For the past week, self has been exploring East London. Well, maybe ‘exploring’ isn’t the right word: she’s been mostly reading and writing and sending stuff out and trying to get home sooner so she can vote in the California primary — it may seem funny to cut a trip short just to vote in a primary, but she takes nothing for granted these days.
Here are the positions up for vote: California U.S. Senate, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer, Attorney General, Insurance Commissioner, Member of State Board of Equalization, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, U.S. Representative in Congress, State Senator, State Assembly Member, as well as other local candidates. She is, of course, voting Democrat all the way down the ballot. And if there’s one thing she’s proud about, it’s about raising a son who’ll vote Democrat all the way down the ballot, too!
These past six years have been exhausting: she’s cut off ties with friends she’s known for decades, because all of a sudden they’re calling Hillary “ugly” and say women should not be wearing pantsuits. Think it’s ridiculous? So does self.
Anyhoo, while knocking about East London (which is as far from tourist-y as you can get in London), she stumbled onto a working farm. You can smell the manure from a long way off, it is a little disconcerting, but at least all self had to do was follow her nose.
What a place, though! It sells cheese, grains, veggies — the usual stuff sold by an organic farm. And the minders look exactly like the people in California. In fact, they may even look slightly more hippie-ish than organic farmers do back home. East London hippies — self never knew such a type existed!
Thank you to John for coming up with the great theme! As he explains:
I’m occasionally accused of having a (weird, warped?) sense of humor, so my first thoughts for a theme were: humor, humorous, fun, funny, pleasing or pleasurable. Objective, subjective? Simple, nuanced? Can we photograph such an abstract, humanoid concept?
I hope, as this is published, we can still find at least a corner of our lives for some humor. ‘We must keep our sense of humor, sometimes it’s all we have left.’
Self has spent most of April in County Down, Northern Ireland. It’s a lovely, peaceful place, filled with sheep, lambs, cows, horses, and myriads of birds. The animals just did not know what to make of self and would stare. And stare. And stare.
Love windows, all kinds of windows. Thanks to Ludwig Keck for hosting the Monday Windows Challenge. These windows are from River Mill, a beautiful place in County Down, just a little ways from Ardglass. Run as an artists retreat by poet Paul Maddern, it’s got everything: a beautiful garden, a calm atmosphere, and five-star cooking by Paul!
Travel with Intent’s One Word Challenge this Sunday is FOUND. Her photo of a relief from Pompeii is amazing in its detail. It was “from the tomb of an organizer of gladiator games.”
Self’s FOUND photos are a little humorous. She’s doing a writer’s residency in Northern Ireland. On an after-dinner walk with a fellow resident, she found these animals coming in closer for another look. They were intrigued, right? People like self being somewhat of a rarity in these parts.
Self is spending time at a writers residency just south of Belfast. It has the most beautiful garden, which sits right next to a brook. Masses of pretty white and yellow daffodils are in bloom.
Met the author at the just-concluded AWP Book Fair, and it was grand. Turns out he read self’s short stories in college. (Therefore, self is old. Now her secret’s out!!!! LOL)
Seriously, it was exciting. He even mentioned a book report he did on self’s work. And his teacher was DIANA ABU-JABER.
From the back cover:
Professor Francis Kauffman has unwittingly landed himself in prison where he’s faced with an insurmountable task: execute a fellow inmate. Charged with igniting a political insurrection among his students at a university in Beijing, Kauffman is sent to the notorious Kun Chong Prison, where his existence grows stranger by the hour as he struggles with the weight of his imprisonment and his incurable need to write about it in a place where art is forbidden, and the inmates must act as executioner.
Opening sentence of this (dystopian) novel:
“I don’t know why we don’t eat with the other prisoners on the first floor.”
Your topic this week is March Spring or Autumn Season. In the southern hemisphere Autumn has just started and in the northern hemisphere Spring is coming into full swing most places. Feel free to post either season.
Self created a collage of photos where the color green (color of spring!) appears. Most were taken at the just concluded AWP annual conference, the first in-person conference since 2019:
The annual AWP Conference was held in Philadelphia this year. Self spent two days browsing the AWP Bookfair: she uncovered a whole treasure trove of quirky literary magazines and small presses.
To refuse to countenance a war that does not speak its true name . . . you can no longer mumble the old excuse, “We didn’t know”; and now that you do know, can you continue to feign ignorance or content yourselves with mere token utterances of horrified sympathy?
Kanlaon 