Discover what Santa drives in the desert http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/12/holiday-preparations-t-10-days
Tag: Medieval Studies
Lotus Elise
Sadly, the 2013 Institute For Medieval Studies’ Spring Lecture Series is over. The final lecture was “Holy Terrors: Gargoyles on Medieval Buildings” by Janetta Rebold Benton of Pace University. Ms. Rebold Benton’s lecture was wonderful, with a lot of great photos of gargoyles and grotesques (non-water spouting gargoyles). I had never though about it before, but true gargoyles are water spouts that drain roofs, and the name is derived the same root word that gives us the term “gargle”.
We got home very late from a wonderful reception celebrating the conclusion of this years lecture series, so I only took time to process a photo of a Lotus Elise that was in the parking lot when I left the office, heading to the Lecture series last night.
Myths & Monsters
The two lectures tonight on “The Uses of Norse Mythology” by Rory McTurk, University of Leeds and “”Real’ Monsters: Medieval Belief, Wonder, and the Wonders of the East” were fantastic.
Water was turned into the irrigation ditch 5 weeks ago, and after more than a dozen attempts to irrigate, I finally got every irrigated yesterday. I had gotten up between 2:00 am and 4:00 am every morning since last Saturday, went out with the monsters, and attempted to irrigate 3 times before I got everything watered. I also got a decent shot of the Big Dipper in the pitch blackness in the early morning.
A couple of the photos are somewhat monstrous today, with a monsterously strange car with a v-twin engine in front of the radiator, but I only got a partial shot of it from a quick drive-by I snapped as I crossed Central on my way to class. I also discovered that a host of “light demons” had attacked my camera on one of my shots of the lecture of the Staffordshire Hoard on Tuesday night, after I downloaded the photos from my second camera tonight.
Medieval & Motorcycle
Leslie Webster’s talk on “The Staffordshire Treasure: Art and Power in the Seventh-Century Anglo-Saxon England” was wonderful. The Staffordshire Treasure was buried in a remote spot near the old Roman road o Walting Street near the end of the 7th century. It was discovered in July 2009 by a local with a metal detector. The stash consists of over 10 pounds of gold and 3 pounds of silver military accouterments, such as parts from swords, studs and trim for horses and saddles, buckles, crosses, helmets and so on. It’s the largest and richest assemblage of treasure from the early Anglo-Saxon Period.
Bite Me!
The tulips were chomping on a branch from a trumpet vine yesterday morning. We went to the first lecture of the Institute of Medieval Studies spring lectures series, “Medieval Myths & Monsters” last night. The speaker was Leslie Webster from the British Museum and her topic was “Myth and Mission: The Riddle of the Franks Casket”. It was a wonderful lecture. Tonight there will be two lectures. The first lecture is by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh from Harvard University speaking on “Early Irish Origin Legends”. The second lecture is by Leslie Webster on The Staffordshire Treasure. The lectures begin at 5:15 in Woodward Hall at UNM. Woodward Hall is just west of the Student Union Building, across from the Fine Arts Building. As you can see from the photo below the first lecture was well attended, but there were still lots of open seats.
Off Center & Not Even 