Preston--Church History Tour

When we got to Preston we met up with our guide, Peter, and immediately started in on our church history tour. We congregated in “market square,” next to a large obelisk.

This square would have been the life blood of Preston back in 1838 when Heber C. Kimball, Joseph Fielding, and Willard Richards would have arrived. Preston was Gordon B. Hinckley’s first mission area as well, and market square is where he preached for the first time, and was absolutely terrified to do it. As I stood in that place I was in awe. It wasn’t particularly beautiful, we were actually in the middle of a street fair type of thing and there were lots of people around, it was noisy, dirty, and just a normal town. What struck me was the significance of this place to the restoration of the gospel. My ancestors all come from England and Wales, so in that way I am directly affected by the missionary work that originated there. In the days leading up to this trip I have been praying that I could feel the spirit in these places and really appreciate what I would be seeing. I feel blessed to have felt the spirit of that place.

Anyways, it started to rain so we all went into this museum where they had an exhibit that showed what Preston was like back in the 1800s. Honestly, it was super nasty and I am so glad that most places aren’t like that anymore. Up to the 1900s Preston was a major place for the cotton industry. The damp climate and the easy accessibility to the canals made it an ideal location for production and export of cotton. Unfortunately all of the mills created horrible living conditions for the poor people. The medieval layout of the town was altered once the Industrial Revolution came around and the planning was just really bad. All of the houses were crowded together, the sanitation was awful, and those factors combined with the working conditions in the mills resulted in a high mortality rate. In 1837, 50% of children under the age of 5 would die, and the average age of death was 18 years old. The gap between rich and poor was huge and there was a lot of strife and striking in Preston. It just wasn’t a very happy place to be.

Still, the missionaries had great success there and I think it is obvious that much of that success is due to the bad living conditions and difficult lives led by the working class. Those people were ready for the gospel; they really needed that light and hope in their lives. I can only imagine the joy they must have felt when they learned of the Plan of Salvation, eternal families, and the comfort that the Holy Ghost brings—especially in light of the path their lives were probably on.

The adversary was aware of what was taking place, and on Wilfred Street we saw the spot where Heber C. Kimball was stricken by evil spirits and witnessed the “battle between good and evil for the souls in the British Isles.” I didn’t really like being there. To this day that house is still referred to as being haunted, and some people call it the “House of Devil.” This whole thing just proves what a big thing was about to happen. I imagine that Satan wasn’t about to go down without a fight, and the missionaries definitely had their fair share of adversity, but truth always prevails!

We continued walking through the town and Peter pointed out a lot of interesting little features and spots of historical significance, and told us lots of stories about people involved in the early days of the church in Preston. One of my favorite things was seeing the Ribble River where 9,000 people gathered to see the first 10 baptisms.

My feelings of this day are summed up in this entry I made in my journal the night after seeing Preston. “It is so incredible to be in the places that are so significant to the church. I keep thinking, ‘Wow, Heber C. Kimball actually stood in this spot and saw that building!’ Learning all of this history has really helped me to gain a deeper appreciation for the early saints and the missionaries. The trials and tribulations they endured were so beyond anything I can imagine—but at the same time, so are the spiritual blessing and experiences they received.” We ended the day at the temple in Chorley, which I thought was highly appropriate. The temple grounds were beautiful and peaceful, it is truly the House of the Lord!

Haworth and the Bronte parsonage

The first stop on our trip was Haworth. This is where the Bronte sisters grew up and wrote their novels and where Patrick Bronte, their father, had his parsonage. The family moved here in 1820.

There were four Bronte children, three girls--Emily, Charlotte, and Ann, and one boy--Branwell. There were two other girls but they died at a young age.

Their mother, Maria, died just a year after they moved and since the children were still very young her sister moved in to care for the family. The kids were very close and the sisters were incredibly loyal and loving to their brother. All four of the kids were artistically talented, especially Branwell and Charlotte. Growing up, they would write stories for each other, a habit that prepared the girls for the novels they wrote as "young ladies." The girls are all published novelists-- Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Ann wrote Agnes Grey.

A lot of aspects of their childhood come through in their books, and the isolation that they must have felt growing up in such a remote location seems to be a theme in both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. (I haven't read Agnes Grey yet but I'm pretty sure it's about a lonely governess...much like Jane Eyre). The girls worked as governesses once they got older, and Charlotte also worked as a school teacher at the little school next to their house.

Branwell had a lot of pressure to follow in his fathers footsteps and was encouraged to be a professional artist. It is said that he found his father a hard act to follow and unfortunately he never really made it. After a string of about 12 failed careers (and love affairs) he turned to drinking and drugs and died in 1848 at the age of 31.

