Another photo challenge!
This one is loose: any picture taken with your cell. The host is Journeys with Johnbo.
Here are self’s fridge magnets. Shakespeare rules!
Tag: inspirations
-
As a nation, our adjustments have been profound.
In the weeks after 9/11, I was proud to lead a united, resilient people. So much of our politics has become an . . . appeal to worry, anger, and resentment. I can only tell you that on our day of trial and grief, I saw people reach for their neighbor’s hands and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know.
I saw people reject prejudice, and accept people of the Muslim faith. That is the America I know.
This is not mere nostalgia. this is the truest version of ourselves. This is what we have been, and what we can be again.
On 9/11, the terrorists discovered that a random group of Americans is a remarkable group of people . . . They shocked the terrorists. This is the America I know.
Self found it significant that in his speech, 43 mentioned that we “have seen evidence that” we continue to see terrorism today, but on a new front, at home: “In their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit, and they must be confronted.”
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
-
Self still playing catch-up on the Photographing Public Art Challenge, co-hosted by Cee Neuner and Marsha Ingrao, which she adores.
She just completed a road trip to the Central Coast. She loves doing road trips because it’s a break from the unrelenting heat in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Robin’s, 4095 Burton Drive, Cambria: Each Table Top is a unique patchwork of tiles. Mine had a plane.
Cambria Nursery, 2801 Eaton Road, Cambria
Fence as Art: Cambria Nursery, 2801 Eaton Road, Cambria
-
Wow! Self LOVES the quote from Agnes Martin that inspired this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge!
She had a lot of fun going through her archives to identify her sources of inspiration.
Which are MANY. Here are a few:
- Gardens
Front Yard, May
- Beaches
Ocean Beach, Carmel
- History
The Jesuits in the Philippines, by Horacio de la Costa, S. J. (Harvard University Press)
Self is so glad she can share her inspirations with dear blog readers.
-
It did not turn out to be the super-spreader event that we all feared it might be.
Today, CNN reported that the Olympic Village reported 358 positive corona cases. While not insignificant, when considering the thousands who congregated in Olympic Village, this is an achievement. Kudos to host Japan!
For two weeks, self watched in awe as athletes battled their personal demons and PUT ON A SHOW.
Will never forget:
- Stanford’s Katie Ledecky, slaying all
- the courage of the entire US women’s gymnastics team: Suni Lee, Simone Biles, Mykayla Skinner, Jade Carey, Grace McCallum, and Jordan Chiles
- Bobby Finke’s amazing races
- Hidilyn Diaz delivering the Philippines’ first Olympic medal ever, and it was GOLD
- German swimmer Florian Wellbrock losing twice, in the 800 and 1500, then coming back to win the 10k
- Ukrainian swimmer Mykhailo Romanchuk, losing to Finke in the 1500, still having a sense of humor (photo-bombing Finke during his interview with Michelle Tafoya)
- Neeraj Chopra delivering India’s first Olympic gold in track, in the javelin
and so many, many other stories, impossible to list all here.
Hidilyn Diaz, Filipina weightlifting champion
AND they even got a Belarussian sprinter her freedom.
Can’t wait for Paris 2024.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
-
I did a post last week about Annaghmakerrig Lake. These are from the same visit (March 2017), but taken of the trees outside my cottege at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig.
For a blissful month each year, I journeyed to this beautiful corner of Ireland, with one purpose only: to write. I was supposed to go in 2020, but of course COVID. My hope is to return, perhaps in 2023?
Thank you to Becky of The Life of B. If not for her #TreeSquare Challenge, I would not have thought to post these pictures.
-
Thanks to Cee Neuner and Marsha Ingrao for co-hosting a new challenge, Photographing Public Art (PPAC).
How it works:
- We will take turns, one of us hosting every week exploring art in public places. We invite you to join in the fun of exposing public art where you find it – at home or in your travels.
For self’s first post for this challenge, self is happy to share this sculpture, standing right next to the San Luis Obispo Train Station, which she stumbled on last week:
Artist: Elizabeth MacQueen
Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.
-
There’s a beautiful gallery of inspiring photos on Travels and Trifles.
What gives self inspiration? Flowers. And books.
These blue flowers are so pretty. Every year, they come back, and this year the blooms have been especially profuse. They wind through the branches of the cherry trees and drape the sidewalk. No one seems to mind.
Front yard, September 2020 Self is a writer. As a writer, she finds inspiration in books. These are a few books she recently checked out from her local library:
Finally, a very special place, one that self would spend every moment of every day in, if she could: the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury. When she sees the orange couch, she knows she’s home.
London Review Bookshop, November 2019 Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
-
Self decided to join the American Rose Society this year, and was so happy to receive their magazine.
The July/August issue has a very interesting article about Memorable Rose Gardens by Mike and Angelina Chute.
“All great gardens are dynamic, constantly changing over time . . . “
She’s never heard of any of the gardens. There’s one called Roseraie de L’Hay, “in the municipality of Val-de-Marne, five miles south of Paris, and only 30 minutes by train.” From the train station, it’s “a short bus ride to the little rose garden.”
There’s one in Rome, Il Roseto, “located on the slopes of the Aventine Hill, a short walk from the Colosseum. Il Roseto is built on a site once home to a Jewish cemetery. In memory of the cemetery and those that had been buried there, the garden’s paths are laid out in the shape of a menorah.”
There’s Queen Mary’s Rose Garden in Regent’s Park in northwest London (also home of the London Zoo) and there are “approximately 12,000 roses on display.”
And there is Austin Roses in Shropshire, “an agricultural area in England’s West Midlands.”
Next time she’s in Europe, she’ll make it a point to see some of these fabulous rose gardens.
In the meantime, there’s a pretty fabulous rose garden in Filoli, less than 10 minutes’ drive away. And here are a few pictures self took of her own roses:
Barbra Streisand Rose 
Frida Kahlo Rose 
Iceberg Rose
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Kanlaon 