March 18, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, essays, history, nonfiction, Salon.com, San Francisco
Love Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. Reading the essays in it painstakingly slowly.
Gary Kamiya was one of the founders of Salon.com (still going strong!). An ex-fellow Fellow from Stanford, Jim Paul, used to write for them. As did Chitra Divakaruni. As did Laura Miller. As did Heather Havrilesky.
Self is on Essay # 5, The Harbor at the End of the World:
A 1508 map by Johannes Ruysch depicts South America as the New World, with Asia in the place where North America actually is.
Private beach access for this homeowner along the Mendocino coast
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 6, 2019 at 5:25 pm (destinations, Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, indulgence, Redwood City, restaurants
For this week’s Fun Foto Challenge, PATTERNS, self is posting pictures from Lovejoy’s, an English-style tearoom tucked away in downtown Redwood City, CA, only a block from the library; and a picture of a plant with bright orange flowers that just began sprouting in her backyard. This winter saw heavy rain, hopefully in a month or so there will be tons of flowers blooming.
Tea at Lovejoy’s, downtown Redwood City, 1 March 2019
Adorable Porcelain Cup and Saucer, Perfect for Tea!
About to Bloom: 28 February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 24, 2019 at 6:14 pm (Books, destinations, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, history, nonfiction, San Francisco
The oldest skeleton found in the City is that of a female, unearthed during excavation for the Civic Center BART station in 1969, dating to about 5,000 years ago.
— from Cool Gray City of Love, Chapter 3: The Alcatraz Triangle
Fourth Sunday of February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 22, 2019 at 2:35 am (Books, destinations, Family, Holidays, Places, Recommended)
Tags: crime, memories, nostalgia, novel, reading lists, thrillers, vacation
Lou Berney’s thriller, November Road, is nearing its mournful denoument. The killer’s getting closer and closer.
NOOOOO!!!
Before we get there, however, there’s the 1963 Las Vegas Strip, where Frank Guidry discovers his past and Charlotte discovers her future.
Las Vegas was the one place self associates with “family vacation” — the one place we returned to, year after year, for about five years. We’d stay at a hotel — either the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Paris, or the MGM Grand — and loll by the pool and take in a show. We’d grow fat at hotel buffets. Here’s a picture of self and son, taken about 15 years ago, at Hoover Dam. How ironic that this is the ONE picture she has of a particular trip. And it’s not even IN Las Vegas.
With Son at Hoover Dam, Just Outside Las Vegas, a Lifetime Ago
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 20, 2019 at 10:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Links, Movies, Places, Recommended)
Tags: crime, mysteries, New Mexico, novel, reading lists, thrillers
At one point, close to the end of Alita: Battle Angel, self started to see if she could correctly predict the outcome. There was the cute guy (who looks A LOT like one of self’s nephews), the charming father figure (Christoph Waltz) and the Evil Henchman (Ed Skrein). At a certain point, self found herself hoping for a certain outcome, which meant that she was vested. And then she realized she was watching Robert Rodriguez, not Guillermo del Toro. And she suddenly knew the outcome. Which gave her a very satisfying feeling of closure.
Alita: Battle Angel — Five Stars
Now, she is at a point in her current read, November Road, where all characters and all plot lines begin to intersect. And they intersect in what is surely one of America’s most beautiful and most mysterious states: New Mexico. There’s a tiny hamlet called Goodnight that has one sheriff, one deputy, and one jail cell.
Here’s a Wikipedia page about the Goodnight Trail, if anyone’s interested.
The book’s veering into No Country For Old Men territory, with this one crucial difference: the MC, Frank Guidry, is good-looking. AND smart.
Since she’s never read Lou Berney before, she has no idea what authorial quirks are coming into play. She has a feeling, though, that Berney is going to be true to the genre. And that genre is noir.
The writing is of the hard-boiled crime genre category (which is to say, self loves it).
p. 136: Seraphine was fond of Guidry, he knew, but that and a nickel would get him one song on the jukebox.