Emily also died in 1848, at the age of 30, from tuberculosis. Anne followed in 1849 at the age of 29.

Charlotte outlived all of her siblings, although she died in childbirth only 5 years later. She married Arthur Nicholls, her father's curate, and her dad was not very happy about it. They had a loving, happy marriage and Arthur and Patrick must have warmed up to each other because Arthur stayed in Haworth to care for his aging father-in-law. Patrick outlived all of his children, dying in 1861, after which Arthur moved back to Ireland.

Tower of London

I guess I'm pretty lucky because this year I got to spend my birthday at the Tower of London! I thought it was so cool, especially since I was only expecting one tower- not an entire castle. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised to see that I wouldn't be wandering around in the same tower all day long.

The first thing we did when we got there was run over to see the Crown Jewels before the place filled up with tourists. Our group was the only one in there so we got to take our time and drool over the jewels as long as we liked. It was amazing! I couldn't take pictures inside but here are some that I downloaded. My favorite thing was seeing the giant diamond in the sceptre thing. It is 530 carats...and so pretty and sparkly. I wish I had taken better notes...but that's really all I remember about it.

All of the tours at the Tower of London are given by Yeoman warders, also known as "beefeaters." These warders used to be in charge of guarding the Crown Jewels and keeping an eye on the prisoners but now they are more of a tourist attraction than anything else, although they take their responsibilities very seriously. Our guide was really funny, he put on a good show.

This is a picture (courtesy of Elliot), of the infamous Ravens. The Ravens have been there since King Charles II and according to legend, once the Ravens are gone the tower and the monarchy will crumble. I think there are about six of them there right now. They all have names, their wings are clipped so they can't fly away, and there is a Yeoman designated as "Ravenmaster" whose sole responsibility is to care for them and feed them raw meat. Sounds like a pretty cushy life if you ask me (for the bird and the Ravenmaster).

The Tower of London as a whole is a fortress, but back in 1028 when William the Conqueror came he built the White Tower which is the main tower that people refer to today.

Not only did the Tower of London serve as a royal palace and a fortress, it was also a prison. Many famous historical prisoners were held captive here, including Guy Fawkes, Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I (before she was the queen), and Sir Thomas More. The prisoners where held in the "Bloody Tower" and when you go in there you can actually see where they carved stuff into the wall. Most of it is in Latin so I couldn't really read it, but it was amazing to see. I don't know what kind of tools they had but I imagine this took a very long time.

Before we entered the complex our guide showed us Tower Hill which is where public executions took place. He said that everyone in town would attend the beheadings, bringing children, picnic lunches, and making a whole day out of it. However, only the lower class criminals would have been beheaded in public. Characters like Anne Boleyn, for example, got to be beheaded on "Tower Green," a private little lawn inside the complex. This is the spot where Anne Boleyn was beheaded. I thought it was interesting that rather than having her head chopped off by an ax, which is the usual practice, she got to be beheaded by a Frenchman with a fancy schmancy sword. I guess that's what you get for being royalty.

This is a section of the original Roman wall. As you can see most of the wall didn't make it, but I was fascinated by thinking of how much history this little piece of wall has been witness to.

This is the White Tower. While we were here they had a huge display of King Henry the VIII's armor. It was pretty cool to see, and interesting to note how his suits of armor got bigger and bigger. Near the end of his life he got so big that they could hardly squeeze him into armor at all...I can't imagine anything more uncomfortable. The royal family lived in the top floors of this tower and sometimes prisoners were kept in the basement.

The fortress was surrounded by two concentric walls and a moat. Being located right on the Thames River, this was a main entrance for awhile. It is called Traitor's Gate because it became a convenient place to bring the prisoners in from Westminster.

It was an amazing day in an amazing place!

Open Air Painting

A very simplistic definition of “open air painting” is a painting that is done outdoors of are of landscapes and natural scenes. According to the “Corot to Monet” exhibit, open air painting was largely impressionistic. They were recreating their sense of the world with new techniques and mediums. There is a lot more blending of color, watercolors, and one technique that I noticed was the use of a lot of little brush strokes like in Corot’s “Evening on the Lake.”

Open air painting and communities of painters at the Barbizon School, for example, contributed to the Impressionism further developed by Monet. They painted rural scenes and landscapes and their work led to artists like Monet depicting real life scenes.

