February 17, 2021 at 12:38 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Calls, Conversations, Dearest Mum, Family, Links, Lists, plans, Plays, Recommended, Relatives, television, The Economist)
Tags: Cal Shakes, concerts, COVID Listening, COVID Reading, COVID watching, favorites, Garden, memories, Mendocino, music, Peaky Blinders, Shakespeare, The Crown, The Expanse, Trader Joe's
It’s been almost a year since the world stopped, plans got thrown out the window, and nothing will ever be the same.
Self thought she’d take a moment to celebrate the things that got her through the past year:
Of course, gardening. Her garden has never looked so great. Every day she watches the oxalis in her backyard get higher and higher. And she just loves it.
Second, books, and her fantastic local library and their curbside pick-up system. She’s been using it since June (Before that, she ordered many books from Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, which is equally fantastic). Also, self would like to thank the AUTHORS of these wonderful books. When self needed to be transported to another place and time, these authors delivered:
Self would also like to thank FREE CONCERTS. The week after everything shut down, St. Bride’s in London began streaming everything. And so did St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, which used to hold free noontime concerts every Tuesday.
She would also like to thank Cal Shakes, whose summertime Shakespeare was a high point of her summer, as long as she was home in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Her first Cal Shakes was Romeo and Juliet. ADAM SCOTT PLAYED ROMEO. Sold!!!) A few days ago, she got a message that they would mount ONE live production this summer (Dates to be announced), with appropriate social distancing, of course: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
Also, FaceTime. Self has actually learned to FaceTime with Dearest Mum. It’s been so great.
And The Economist, which managed to come every week (every two weeks lately, since DeJoy destroyed the USPS)
Finally, she’d like to thank her favorite TV shows, because she’d never have gotten through without them: The Expanse (closing with Season 6), Peaky Blinders (closing with Season 6), The Crown.
A big hand also for Trader Joe’s, for being most sanitary of all the different supermarkets she’s shopped in.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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May 25, 2020 at 4:57 pm (Books, Explorers, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: COVID Reading, inspiration, memories, Mendocino, Mondays, nonfiction, The Philippines, Venice, writing process
Self has many thoughts about the sea because … well, she comes from one of the 7,100 islands of the Philippines.
When she visited Venice, some years back, she encountered the Maritime Museum (off San Marco Plaza), and first encountered the Venetian expression “married to the sea.”
In the writings about the sea, the sea is referred to as feminine. Also, mercurial.
Perhaps this is why she chose to write her novel. It’s about the sea, of course. And she’s been reading about seafarers ever since.
Two years ago, she was teaching in Mendocino. One of her favorite hangouts was Gallery Bookshop, corner of Albion and Kasten in Mendocino Village (the most fabulous bookstore, with its own resident cat). She found a book written by a retired US Admiral.
She just started reading it (thank you, Corona Virus). Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans
The Introductory Chapter is called The Sea Is One:
It is worth remembering that each of us is, essentially, largely made of water. When a human baby is born, it is composed of roughly 70 percent water. It has always fascinated me that roughly the same proportion of the globe is covered by water — just over 70 percent. Both our planet and our bodies are dominated by the liquid world, and anyone who has sailed extensively at sea will understand instinctively the primordial tug of the oceans upon each of us when we look upon the sea.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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November 6, 2019 at 5:00 pm (Filipino Writers, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Mendocino, short story, speculative fiction, supernatural, work-in-progress, writing process
TO DO
Weekend in Mendocino: Clouds lower, spit rain. The meadows on the headlands are green like Ireland’s. No flowers yet, it’s still early in the year.
Out there, where the surf meets the cliffs, lives a Kraken.
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August 16, 2019 at 2:26 am (destinations, Links, Places, Plays, Traveling)
Tags: Cal Shakes, Cee Neuner, Cornwall, England, Fowey, Mendocino, summer
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is TREES.
