Feel a bit guilty that with all the chaos in the world, I have having so much fun in Oxford. Went to Advent services at New College -- fourteenth century chapel (more like a small cathedral)...rows of candlelight...vertical rows of stone saints...and rows of enchanting boys in white ruffs, singing like angels. Also special to be at such an event surrounded by musicians. Then a fascinating dinner with a group of Oxford dons, friends of mine, in a converted parsonage...a Duncan Grant on the walls...coal fire in the grate...bottles of Rioja...and discussion of little known aspects of history. My friend who does post-colonial studies pointed out that the story of the end of Apartheid in South Africa never describes thousands of middle-class white mothers protesting against sending their sons to war...which helped bring down the regime; a friend who works on Russian music said that when the history is told of the fall of the Berlin wall, it is always Thatcher and Reagan and Bring Down This Wall! but never the story of thousands of East Germans leaving the German Free Youth movement at great risk to themselves and congregating in Lutheran church spaces that gave haven to gay rights activists...environmental activists..and so on. And citizens standing in the squares saying, enough of this. Or the human chain across Latvia Lithuania and Estonia in which people blocked traffic across three countries. All these did help to bring down these regimes, which is why I worry so much about attacks on freedom of assembly. Without freedom of assembly peoples voices are powerless to change anything....still so happy to be here talking for hours, that Oxford conversation that is never dull and never ends, and then going home to the familiar sight of drunken students kissing outside the Kings Arms...in the light of sandstone pillars and the moon and the Bridge of Sighs...
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:57:20 +0000
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