What College Vacation Looks Like This Week Month...
As most of you know due to my talking about it for months, I spent a few weeks over in England doing historical epidemiology research with the Rose's. (Doesn't that sound fancy-shmancy?) We attempted to focus on a smallpox outbreak in 1761/1762 in Brighton, but ended up looking at about a century's worth of data from most of Sussex. Sweet. I can't actually explain what we were trying to do, exactly, unless you've got about an hour to kill, but I CAN tell you that I spent my days digging through old parish records and reading letters written by people with impossible handwriting. I even got a reader's ticket at the British Library. (Oooooh...)
While our research was about Brighton, most of the Brighton records are conveniently located in... Lewes.
This picture of the town was taken at the top of Castle Mound, which houses both the
record office and - you guessed it - Lewes Castle.
What time is it? TEA-TIME, BABY!
Lewes apparently has a significantly-sized population
of dangerous elderly people.
A church in Lewes that is now a community center.
I'm not sure I'd like to attend youth events in the middle of a graveyard,
but I bet they've got awesome All Souls' Night parties...
Here's St. Nicholas, the church of the parish whose records we were studying.
It used to be surrounded by a graveyard, but most of the stones were torn out and put along the churchyard walls.
People now use it as a park. Eugh...
The facade of St. Nicholas. I swear I hadn't been to a pub before I took this, the building is actually slanted like this.
It gives "fear of God" a whole new connotation...
One of the gravestones that was left standing is Phoebe Hessel's.
Phoebe was born during the reign of Queen Anne, and fell in love with a soldier.
She disguised herself as a man and joined her love's regiment, fighting for
the Duke of Cumberland for some years. She was wounded by a bayonet,
but only revealed her true identity after her boyfriend was sent home with injuries.
They'd been married for 8 years when her boyfriend died,
but Phoebe lived to the age of 108 (allegedly), and received royal honors from King George IV himself.
The revisionists say none of that's true, of course.
That dandy George IV decided he wasn't spoiled enough as the Prince of Wales,
and so apportioned out tax money to build this monstrosity known as The Royal Pavilion.
The Royal Pavilion is purportedly styled after Indian monuments like the Taj Mahal.
That doesn't explain the minarets, however...
We've hypothesized that Georgie came up with the whole idea
when he had a bad dream after eating too much spicy Indian food one night...
"Maybe it's this key... no, this key..? No... this one? @*$#!"
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Nine
Christmas Break
January 20th, 2003
February 13th, 2003
Spring Break!
May 2nd, 2003
SF Day-Trip!
The Zoo!
Harry Potter Party!
Paris!
