Self’s choice is RED.
Self at 19, with Masako in Shibuya, Tokyo
Red Woven Bag from the Philippines, in Self’s Closet
Self’s Red Knapsack: The Penn Club, London, 23 November 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: COLOR OF YOUR CHOICE
February 13, 2019 at 9:06 pm (Personal Bookshelf, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Japan, London, memories, nostalgia, Philippines
Preparing, OSSW Day One
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.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Rainbow of Colors (At Least 4)
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.
Reading List 2019: Adding Travel Books
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
- The Road to Sata
Alexandra David Neel
- My Journey to Lhasa
Alison Wearing
- Honeymoon in Purdah
Ann Jones
- Lovedu
Anthony Doerr
- Four Seasons in Rome
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
- In Patagonia
Dervla Murphy
- Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Ellen Meloy
- Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River
Gabrielle Hamilton
- Blood, Bones and Butter
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
- A Small Place
Jan Morris
- Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
Julia Child
- My Life in France
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
- Travels in West Africa
Melanie Bowden Simon
- La Americana: A Memoir
Peter Mayle
- A Year in Provence
Rebecca Solnit
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Robyn Davidson
- Desert Places
Stanley Stewart
- In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey Among Nomads
Suzanne Roberts
- Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail
Cee Neuner’s Fun Foto Challenge: BLUE AND YELLOW
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.
Proust and Versailles
January 19, 2019 at 3:37 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Fridays, memories, novel, reading lists
As self lingers over the Introduction to Lydia Davis’s translation of Swann’s Way, she learns that Proust wrote most of Remembrance of Things Past in Versailles, in an apartment on 102, boulevard Haussmann. The apartment is now owned by a bank, but one can still see the bedroom where he spent most of his writing time.
Self’s niece planned a trip to Versailles in May 2017, and self, so impressed by niece’s thirst for adventure, agreed to accompany her. The lines to get into the palace were overwhelming (and most were Asian tourists). It was hot.
But — Proust! If only she had known!
Here are a few pictures from that visit.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Monotones (One Single Color)
January 4, 2019 at 11:48 pm (destinations, Links, Places, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, California, Cee Neuner, Fridays, Garden, inspiration, Ireland, photography, Redwood City
Cee Neuner has very interesting prompts. This week’s is MONOTONES. Love it.
Lake Annagmakerrig: 4:30 a.m., 8 November 2018 (Just realized that it’s too light in the photograph for 4:30 a.m. DUH! The photo is time-stamped for California time, which is eight hours ahead of Ireland. The actual time in Ireland when self took the picture was 12:30 p.m.)
It amuses self to think about how the first color that usually comes to mind when one thinks of Ireland is green.
Clouds, Annaghmakerrig: 7:30 a.m. (California time, which means 3:30 p.m. in Ireland), 7 November 2018
Fatsia, Backyard, Redwood City: 11 a.m., 26 September 2018
Which Way Photo Challenge, Part 2
December 31, 2018 at 6:11 pm (Books, destinations, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: England, fantasy, inspiration, London, Mondays, Oxford, Philip Pullman, pilgrimage
Much thanks to sonofabeach96 for the prompt, which sent self back to her archive of photographs, taken during her most recent trip:
London Alley, 20 November 2018
Rainy Night, London, 20 November 2018
Wolvercote, the Ruins of Godstow Abbey in the distance, 16 November 2018: Philip Pullman’s LA BELLE SAUVAGE led self here. (When’s Book 2, The Secret Commonwealth, coming out? Been waiting a long, long time!)
Which Way Photo Challenge (Week of 27 December 2018)
December 30, 2018 at 11:25 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Places, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: Durham, England, London, Philadelphia, photography, restaurants
Showing the ways people move from one place to another on land: roads, walkways, stairs, elevators, escalators, railway tracks, ski lifts, runways, canals, locks, parking lots, driveways, tunnels.
The Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, Downtown Philadelphia, 5 December 2018
Crossing Over the River Wear, Durham, 29 November 2018
Millenium Bridge, London, 22 November 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
On This Day, One Year Ago
December 23, 2018 at 4:08 pm (destinations, Filipino Writers, Holidays, Places, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: nostalgia, Paris
Self happened to be in the City of Light. This is what she did.
