Chiara and I stopped off in Cambridge on our East Anglian trip, and took the time to dally where I spent most time there as an undergraduate, not in my own college (Jesus college) – I first wrote ‘(Jesus)’ before I realized this read like an abusive aside about my college, where I was proud to be able to say I played football for Jesus, as I did, but spent most of my leisure time in Kings where the majority of my pals were quartered. And Kings sports the amazing college chapel with its sublime fan vaulting, glimpsed in the photo above. Plus the ‘backs,’ the backs of the colleges that verge on the Cam river, where undergrads and visitors punt their way up and downriver, poling narrow flat-bottomed craft along, and where I used to stand in midstream cooling off, arms folded, naked to the waist, hoping I looked like a youthful river god. Here on the bank I often sat with the soon-to-be eminent Clive James, my contemporary, a fine poet always generous to me; he would challenge me to improvise sonnets antiphonally, a line each, with him. I couldn’t keep up. He forgave me, and praised my later writings when few others did. Blessings on you, dear loyal friend. Here my friends Brian, Bernard, Simon, and the late Mark Lushington had rooms, where the sublime E.M.Forster could be seen in old age, making his slow way around the quad; and where I met with Professor Jaffé to ask if I might switch to Art History; who told me I would have to spend two years with the Baroque, and shouldn’t be choosy. I was and still am choosy about the Baroque. I stuck with Eng.Lit.

We left East Anglia behind, with its solitary churchiness (“silly Suffolk” derived from “selig,” holy), once all sheep and marshes, now simply fields and folk; and a Protestant God installed on top of the old Catholics and the Old Religion before them; a Protestant God – God’s face only, if you meet him. No intercessionary figures, such as throng the West where we were headed… the West with its trilithons and its magic precincts still sacred to the old gods. To Stonehenge and to Glastonbury we went; Glastonbury of innumerable myths, of Arthurian legend, Glastonbury a pinnacle among what were once the Somerset Levels, marshes navigated by knowing the curving walkways built just beneath the water (strangers will fall in and drown), leading to marshland villages on stilts; Glastonbury one pinnacle, and not far away the other pinnacle of Cadbury Castle, where Camelot once stood. Glastonbury with older magic than this, supposed recipient of the Grail when Joseph of Arimethea brought it: brought Jesus himself a quarter century before, when Jesus was a boy, Jesus whose feet Blake sang, on England’s pastures green. Glastonbury Tor of the septenary ring: you can still see it, barely, the furrows that took pilgrims spiralling around and up, seven rings; long ago I took one of my baby girls, strapped to my chest, around and around, widdershins, anti-clockwise (the holy way) up to the top. Now, I thought, such heroics were beyond my aging bones. No, Chiara exclaimed, we’re going to climb the Tor. We did; we got lost when I sent Chiara ahead (I was too slow) and on the far side of the Tor she got lost in a wood! But emerged. And I climbed – picture it in the ‘The Climb,’ my photo above – on my hands and knees. Literally! On hands and knees, aboriginal pilgrim. And made it to the top! Where Chiara posed in the door of the church. What a day! What a deed!

Thanks to Windows 10, that classic Microsoft catastrophe, this comes to you after a long radio silence. As is now increasingly well known, Windows designers, despairing of figuring out the separate glitches that occur when an upgrade interfaces with each individual make of computer, decided to launch an untested upgrade (again! And you thought Windows 8 was bad!) and make consumers the testers. Worldwide howls have ensued – but what does Microsoft care? They have a de facto monopoly, for all those who can’t afford Apple products. In my case, my previously steady new Asus laptop (tho’ burdened in Windows 8 by the dreadful, inescapable and uniformly derided ‘Media Center’ designed for the tablet – and intended to unify the tablet and the laptop – an gross and infantile tablet-style spread intruding on every move) was so completely destabilized by the Windows 10 upgrade that even after the cursor was revived and the banner advertisements blanketing every site were removed, my various apps uniformly failed. The effects are still resonating even after several cleanings by cynical Best Buy techies who admit that they themselves wouldn’t install Windows 10 on their own computers on pain of death, and many of whom avoid the whole ordeal by building their own computers. Now that I can finally upload photos to this blog, welcome to… the last 10 weeks!

