“THE TRIALS OF SPRING is a major cross media event that tells the stories of nine women on the front lines of change in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. It includes a feature-length documentary, six short films, and articles by award-winning journalists about women and their unwavering quest for social justice and freedom.”
More at Trials of Spring
“…police in Egypt are definitely using phone apps to entrap people they suspect of being gay or transgender.”
This blog post lists precautions LGBT people in Egypt can take to try to protect themselves, but the situation appears to be very grim.
More at A Paper Bird
“A new study determined that early humans migrated out of Africa through Egypt, a finding bolstered by the discovery an almost complete skull in the Manot Cave of Israel’s Western Galilee dating back 55,000 years. It provides direct anatomical evidence that fills the historic time gap of modern human migration into Europe.”
See more at CBS News
Written June 21, 2008, on train from Manchester, England, to Holyhead, Wales, for ferry to Dublin, Ireland
After a good veg breakfast the next morning, I took two buses to Salisbury, then continued on to Oxford. I walked from the train station to the Ashmolean Museum, where I met Andrew Hodges for a pleasant lunch. We hadn’t seen each other for six or seven years since he stopped at Mills College as part of his lecture tour for his book on Alan Turing.
The Ashmolean has a wonderful collection of 25th dynasty materials, which I photographed along with a few contemporary Assyrian items.
On Andrew’s advice, I took a walk through town to see the old campus halls, the church, and other beautiful buildings. Then, back to the station and on to Manchester.
Written on June 15, 2008, in Tandoori Nights Restaurant, Amesbury, England, United Kingdom
I returned to the hotel last night, then managed to stay awake long enough to go to a gay bar near Kings Cross called Central Station. I ordered a double Bailey’s on the rocks which set me back £3.50 (~US$7). In English bars, one is not expected to tip however. I ended up talking with a fellow who promotes rock bands and stayed long enough to take in a drag show as well. The performer, Lizzie Drip, had elaborate costumes and put on an impressive show. Somehow I managed to sneak in without paying a £2 cover charge. I found a couple of guys quite attractive, but that reminded all the more how much I’m missing Sacrilege. I email him often and even managed to reach him by chat.
On the way out, I asked directions from an Asian guy visiting London from Paris for the weekend. We chatted on the way back to Kings Cross, then went our separate ways. I arrived at the hotel and considered my plight: the camera had broken in the Horniman Library and I had no way to take photos for the rest of my trip. I decided I had to bite the bullet and buy a new camera, even though it would have a European warranty and European plugs for which I’d have to use an adapter. Also, I had to consider the problem of where to buy a good camera on a Sunday with only a couple of hours to spare before catching a bus out of town.
Despite these worries, I slept well, well enough to miss the lackluster hotel breakfast. I showered and packed everything up, checked out of the hotel, leaving my large bags in storage. I tried the Gran Sosso again for food with wifi, and it was closed again. So I went back to Friends House. The Sunday service was just starting, but no one seemed to mind me sitting in the lobby using my laptop with the free wifi. I searched for camera shops and found five, then I called them to see if one was open on Sunday. I was prepared to travel all over London, but the only shop that answered the phone was the closest, a short walk away. A nice salesperson patiently helped me decide on a new Canon compact camera with 12.1 megapixels(!) and amazingly good focus, closeup capability, raw file format, fast powerup, and rapid snaps in succession. I had to purchase a memory card as well, and opted for an 8G card. The whole shebang ran me more than US$500, even with a refund on VAT, for which I’ll have to send in a letter once I pass through customs. I wonder if I have to pay customs duty to export the camera?
In the nick of time, I caught a bus back to Kings Cross after grabbing a whole wheat crust pasty for brunch along the way. I picked up my bags at the hotel. Luckily, I left enough time because the entire Victoria tube line was down and I had to wait awhile for a ride on the Circle line to Victoria station. From there, I walked my bags to the Victoria coach station. I waited through a long ticket line because all I had as a ticket was a text message on my phone, but apparently that is all the bus driver needs to see.
