous movies from space in my mailbox this morning, thanks to Marc Abrahams.

Frank and I are headed out today–but not that far out–he to Bonn, I to London, and then we’ll meet up again in the other Cambridge.

As usual, the need to finish packing inspires a wish to spend time instead on my blog.

If Mercury Messenger shared this weakness of character, can you just imagine its wonderful blog?

A lot of bottles…

Have you read Stu Savory’s intergalactic cometary warning?

It’s 3:25 a.m. in Stockholm, our flight leaves at 6:50 a.m. Blogging own my inner thoughts would come out close to “Mmmzzzzz,” so farewell.

The Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau houses its laureates in nineteenth century summer splendor–lawns, wooded allees, lots of roses, afternoons on the terrace looking out over Lake Constance while women in long skirts bring chilled white wine or Eischocolade.

And meanwhile , at the Hotel Bad-Schachen, in our gauze-curtained room, or on the stone terrace, or under the sycamore tree on its green bench , there were between two and four bars of wifi Internet.

If you plan to visit Lake Constance–it’s in the leisurely fruit-growing “Grüss Gott” part of Germany, tucked up against Austria and Switzerland–and if you are not too wedded to air conditioning, I recommend the lovely Hotel Bad-Schachen, formerly the White Swan Hotel.

This blogpost, formerly 2333 in my old blog, needed a rescue because of bad XML. It was originally posted 7/2/05; 2:51:57 AM. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, which helped me re-find it!

. . . that high temperatures do not destroy the magical mix of young scientists with older ones. More and larger photos can be found here.

Now I’m off to sleep, because tomorrow means new adventures.