New Pictures!

Hello all,

We had a beautiful day here last Monday and the light was a photographer's paradise. I took a break from my research and went shooting (pictures) around town. If I haven't mentioned it before, the light here is a golden color all the time, but sometimes before sunset and on particular days it is even more golden than usually and gives everything the Midas touch. (Please see new pictures on the right side of this blog). I hope you like them; there is more where this came from, but unfortunately they won't all fit on the site. Hopefully, we'll soon have my dad and Victor's pictures, too, from their vacations here.

Hope all is well with all of you and happy holidays!! My Thankgiving will be spent amidst the fall foliage of Cambridgeshire.

See you at Christmas.

JJ

New (Guest) Entry!!

Hello dear reader. This is Victor, JJ’s boyfriend, and I’ll be doing a
little guest blogging to lighten her load as far as keeping this page
updated. (Soon to be accompanied by photos.)

I just got back to Ann Arbor from Cambridge, and will try to pick up
roughly where JJ last left off. I arrived in London on Friday morning
(October 13th) and met up with JJ at our hotel on the Strand. It’s a
bustling strip that serves as London’s Broadway as far as musicals and
overpriced tourist traps go, but it’s also just south of Covent Garden,
familiar to all you “My Fair Lady” fans as Eliza’s flower-hawking
grounds. That day we wandered about and eventually had a proper date
down in Piccadilly Circus, grabbing a delicious bite at an Indian
restaurant called Chowki, which shifts their culinary focus onto a new
part of India every month. [Photos 725-2 and 727]
Then we checked out a new stage version of Hitchcock’s classic spy
thriller “The 39 Steps” at the Criterion Theatre. It was a four man
show and added a great deal of comedic bits that worked perfectly to
satirize the genre and keep us engaged. [possibly photo 730 of the
theater] We both agreed that it was a proper date.

The next day, after stuffing English breakfasts down (I vowed that it
was my last), we hoofed it far and wide – to the always wonderful
British Museum, where a volunteer was kind enough to hand us used mummy
cloth among other artifacts, and then off to my old neighborhood
(Clerkenwell/Farringdon for those in the know) from studying abroad in
London in college.

Photos 743-2

We got back to the hotel and relaxed for the evening, preparing for our
big night out at…

Fabric, one of London’s mega-super-hyper-clubs. We arrived fashionably
late (a little after 2am) and queued for a half-hour before being
admitted to what resembles a subterranean brewhouse or possibly a
factory. It must have been 40 feet down into a cavernous space,
flanked by three major rooms, each with a renowned (if you’re European)
DJ spinning techno, house and other types of music that our American
ears can’t differentiate and categorize. The music and lightshows were
amazing, the drinks were expensive and the patrons were rowdy. It all
amounted to an “as-advertised” megaclub experience and we checked out
at the modest hour of 5am, 3 and a half hours before the club closed.
Sorry, no pictures, but there are some on the website:
http://www.fabriclondon.com/club/gallery.php

Sunday, we got a not unsurprising late start up to Camden Market, a
bustling series of stalls, stores, eateries and throngs and throngs of
people. Highlight: the rave supply store Cyberdog, and its LCD digital
animation t-shirts. We made our way through the morass and onto the
canal walk. There’s a nice pathway from Camden to Little Venice, just
west of Paddington Station, and it’s a relatively pastoral passage
through a very urban city. We then took a spin on the Eye, which was
overpriced and super-touristy, but fun nonetheless. I have a sneaking
suspicion that the architect definitely built it to be there
permanently, even though the original plan was for it to be up for just
a year as part of the Millennium projects. I don’t think the purists
would have okayed it as a permanent structure from the start, but once
you’ve got a 400-ft moneymaking ferris wheel that the postcard industry
embraces, it seems like a lot of trouble to take it down.

Photos 766, 895

So by Monday we finally made it to Cambridge – which is nice, as JJ has
attested to already. Over the week, we hung out with some wicked smart
international law scholars, successfully challenging the locals at a
pub quiz and enjoying some vino back at the Bahrain House next to the
Lauderpacht center.

A highlight of the week was punting down the Cam. Punting is one of
those weird activities where you pay to perform manual labor that
generally other people get paid to do, like apple picking. This one
involves pushing yourself up and down a canal in a narrow boat by
shoving off the gravel riverbed with a nine foot aluminum pole. Like
the Venetian watercrafts, but with more ping-ponging from bank to bank.
I got the hang of it in the last 10 minutes (hit me up for pointers
if you ever find yourself about to travel by punt), but it was amazing
all the way through, mostly because JJ was there and, oh right,
Cambridge is absolutely gorgeous from the water.