This is self’s second photo challenge post today. She spent a long time poring over her photo archive and came up, finally, with these three:
Early Morning Fog, Mendocino, April 2018
Cal Shakes Grove, Orinda, CA, September 2018
Monterey Pines in Fowey, Cornwall, England, May 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 22, 2019 at 2:26 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Filipino Writers, Flowers, Links, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: fairy tales, flash fiction, Hotel Amerika, inspiration, Literary Magazines, Manila, Mendocino, The Philippines
Thanks once again to viveka for inspiring self to try posting to the current Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: DREAMY.
Self is a short story writer (though some of her stories are over 50 pages!).
- This Red Riding Hood Lamp followed her from one childhood home to another; self’s parents gave it to her when she was about five.
She brought it to the States with her, when she left for grad school. And here it is now, in self’s home in Redwood City, California.
It was the perfect gift — one that nurtured her imagination and encouraged her to dream.
- Here’s an image from the cover of Hotel Amerika, a literary magazine (based in Chicago) which published self’s flash, Ghosts. She loves the surreal, and so she loves the image.
Hotel Amerika, Vol. 8 No. 2 (Spring 2010)
- Finally, a landscape absolutely made for dreaming: Mendocino.
Mendocino Headlands: April 21, 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 3, 2019 at 5:02 pm (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: discoveries, history, Mendocino, nonfiction
Found this book in Gallery Bookshop, Mendocino, last year.
Love any book on Sea Power. Because oceans are life. And self loves reading about them.
The World’s Oceans: Shipping Lanes and Choke Points, from Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans, by Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.)
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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February 8, 2019 at 2:46 am (Conversations, destinations, Food and Drink, Lists, plans, Plays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: lunch, Mendocino, restaurants, Shakespeare, teaching
Drove up to Mendocino, which as the crow flies is only 200 miles from Redwood City, but always takes self at least FIVE HOURS.
On the way, she stopped by Yorkville Market and had lunch:
And then she mulled over the writing exercises she should start tomorrow with.
Should she have the students practice writing one very, very, very long, run-on sentence? With points to whoever can come up with the most run-on sentence?
Or, for fun, should she have them write a piece that’s all bad grammar and deliberately wrong spelling? Hamberder, anyone? Smocking guns?
Should she have them write a piece that’s all dialogue?
Should she ask them to capture every nuance of a piece of reality . . . in one sentence?
Should she have them practice writing a conversation that grows from an association of ideas (like a Harold Pinter play?)
Should she have them practice delaying the outcome for as long as possible?
She can’t decide. She’ll have to sleep on it.
BTW, this is one of the plays being presented by the Mendocino Theatre Company in 2019:
Mendocino Theatre Company, 2019 Season
Stay tuned.
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January 27, 2019 at 9:05 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Links, Places, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Writing)
Tags: inspiration, Mendocino, teaching
A deep examination of process.
A workshop that is as much about reflection as it is about writing.
A workshop about doing it over. And over. Until you get it right.
ONE STORY, SIX WAYS: Feb. 8 – 10, 2019
Instructor: Marianne Villanueva
Mendocino Art Center
42500 Little Lake Street
Mendocino, CA
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November 23, 2018 at 2:48 pm (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Cambridge, England, fantasy, Fridays, His Dark Materials, Mendocino, mysteries, Philip Pullman, reading lists, The Odyssey, translation
- The more you don’t make contact, the more impossible contact becomes, as if silence can enlarge like a seep of blood.
The writing in Missing, Presumed got stronger, the voice more confident, after about the halfway mark.
Today, self was in Heffers and found yet more books she wishes she could have purchased. But — no, it’s too much. She’s hauling luggage to Durham next.
She had to content herself with taking pictures.
Heffers, Trinity Street, Cambridge: Friday, 23 November 2018
When, oh when, is The Secret Commonwealth, Book 2 of the Book of Dust, coming out? Philip Pullman keeping very mum.
Waterstones, Sidney Street, Cambridge: Friday, 23 November 2018
Can you imagine, Emily Wilson, whose translation of The Odyssey self bought in hardcover from Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, earlier this year, is reading tonight in Cambridge?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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