Waiting for the bus, I met a Hungarian woman named Gyongyi, which means “pearl”. She told me about a book she translated from Hungarian to English, about Hungarian runes that apparently have similarities to Egyptian hieroglyphs. She said she had read also about Hungarian shamen. Throughout the ride, I was eying two cute young men. After she got off at Andover to meet the family for whome she was to be an au pair, I started chatting with Peter, a young Czech longhair fellow who also works as a nanny. I gave him my info as well, just before I got off the bus at Amesbury. After walking a mile in the wrong direction, I called the proprietor of the Catkin Lodge and managed to get on the right track. He helped me plan my visit, the I headed back to town to eat. The hotel with the vegetarian lasagna had stopped serving, so I went for an excellent meal at Tandoori Nights restaurant where I had a good chat with the manager. Now I’m off to bed.
Written on June 14, 2008, in Nell of Old Drury Pub opposite Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London, United Kingdom
I returned to the hotel last evening thinking I’d perhaps go out later to a gay pub – after a short nap, I thought. Instead, I ended up crashing fairly hard and not feeling like getting out of bed despite a fairly troubled night’s sleep.
I haven’t developed any affection for the hotel. I heard people talking in the streets and through thin walls to the other rooms all night long. The fan makes such a racket when I turn on the bathroom light that I decided to pee with the light off. My criticism about the TV not working turned out to be unfounded however – I was pressing the off button on the remote to try to turn on the TV.
Waking this morning, I did a backup of all the pictures I’d taken. I rushed to get breakfast before 9:00: toast with jam, wait for scrambled or sunny-side-up eggs, a bit of juice made from a powder (like Tang), and tea that had such a slimy goo in it I was afraid to drink it. I chatted with a fellow from New Zealand seeking his fortune as an IT consultant in Britain.
I walked over to the British Museum and spent four hours inspecting and snapping photos of artifacts. I started with the Assyrian collection.
I continued with the Egyptian collection.
I finished up with the Benin bronzes and an assortment of sub-Saharan artifacts.
Then, I took photographs of some homoerotic Greek cups and vases, in particular, the so-called Warren Cup.
By the time I finished, I was late for an appointment at the Horniman Library associated with the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. I didn’t have time to digest the 15 or so books I requested there, so I just typed in the reference information, then went to the museum for a quick trip through the African gallery there.
Finding the place wasn’t easy: two buses and a train from London Bridge, but the way back to central London was easier and I took the tube from London Bridge station to Covent Garden. There, I ate dinner at Food for Thought, a traditional veg restaurant. The place was packed, a long line stretching up the downward staircase at the entrance. I waited and eventually arrived at the head of the line, ordered quiche and salad with organic passion fruit juice. I shared a table and conversation with two women of apparently Indian extraction. They recommended another London veg restaurant called Govinda, run by the Krishnas.
Next, I walked to this pub, called Nell of Old Drury Pub. I came hoping to join the Rainbow Earth moot, which I had seen scheduled for this evening in the gay pagan yahoo group. However, it’s now 20:30 and no one has showed up. 🙁
Written on June 13, 2008, at Eat and Two Veg Restaurant, London, United Kingdom
Here is a special feature on Pakepu’s coffins at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. He was a Water carrier who lived in Western Thebes around 700-650 BCE.
Written on June 13, 2008, at Eat and Two Veg Restaurant, London, United Kingdom
This morning, I had to go to Cambridge and Sarah was off to Kent, so we said our goodbyes. I caught the train to Cambridge and met a nice woman named Emily Esche on the way. She is studying archaeology and is particularly interested in studying human remains. So, we could talk shop. She later sent me an email with great advice for sites around Stonehenge.
When I got off the train at Cambridge, I was stunned by the number of bikes parked outside the station (the pic shows less than a quarter of the bikes).
I walked to the Fitzwilliam Museum and, since the museum’s 25th dynasty expert is on leaving writing her thesis, I met with a fellow named Anders Bell, who showed me an Assyrian artifact from the museum’s store (i.e. storage area) then directed me to the ancient Sudan gallery and three ancient Egyptian galleries, excellent for research purposes.
The next blog entry has a special feature on Pakepu’s coffins. He was a Water carrier who lived in Western Thebes around 700-650 BCE.
I managed to finish my work at the museum in 2½ hours. On the way back to the train station, I took a few pictures of the Scott Polar Research Institute and the wonderful statue of a nude young man outside it.
I also walked a bit further down the street and visited the cathedral on the way to the train station.
Then I hopped back on the train to London to check into the overpriced European Hotel near Kings Cross, into that small basement-level room with a loud bathroom fan and a musty odor with little room for anything else but the bed and the lamp next to it, all for the bargain rate of £45 (~US$90) per night. That’s actually a good deal in central London.
