May 16, 2019 at 4:49 pm (Conversations, destinations, Holidays, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Fridays, memories, Paris
For only her second post participating in Nadia Merrill’s Photo-a-Week Challenge, she has to go back, waaaaay back, to 30 December 2017. She’d just spent one of the loneliest Christmases ever, in Paris. Lo and behold, when it was time for her to leave, she realized she’d come to feel comfortable in Paris (after spending two weeks holed up in a hotel just a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, where a very discreet hotel staff never asked her a single personal question, and only interfered with her routine once, when they insisted she go to the Louvre on Christmas Day — No lines, Madame!)
This week’s Photo-a-Week Challenge is RAINDROPS.
She thinks that’s what’s going on in these pictures. Or mebbe she was just too tired and it was too early in the morning and her hand was shaking. She was in a cab headed to the airport, where she was going to fly, first, to London, and then to the Philippines.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 11, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended, Sundays, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: California, English writers, Mendocino, novel, reading lists
View from Main Street, Mendocino, Today (It rained all day yesterday but today was glorious)
“And hadn’t the Kraken been nothing but legend, until a giant squid pitched up on a Newfoundland beach, and was photographed in a tin bath by the Reverend Moses Harvey?”
— The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, p. 144
This is self’s first Sarah Perry book. She’s quite enjoying it.
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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
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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!)
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December 13, 2018 at 5:53 am (destinations, Links, Places, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Cee Neuner, England, London, Oxford
All gratitude to Cee Neuner, for a prompt that allowed self to share these pictures, taken during her latest trip. She’d never have thought of posting them otherwise.
Traveling in winter is hard, self didn’t know just how hard until she was in the middle of the trip.
Blackfriar Train Station, London, November 2018
The Millenium Bridge, London, November 2018
Oxford Street Market, November 2018
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November 28, 2018 at 9:19 am (destinations, Explorers, Links, Places, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Cambridge, Cee Neuner, England, London
It seems apt, the theme of this week’s Fun Foto Challenge from Cee Neuner: COLD.
Self is in northern England. In Durham. It took self three hours by train from London, via Peterborough.
Her train pulled into Durham just after dark. She saw a large cathedral. She realized this must be her stop.
Since she hasn’t begun exploration of Durham yet (it’s a very bleak morning), the pictures she’s posting are from her previous stop, Cambridge.
Cambridge felt arctic.
This was Bridge Street when self left St. John’s Chapel after the Advent Choral Service:
Bridge Street, Cambridge: Sunday, 25 November 2018
And note the bundled up tour guide. Self was on a Cambridge Highlights Walking Tour. We stopped in front of the most fabulous clock.
Corpus Clock, Cambridge: Friday, 23 November 2018
And, finally, Blackfriars Station in London. The previous night, self stayed in a hotel on Fleet Street so she could attend the Journalists’ Service at St. Bride’s.
Blackfriars Train Station, London: Thanksgiving, 22 November 2018
Thanks as usual to Cee Neuner for the fabulous prompt.
Stay tuned.
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October 19, 2018 at 3:14 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: discoveries, Fridays, Ireland, Irish writers, poetry
by Aine MacAodha, from her collection Landscape of Self (Belfast: Lapwing, 2015)
It was early November
I remember because of
How cold it was
A mini ice age it was said.
15 below zero; small towns
In the north stood still
Phone lines came down
From the weight of frost and snow
Burst pipes in the hundreds
And the drains unable to cope
Backed up.
I slid on the ice; tore ligaments
In my arm when I was helped up.
I feel the aches again as winter
Loiters like a threat.
Bones shudder under skin
A warning of another ice age to come.
It was the talk of the town all winter season
From the post office in market street
To the butchers in campsite
It was something different to talk about I suppose.
Aine MacAodha is from Omagh in County Tyrone.
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October 1, 2018 at 8:43 pm (Books, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Mondays, novel, Philadelphia, reading lists, Willa Cather
I walked home with Antonia. We were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed. We lingered a long while at the Harlings’ gate, whispering in the cold until the restlessness was slowly chilled out of us.
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September 30, 2018 at 7:42 pm (Books, Conversations, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: novel, Philadelphia, reading lists
Self is reading My Antonia in Philadelphia.
A very warm, muggy Philadelphia.
And she’s in a section of My Antonia that takes place in the middle of a hard Nebraska winter.
lol
In Chapter XV we meet a new character, Anton Jelinek, who the narrator, Jim Burden, cannot help admiring for his “frank, manly faith.” Jelinek’s business is to make coffins.
- “The last time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden,” he said, as he sorted and tried his chisels, “was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up above Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a box cañon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you’ll believe it, they went to work the next day. You can’t kill a Swede. But in my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned out different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It’s a handy thing to know, when you knock about like I’ve done.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 20, 2018 at 4:09 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Weather)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Events, exhibits, Garden, museum, Redwood City, San Francisco, Saturday, summer, weekends
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week is: Horizontal Line(s). Self browsed through her photos and found these from Saturday, 16 June.
Went to the City to see the Rube Goldberg exhibit.
Lobby, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
Afterwards, self chilled in the backyard. It was a beautiful day!
Backyard, Redwood City
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