Cabins are in my stars, stories-- only11 days 'til Christmas

"My Cabin," 5 x 7 watercolor card

As this year's star journey continues toward Christmas, my thoughts turn again to one of my most iconic symbols, a cabin, usually in the mountains.
Those who know me well have seen me write and paint about them many times. No wonder one of my earliest cards this year was of another cabin, in the mountains where all the stars shine brightly, all full of dreams, wishes, warmth, memories and more.
If you wish, here are three links, stories, paintings and photos of cabins in my life and their influence. 

Our cabin

Earliest article comes from just over a decade ago, when this blog was new, "Where's Your Cabin?" 
The others, five years later, shows a painting and photo of our cabin when we were growing up in New Mexico. "My stars," that's a long time ago!

• 2009-- Where's Your Cabin?
• 2014-- And Where Is Your Cabin?
• 2014--The Cabin Season Nears

Today  I started wondering about that old interjection, "My Stars!" As with any cabin, there has to be a story behind it, and in fact there are several.
While it's now mostly an American expression, considered archaic, grandmotherly and Southern, it has historic English roots.
Here's what I found:

• It likely arose from a reference to the British Order of the Garter, founded in 1311, the highest award that the English King or Queen can give a knight, with a medal worn in the shape of a star, not something that holds up an article of clothing.
• The phrase probably started as "Oh, my stars and garters," an exclamation referring to any royal honors and awards, and perhaps to any high honors.  
• The phrase morphed into others, like "Bless my stars," and "Thank my lucky stars" in the 1600's, probably  referring to serious beliefs that certain  stars influence our well being and rule our fate, still alive in astrology today.
• Then in 1593, without the reference to garters, "My stars" was so common, it went in print when  Christopher Marlowe used it in the play The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second.

My stars, that's more than you wanted to know about a phrase and my cabins!

Words you have to look up, and mountains

Mountain journey, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# d'Arches

Books that you have to circle words in--I love it, and go back and look them up. Reminds me of mountains--no matter what you see, there's always the unknown, more to learn.
It's mountain mood today, reading  The Living Mountain by the late Nan Shepherd about the Cairngorms of northeast England, another place I'd never heard of.
I found the book in another I'm reading, Landmarks, By Robert MacFarland of Cambridge University, about the deep place names of local places in England and Scotland, complete with partial  glossaries of the old names.  Names as landmarks...so powerful for any country, and any reader or writer and seer.
I first found him about a year ago in his book The Old Ways, about walking the ancient paths in England.
In this recent book, he devotes most of a chapter to Shepherd's book, and writes the forward to her most recent edition. It's a book of a lifetime of discovering mountains up close, not from a distance.
Other than English and Scottish terms I don't know, there are words throughout that I've circled, going back at the end of each chapter to look them up in the OED.
Discovery.
Thus today's watercolor, Mountain Journey, exploring and risking new paths in watercolor.

Magic in the pages of October

I found magic in the pages of October, ideas affecting my life and art...another reading spurt, completing four books in four genres--poetry, fiction, self help and spirituality--though the last two could be combined.

Biggest find and pleasure was "Big Magic," by Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert gained fame for the chick book, "Eat, Pray, Love, "which I haven't read. But the sub title on this new one grabbed me, "Creative Living Beyond Fear."
The book is full of personal anecdotes, and stories about people overcoming and being creative. I bought my copy from Best of Books in Edmond.
For me, the first part of the book and the closing pages are the most powerful. In between there are gems, but it's padded a little with too many stories perhaps, some needless repetition, and some borderline preaching, rather than just advice and truths.
But some of those truths, overcoming fear that defeats creativity:

• "...I believe we are all walking repositories of buried treasure
• "We all know fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun."  
• "...if you can't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting."

The chapter on "Permission" is one of the strongest, and I have more marks here than anyplace else--especially when writing about education  There is poetry here when she writes about her mother (pages 84-85).
Excerpts from near the end:

• "Creativity wants to flip the mundane world upside down."
• "We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits"
• "Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us."

+++
The other October books that awakened emotions and ideas, for future posts:

• Friend, poet and force  in a fedora, Dorothy Alexander's  "The Art of Digression, A fragmented Memoir";  
• Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh's , "Peace is Every Step, the path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life"; 
•  English journalist Paula Hawkins' "The Girl on the Train," a psychological thriller, listened to part of it driving across the wide opens during fall break, and finished at home in print.

A window on real education, in a word

Cambridge students punting while they attend, and tourists "attending" to students.

Words are windows on the way we live. Thinking about our pilgrimage to Cambridge--the town and mostly the University...students don't "attend" Cambridge...they "study at"--and therein, with just one word,  you have the difference between real higher education, and in America, especially public education. Isaac Newton  and Charles Darwin didn't attend Cambridge, they "studied" there, for example.

