the history of St. Lawrence Church

St. Lawrence's Church in Lechlade was completed by 1476, but excavations reveal an earlier foundation and burials dating back to Saxon times. There is mention of the parish of Lechlade in the Domesday Book of 1086. The first mention of the dedication church to St. Lawrence was noted in 1255. The church was one of the few in England with the privelege of sanctuary.

More.

still waiting, after all these years

Thirty two years and counting - that is the length of time since the launch of Vayager II and with it earth's message in a bottle to the extraterrestrial aliens that if you are out there, say something. This was Carl Sagan's idea. he thought that while we are at it, sending space junk out beyond the solar system, we ought to see if someone is out there listening. More on the message.

We are still waiting.

When you think about it, the lack of response from the aliens out there is quite staggering. The earth after all, is over 4 billion years old and the universe itself, is 14 plus billion years old. Enough, already. Forget time travel, parallel universes, and worm holes. If someone, intelligent enough as we are, has been working on this problem of contacting intelligent life out there, and has failed for 10 billion years more or less, then the likelihood of finding intelligent life anywhere is slim.

Still, we keep trying.

I am reminded of Sisyphus, who was doomed to roll a heavy rock up a hill for eternity, only to have it roll back during the night so that he could start all over again. It is an existential nightmare, but it is our nightmare, and so we embrace it.

The Night the Lancaster Bomber Crashed

In World War II, Graffigny-Chemin saw little action due to its relative isolation. However, on the night of July 22, 1944 an English Royal Air Force Lancaster Bomber crashed into the hills behind the village. Thirteen airmen died immediately, two were seriously wounded, and one, Canadian Paul Bell, was slightly wounded. Local villagers managed to secret Airman Bell to the French underground, and he was spirited out of France through Switzerland and then to England. However, because of the severity of the injuries of the other airmen, they were released to the German authorities, but then never heard from again.

Villagers had removed from the crashed plane its radio transmitter, weapons, ammunition, and explosives. When the German authorities learned of this, they took hostages from the village and threatened to burn it. Living in the village was the French widow of a German Colonel, who had died in 1913. She interceded with the authorities and obtained the release of the hostages and cancellation of the order to burn the village.



The Airmen who died in the plane crash are buried in the village cemetery of Graffigny-Chemin.

the bridge to nowhere

Ever since I can remember, I have thought about escaping from my mundane life into a world of excitement and adventure.

It is the wish, I imagine, of most small town boys boys and girls to want to strike out and find something new and different. Main Street, Winesburg Ohio, Our Town, books that I read in high school, revealed to me that this need was epidemic. The longing to leave is epidemic.


This last Saturday,
I dropped my son Will off in Emporia where he was trying out for an Olympic High School Development is expressed in many ways.Program. With the whole day to kill while I waited for Will, I brought my kayak along, hoping to find a river or stream to navigate.

Hartford, Kansas is north of Emporia and just off I35 on the way to Kansas City. The town survives on farming, and by survives I mean that like so many other small Kansas towns, it is hanging in there. Opportunities for high school students are limited. If you don't farm, you pretty much don't do anything.

At the north end of the town is a bridge. It looks like the "bridge to nowhere". It leads into the Flint Hills Park, but that is one way trip down gravel roads that end at the John Redmond Reservoir. If you really want to leave Hartford, you need to go back the other way, hop on I35 and head north to Kansas City.

The bridge is now the haunt of high school kids who wanting to express themselves, paint the bridge and not the town. From its railings these kids can look out and wonder where the river of life will lead them. Right now the bridge serves as a way to express loves, memories, feelings, and hopes. In a greater sense it expresses hope that out there somewhere there is more.

Julie & Julia

This might keep me going for awhile - this being the Julie & Julia movie about a failed writer who finds her calling and purpose in life by blogging all the recipes of Julia Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Julie is Julie Powell whose blog the Julie/Julia Project, a race to complete 524 recipes in 365 days, becomes a blog sensation, followed by a book and a movie. (Watch the trailer.) Julia of course is Julia Child, cook, author, and TV sensation.

If your looking for the original blog, there is little that is left other than a tribute posted on Julia's death in 2004. And, yes Julie has created a new blog to record her experiences as she deals with fame and fortune, but apparently lighting does not strike twice with Julie; her blog has none of the appeal of the original.

A no-holds-barred movie review.

Having just come back from Paris this summer, I loved the scenes in the movie. Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore, is still there on the Left Bank. Yes, it is the bookstore that Hemingway frequented when he had no cash and was struggling as a writer. The subway scene was also real, the only change was finding a metro train that was vintage. Sadly, the French open-air markets where one went to buy fresh produce are gone. But, one can still find patisseries, boulangeries, and the other small specialty shops where Parisians love to shop.



Read the N.Y. Times story as Julie goes into the homestretch on her blog.

Up the river

Read about the poet Shelley's trip up the river Thames with his wife Mary Shelley.




"The weeds above Lechlade became so thick that ...tugging and pulling [they] could not move the boat an inch..." They returned to Lechlade and stayed at the inn.

In Lechlade Shelley's thoughts turned to writing and the self-reflection that writing creates:

"A mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, and in dim perspective - their shadowy hopes and fears, all that they dare not, or daring and desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes of day."

The writer's passage from sensation to reflection is sometimes so difficult and dizzying that one "dares not look behind".

A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire

A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire by Shelley

"THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray,
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:


Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

...

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night.
Here could I hope, like some enquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep."