Rowan's Excellent Adventure - Day 4

I know. Please don't yell at me for missing day 4. I was going from sun up to 11:30 last night and no time to do much of anything in between. I am taking a few moments now to catch up.

Yesterday was the first day of the Round Table and it was very full. Really excellent presentations by everyone. Last night's presentations were lively and emotional, and elicited an equally emotional response from the audience. Some supporting and some angry. The usual academic reserve and politeness slipped a bit. One of the presenters, Leleua Loupe who teaches history at Rancho Santiago Canyon College presented with a doctroal candidate form U of Ca. - Accela Minerva Ojeda. There paper was discussing nativism and racism in the U.S. immigration issue. Dr. Loupe is also a spoken word artist and performed a piece she had specifically created for presentation in Oxford. Very powerful and very personal, and she was very brave to do this in this venue. My hat is off to her.

Part of my time yesterday was occupied with a walking tour of the colleges that make up Oxford University. We had an excellent guide who provided a lot of history along the way. I will share some of the pictures here.

First, and not on the tour but a building I had listed as an unidentified church earlier, is St. Anthony's College.

Here is the Oxford Union where most of the Round Table presentations and discussions are being held.

Inside the Union

Common across from Oxford Union.

From the walking tour....
The entrance to one of the colleges (there are 39 but we did not tour all of them). I believe this one is St. John's.

The first quadrangle at St. Johns - this one on the "accommodations" side. There are no dorms. Each apartment is on a "stair." which accesses in this case 4 accommodations. There are no connecting hallways which adds privacy and cuts down on noise.

A very old door.

The second quad (many colleges have only one). Note the numerous gargoyles, but a better picture of them later.

This is a close up. One of the very interesting things is that every gargoyle is uniques. Even when they are of the same creature or person they are in different poses and expressions. There are well over a hundred of them around the quads at St. John's.

This is one of the garden's at St. John's.

St. John's is one of the richest (historically and currently of the colleges). I guess that is not too surprising as St. John (the Baptist) is the patron saint of merchants. Go figure they would have money to burn. The family who started the college ended up owning most of north Oxford, and apparently the college still does.

Different college and another exceptional entryway.

Downtown Oxford - a ped only area. Note there is little "new" construction here.

Now 3 Protestants were burned in Oxford in 1555 and 1556 (when the Catholics held sway)

And the spot of the burning has been preserved.

About 4 blocks away, a memorial to them has been raised (I believe sometime in the 1800s)

Most of these I can't tease out what College they are, but the architecture is amazing.

This is a library - with underground tunnels to surrounding colleges. The funds were donated by a doctor to the Royal Family.

And above the door of the Sheldonian Theatre...

Music anyone?

Enjoy!

Posted by rowan at July 17, 2007 7:42 AM | [eMail this article!] |