Bathers at La Grenouillere, The Beach at Trouville, The Gare St-Lazare; all of these are works by Monet that evolved from the earlier works of open air painting. As European landscape painting developed further it focused on natural elements like weather, the movement of light, movement of water, clouds, and, as previously stated, depictions of real life particularly in rural settings. Something I noticed about the paintings in this exhibit is that they aren’t just of pretty, peaceful, pastoral scenes. Those artists got out there and painted what they saw, what they felt, and tried to capture the raw emotions of nature. Being out in the open air, directly communicating with the environment brought landscape painting to a whole new dimension and this is what evolved into Impressionism.

DOVER!!

DOVER BEACH

By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;

on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray


Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,


Listen! you hear the grating roar


Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 


At their return, up the high strand, 


Begin, and cease, and then again begin,


With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 


The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago 
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought


Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 


Of human misery; we


Find also in the sound a thought, 


Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith 


Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore


Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 


But now I only hear


Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 


Retreating, to the breath 


Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear


And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true 


To one another! for the world, which seems 


To lie before us like a land of dreams, 


So various, so beautiful, so new, 


Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 


Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 


And we are here as on a darkling plain 


Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 


Where ignorant armies clash by night.

1867

Our trip to Dover was pretty memorable, I had such an awesome time! In the bus on the way there Dr. Paxman taught as a little bit about castles, all stuff that I probably should have already known but I must have forgotten. Anyway it was all super interesting and I was excited to apply my new found knowledge to Dover Castle!

Here are a few things I learned:

1. Castles served 3 different purposes, defense against foreign attack, defense against domestic attack (for when the townspeople hate the King), and as a status symbol for the King to show off how much power and wealth he has, as well as how much control he has over his people since they are the ones who help pay for it and build it.

2. Nobody can really say when a castle was built because the initial design was always built upon for 100s of years after, depending on what renovations or additions were necessary. Because of it’s placement on the coast and it’s close proximity to the coast of France (26 miles away), Dover Castle was under continuos military construction. It was even used during WWII as a headquarters communication point. It was during that time that they added a hospital and dug secret military tunnels all around it.

3. Castles are typically built concentrically with 2 outer walls so that attackers have a harder time breaking through and getting in to the “keep” which is the main, residential area of the castle. The 2 outer walls have angled holes in them (skinny little arrow holes that you can shoot out of but that are nearly impossible for someone to shoot through from the other side), murder holes to drop stones and hot tar through onto the people below, battlements, flanking towers, matriculations...the list goes on.

4. William the Conqueror introduced a period of great castle building in which 500 castles were built in one generation. Keep in mind, however, that a lot of those castles were built only for defense and it wasn’t until later that they were built up and refined into private residences.

British Museum: Take 2

So I got to go back to the

British Museum on Tuesday with Elliot and Alex and we just focused on a couple of exhibits, the Anglo-Saxon exhibit and the special display of Clocks and Watches.

The Clocks and Watches display was especially interesting to me and I think that a lot of that has come from my Dad. He is always looking online at these ridiculously expensive watches and clocks online, and he goes on and on about intricate they are and how impressive a well made clock is. I usually just roll my eyes but now I have a renewed enthusiasm for clocks and watches. I never realized how cool they are!

The boat in the picture to the left is a machine that was used to announce the banquets in court. The ship has a little organ inside and the little guys move in a procession and there's drumming...and then it moves! All the way across the table! And here's the coolest part, once it travels across the table there was a grand finale and all the cannons actually fired. So awesome right? Yeah. I know.

This next picture on the left is of the first alarm clock! It was in a display with different alarm clocks through the ages, it went from this little bell one to a standard digital alarm clock from 2008. It was pretty awesome, I wish I could have seen it in action. The clock on the right has little organ pipes on the top of it and on the hour I guess it would play a little song on the organ. How's that for an alarm? I can't even imagine all the little intricacies that would have had to go into that...so Dad, I now have a greater respect for clocks and watches. You should be proud :)

Impressions and Insights from "Walking Through The City"

So last Friday I went on my first walking tour! I felt super tourist-y walking around with my little book but it was so fun and I really learned a lot.

One of the most surprising things I learned was that London was actually founded by the Romans. I never really thought about who founded it originally because the city is so old...but I definitely had no idea it was part of the Roman Empire. They were here from 43 AD to 410 AD, and they named the city "Londinium" which eventually evolved to London (duh). They also bridged the Thames River and introduced Christianity to England which is pretty significant stuff. Who knew! Of course the Roman Empire fell back into the hands of the "heathen" Anglo-Saxons in the late 400's, but those Romans got there first!

The tour took us around "The City" which is the oldest part of London and the site of the old "Londinium." Supposedly there are still remnants of a wall around it that date way back to the Roman times but we didn't get to see those. Anyways I just though that was so cool.