Photos 1090, 1105, 1114-2, 1120-2, 1178-2

Other highlights include the Wren Library in Trinity College (sorry no
pictures allowed that day), a trip to Grantchester, Evensong in King’s
College Chapel, where pre-pubescent boy singers harmonize with their
deeper-voiced collegiate crooners in perhaps the most beautiful church
we’ve ever seen, and generally ambling around these medieval streets
and courts.

Aside from strange operating hours (don’t count on food being available
at times other than the most traditional hours), this is a near idyllic
town, easy to relax in but also inspiring if you care to hit the books.

Photos 985, 971, 961, 968, 929-2

We've Got Photos!

Please see the picutres I've taken so far at Cambridge at http://homepage.mac.com/fourjfarm/Cambridge. Or just click on the "My Pictures" link to the right. The first ones are of the Lauterpacht Center, a few are of the other colleges in town, and the pictures of the Cam River and green grass are Grantchester. You can enlarge any of the pictures by clicking on them. Enjoy!

The bar gods have smiled on me...

Most of you have probably heard, but as of October 2, I am officially an esquire. Webster's online dictionary has defined it thusly....1 : a member of the English gentry ranking below a knight, 2 : a candidate for knighthood serving as shield bearer and attendant to a knight, 3 -- used as a title of courtesy usually placed in its abbreviated form after the surname Not too informative (for that you may want to look at AskJeeves.com) but it is cool to see its English background considering I am here in England (though apparently many have argued that its use is unconstitutional, as no state shall "grant any title of nobility; and no person can become a citizen of the United States until he has renounced all titles of nobility." At one point use of the title was almost grounds for losing your American citizenship, according to AskJeeves:

"In January 1810 Senator Reed proposed the Thirteenth Amendment, and on April 26, 1810 was passed by the Senate 26 to 1 (1st-2nd session, p. 670) and by the House 87 to 3 on May 1, 1810 (2nd session, p. 2050) and submitted to the seventeen states for ratification. The Amendment reads as follows:

'If any citizen of the United States shall Accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.'"

Obviously, this is not the same Thirteenth Amendment that appears in our Constitution, so I think I am in the clear in adopting the designation for myself.

In light of this great (and relieving) news, I will celebrate by taking some time to update my webpage in the near future.

In the meantime, anyone interested in seeing the pictures I've taken so far can email me their email address, and I can send them the current photo album. Cheers.

Day 4 (Sunday)

Today was better than I could have ever imagined. Niaz (from the University at Belfast) called me in the morning and suggested that we go to Grantchester, a town about a mile away to our south. I called him around 3pm in the afternoon, thinking that we should go while the sun was still out. (The sun had not been plentiful over the first three days I was there, and even when it had come out it was highly unpredictable.)

Niaz first took me to the back of the Center where the garden was and told me that he had some secrets to share with me. He brought me over to an apple tree, which had some small apples that were half green and half red. They turned out to be very good, in spite of their appearance. He then showed me a fig tree, hidden among the other plants, and we grabbed some fresh figs too, for the road. He told me not to share what I now knew about the garden with the other fellows--little did I know he had other secrets for me.

We headed out to Grantchester by way of Grange and Grantchester Roads. Niaz pointed out a popular and well-known bar called the "Hat and Feathers". We continued walking out of town and into the countryside, which presented us with nothing but a winding road stretching out to nowhere. We walked a ways down the road, past some rugby fields, and talked about our own "stories" until he stopped me. "Do you see the river down there?" he asked me and pointed out into the distance at the Cam. "There are people walking there." I could see some people strolling around and figured that it was a shortcut some locals took on the way between towns. I was about to make a joke about walking across the farmers' crop fields to get down to it when Niaz crossed over a small drainage ditch and began walking across someone's recently tilled farmland in the direction of the river. After about a half mile we came to a small barbed wire fence which we proceeded to jump. Niaz had apparently forgotten to make the turnoff we were supposed to have taken. But we came up shortly to the river Cam which looked beautiful in the sunshine. It was surrounded by lush, green grass, covered in spots with bright green algae, was bordered by weeping willows and other full bushes. It was winding very peacefully through the meadows in the bright sunshine, disturbed only by ducks and a swan. It was quite a sight.

