I ♥ Angela Carter, part 2
(I ♥ Angela Carter, part 1.)At midnight, especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that.
This is the most beautiful book I own.It's the first U.S. edition of The Bloody Chamber (published in 1977), a collection of deliciously creepy retellings of classic fairy tales and legends like Bluebeard's Chamber, the Erlking, and Beauty and the Beast. The heroines of these stories are brave and sensuous and morbid; the collection's usually pegged as 'feminist fairy tales' but they're so much more fun than that label lets on.
One of my favorite stories is 'The Lady of the House of Love'; as you read it you can totally imagine yourself as the 'beautiful queen of the vampires', alone in the gloom of her ruined chateau:
Closely barred shutters and heavy velvet curtains keep out every leak of natural light. There is a round table on a single leg covered with a red plush cloth on which she lays out her inevitable tarot; this room is never more than faintly illuminated by a heavily shaded lamp on the mantelpiece and the dark-red figured wallpaper is obscurely, distressingly patterned by the rain that drives in through the neglected roof and leaves behind it random areas of staining, ominous marks like those left on the sheets by dead lovers. Depredations of rot and fungus everywhere. The unlit chandelier is so heavy with dust the individual prisms no longer show any shapes; industrious spiders have woven canopies in the corners of this ornate and rotting place, have trapped the porcelain vases on the mantelpiece in soft gray nets. But the mistress of all this disintegration notices nothing...
The prose throughout is beautiful and evocative and pleasantly disturbing. There's an awful lot of romanticization of death in popular culture these days--(enough already with all these cheesy vampire sagas!)--and while the stories in The Bloody Chamber are often preoccupied with sex, death, and decay, this is not at all the indulgence of some teenybopper goth fantasy. Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness.Like I said, I am rationing the oeuvre of Angela Carter, although I suspect I have already read her best novel—Wise Children, her last, published in 1991. If you've never read her, The Bloody Chamber might be a good place to start.
Another Adventure
Aaaaaand that's about all I got. Happy Sunday!
Eastern Europe retroblog: Mostar & Sarajevo
We arrived in Mostar pretty late--it's a pleasant town best known for its historic bridge (which crazy locals occasionally like to jump off of), but we were pretty much only there to break the journey to Sarajevo. We chose a restaurant in the old town where the waiter spoke Italian, and I managed to communicate that Kate and I wanted only vegetables on our plates.The next day we took the train to Sarajevo. Way too many pigeons, strong Turkish coffee for breakfast and delicious spiral-shaped spinach pastries and juniper juice for dinner, shops full of beautiful shawls and metalwork.(Below: the main drag of the old town, the Baščaršija, which dates to the 16th century; a fountain in the courtyard of a mosque.)
I don't know what this building is--or used to be--but it's a real shame to let such an amazing piece of architecture fall into disuse and disrepair.
Three goofballs at the Sarajevo Brewery. Elliot sampled the local dark lager, Kate got baklava and I had a campari and orange. This was before I became a (very occasional) beer drinker. I think this was Elliot's last night--he took a train back to Budapest to go home, and Kate and I went on to the volunteering part of the trip.
Inside the Orthodox Cathedral.Next: Brčko, Bosnia, where Kate and I volunteered at a children's summer camp.
Sundress #2
And then, naturally, I bought more fabric.I'm still planning to make the basic dress out of Cal Patch's book, but I've got to draft the pieces first, and I wanted a second sundress now. I first found this fabric (the line is Santorini by Lila Tueller) while I was in London, but it was mad-crazy expensive (something like £11.50 per meter, which is roughly $15 per yard, when the fabric retails here for $8.95), and I wound up getting it on sale from My Needle & Thread (another Etsy shop). With the bold outlines around each leaf and flower, the fabric reminds me of a stained glass window.
(Park photos by John the Bad.)Sundress #2 took longer than #1 even though I skipped the pockets again. I realized midway through that my machine really needed a tune-up, so I packed it up and took it to the local Sew 'n Vac; I was holed up at Rachel's (she is a lifesaver, let me tell you) working on the new magnum opus; and then with my grandpa's funeral and family time and all.
(Kind of a goofy photo of me, but a better shot of the dress. Also, from looking at this one I think I need to adjust the right strap. My right, that is.)This dress has already been very much splashed on and stained with SPF 70 sunscreen.
