August 17, 2017 at 5:50 pm (Places, Recommended, Traveling, Books)
Tags: British authors, history, nonfiction, reading lists, war literature, World War I
Just finished reading about the siege at Gallipoli: the numbers are staggering. One simply cannot grasp the idea of almost a million men fighting on one spit of land overlooking the Dardanelles. The problem is that nothing really happened, other than a whole lot of dying, followed by a British retreat.
Next chapter is the Invasion of Mesopotamia. Again lots of strategizing and moving of armies.
Finally, finally, we’re at the siege of Kut:
The Sanussi fighters went south to occupy the oasis towns of the Western Desert, stretching from Siwa near the Libyan frontier to Farafra and Bahariya, where they were within striking distance of the Nile Valley but beyond the reach of British forces.
It is a good thing they do, because they only have “one quick-firing cannon and three machine guns” to share among “fewer than 1,200 men.”
The British go in hot pursuit, and finally corner the Sanussi at a small “coastal village” called Sidi Barrani. Here the Ottoman Army was forced to make its last stand. Self just wants to say, the British Army were not gracious in victory. A wild melee ensued, with lots of sabres engaged and horses shot out from under and officers taken prisoner (but what happened to the foot soldiers, self has no idea. There weren’t that many to begin with. It was a very one-sided battle)
It’s very surreal reading. Reminds her that while she was re-discovering the City of Light in May, just a few months ago, she was reading, of all things, Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, which taught her a lot about mules.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 12, 2017 at 2:13 am (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: California, desserts, discoveries, indulgences, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is ELEMENTAL. Erica V. on The Daily Post describes her response to experiencing the American Southwest for the first time: “I was both confused and in awe of this extreme landscape.”
Last month, self was in Pasadena. Her first visit south in three years. She Airbnb’ed in the Pasadena hills. The house was at the very top of a winding driveway. Behind it was nothing but steep, scrubby hillside.
Just inside the front door was a rock, a very heavy rock. Self should have asked her host about it, but she never did:
There was a chameleon that kept trying to get into self’s unit. It was a beautiful thing. Every time self left the apartment, the chameleon would be clinging to the screen door. One day, self decided to photograph it:
Finally, a slice of green matcha tiramisu from Urth Caffé, in downtown Pasadena, a block from legendary bookstore Vroman’s. It looks for all the world like moss!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 6, 2017 at 9:20 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Flowers, Links, Lists, Places, postaday, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, television, Traveling)
Tags: flower photography, Game of Thrones, Gendry, Gendrya, India, Ireland, photography, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Been reading Gendrya all day in preparation for tonight’s Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4. Which self knows already from all the leaks has NO. GENDRY. Nevertheless. It is reportedly spectacular. There is a scene in which . . . but, no. THERE SHALL BE NO FURTHER SPOILERS.
She’s posted twice on this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge TEXTURES. Now it’s time to appreciate these beauties from other WordPress bloggers!
Kudos to the bloggers!
Stay tuned.
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August 5, 2017 at 3:16 pm (Places, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: art, inspiration, London, museum, restaurants, short story, work-in-progress, writing process
Setting, The Wallace Collection, London:
Fragonard’s “The Swing” Originally, the lady was to have been pushed by a bishop. But this was evidently too much. So, instead, we have an elderly gent sitting on a stone balustrade, in the shadows behind.
- She walked past the Flemish Masters in the East Drawing Room, strode past Titian’s Madonna and David Teniers the Younger’s the Deliverance of Saint Peter.
Later, self took her notes and added this sentence (while having lunch at Chez Nous, 22 Hanway Street):
- She was more of a café person than her friend Maxine, who’d set the bar pretty high, whose idea of dinner was to go to the Ottolenghi in Islington, who had impressed her parents into gifting her a trip to London (she couldn’t be bothered to learn French, so London it was) by getting an A on a paper about the Thirty Years War (“1618 to 1648,” she told her mother, Cici, who blushed with maternal pride).
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 31, 2017 at 3:22 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Chinese food, coffee, London, memories, Mondays, museum, restaurants, San Francisco
Self scoured her archives to find illustrations for this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: SATISFACTION.
She’s feeling nostalgic.
Capuccino Break, British Imperial War Museum, May 2017
Chinatown Love, October 2016
Eating with Emily at Fabulous Chéz Nous, 22 Hanway Place, London. We waited for this meal: it was a promise we made to each other when self left London last July. Emily’s daughter directed the Wonder Woman movie.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 29, 2017 at 4:30 pm (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, Family, Flowers, Links, Lists, Places, Plays, postaday, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, Cork, Events, Ireland, London, memories, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Readings, Sacramento, Saturdays, Shakespeare, summer, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Washington DC, Wordpress
- Share a photo of something that brings you satisfaction. It can be monumental, minor, or something in between.