I massaged my body with a hot shower, then headed out to find free wifi, so I could search for vegetarian restaurants and queer bars. The Cafe Sosso closed just as I arrived, so instead I went to the (Quaker) Friends House cafe, which had also closed, but they let me site there in the courtyard and browse with my laptop. I found this excellent veg restaurant called Eat and Two Veg where I just finished an excellent meal of veg sausage on mashed potatoes with fresh-squeezed juice and a fruit cobbler topped with butterscotch ice cream for dessert.
Written on June 13, 2008, at Eat and Two Veg Restaurant, London, United Kingdom
I reluctantly left Sacrilege in San Francisco and boarded the plane to London via Washington, DC, on June 9, leaving late in the evening and arriving late the following evening.
Sarah, my friend from Zimbabwe, is working in London and kindly prevailed on her housemates to permit me to crash at their place for a couple of nights. One of her housemates, Caroline, is a schoolteacher and I didn’t meet the other housemate, who is apparently from Malaysia and was traveling in Amsterdam.
Sarah lives in a greenish northern suburb of London which is at least a half hour on the metro, or “tube” as they call it here, from central London. The tube ride costs £2 (~US$4) if you pay in cash, or only 90 pence if you use the Oyster card, a kind of metro debit card.
On my first excursion into town, I went to the Petrie Museum for Egyptian Archaeology. I arrived at 11:00 and left around 16:00 after examing ten artifacts up close and personal and many more exhibited in the public collection.
Next, I searched around for a hotel where I could spend Friday and Saturday night. The cheapest room I could find in the Kings Cross area with a bathroom “en suite”, i.e. in the room, not shared, was £45 (~US$90)! The place is called the European Hotel and the expensive room was in the basement, small, and perhaps a bit moldy.
I made it back to Sarah and Caroline’s place before either of them got back home, so I waited on the stoop until Caroline got home before Sarah did.
That evening, Sarah and I ate pizza with Caroline, then Sarah invited me to meet some childhood friends with whom she is still close. They even live in the same neighborhood in London. We went first to a typical English pub where I tried a draft ½ pint of ale. Everyone else drank at least twice as much as I. We met Antony at the pub, then went on to his cute little house and sat in the back garden with Antony’s brother Bobby, who I had met in Zimbabwe on an outing with Sarah to majestic Matopas, along with a girlfriend of theirs also named Sarah, who lived for awhile in Australia.
Antony is a great conversationalist, his banter littered with curses and his stories and political arguments quite entertaining. We drank and drank and drank, then Sarah and I walked home, so waking for our work the next day wouldn’t be too painful.
Next day, we walked again to the tube and she went to work, I to the British Museum. I got some good pictures of 25th dynasty Egyptian artifacts in Gallery 4.
I’ll go back there tomorrow (Saturday) to do more. I had an 11:00 meeting scheduled with Chris Naunton, Deputy Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. Their office is located on Doughty Mews, a cute little cobblestoned street with comfy old brick buildings. The library there had lots of resources to help me with my research, but best of all was the chance to chat with Chris, who has been researching 25th dynasty non-royal officials for at least eight years. Although he was delayed by an emergency meeting due to leadership change within the organization, and although he was obviously dealing with considerable stress over it, he made time to hang out and chat with me and provided a bunch of helpful materials.
I was scheduled to meet Sarah at 18:15 at Charing Cross station, so I managed to go to the Kings Cross station to purchase my round-trip train ticket to Cambridge for the following day, Friday.
I took the tube to Charing Cross to meet Sarah. While I waited, I ate a veggie pasty from a place in the station. Then, I took Sarah out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near the station.
After that, she invited me to a South African bar, where her friend Jeremy had invited a group of Zimbabwean and other friends since he was passing through town on this travels with his girlfriend and hadn’t sen many of his friends, now in London, for some years. It was all about drinking a lot of beer or cider, but surprisingly, people chatted a lot as well. We also tried Amarula Cream, a liqueur from a South African fruit that tasted like Bailey’s. Then Sarah and I left — I was really tired. I nodded off a bit on the tube and struggled to walk the rest of the way back to her place.
Who knew? You can get free wireless in Cairo’s international airport terminal.
Which means that I’m on my way back home to San Francisco.
I’ll fill in the remaining details of the trip on this blog after I return home.