The only change between #1 and #2 is the length of the bodice--this time I did a few more rounds (38 instead of 35).Now I'm ready to try something more challenging! I'm going to make a dress to wear at my launch party in October--fingers crossed it works out...
(She stuck a crochet hook in a ball of yarn and called it a yarnipop.)[Edit 6/21: Kate asked for a close-up of the bodice. I was concerned that the larger print would look odd under the shirring, but I think it looks totally fine.]
Memorial Day
Memorial Day means more to me this year.
The Navy Hymn is printed on the reverse.Gosh, do I miss him.(Home is the Sailor, part 1; Home is the Sailor, part 2.)
What's a beldame?
When people ask me about Petty Magic, I usually use the word 'witch' even though my narrator hates that word with a red-hot fiery passion--just because 'witch' is quicker to understand. (There's an old-school witch on the cover, too, spiriting a little girl away on her broomstick--but this is ironically appropriate.)
Think of us as sibyls or seraphs--fearsome, oh yes, but more or less benevolent.
Eve and the other beldames in Petty Magic live at least twice as long as ordinary women but age half as quickly. They can turn themselves into animals, travel thousands of miles in a twinkling, or render themselves invisible, but they get worn out and need to sleep and recharge just like anybody else. They can be sweet and solicitous like fairy godmothers, or...not. And they tell lies, so they say, only to keep the men in black from locking them up.Because Eve is more superwoman or benign enchantress than vindictive old hag, I wanted a different word for her. In Coraline, Neil Gaiman refers to the 'other mother' as a beldam, as in 'crone' or 'witch' (the word comes from Middle English--bel, grand, and dam, mother, grandmother being the original meaning). In the dictionary 'beldame' is only listed as an alternate spelling, but in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (written in 1819, revised in 1820) Keats's beldame is from the French, a 'beautiful lady'--that is to say, a sorceress.
She took me to her elfin grot,And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,And there I shut her wild sad eyes--So kiss'd to sleep.And there we slumber'd on the moss,And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,The latest dream I ever dream'dOn the cold hill side.I saw pale kings, and princes too,Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merciHath thee in thrall!"
The belle dame is a dangerous woman--a fairy, or a sort of banshee--who, in medieval legend, would lure men into an enchanted forest and make them lose all desire for anything else, even to go on living. The poem harks back to the chivalric tradition, in which 'women were to be loved from afar and to be considered unattainable.'
Archetypes aren't terribly interesting unless you can somehow subvert them (or better yet, subvert and reinforce). Can a 'dangerous woman' have (mostly) good intentions? Maybe not Keats' beldame...but definitely mine.(A version of this entry appeared on Read It Forward.)
Eastern Europe retroblog: Split, part 2
(Split, part 1.)I haven't felt like writing lately, let alone blogging, but sometimes the way to feel like doing something again is just to do it. I got some good writing done today for the first time in a week and a half, and now--back to the retroblog!One last post about Croatia. After Hvar, we spent another afternoon in Split before taking a train to Mostar in Bosnia.
This time we took a short bus trip out to Salona, the extensive ruins of a Roman city built on an earlier Greek settlement. It took us awhile to walk through the whole site, which has a bit of everything: streets, temples and early Christian churches, homes, public baths, aqueducts, a large amphitheater...
We met hardly any other tourists here—it was eerily quiet. The last picture reminds me a little of the ruined Emerald City in Return to Oz (kind of a bad film, I know, but a guilty-pleasure childhood throwback).Next up: Mostar and Sarajevo.
Home is the Sailor, part 2
We were really tickled when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer wanted to do a write-up on my grandfather and his accomplishments. The article is online, but in case the article gets taken down at any point, I'm going to repost it. [Edit, 2013: no longer online, sure enough.]
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Published May 22, 2010.
Theodore Colangelo, 90, defense-mapping official
By Claudia Vargas
Inquirer Staff Writer
Theodore Colangelo, 90, of Cinnaminson, a sailor during World War II who went on to be director of the Defense Mapping Agency distribution center in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer and multiple system atrophy Monday, May 17, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred from a Defense Mapping Agency office in New York state to the Philadelphia distribution center in 1959, he was a supply clerk. By the mid-1970s, he had risen to director, managing more than 120 employees, said former colleague Gerald Bonner of Cinnaminson.
