May 22, 2017 at 1:46 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Food and Drink, Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: art, happiness, Mondays, museums, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
It was a gorgeous day!
Self strolled down the Champs-Elysees. She saw a shrine on the sidewalk, draped with French flags and flowers. Oh. So that’s where the policeman was shot.
She bought a salad from a brasserie and decided to eat in the Tuileries, right in front of the Musee L’Orangerie (where the Monets are) but she did not bother lining up for a ticket. She hates lines.
Instead, she sat outside, watching people:
The Tuileries, Monday Afternoon: Is that a Brancusi? Or a Picasso? Or a Henry Moore?
The wide avenues were alive with strollers, and the trees were so green:
And guess what she saw, over on the other side of the Place de la Concorde:
Iconic: 22 May 2017
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 22, 2017 at 9:40 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Hawthornden, Mondays, poetry
Rivers fascinate self.
Here’s a poem about rivers from Joan McGavin’s second collection, Passing Arcadia Close (Oversteps Books 2017).
Self met Joan 2012, in Hawthornden.
SALT
by Joan McGavin
The changing taste of rivers
told me where I was heading.
How could I fail to swim faster?
I’d hugged the coast for hours,
kept the lap of landbound waves
to my right, where the tang of fresh water
mixed in with salt would flood
the roof of my mouth
at each estuary.
At night I dozed in the hammock between waves
or beached and slept away from houses
but within earshot of tides.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 22, 2017 at 8:14 am (Books, Family, Memoirs, Women Writers)
Tags: history, memoir, memories, Mondays, South-East Asia, Vietnam, Vietnam War
Early 1960s. The “war” was the Vietnam War, which pitted the North, where Moi’s parents were from, against the South, to where they fled:
How long does it take for a mother to read Alone in the World and The Story of Perrine to her child? My mother read to me almost every evening, because my parents went out only three or four times a year, and never had guests. It was wartime, but that doesn’t explain it — war had only just begun and nobody imagined at the time that it would last some 15 years and that we’d face shortages of everything, especially freedom, the basic freedom to move around as we chose.
This sense of frugality was something my parents were born with, just as others live with a heart murmur or an irregular heartbeat. It was the region of their birth, the North, that had triggered this simmering anxiety.
At bedtime, my mother would decide on a number of pages, but I would beg her to carry on, and she was always happy to continue the story of Rémi the abandoned child or of Perrine Paindavoine, an orphan searching for her family . . . From one episode to the next, in those days before TV series, I traveled from one family to another, and from town to town, in the comfort of knowing I would fall asleep sated with emotions.
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May 21, 2017 at 9:38 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Links, Movies, Places, postaday, Recommended, Relatives, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: French movies, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Self was last here in 2012. She’s declined every opportunity to return, until now.
Look what she encountered around the corner: a film festival running in conjunction with Cannes. The movies are in English, with French subtitles. Perfect.
Her Dear Departed Dad worshipped Orson Welles, and movies in general. He passed on this HERITAGE to self.
Self didn’t know until today that it is the 70th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival:
Self is a film nut. She takes advantage of every opportunity to attend film festivals, wherever in the world she happens to be: Edinburgh; Ojai, California; Cork, Ireland; Palo Alto; San Francisco.
One day, perhaps, she’ll write a script based on one of her stories.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 20, 2017 at 1:43 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, destinations, Places, Plays, postaday, The Guardian, Traveling)
Tags: discoveries, Emma Rice, England, London, memories, postaday, postaweek, praise, Saturday, Shakespeare, Wordpress
- This week, share a photo that channels a living tradition, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.
— Ben Huberman, The Daily Post
This is her second post on HERITAGE. She deleted the first one, pictures of the Imperial War Museum. For the first time in forever, that post got 0 likes, go figure.
Self watched (last night) a kickass production of Twelfth Night, directed by Emma Rice, who’s departing the Globe after just two years at the helm. As a tribute to Ms. Rice (who famously told the Guardian two years ago: “Being childlike is underrated. It takes commitment.”) Self thinks this would be an appropriate time to share why she loves the experience of watching a play at the Globe, so much:
It’s so London. And London is a city absolutely buzzing with energy. Especially at night. Every year since her first Globe play (2014’s bloody Titus Andronicus), she watches at least one play at the Globe.
Last Night: Heading home in a cab after watching “Twelfth Night”
At intermission, she heads straight for the wharf. This is the view:
The Thames, Seen From Behind the Globe
It is an essential part of her Globe theatre-going experience.