See what self means?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 8, 2019 at 2:46 am (Conversations, destinations, Food and Drink, Lists, plans, Plays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: lunch, Mendocino, restaurants, Shakespeare, teaching
Drove up to Mendocino, which as the crow flies is only 200 miles from Redwood City, but always takes self at least FIVE HOURS.
On the way, she stopped by Yorkville Market and had lunch:
And then she mulled over the writing exercises she should start tomorrow with.
Should she have the students practice writing one very, very, very long, run-on sentence? With points to whoever can come up with the most run-on sentence?
Or, for fun, should she have them write a piece that’s all bad grammar and deliberately wrong spelling? Hamberder, anyone? Smocking guns?
Should she have them write a piece that’s all dialogue?
Should she ask them to capture every nuance of a piece of reality . . . in one sentence?
Should she have them practice writing a conversation that grows from an association of ideas (like a Harold Pinter play?)
Should she have them practice delaying the outcome for as long as possible?
She can’t decide. She’ll have to sleep on it.
BTW, this is one of the plays being presented by the Mendocino Theatre Company in 2019:
Mendocino Theatre Company, 2019 Season
Stay tuned.
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February 1, 2019 at 3:12 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Recommended, Tel Aviv, Traveling)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, England, Fridays, Israel, literary festivals, poetry
Thanks once again to Cee Neuner for the Fun Foto Challenge!
Last October, self was in the historic English town of Winchester, which was hosting a Poetry Festival. The next Winchester Poetry Festival will be October 2020.
Winchester, England: City Map, October 2018
Tel Aviv Artist Reuven Rubin
A friend made this bag for self.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 28, 2019 at 8:44 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Lists, Memoirs, Places, plans, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, decisions, Mondays, nonfiction, reading lists, travel books
Excited to be adding these wonderful books to self’s 2019 Reading List. Self loves travel books. It’s been a year since she devoted a reading year to them:
Alan Booth
Alexandra David Neel
Alison Wearing
Ann Jones
Anthony Doerr
Best Women’s Travel Writing series
Bill Bryson
- The Lost Continent
- Walk in the Woods
Blair Braverman
- Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube
Bruce Chatwin
Dervla Murphy
- Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Ellen Meloy
- Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River
Gabrielle Hamilton
Gretchen Legler
- On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Isabella L. Bird
- Six Months in the Sandwich Islands: Among Hawai’i’s Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes
Isabelle Eberhardt
- The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt
Jamaica Kincaid
Jan Morris
- Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
Julia Child
Katrina Kittle
- The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America
Kira Salak
- Four Corners: A Journey Into the Heart of Papua New Guinea
Mary Henrietta Kingsley
Melanie Bowden Simon
Peter Mayle
Rebecca Solnit
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Robyn Davidson
Stanley Stewart
- In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey Among Nomads
Suzanne Roberts
- Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail
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January 27, 2019 at 9:05 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Links, Places, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Writing)
Tags: inspiration, Mendocino, teaching
A deep examination of process.
A workshop that is as much about reflection as it is about writing.
A workshop about doing it over. And over. Until you get it right.
ONE STORY, SIX WAYS: Feb. 8 – 10, 2019
Instructor: Marianne Villanueva
Mendocino Art Center
42500 Little Lake Street
Mendocino, CA
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January 24, 2019 at 4:18 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Holidays, Links, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: art, Cambridge, Cee Neuner, England, Events, exhibits, London, museums, translation
This week, Cee Neuner’s Fun Foto Challenge is BLUE AND YELLOW.
As it’s a grey and chilly morning where self is, the Blue and Yellow will come from her archives.
Here’s a picture she took in Heathrow, December 2018. Somewhat blue and yellow:
The Oceania Exhibit at the Royal Academy of Art in London. The yellow is in the gilt frames on the wall.
Finally, sign on a sidewalk in front of Blackwell’s bookstore in Cambridge, England. Blue and Yellow, upper right-hand corner:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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