Mr. Colangelo was known as a firm leader whom employees respected for his openness to new ideas, such as having an evaluation panel for promotions. But his biggest accomplishment was coordinating the military branches working within the distribution center.
When Mr. Colangelo first arrived, Bonner said, the Air Force and Navy foremen "were all trying to operate in their own ways."
Bonner, who was hired in 1975 as the personnel officer, found himself dealing with minor issues. Mr. Colangelo reorganized the joint operation to flow smoothly, he said.
"It was humming. I got bored," he said, adding that he left in 1980.
Mr. Colangelo retired in the early 1990s after 45 years of working with military mapping systems and distribution.
Mr. Colangelo had come to the United States as a 10-year-old from his native city of Pietragalla, Italy, with his seven siblings and widower father. Arriving in 1930, Mr. Colangelo and his family settled in Schenectady, N.Y.
When he was 16, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and a year later the Navy, where he was a seaman aboard the Erie.
After serving for three years, he returned to Schenectady. But a year later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he rushed back to the Navy, his daughter Eileen DiLullo said.
As a machinist mate on the Samuel N. Moore, Mr. Colangelo, during at least one typhoon, worked frantically to keep the destroyer's engines running, his daughter said.
Shortly before being discharged in 1947, Mr. Colangelo was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. While recovering at the VA Medical Center in Brooklyn, he fell in love with Dorothy Smelz, a social worker assigned to him. Six months later, they married.
Mr. Colangelo started working for the Defense Mapping Agency in 1948.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred to Philadelphia in 1959, he wanted a single-family home, so he settled in Cinnaminson, where he lived in the same house until he died.
He aimed to always be home by 5 p.m. to be with his family, his daughter said. But Mr. Colangelo sometimes had to work 20-hour days - and that's when Dorothy Colangelo knew something unusual was going on in the world.
In the days leading up to President John F. Kennedy's public announcement of the Cuban missile crisis, Mr. Colangelo had been holed up in the distribution center for many hours, his daughter said.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Daniel; daughters Susan D. Grant and Mary Ann McWilliams; four grandchildren; and a sister. His wife died in 1996.
A funeral was held Friday, May 21, at Snover/Givnish Funeral Home, Cinnaminson. Interment was at Lakeview Memorial Park, Cinnaminson.
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Grandpa would have been so pleased to see this in the paper. I knew next to nothing about his career at the Defense Mapping Agency, and it was strange (in a good way) to be hearing about it for the first time in the newspaper.
Thanks to everyone who left kind messages on the blog, Facebook, or by email (I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee to catch up on my correspondence right now). I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging topics soon, I promise. It's just that I feel odd writing about anything else right now, you know?
'Home is the sailor, home from the sea.'
My grandpa Ted passed away this afternoon. He was ninety, and hadn't been well in quite awhile, but it still came as a bit of a shock. You know how, when you're little, you think your parents are invincible? That's how I'd always felt about Grandpa Ted.
(With his father and four of his six sisters. Thanks to our cousin Paula for this picture.)During the war my grandfather was a petty officer aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific. He went for more than a year without setting foot on land, and that was the easy part--he'd survived kamikazes and two typhoons, during which the temperature in the engine room reached 180º F. When he got back to the States, he spent nearly a year convalescing in naval hospitals; for the rest of his life he dealt with some serious medical problems as a result of war-related injuries, and yet he always seemed to defy everybody's expectations. (Just to give you an idea, today he received Last Rites for the fifth time.) He never thought he'd live to see ninety; I sometimes joked he'd outlive us all.
(Summer 2005. This is how I want to remember him--robust, striding around the block in his Abercrombie & Fitch ballcap and t-shirt.)
(At the Mary Modern launch party with Grandpa Ted, Grandmom Kass, and Grandpop Mike, July 2007.)We didn't always agree--heck, that feels like an understatement, given our diametrical political beliefs--but he was a good man, and I loved him very much.