— Jen H., The Daily Post
For this post, self decided to kill two birds with one stone. She’ll look back at her fondest memories of 2017 (thus far) — the moments that gave her the most satisfaction.
From Shakespeare’s Globe, her last night in London, June 2017
The Eiffel Tower: May 2017
Quarterly West reading at Sixth Engine, Washington DC, February 2017
Bus Stop (near the Cathedral of Notre Dame)
Waiting for the beginning of Kenneth Macmillan’s beautiful, stunning ballet, “Mayerling”: Saturday, May 13
The Main House, Under a Crescent Moon
The Forest Seen From the Lake: Early March
Going to the Globe and seeing Tristan and Yseult; sorting through old photographs of Dearest Mum; seeing the Eiffel Tower up close; reading her story First Causes at Sixth Engine in Washington, DC; watching Mayerling at the Royal Albert Hall; visiting Cork; Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 25, 2017 at 3:57 am (Artists and Writers, Flowers, Food and Drink, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, humor, museum, San Francisco
Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Airplane “Found Art”: Self’s seatmate on a flight from the East Coast back to California was a little girl named California Rose. She made self this sculpture out of Twizzle sticks! The finishing touch: a tiny Mini-Me on the top!
Most Creative Use of Twizzle Sticks Ever!
Another Fine Detail: A Graham Cracker Lion at the Base of the Flowers
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July 24, 2017 at 6:04 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Places, plans, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: artists residency, British authors, Edinburgh, fantasy, Hawthornden, inspiration, memories, Mondays, Scotland, short story, writing process
Just to show you how mind-numbingly slow her mind is, there are stories she’s begun five, even 10 years ago, whose words sit in her MacBook, languishing.
Five years ago, while self was in Hawthornden, she met two British poets: Joan McGavin and Jenny Lewis.
After dinner, while we all gathered in the parlor, these two would talk. And if self did nothing in that whole month she was there (June 2012) except listen to the stories, she would count that month well spent.
She also remembers visiting the National Museum in Edinburgh, and seeing there a figure of Dolly the Sheep. And dreaming of a giant Dolly the Sheep looking in through the manor windows.
Dolly the Sheep was the first successfully cloned sheep. She was born on 5 July 1996 and died on 14 February 2003.
Self was channeling sheep apparently because she even began writing a Dolly the Sheep story, which began:
- The ghost of Dolly the Sheep, and three dun-polled cows.
Hawthornden was the place where self worked on editing Magellan’s Mirror for J Journal. And that is quite a fantastical story (The Philippines populated by a race of giants).
Then she began going to Ireland and started writing dystopia.
Goal for today: Finish that Dolly the Sheep story!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 21, 2017 at 2:40 pm (Artists and Writers, Plays, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: art, exhibits, Fridays, London, postaday, postaweek, Sacramento, Shakespeare, Wordpress
Jessica Dunne exhibit at B. Sakata Garo Gallery, 20th Street, downtown Sacramento
Self loves bright colors!
A T-shirt from the gift shop at Shakespeare’s Globe: A Quote from Romeo and Juliet
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July 20, 2017 at 6:38 pm (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Pianos, Places, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Filipino food, memories, postaday, postaweek, Sacramento, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is:
UNUSUAL
The prompt comes from guest host Lignum Draco: “Experiment.” Try something “unusual.”
Don’t know whether self is interpreting this week’s Photo Challenge correctly but, without further ado, self’s takes on “unusual”:
Gina’s Filipino Café, 1101 Twelfth St., downtown Sacramento
- There is only one Filipino restaurant in downtown Sacramento. And it just so happened to be very close to the apartment self was renting. Adobo is the quintessential Filipino dish. Anthony Bourdain said the best pork he ever tasted was in the Philippines.
Still can’t get over the fact that this bridge over the Sacramento River is such a vibrant, fun yellow! Cool!
- It’s all there in the caption.
Dearest Mum was the reigning superstar of her day (She won the New York Times International Piano competition when she was just 14). In spite of that, she was very demure.
- Photos from a stash self had in her closet. She stumbled across them just two weeks ago. Dearest Mum as a shy flower. Before self was even a notion. She went on to marry Dear Dad, who took her home to the Philippines (She had grown up East Coast, mainly New York City) and with whom she had five children.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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