Ready to punt

There's another word with a difference.
Here, "punting" is what Bob Stoops does twice. In Cambridge, "punting" is boating on the River Cam. Cambridge is named after the first bridge over the river back in 731 AD. Cambridge as a University was founded in 1284, but we do have some similarities at UCO and in America. We have buildings, and we have students, but they attend here, not study. There are many more bridges at Cambridge these days, some dating from the 1500s and 1600s. The University has 33 colleges, none of which has more than 1,100 students "studying" there.

Ready to punt

If you go to Cambridge, you have to go punting, and we did...down the river, on the "backs" of the medieval campus buildings, with other tourists and students. 
At top is a photo of why I prefer the English punting, two students who "attend" Cambridge. Susan and I did too. 

Top students get the best rooms, and windows

For more windows, here are some others. Here are some  windows dating from 1460 behind which some excellent students live. I learned that the best and biggest  rooms go to the students who have the best grades.
 And for lower classmen and other students who just "attend" rather than "study," I expect the rooms are somewhat less kind. 
 

Punting on the River Cam, with King's College iconic chapel in the background

Haunting windows of UK itinerary discoveries

The Benedictine abbey, destroyed when the Protestants revolted.

We worked almost a year on putting together an itinerary for the trip to England and Scotland.
Susan did most of the work, using travel books, and then we turned to Vickie Nichols of Nichols Travel for more help.
We made some of the arrangements ourselves, including a stay in Cambridge, and bed in breakfasts in York and Keswick, driving through the moors, Lake district and into Scotland. 

Someone still decorates the graves of monks.

Still we rented a car in York, and braved me learning how to drive and sit on the opposite side of the car and road than here. 
And behind the wheel of this new Mercedes, thankfully with a gps system we named "Maggie," we discovered countryside and people we never dream of, nor planned on our large itinerary. 
Discoveries included the ruins of this haunting, historic  Benedictine Abbey on a high, windy bluff overlooking Whitby, a fishing village on the coast of the North Sea.
For some reason I'm having trouble writing and organizing these trip stories, but the them of windows helps keep be going. Susan's priority were the moors and mine was Cambridge. We missed much and changed schedules. More about that later.

So for the record, here's the official itinerary--we neglected to plan for all the walking--anywhere from five to nine miles a day, so we lost weight!

• London--five nights. parliament, Westminster Abbey, Churchill's War Rooms, Buckingham Palace, Tower bridge and the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Picadilly circus, British Museum, Harrods department store, Dickens' house and museum, side train trip to Canterbury Cathedral, and various pubs, using the Tube (subway, cabs, double-decker bus, and walking..
• Brit rail to Cambridge--one night. My pilgrimage to a real university. Punting (not the Stoops' kind) on the River cam. Painted one watercolor.

Haunting windows on the past

• Brit rail to York--three nights. touring York Minster, largest cathedral north of the Alps. Toured the National Railway Museum, a little boy's dream of real locomotives. Visiting Viking center, visiting pubs, walking the medieval walls. Car trip to Scarborough and discovering Anne Bronte's grave. North through the most beautiful country I've ever seen. Whitby and the Abbey. The Yorkshire Moors. Whitby was a religious site from the mid 600s. The Abbey was built about 1225, after the Catholic Normans had conquered England.  Henry VIII disestablished the monasteries in 1540 and destroyed it. The windows are haunted, in more than one way. Bram Stoker lived in Whitby and the abbey  may have been an inspiration for "Dracula."
• Keswick--Lake district, two nights in a country house. Drove through beautiful North York Dales. Drove to Grasmere, toured Wordsworth's Dove Cottage and grave. Hiked in the mist alongside on of the lakes. Painted one watercolor.
• Scotland and Edinburgh--three nights. Drove up through Scotland on the rural roads, Turned in car at Edinburgh after nightmare traffic.  Took 12-hour small bus tour to Loch Ness and through the highlands. Shopped Edinburgh. Toured Edinburgh castle, and sampled great Scotch. At and drank in pubs.
• Took tram in front of hotel for 30 minute ride to airport, five pounds each. Home.

Windows into a wonderful world--2

Old window at Canterbury Cathedral

Windows tell you a lot about a place, a people, a time, a civilization, We take ours for granted, though I wish our 1970s house had bigger ones. Many of the newer ones do, but they're not distinctive, just cookie-cutter pre-fab ones.  
Go back in time and you'll find American windows smaller, especially on the frontier, or in pre-white man days when there was no glass. We're spoiled today with storm windows, screens, air conditioning and more. 