One of the first things we saw was St. Mary Le Bow church. This was one of the first churches designed by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1066. Something I found really interesting was the legend of the "Bow Bells." In medieval times there was a rooster on the top of the church and the tradition goes that anyone born within the sound of the bells is "Cockney," meaning that they will be as brazen and loud as a rooster. Over time this evolved into a whole Cockney culture, they even have there own type of code language called Cockney Rhyming Slang...it's pretty fascinating. The other cool thing about this part of town is that it was a central location for medieval jousts, there are ancient Roman baths just across the street, and all the streets in the area actually used to be little stream

s that led into the Thames River. We also ate lunch in the crypt underneath the church which was cool, even though the food was totally gross.

St. Mary le Bow Church (and the ugliest cherubs ever)

Let's see...we saw the Temple ruins of Mithras and even though that wasn't very impressive to look at, it represents such ancient history and suggests that there was a mysterious Persian religion that rivaled Christianity in the Roman empire. I thought that was the coolest story.

Now "The City" is London's main financial district. We saw the Royal Exchange...which is a cool building but I really don't know anything about it...there is a grasshopper on top of it, bet you didn't know that!

We saw the Thames river (prounced Tems, not Thaymes) and had a really good view of a bridge which I originally thought was the London Bridge but I guess it's actually called the Tower Bridge. There were a lot of big barges and freighter ships on the river, so they use it a lot but the water is totally gross. I heard that supposedly there used to be a stream that fed into the river a really long time ago and people would totally just use that stream as a toilet! There was a board laid across it with holes and everything so that people could just do their business into this stream that fed right into the Thames, which was their main source of drinking water, wash water, etc. How sick is that?!? Sorry that's kind of a random, nasty story but it gives you a better idea of how gross this river probably is...but it's still very picturesque! It also makes me really glad that I live in this time era where we have health laws and sanitation regulations in place.

Some other highlights were the Lloyd Building and the Swiss Insurance Building (aka "the great gherkin") -- both amazing examples of modern architecture. I love how the ancient arcitecture and the modern architecture stand side by side and really highlight each other. This is an incredible city.

National Gallery Assignment

Vision of the Blessed Clare of Ramini--National Gallery

St. John the Baptist Preaching-- National Gallery

The “Vision of Blessed Clare Ramini” is a medieval painting that depicts the character Clare Ramini in the presence of Jesus Christ, where she is probaby being forgiven of her sins. It is slightly gory, in typical medieval fashion, and depicts the wounds in Christ’s wrists, side, hands, and feet very graphically- blood and all. Raphael’s painting is similar in that it’s subject matter is entirely religious. His painting, “St. John Preaching,” is much gentler in it’s approach to repentance and forgiveness. John the Baptist is preaching to a crowd of people and everyone looks pretty mellow, as opposed to “Vision of Blessed Clare Ramini” where she looks distraught and Christ’s expression is far from gentle.

I felt like the subject matter of these two paintings had a lot in common with each other, as well as with the rest Renaissance and Medieval art in general. Art in this time period is almost entirely religious in its nature, and centered around a key religious character. That character, as well as the rest of the characters in the painting usually has a certain face or expression that is repeated over and over again. In “Vision of Blessed Clare Ramini” Christ and his apostles all have pretty much the same face, and in “St. John Preaching” all of the faces are significantly different from Medieval art, but very similar to each other. It seems to me that expressions didn’t break out of a “mold” until later when artists broke away from strictly painting religious scenes and began to paint portraits of people they knew or had seen, using models.

Despite these similarities, I observed a lot of differences in the asesthetic elements of the two paintings. Medieval painting seems to be more symbolic than realistic. The most important characters or elements are oversized and very obvious, like the artist was afraid the audience wouldn’t notice them unless they were exaggerated. For example, in the medieval painting of Clare Ramini Christ is almost twice her size. Behind him are all of his apostles, who are slightly smaller, and then Clare is the smallest. There are also metallic accents in the painting to help bring emphasis to certain elements- most often the halos. Renaissance art is more realistic and proportioned, as can be seen in “St. John Preaching.” The people are all the same size and they stand in proportion to their surroundings. Consequently, the Renaissance painting requires deeper observation and thought in a way because the key elements of the picture aren’t highlighted in the same way as Medieval painting is. As well as being exaggerated, Medieval painting is also less realistic in it’s depictions of people. The style is very flat and only has one dimension. Raphael uses blends of light and shadow, as well as other artistic techniques to make his paintings come to life. He also uses bolder, brighter colors whereas medieval paintings have a duller look to them.