My fellow Americans! – I’ve just passed my citizenship civics test and am a dual citizen of the US and UK, pending my final hurdle, namely standing up in good clothes – the invitation says no jeans, no T-shirt! – and singing the song (yes, the one known to shameless but fond Feliciano fans as “José, can you see…”), and pledging the pledge – so….my fellow-Americans, and Britons: apologies to any loyal readers of this blog (of any nationality), if such there be. Apologies for the long silence, I mean; and also for the shameful Feliciano joke which found voice the day the great José sang the national anthem at Tiger Stadium, 42 years after his first, astonishing rendition there during the ’68 World Series, during which he shocked everyone and offended many by becoming the first big-occasion National Anthem singer to really mess with the melody.

And now: the last 10 weeks! Mostly in the UK and Ireland, where Claire showed 40 of her paintings in her home town, to huge success. While Claire prepared her exhibition, of which a full account with photos shortly (I have to report piecemeal in a series of posts, otherwise the words trickle down one side of the page one word at a time), Chiara and I revisited Stonehenge, and went to Ely Cathedral, one of the great world’s great architectural and pilgrimage sites, founded in 672, whose peculiar magic culminates in the Lantern, high above the crossing of nave and transept. The original tower collapsed in February 1322, to the chagrin of Alan of Walsingham, who only two months earlier had been elected sacristan and given charge of the fabric of the cathedral. He more than redeemed himself by designing (some have questioned his role, but others give him credit as an architect) an astonishing feature in the new tower, supported by oaks so huge that it is said they could not be replaced because there are none today big enough for the job. This feature is the Lantern, an octagon of painted panels 120 feet above the cathedral floor; on each panel a winged musician-angel plays and/or sings; the panels open, to reveal living choristers who sing, like very angels, from the highest point in the church. We climbed to the Lantern, I defying my knees and, with the help of Chiara’s guiding hand, my vertigo, and in my photo you can glimpse Chiara in one of the panels, peeping out – my angel.

Finishing up summer teaching –

Then into some frantic attempts to rent the house for the duration of our August trip to Ireland and the UK, while packing up our possessions and moving them into the studio/cottage, now vacated by Dan after more than a year.

Yard sales galore – beginning with the one at the Woodstock Elementary School, much less well attended than usual, alas.

A treat at the Kleinert-James gallery: a showing of ‘La Comare Secca,’ – the Grim Reaper – script by Pasolini, directed by Bertolucci (his best, reckoned his wife, and I agree), starring our friend Allen Midgette, glimpsed here in close-up, beyond the popcorn machine lent by Lenny B., along with his wine. He forced 4 glasses on me during the film, and I tottered down the hill to the pizza parlor to watch the Women’s World Cup Final. Arrived 17 minutes late, US had already scored 4 goals. 17 minutes gone and the game was over.

My summer Shakespeare class, 2015. Past students will recognize this curious room as my office, which I shared with Allen Ginsberg, and which serves (as it served then, for both of us) as my classroom. It looks more comfortable than it is – at any rate the sofa is a wreck and certainly less comfortable than it looks – but at least it doesn’t, thank God, look like a classroom. Here you can see, left to right, Jennifer, Njeri, Austin, Yolanda, Fatema, Jamie, Nasrin, Eric, Elliot, and Sarah-Anne. On the sofa, Jonathan and Mark, and Cindy at the table. A good representative sample (picture up to 34 in this room, at times) of my wonderfully diverse students, by age and ethnicity. A fine class, too. And in the center, the Shakespeare volume I worked from – a gift from my beloved daughter, Chiara.

Some Dr. Cicero books – my pride & joy to have contributed to their presence in the world!