Birthday party for 2 Ys

Happy birthday to Yushan and Yuki, two pretty and kind girls!



They had a very successful party last weekend, and every guest was amazed and pleased by everything that they had done to share their joy.

*An anecdote about the cake:

In the party, when the b-day girls were taking pictures of the matcha cake, I overheard a conversation between them. The one advised the other, "you should take the picture from another angle, did you notice that it is in the shape of an apple?"
I was a little confused and therefore asked gentleman O by my side whether he thought it's shaped as an apple. He smiled embarrassedly and gave no answer. (He knew that I made the cake and might have thought that he had to answer my question with caution.) I murmured again to him, "do you think I should tell them that I have tried to make it look like a 4-leaf white clover?" He laughed and shook his head.
Apparently I was not good enough at the design. It indeed looked much fatter than a clover, and more like an apple. After rotating the image several times today, I also found that it could be a mushroom. : )

A heart in the grey sky

It's been raining non-stop for almost two weeks. I cannot help wondering if it's me who brought the rain back to York. It rained heavily and the wind blew fiercely in Chicago on the day I left the US. At the moment when I entered Wentworth in York, it started thundering and showering and never stopped ever after. It's said that the weather had been extremely nice for the whole week during my absence...

I spotted a heart in the grey sky yesterday afternoon. Andy once posted an amazing glowing cloud-heart on his blog. If that one, at least to me, is celebrating the beauty and glory of love, this latte-ly, creamy heart seems to portray an enduring and quite joy, the joy that can always disperse deep gloom. A heart that emerges from the heavy and grey cloud is a good sign, hope this brings you away from your worries too. Enjoy these rainy days.

York Mystery Plays--A Quadrennial Event

This is a representation of medieval plays in the traditional way.
It will present York Cycle, a series of biblical stories, this year.
In the Middle Ages, the program mainly functioned as religious propaganda, but its occasionally daring jokes and fun were not less entertaining.

I want to see this, anyone wants to come?

Travelogue I: Kalamazoo 3-7/May/2006




I finished compiling the travelogue for this trip to the US yesterday afternoon. It's good to write everything down before my poor memory fails me in the near future, or before my anxiety about amnesia gets worse.

The trip consisted of two parts--the academic and leisure--and both were fantastic.
The conference in Kalamazoo went very well. I met some old friends and came to know a lot more enthusiastic medievalists from all over the world. There were plenty of neophytes--first time in Kalamazoo just like me, and a lot more well-established scholars who have been attending this annual event for more than 25 years. Every year, they would come back for this annual meeting and have developed a strong emotional tie between each other after all these years. The idea of "international conference" itself is still a bit intimidating, but I was amazed and moved to find how these medievalists keep returning to meet their old friends and support each other.
It is a great resource of knowledge as well as a celebration of friendship and "familial" reunion.
The academic part was as fruitful as expected, but the fun part went beyond my imagination.



There is a legendary ball for the conference every year. At first, I thought it was a formal drinking reception, but it was not. Every attendee, no matter how serious they look when talking about their studies in the daytime, danced disco. And the most important of all, they were indeed great dancers!! My dancemate and I tried polka, and it was a great fun. I was not very good though, I kept bumping into other couples on the dance floor. Thanks! Vera, Jessica, and Carola. (these girls are great dancemates!) Those worldly-known scholars were terrific polka dancers. I wish I could upload my video clip...

Maybe I should treat seriously the desire to dance from now on.

It is a good lesson in life and work indeed: to have fun and serious life at the same time. The horizon of the view of life and work has been changed, and I am enabled to see a broader and a more positive world.

For more photos about Kalamazoo, check out Kalamazoo under the tag of "Kalamazoo 2006".

Pilgrimage to Kalamazoo

I am leaving for the 41st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo tomorrow.

It's the biggest annual event in the world for medievalists, as I was thus informed. The place name is tainted with an exotic sense. I don't know whether it has zoos there or not, but it is definitely suits the idea of Middle Ages well.

"See you in the 'zoo!", my colleague said to me before her departure yesterday.

It's been an dream for me since I learned of this place and the congress about 7 years ago when I started my career in Medieval Studies.

It's a dream for every medievalist too. Some of my colleagues can talk about it nonstop, and some say that it simply becomes an addiction that they cannot move on without it. It provides necessary fellowship in this discipline as interdisciplinary knowledge is in particular essential.

Kalamazoo has become a legend for medievalists indeed. The four-day conference, as usual, hosts 640 sessions this year and involves thousands of medievalists from the world. It also has talks, exhibitions, book fairs, and performances. Everything is systemized and computerized even though the subject is the Middle Ages.

I am a pilgrim going on my first pilgrimage and hopefully will get addicted to it too.
For this time, my first task is to find out why Kalamazoo is Kalamazoo.

Tapestry of Spring

Spring has stepped into the campus, driven away harsh winter, and opened arms to greet the coming summer.
The tapestry of Spring brings warmth and solace to every soul awakend from the long winter.

The famous opening 18 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" resonate with this floral season.

[Middle English:]
"Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
hat slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke."

[Translation:
When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March's drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands.
And specially from every shire's end
Of England they to Canterbury went,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak.]