Parliament, Union Jack, from Westminster cloisters

Over time, windows reflect a civilization and culture, and that tells you something about the shallowness of America. Only in some aging neighborhoods in the city and elsewhere do you find windows with character, grace and style.
Windows draw me, my imagination--so many stories, histories, ghosts, hopes, fears--demanding to be photographed, to be encountered.
In England and Scotland I found different stories, growing out of centuries of habitation.
Too many words--I was overwhelmed everywhere I went, and it's hard to write about, to organize. The windows help. 

Canterbury Cathedral, from its cloisters

Earls Court Tube station--our window to the rest of London

A sea of red buses outside the 18th Century pub, The Clarence
 

Parliament...windows on freedom

Westminster, windows on the past

Windows on Wordsworth's world-1

I'm drawn to windows, especially old ones. To me, they beckon to be photographed, hinting at ghosts and stories and imagination. Of memories and lives once lived. Of beliefs and hopes.
It's no wonder that windows in our trip to England and Scotland grabbed my attention.
This first window and pitcher  in Grasmere near William Wordsworth's home begged to be photographed. There's a novel here, or, more fittingly, a poem.
You don't have to be in England or Scotland long before you understand how the landscape imbues the work of their artists and writers. Impossibly green. It was a cold, misty day in the Lake district, and absolutely wonderful. Clouds obscured the tops of the mountains, but not the spirit of a poet who is one of the founders of the Romantic movement. No wonder. 

Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth wrote

Susan photographing at the rear of the cottage

Looking out at Wordsworth's garden

Wordsworth's graves at St. Oswald's, Grasmere

Stained glass inside the church, with ropes to ring the bell

A journal of journaling in England

Every time we take a trip, this old newspaper man can't keep from taking notes, finding time at the end of the day to comment, to record impressions, to give a brief summary of the day's events. That, by the way, is where the first meaning of "journalism" came from, a record, or log, of the day's travel--using the Latin and now French word for "day," which is "jour."

Painting in Cambridge

So yes, I'm a journalist in many ways, and our trip to the England and Scotland was no exception, but with a couple of twists.
First, I went off and left the specific journal I'd bought for the trip. Fortunately, I had an Associated Press reporter's notebook in my bag.
And I did take another kind of journal, the handmade leather bound watercolour (in deference to my British heritage) from Mind's Eye Journals that I bought at the Paseo arts festival this year. And I brought my traveling watercolor kit, plus one other brush.

St. John's chapel

I had no idea if I'd have time to paint on our two week trip, but I was going to try. Fortunately, I did three paintings, and while they're not very good, they are mementos for me of specific days and times I will remember forever. I remember the seller of the journal telling me the journals are artifacts, and indeed they are--but then so have all my trip journals become.
Another reason the painting isn't great is that painting in England is far different that the desert southwest, where there is little moisture and lots of harsh landscapes. It's a slow transition for me to different painting.

My watercolours, and painting journal

Having been to England, Susan and I now understand how that landscape has so influenced English painting...it is moist and green. I wrote this in my AP notebook on the train on the way to Canterbury: "The English atmosphere cries out for watercolor. It's humid, fluid skies, green. It's idyllic, pastoral. The landscape drips with watercolour."

Here's the second of my three watercolours...St. John's College chapel at Cambridge University, done on the rooftop of the Varsity Hotel, virtually on the banks of the river Cam. It's late in the evening, we're getting a little sunburned, and there are lots of clouds in this distance. We've eaten, had some wine, and are listening to some Cambridge students at the next table celebrating the end of the semester. 
Yes, it's done in plein air, drying quickly, and painted quickly. I'd like to do it over, but that's later, and won't have as much meaning.

My AP notebook and transcribed notes

But at least, my doldrums of writing since we've returned seem to have ended. Here's hoping for a fresh breeze to gather and write all the thoughts and stories we encountered and experienced, recorded on those 81 pages of notes in the AP notebook and three watercolors. 