(Two pics from summer '06, with kids and grandkids.)I want to tell you the story of how my grandparents met. At the naval hospital in San Diego, they told him they were sending him home to New York for his big operation, and gave him a choice between hospitals in Queens (St. Albans) and Brooklyn. He knew that St. Albans was the newer hospital, and naturally he wanted to be treated at the best facility available. He opened his mouth fully intending to say "St. Albans," but "Brooklyn" is what came out. If he'd chosen the hospital in Queens he would never have met my grandmother.She was a lovely 23-year-old volunteer social worker, midway through an M.S.W. she would never complete. Sitting up in bed, he'd strain for a glimpse of her as she passed by his room. So he could speak to her, he kept asking for another pack of playing cards, and she asked him tartly how he could possibly lose so many decks. He wore her down, of course, and they married seven months later.I've always been fascinated with this story for that one inexplicable slip of the tongue. Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing Brooklyn, Nonno.(What's even more uncanny is that she wasn't supposed to be in Brooklyn either--she'd been assigned to a hospital in Trenton, but another volunteer, who'd been assigned to Brooklyn, asked my grandmother to switch so she could be close to her family. My grandmother agreed, even though Trenton offered free housing and Brooklyn did not. She was that nice.)
I'm so glad I got the chance to sit down with Grandpa Ted while he was still in good health and ask him about his childhood in Italy and his life during the war. I've been meaning to edit the raw audio and put all the stories on CD. Now would be a good time, eh?
(Outside the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, sometime in 1947.)Home is the sailor, home from the sea. (I think I like the A.E. Housman version better than Stevenson's.)[Note on 19th May: I have made a few edits to the above for historical accuracy--after talking to my aunt Eileen and listening to the stories we recorded in 2007, I realized I'd made a few mistakes.]
The Backyard Tourist, part 2
I'll never knock Philly for being grubby ever again. Can you believe these photos were taken inside the city limits? This is Wissahickon Valley Park, the north-west portion of Fairmount Park. If you can ignore the distant hum of air and road traffic and focus instead on the birdsong and wind in the trees, it really does feel like you're out in the middle of nowhere.One of the trails takes you under the Walnut Lane Bridge, which is pretty awe-inspiring from this vantage.
After leaving the park one day, I walked halfway across it before I realized where I was. This bridge is only a hundred years old, of course, but there's something so majestic about it, like a Roman aqueduct. You're so far below the traffic that it's easy to pretend it hasn't been used in centuries.Following the trail, there's a wooded ridge on one side and, on the other, Wissahickon Creek far below you. At the top of one of those ridges (Mom Rinker's Rock, according to Wikipedia) there's a statue of a man I took to be William Penn, with the word TOLERATION inscribed at the base (also according to Wikipedia: the statue isn't meant to be any Quaker in particular).
You know what this means? Seven years of good luck.
The Wind in the Willows, part 2
Especially for you, Paré:
And a better view of the stairs:
Can't even see the house from the street, but I want to live here so bad.
Eastern Europe retroblog: Split, part 1
The view from the train from Dubrovnik to Split (if I remember correctly, this landscape is technically in Bosnia).We found ourselves in Split (in Croatia) twice, before and after our trip by ferry to Hvar Island. (Oops--I should have posted 'part 1' before Hvar!) We didn't spend the night either time, but we had several hours to spend sightseeing each way, and on sojourn #1 we visited Diocletian's Palace, which dates from the late third, early fourth century A.D.
It's a huge complex, some parts below and some above ground, and it's so well preserved that there are actually shops and market stalls located inside it.Elliot at the entrance to...erm...I can't remember, even with the aid of Google. Cool shadow, though, no?
Below: the cathedral bell tower, which we climbed. Felt kinda woozy at the top--I'm not terribly good with heights but I always make myself go up anyway.
Hammin' it up, as usual. We found a good pastry shop on the quay, and sat on a bench under those palm trees where we spilled powdered sugar all over ourselves.Next: Split, part 2.
Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy
It's high time we had some more witchy stuff on here!Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy by Grillot de Givry has got to be the weirdest book I have ever cracked. The publisher's product description is somewhat misleading:
From raising the dead to foretelling the future, this historical tour of the occult offers a captivating exploration of sorcery and ceremonial magic. Prepared by a noted French historian, it ventures into virtually all of the classical arts, with 375 rare black-and-white illustrations derived from paintings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and architecture.
The author doesn't actually approach the material with the objective eye of a historian; he writes about necromancy and love philters and suchlike as if he actually believes in all this stuff. I can't decide if he's brilliant or cuckoo.
