September 7, 2014 at 9:01 pm (Places, postaday, Sundays, Traveling, Venice)
Tags: destinations, memories, photography, postaday, postaweek, Stonehenge, Sundays, travel, Venice, Wordpress
On the way to the Grand Canal: Self took a trip to Venice with Margarita Donnelly, retired managing editor of Calyx, in April 2013
Pat Shelley, who led the tour to Stonehenge self took in April 2014
Holy Mother of All Monuments! Our little band of walkers approached the monument in early evening. We had to walk across a sheep meadow. That time of day, the tour buses were finally beginning to thin out. Our group had the monument almost all to ourselves. It was CHILLY.
September 7, 2014 at 6:09 am (Books, Recommended)
Tags: discoveries, novel, praise, Saturdays, spies
Dark Star is the first Alan Furst book she’s ever read, and it’s a mighty good one.
By 1917, when he was 20 years old and had attended three years of university in Cracow, he was a confirmed writer of stories, one of many who came from Odessa — it had something to do with seaports: strange languages, exotic travelers, night bells in the harbor, waves pounding into foam on the rocks and always distance, horizon, the line where sky met water, and just beyond your vision people were doing things you couldn’t imagine.– p. 56, Dark Star
Is there such a thing as a lyrical spy story? This must be a first. At least in self’s reading life.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
September 7, 2014 at 2:19 am (Links, Places, postaday, Traveling, Venice)
Tags: memories, Philippines, photography, postaday, postaweek, travel, Venice, Wordpress
The WordPress Photo Challenge for the week would seem rather self-explanatory:
Last year, self decided to accept Margarita Donnelly’s invitation to share an apartment in Venice. She stayed almost three weeks. That trip certainly qualifies in her book as an adventure.
The apartment was in Ca’ San Toma. Only a 5-minute walk to the Frari church.
She had seen Venice when she was 11. Of course, it had changed. For one thing, everyone on the vaporetto kept vacating their seats and indicating that self should sit. In the spot marked for “Senior Citizens.” (Self, when will you ever learn to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth?) Although self is not quite a senior citizen, and it stung her pride mightily, she never refused a seat.
On the Vaporetto to Murano, April 2013
Just in front of the Naval History Museum, Venice, April 2013
Also last year, self visited, for the first time, the town of Magalang in Pampanga (Philippines). She visited at the invitation of Alawi Canlas, an English professor at Pampanga Agricultural College. Self really enjoyed meeting all the students, and discussing her work with them. That trip, too, was an adventure.
Magalang Public Market in the Philippines, province of Pampanga: It’s huge.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
September 7, 2014 at 2:01 am (Books, Links, Places, Recommended)
Tags: Berlin, discoveries, Home, music, novel, praise, Saturdays, weekends
Yesterday, while standing at the check-out line in Whole Foods on Jefferson, self saw a CD by Ed Sheeran. She was curious, as apparently he is a great favorite of the writers on fanfiction.net So she bought his CD and listened to it at home and, you know, it reminds her of old rock. But it’s pleasant. Something new to listen to while driving!
Today was peaceful. She mostly watered.
She’s very much enjoying Dark Star, by Alan Furst. He writes ridiculously well, for someone who writes spy thrillers.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
On p. 52, the hero of the story, Szara, lands in Berlin (after a particularly nasty encounter with some hired assassins — he escapes by the skin of hist teeth). This is what he sees of the city from his hotel room:
Szara stared out a high window, watching umbrellas moving down the street like phantoms. It seemed to him the city’s very own, private weather, for Berliners lived deep inside themselves — it could be felt — where they nourished old insults and humiliated ambitions of every sort, all of it locked up within a courtesy like forged metal and an acid wit that never seemed meant to hurt — it just, apparently by accident, left a little bruise.
Lovely writing, isn’t it?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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