London Zoo

Very pleased with the London Zoo (except for its misleading Tube posters, which sent me to the wrong and more expensive stop!). The Reptile House was all that I could hope for, king cobra, taipan, black mamba, numerous green mambas, numerous spitting cobras, etc. An American western diamondback rattler that did not come out, as well as a sidewinder (whose cage inexplicably contained an empty Budweiser bottle and an old pack of Marlborough cigarettes, as if Americans were such addicts we smoke and drank in the hottest desert!).

New Amy Welborn Blog

Amy Welborn, the Queen of Catholic Blogging and my own inspiration in blogging about a mixture of Important Issues and everyday life in an always interesting way, is in the process of transferring to a new blog. I still check Amy's blog almost every day, and while I sometimes am irritated by her treatment of LGBTQ issues (Amy's dismissive "whatever" comment about the gay couple who write the HBO show Big Love was especially annoying recently), I still love her to pieces. The new title is Charlotte Was Both, an allusion to Charlotte's Web I will leave you to find on your own. Alas, Amy mentions that she chose this title and wanted "no allusive Latin" in the blog title, which made me blush and despair that anyone reads this blog!

Bonus points to any of you familiar with Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, from whence the title of my blog comes. A must-read for any Anglicans, especially those of us who enjoy taking ourselves too seriously!

Manchester

Went to a meeting in Manchester in the north of England yesterday, it was a great treat and gave me a taste for train travel a bit, so I might pop off on further journeys. The August Bank Holiday is coming up, a 4 day weekend that will give me lots of travel opportunities.

British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Harrods

Busy weekend, in sunny temperatures that bordered on hot. Went to all of the above and snapped piles of photos, but alas, have not developed any and may not until I return home. You can judge my photpgraphy skills later!

"Becoming Jane" Film Out Today

The reviews are so-so, but you should go see this dramatisation of Jane Austen's life and then report here how you like it. It came out in the UK in March but apparently is just this weekend out in America.

Church House Book Shop

After considerable effort to meet this place's limited operating hours (basically Monday-Friday 9-5, with a precious extra hour on Thursdays), I finally succeeded in gaining entrance. Not quite what I expected--like any religious goods shop I suppose they must cater to plenty of lowest common denominators with lots of jokey books and plastic jimjaws. Perhaps I had puffed up the official book shop of the Church of England a little too much. My biggest surprise was that there were almost as many Roman Catholic items for sale as Anglican, which cheered me to think the my long education was still of much use in the Anglican theological world! I did buy two very interesting books unavailable stateside--The Life and Work of a Priest by the Bishop of Oxford, and Anglican Spiritual Direction by a canon of St. Paul's. Book reviews sure to follow.

"The Courage to Steady Our Gaze"

From a collect at St. Paul's this morning, "that with the Virgin Mary we may have the courage to steady our gaze at the poverty of the world." I am consistently finding sources for entire sermons in a single line of a single collect at St. Paul's. Reminds me of something we often discuss at school as part of the mission of social work, that part of the job of the social worker is to "sit with the pain" we find (thank you, Professor Robyn Golden!). Our self-protective instincts have to be overcome for ministry and service really to take place.