It is also very easy, according to several Black-books, to become invisible by carrying the heart of a bat, a black hen, or a frog under the right arm. A more elegant method is to wear the Ring of Gyges on your finger; you can then become visible or invisible at will simply by turning the stone inward or outward. This ring must be made of fixed mercury; it must be set with a little stone to be found in a lapwing's nest, and round the stone must be engraved the words, "Jésus passant ✠ par le milieu d'eux ✠ s'en allait." You must put the ring on your finger, and if you look at yourself in a mirror and cannot see the ring it is a sure sign that it has been successfully manufactured.
How nutty is that? There's plenty more where this came from, but I left the book at Seanan's when I was moving out of Galway and forgot about it while I was in Tipperary, so further excerpts will have to wait.
Great Book #44: The Wind in the Willows
'It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.'The Wind in the Willows is one of those classics I really don't know why I never read. Now I wish I'd read it as a child, because as I was listening to the Librivox recording (with a variety of readers, most of them excellent) I kept thinking too much like an adult:A toad riding a horse! Rats and moles eating bacon and lobster! Field mice singing Christmas carols! How silly!I also wish I didn't know anything about Kenneth Grahame, thanks to "The Tragedy of Mr. Toad." [Recently it has been pointed out to me what a rubbishy newspaper the Daily Mail is, so I apologize if 'Femail,' etc. offends anybody.] As I was listening, I did often think about how this book was the most substantial thing the love-hungry Alastair ever got from his father...at least according to the article.But setting all that aside--this really is a lovely book, full of beautiful descriptions of nature and the changing of the days and seasons.
As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.
Most of the episodes in The Wind in the Willows emphasize that true friendship occasionally entails a bit of personal sacrifice, and that loving your friends for who they are doesn't mean letting them go off and make outrageous fools (or menaces) of themselves. This is all communicated quite nicely without bonking children over the head with 'the moral of the story.' That said, I bet everybody looks forward to those chapters following the exploits of the incorrigibly conceited Toad, because the other animals are too sensible to be anywhere near as interesting.
'Glorious, stirring sight!' murmured Toad, never offering to move. 'The poetry of motion! The REAL way to travel! The ONLY way to travel! Here to-day--in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped--always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!''O STOP being an ass, Toad!' cried the Mole despairingly.
Toad's gleefully insane obsession with motor-cars, his imprisonment for auto theft and his flamboyant escape and subsequent adventures while impersonating a washerwoman--these passages are even more enjoyable than all the poignant bits about Rat and Mole's particular friendship, though I feel a bit guilty saying so.
[picture the following shrieked by a huuuge British guy with painted-on warts]:I'm being attacked by a cushion! AHH! I'm being attacked by a shoe! AHH! I'm being attacked by my foot! AHH!
—Toad in the Masterpiece Theatre version of "The Wind in the Willows"
I ♥ Shaye
Something really crappy happened in the publishing world last week.Let me back up. From the day I got my Mary Modern book deal (14 March 2006--can't ever forget a date that important), I felt really happy to be a part of Shaye Areheart Books. Shaye and Sally (my editor on Mary Modern) always made me feel not only that they loved my book, but that they cared about me personally. I got the impression that it wouldn't make one bit of difference to Shaye if I never made a bestseller list, so long as I kept telling good stories.Now, this sort of thing happens quite a bit--CEOs and other folks in lofty positions occasionally get ousted in publishing just like any other business--and I don't want this to turn into an anti-corporate rant or anything. (Well, all right: I composed the rant, and have just hit 'delete'.) I just wanted to ask that when you pick up a hardcover copy of Petty Magic this fall, stop and look at the colophon on the spine. It ought to have been a steaming coffee cup, with SHAYE AREHEART BOOKS written underneath.
