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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May 30, 2018 at 10:57 pm (Links, Weather)
Tags: causes, Cee Neuner, Events, memories, Protests, Redwood City
Happy to be reminded (by Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Flags and Banners) that Redwood City, CA had an amazing event on March 24, 2018.
The weather was gorgeous and everyone was smiling and happy.
Redwood City, Courthouse Square, 24 March 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 22, 2018 at 6:25 pm (destinations, Places, Sundays, television, The Guardian, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: adaptations, humor, indulgences, memories, review
Self is watching Versailles Season 2. She is so happy the series was renewed! It has proved extremely addictive.
The Guardian: With ladies in milky baths, ocular torture and piles of flesh, Versailles returns for more pre-revolution rumbustiousness (Shouldn’t that be rambunctiousness? Whatever). But is there depth beneath the bling?
Where were we then in Versailles, which returns for a second series? The palace is still under construction, and 1,000 workers have died so far. Versailles was clearly the Qatar of its day, and those gold gates are very Gulf State chic, no?
The writer is Sam Wollaston.
Self bows to your wicked wit, Sir. She bows.
From her visit to Versailles, May 2017:
Versailles, 28 May 2017: It was too bloody hot.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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