Self still remembers her first sight (up close) of the Millenium Bridge. Her jaw dropped. She had no idea — no idea — that London had become this cool place. That was the moment when self fell in love, really fell in love with the city:
The Millenium Bridge connects the South Bank to Saint Paul’s.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 18, 2017 at 10:04 pm (Calls, Conversations)
Tags: causes, crime, disappointment
It took me this long to read the letter to Brock Turner at his sentencing:
How old are you? How much do you weigh? What did you eat that day? Well what did you have for dinner? Did you drink with dinner? No? Not even water? When did you drink? How much did you drink? What container did you drink out of? Who gave you the drink? How much do you usually drink? Who dropped you off at this party? At what time? But where exactly? What were you wearing? Why were you going to this party? What did you do when you got there? Are you sure you did that? But what time did you do that? What does this text mean? Who were you texting? When did you urinate? Where did you urinate?
When Turner was released from the San Jose city jail, he asked to be allowed to exit from the back of the building, where his lawyer was waiting.
His request was denied. He had to go out through the front, where all the reporters were. They made him face them. And he had to do it alone.
Thank God they didn’t let him get away with the coward’s response to duck and run.
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May 18, 2017 at 10:24 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Dublin, Garden, inspiration, Ireland, memories, photography, websites
Cee Neuner has a new series called ANYTHING GOES.
Theme for the week is All One Color.
Here’s a recent picture self took of Dublin’s iconic St. Stephen’s Green, first week of May. St. Stephen’s Green is very aptly named:
St. Stephen’s Green, First Week of May 2017
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 14, 2017 at 3:01 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, dance, discoveries, England, London, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Saturday, Wordpress
The Daily Post Photo Challenge this week is REFLECTING.
Can self just say she arrived sick and barely able to keep upright. But damn — the Royal Opera House!
Seeing it for the first time was — awesome.
Plus, the adjoining bar/restaurant: All that glass! All that light!
Perfect for this week’s Photo Challenge!
Before the start of the ballet, self dashed to the bar to order some hot tea. She wound up sharing a table with an American woman, a ballet aficionado who has season tickets to the New York City Ballet and watches “thirty ballets a year. At least.” Self confided that she wasn’t feeling well and might leave during one of the intermissions.
And the womans said: The pas de deaux in Act III are spectacular. Don’t leave.
The Bar at the Royal Opera House, 8 p.m. Saturday, May 13
And then, the interior of the Royal Opera House itself:
Waiting for the beginning of Kenneth Macmillan’s beautiful, stunning ballet, “Mayerling”: Saturday, May 13
More of the Royal Opera House Bar. At intermission, self went up an escalator to the “Bridge” over the bar, from which she got a jaw-dropping view of Covent Garden, at 8 p.m.:
Center Top, the “Bridge”: A side escalator takes you to it, and from there you can see all of Covent Garden. SPECTACULAR. Especially at sunset.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 13, 2017 at 2:33 pm (Books, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: history, reading lists, Saturday, travel books
Apparently the Native Americans and the western settlers moving along the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century got along quite well.
The amicable relations came to an abrupt end in 1855:
- In 1855, a detachment of six hundred U.S. Army soldiers commanded by General William S. Harney surrounded a band of Brule Sioux led by Chief Little Thunder near Blue Water Creek, six miles north of Ash Hollow, slaughtering eighty-six braves and capturing most of their women and children. Harney’s expedition was launched in retaliation for an incident the year before, when an inexperienced Army lieutenant, John Grattan, had brashly marched his soldiers into a large Brule Sioux camp outside Fort Laramie, Wyoming, demanding that the chiefs produce the Indian who had shot a Mormon pioneer’s cow, even though the Brules had already offered restitution for the cow by giving the pioneer his pick of their sixty-horse herd. The usual army bumbling was involved. Grattan was a recent West Point graduate, unfamiliar with Sioux ways, and his French-Canadian “interpreter” could not speak the Brule dialect and was drunk.
— The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, p. 213
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May 13, 2017 at 5:17 am (Links)
Tags: politics, praise, Protests, Saturday
Because, at this point, I do question your mental health.
Smiley face when confronted by angry Black students.
Absolutely the right response. Absolutely.
How dare you, woman have you no shame. Race issues obviously mean nothing to you. Nothing.
Then if you can’t understand, be afraid.
Afraid of your own poor judgment.
So I look at the video again. There you are: Keep on smiling! Adjust those podium mikes! Look helplessly at the Black University President by your side! (A completely idiotic and inappropriate response, let me tell ya: “Help me! I’m a vulnerable white woman! In a sea of angry Blacks!” Thus prompting racists of all stripes, those in plain view as well as those merely lurking, to go: “Look at what those people are doing to this poor, helpless white lady!” I wish never to see another such performance in my lifetime)
Betsy, you are doing so much damage to education, every day that you continue in your position. Because you’re just sleepwalking. You know it, the President knows it, the GOP knows it.
To the graduating class of Bethune-Cookman: I salute you. You will go on to do great things.
Link.
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