Some of my previous trip journals--the thick one is from Paris, 11 years ago,

Turning the pages of 2014

The second half of the year seemed slow in reading, compared to the first half when I consumed  11 books--almost reaching my goal of one a month for the year. Reading goes in spurts. Weeks go by without a book, and then when I'm hooked, it speeds up. 
The year ended with Unbroken, the WWII story of a remarkable American. Now a movie, the story from Laura Hillenbrand, the same writer of Seabiscuit, captured my imagination and emotions.
Before that were two books from Best of Books in Edmond, now owned by friends Joe and Nan Hight. Spirit of Steamboat, by Craig Johnson, whose books are the basis for the Longmire TV show, is a compelling Longmire tale different from his mysteries. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel was an interesting novel of post-apocalyptic America.
I'd forgotten I'd bought three art books from English watercolourist (Hey, that's the way the English spell it)  Ray Campbell Smith that gave me insights and inspiration, Fresh Watercolour, Landscapes in Watercolour and Watercolour Work-Out recommended by English blog friend, social media guru  and artist Ian McKendrick of Cambridge, Watercolourjourney.
Another short, entrancing  novel illustrated with watercolors by Neil Gaiman, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains  made me want to do the same.
Before that, already reviewed on this blog were River of Doubt, about TR, following the Roosevelt NPR program, Writing Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon, and Falling Upward, by Fr. Richard Rohr, which changed my life.
A stifling summer of sickness managed four books in July--One Hundred Years of Solitude, by famed Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which I got bored with and didn't finish; Spider Woman's Daughter, by Anne Hillerman, continuing the Tony Hillerman legacy; American Gods, my first read by Neil Gaiman; and Blackjacks and Blue Devils, by Jerry Wilson, printed by my friend Jeanetta Calhoun Mish's Mongrel Empire Press.

Six month total--14. The books of 2014--25.

D-Day, 70 years ago, respect written in blood

American soldiers heading to Omaha Beach in Normandy, 70 years ago.

It is now June 6 in England. At the end of that terrible day 70 years ago, 1,465 Americans were dead, 3,184 were wounded, 1,928 were missing, and 26 were captured. Omaha Beach claimed almost 2,000 of the total casualties.
Other Allied forces, mainly Brits, lost 1,914 dead. They were part of 156,000 Allied  troops who on D-Day crossed the English Channel to invade France and help defeat Germany in WWII. The Germans lost from 4,000 to 10,000 men.
I was five exactly five months old, home snug and safe and free in my crib in Dallas, Texas.

American and French flags honor each grave.

Today, the 172-acre American Cemetery atop the bluff at Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer, France, contains the remains of 9,387 American military dead, most of the killed during the invasion and other operations in WWII. Included are the graves of Army Air Corps crew shot down over Europe as early as 1942. A total of 307 of the graves are of unknowns.

These men died and served to spare me the fate of much of the world which believed that all people should think alike, that free thought and expression are dangerous, that people are supposed to be subservient, that individuality and differences in beliefs, religions, races, languages is suspicious and should be squelched by force, that the might of military makes anything right, that individuals have no rights.
What frightens me is not that tyrants in other parts of the world still believe this.

The flag in the cemetery

What frightens and disgusts  me are the fanatics in America who still believe those ways. You can easily find specific recent  examples of each of those intolerant beliefs, echoed in the rhetoric by narrow-minded ideologues in our own state government, national government, political movements and media. They have invaded America by spouting thinly-designed hatred and mindless propaganda, threatening this country built on reason and respect of others. Yes, they are free to do so because of the sacrifice of those Americans 70 years ago, but they are not worthy of the mud on our soldiers' boots.
If D-Day means anything to us as a free people, we will  respect the rights of others who differ from us, encourage free thought and expression. Our vows should be written in the blood of those men who served on that day, 70 years ago.

Bucket list for 2014

2014 Buckets...5 by 6 watercolor

For 2014--

England and Scotland--this summer;
Open cockpit biplane ride;
Sail on a sailboat in the Caribbean;
Take more backroads;
More New Mexico;
Family history;
Take up oil painting;

Cousin reunion;

Retire ?;
Surprise myself!

Standard resolutions:

More time with children and grandchildren, family and friends;

Health and exercise;

Improve blog;

Paint more;

Write  a book?

Unreadability blogging book rant

Horrible typography. You can't read this at full size

• If you saw a book with tiny white sans serif type in reverse on bright green and red and blue, you'd assume the authors and printers knew nothing about readability, right? Right. And if it were a how-to book, you'd question their expertise any anything else--if they don't understand basic readability. Right? Right! 
• Coming soon on blog, I'll be switching to Wordpress, 'cause Blogspot on Goodle is static and monopolistic. So today I bought two books. One was "Wordpress for Dummies." A good book. But, then there was this flashy one on the newsstand. 
• ...If you're considering blogging, don't buy "The Bloggers Book" with a CD in it. Published by the English. Ok...but these fools may know the Internet--which I now question, but they know nothing about typography---yep, 8 point sans serif white on weak green or bright red or yucky orange, etc. Other text is hard to read 8 or 9 point sans serif. Organization is awful, hard to follow.
• Finally, I've blown $29.99 on this, already found errors in graphics, etc. And being English they spell emphasize "emphasise." Makes me glad we won the Revolution. Now if we can teach them readability. Oh, yes, I intend to email them this, but you could too. But the 5 point type is probably hiding their email...can't find it.
• You gonna hear from me. At least what I spent is tax deductible. www.imaginesubs.co.uk/icr
• And if you click on that link to subscribe, you have to have a pass code to get in, which you get in finally big sans serif type on the back page of their lousy book