Recap
I've been back from Yaddo several days now, and it's all starting to feel like a marvelous dream. To be able to write and read all day in a quaint little sun-lit study with no interruptions whatsoever, and a plastic lunch pail packed with a sandwich and fruit and carrot sticks wrapped in wax paper; to go for a run in the woods, or lay my yoga mat out on the back porch, and listen to the birds and the squirrels going about their business in the trees; to meet up with new friends at dinner, and play games in the pool house and have wine and snacks by a fire in a cozy sitting room, and to go back to work for a little while afterwards, if I felt like it...the whole experience was magical, it really was. One Saturday I laid in bed all afternoon reading Neverwhere--even ate my lunch in bed--and I didn't feel one bit guilty about it!As I said, I was a little nervous about going without internet access, but it actually felt really good to be unplugged and unreachable, unless I wanted to be (and I did quickly check my email a couple times a day, usually after breakfast and before dinner). And of course I was meeting so many interesting new people that I wanted to get to know them all better, rather than spend much time on the computer in the evenings. Everyone--staff and residents--was so incredibly kind and friendly!I know each person's experience of an artists' residency is going to be a bit different, and I think we were all looking to gain slightly different things, but for me the social aspect was almost as important as the actual work. We talked for hours about books (our own, and others'), and art, and pop culture, and shared horror stories from our childhoods, and I went to bed every night just feeling really, really content. I was fortunate enough to give my first-ever reading of Petty Magic after my new friend Nova read from her forthcoming novel, Imaginary Girls (look for it, summer 2011...it's going to be amazing!)--and even more fortunate afterward to be able to have one of those marvelous conversations with her that would, the next morning, allow all the disjointed bits of my fledgling novel to click into place. I love that kind of conversation--one you can look back on as a real turning point.So, if you are reading this and thinking of applying to Yaddo, I have one piece of advice: DO! If you haven't published a book/had a show/whatever yet, don't let that stop you; part of what makes Yaddo so awesome is that they bring together writers and artists of all levels of experience.
Eastern Europe retroblog: Hvar
Hvar was probably my favorite stop on our Eastern European adventure. Lavender fields (which we did not actually get to see, but we picked up plenty of soap and sachets to bring home), azure sea, perfect weather, atmospheric old town...
Sunday, 10 June 2007Hvar is going to be the highlight of our trip, I just know it. We arrived on the ferry from Split last night (at 6pm, still plenty light out) and found a guy who brought us back to an adorable little apartment with an ivy-draped terrace for only 80 kuna per person per night. That's about $15. (Most hostels cost more than that!)
I'm sitting at the table on this terrace and a little lizard just darted across the rough stone wall. I'm drinking Earl Grey, waiting for K&E to return from shopping for breakfast and feeling content. We got pasta, bread, and white wine and ate out here last night--more satisfying than many of our dining-out experiences here. When it got dark we lit a pillar candle and listened to the strains of the music festival down in the town square--there was some sort of choir performing (it sounded more like a barbershop quartet, with more than four), and cheesy pop and U2 and Sting playing at break-times. There were ten-year-old ballerinas (all in pink, of course) hanging around outside the supermarket--free food and red balloons.There is a very eloquent little sparrow sitting on a wire nearby...
(That's Kate's underwear on the line right over Elliot's head, by the way.)Next post: Split!
Yaddo in Pictures, part 2
The stairs at West House; two views of my study; reading on the back porch on a sunny afternoon; a walk in the woods.
Yaddo in Pictures, part 1
A neo-gothic pile; the gardens (which are open to the public); Katrina's room; another view of the mansion; one of the gargoyles in the dining room (gosh, that sounds familiar...)
Eastern Europe retroblog: Dubrovnik
Again, photographs of a beautiful place render description rather unnecessary. Dubrovnik is touristy and therefore everything is relatively expensive, and the walkable old town wall doesn't seem quite so marvelous when you realize it was recently reconstructed...but my, what a lovely place! After we walked the walls we went to the nearest beach and had ourselves a soak.
You'd walk around more than once, of course, which meant you'd be passing the same tourists two or three times. I remember walking by a couple of middle-aged English ladies in sensible shoes, and smiling every time I caught a snatch of their conversation--they were SO happy to be there. Everything was a delight to them. Man, I love people like that.
"Mosquito bites all over, including my face...Kate's all bitten too--we joked we have the plague...Been sniping them, and when I do there's a smear of blood on my palm. My own blood--the little bastards! One just dive-bombed onto my thigh. Smack! Serves you right."
(Detail of a fountain just inside the old town entrance.)
We'd arrived late in the day, and while we walked a quiet street right by the city wall we spotted a sign for a bar. We passed through the wall, and found this outdoor spot literally perched on the cliff. It was touristy, of course, but over drinks we enjoyed one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life.Next installment: Hvar Island.