This previous post was deleted somehow. I don't like this new version of Blogger. Some strange terminology like "re-edit" & "re-publish" used in what seem to me incorrect context. However....

More things to post from my "Oak Bay Dump Collection" and also did a couple of paintings based on pictures I took of my beloved Notre Dame Cathedral when we were in Paris in March. However, something is wrong with our connection so I can't post images at the moment. Having to use Jim's unfriendly non-Mac at the moment.

Really excited about our trip to England next summer as part of it will be a week in Dorset sharing a delightful sounding cottage with our Yorkshire friends. This is Thomas Hardy country and I've been reading "Under the Greenwood Tree" (the happiest of Hardy's novels) and really enjoying it. It's a quaint pastoral tale of the time when organs were beginning to take over the choirs of singers and instruments that previously played the church music. Lots of interesting old vocabulary and expressions.

Also, recently finished Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex" and really enjoyed it as well. Certainly a writer to watch. This one won the Pulitzer prize. Very impressive writing - immigrant story writ large. I liked a comment he made about the importance of death - it gives weight to life. Also, how despair wins out in the end - a necessity - makes saying goodbye to life possible. These comments make it seem dark but the novel is vibrating with life.