Niaz told me that he liked to bring the fellows down here occassionally for a barbeque, and he would sometimes fish here as well. We talked about the various uses of the Cam at this section, where the town had preserved walking land along the river. Apparently the locals often come down to it to stroll or camp, or to swim naked at a certain section in a certain time of day. The path along the river went through many different fields: some held cows that were grazing and lounging in the sun, some had trees that lined the path, and some contained higher grasses and pheasant. We eventually came to the most popular spot where a lot of people were sitting in lawn chairs and enjoying the scenery. When I thought this was the end of our journey, Niaz led me up the hill so that we could go have some afternoon tea at a teahouse. We crossed over another wooden fence through some trees, and came upon a place which is famously known as "The Orchard". I found myself in the middle of a large apple orchard where a large number of locals were sitting around small tables in old-timey cloth-and-wood lounge chairs taking afternoon tea.

The only building present was the medium-sized wooden teahouse which also held a pastry buffet. Niaz and I got some food and drinks, I had my first English tart, and we went out to grap ourselves our own table in the orchard. Niaz handed me a brochure about the Orchard's history, and I discovered that it had once been the stomping grounds of Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster (novelists), Betrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein (famous philosophers), Maynard Keyes (economist), and Rupert Brooke (poet). This group had all been friends, and they used to come to the Orchard as students. Apparently, Brooke and Virginia Woolf used to swim naked in the spot on the Cam that Niaz had pointed out. (Apparently, Lord Byron had also done the same thing as a student there).

After a relaxed and enjoyable conversation in the Orchard, Niaz and I eventually headed back to Cambridge by way of Grantchester town. The town had a few well-preserved old buildings, one with a thatched roof, and some popular, old-looking bars. While Niaz chided me for not talking more time to look at the historic buildings, I assured him that I would be back. As we headed back out of town, down the winding road, we saw a farmer's dog was playing in one of the fields as the sunlight turned golden. We kept walking, past various English meadows, and we continued the conversation.

Day 5

I began the day with a meeting at Barclay's bank to set up my banking account here. The young guy who interviewed me and took my information was helpful and THOROUGH. The meeting took about an hour. Next I spent a few hours finding necessities at the pharmacy and grocery stores, and finally arrived back home in the early afternoon. Read quite a lot in the afternoon on non-governmental organizations in international law, which is also the title of a text written by Anna-Karin Lindblom, a Special Adviser in human rights issues in the Ministry of Justice Division for Democratic Issues in Sweden. She was a visiting scholar here at one time and actually wrote part of the very long book I am now reading (circa 500 pages) while she was here.

At 6pm I went downstairs for our barbeque with the members of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (baically the British State Department) who are visiting the Center this week. I spoke with Harriet Cross, a woman about five years older than myself who is about to become a "First Secretary of Human Rights" within the UKMIS, or UK Mission to the UN. This means she will be representing the UK government on issues of human rights in the United Nations Office in NYC. Her past experience has been as _____ and she has visited the holding centers in the UK for suspected members of terrorist organications, examining and reporting on their conformity with the appropriate UK human rights standards. She has also done some work on indiginous societal issues within the UK. I also spoke for a short time with one of the legal specialists of the Office about Darfur and causes for the failure of the AU mission there. Also met Elanor, one of the current diplomats to the Falkland Islands, and with John Barker, a lecturer here who worked on the South African Constitution and has worked on a number of sustainable development project. I look forward to speaking with him more about his past and present projects.

Day 6

Today started off well. I am still adjusting to the jet lag, believe it or not, but otherwise I got a good start to the morning. Went down to breakfast where the group made plans for Professor Komori's send-off tonight at a very visible wine bar in town. He has been to the Center 3 times over the length of his career, and he is about to retire soon from the school's of law and policy at Hokkaido University in Japan. I did some more reading from the Sustainable Development Law book, as it is a subject I am fascinated with and may be interested in writing on it. Accompanied David, a public international law professor in Barbados, and his girlfriend Nikolai (who has worked in the Attorney General's Office for Jamaica and is now getting her LLM in international business relations from one of the London Universities) on a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum downtown, a famous museum (I gather) which held some very interesting items (which I may or may not talk more about later). I stayed just a bit, though, because I wanted to get back to do more reading and join in the afternoon lecture for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on international environmental law, a subject I did not take in law school but am interested in learning a little more about. The lecture will be giving by a professor from the London School of Economics.

Later that evening...

Attended the seminar on international environmental law and also learned a bit about refugee law from the British perspective. Talked with a researcher from the commonwealth office from West Africa about his use of NGOs. Also learned during the lecture that James Crawford, the director of this center, was lead counself of three major environmental law cases, two of which went before the ICJ (international court of justice). That's three major cases out of the nine landmark cases that were mentioned!

Also talked with John Barker, a fellow here who was one of the three main people at the heart of the drafting of the South African Constitution) about that experiene. Mentioned Professor Malherbe, a South African professor who came to IU to speak when I was president of the international law society. Had a long discussion with Professor Barker about problems with the South African Constitution and Iraq.