We're off Tuesday for our trip to England mainly, then Riga,Latvia at the end where Jim is giving a paper at the Huxley Symposium. Riga seems to have lots of old stuff to see and a big collection of Art Nouveau architecture
So we begin by heading up to Yorkshire by train and staying with Alan and Susan for a while, then down to London where Jim has some research to do and to see the Horne family and also where we will meet up again with Susan and Alan and we all head to Dorset where we've rented a cottage for a week right in the heart of Thomas Hardy country. Then to Oxford to visit the Bradshaw family, then Reading and London for a bit more research and also really looking forward to visiting Patty Brooks in Buckinghamshire and seeing a bit of that area. Then to Latvia, then home the end of July. Will keep everyone posted of our adventures!
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Monday, June 14, 2004
Finally getting around to dealing with the rest of the pictures from our 2000 trip to Ireland. I was motivated to do this since friends are going to Ireland this summer. These are from Belfast and focus mainly on the part of Belfast where there is still conflict. We took a bus tour of this area and people seemed very friendly except the next day we heard that the tour bus was held up by masked men with machine guns. No one hurt but it wouldn't have been a pleasant experience. It doesn't seem like the "troubles" are completely over there yet. Belfast is really very beautiful and we liked it much better than Dublin; however, I notice I don't have any pix of Belfast other than of this area. I think it was pouring rain when we were seelng the rest of Belfast and I guess I didn't take pictures.
The famous "Peace Wall"...somehow I pictured a green hedge with flowers rather than a metal wall with barbed wire.![]()
I did find some flowers along one part of the "wall".
While on the tour we were told that the surveillance towers would soon be a part of history as most had been taken down.
Shankill (Protestant area) and Falls (Catholic) Roads are famous for their partisian murals:
The famous "Peace Wall"...somehow I pictured a green hedge with flowers rather than a metal wall with barbed wire.
I did find some flowers along one part of the "wall".
While on the tour we were told that the surveillance towers would soon be a part of history as most had been taken down.
Shankill (Protestant area) and Falls (Catholic) Roads are famous for their partisian murals:
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Books I've been reading lately.
"The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. A gifted new writer. I really enjoyed her short stories "Interpreter of Maladies". This is a novel about the immigrant experience. The protagonist is the son born in America to an Indian academic and his wife.
"Evening at Five" by Gail Godwin. A rather lightweight read on a heavy topic...the death of a spouse. Had something going for it.
"The Wailing Wind" by Tony Hillerman. My usual light mystery for reading on the plane. Hillerman always delivers a satisfying story.
"The Episode" by Graham Greene. This is Greene's first novel (unpublished) that just came available for scholars about a week before we were in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown University) so when we were there Jim had it zeroxed. It became available because Norman Sherry's last volumn of the biography was finally finished. Read it on the train and also on the plane home. Not really very good and lots of overwriting and purple prose but interesting because it was Greene writing and knowing I was one of probably fewer than five people in the world who had read it.
"One Hundred Million Hearts" by Kerri Sakamoto. Most interesting read and glad to see her out with a new novel. Been quite a while since "The Electrical Field". A story about a Japanese born Canadian girl who learns (after her father dies) that he went to Japan (he was also Canadian born) to be a kamikaze and that she has a half-sister in Japan. She goes to Japan to meet this sister and learn more about her father...then the plot thickens...
"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. Picked this up on the Fast Read rack in the library as I had noticed it's been on the best seller list for quite a while. Yuck...what a pile of blithering sentimental nonsense. I gave up after 50 pages but don't think it would have got much better.
"The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. A gifted new writer. I really enjoyed her short stories "Interpreter of Maladies". This is a novel about the immigrant experience. The protagonist is the son born in America to an Indian academic and his wife.
"Evening at Five" by Gail Godwin. A rather lightweight read on a heavy topic...the death of a spouse. Had something going for it.
"The Wailing Wind" by Tony Hillerman. My usual light mystery for reading on the plane. Hillerman always delivers a satisfying story.
"The Episode" by Graham Greene. This is Greene's first novel (unpublished) that just came available for scholars about a week before we were in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown University) so when we were there Jim had it zeroxed. It became available because Norman Sherry's last volumn of the biography was finally finished. Read it on the train and also on the plane home. Not really very good and lots of overwriting and purple prose but interesting because it was Greene writing and knowing I was one of probably fewer than five people in the world who had read it.
"One Hundred Million Hearts" by Kerri Sakamoto. Most interesting read and glad to see her out with a new novel. Been quite a while since "The Electrical Field". A story about a Japanese born Canadian girl who learns (after her father dies) that he went to Japan (he was also Canadian born) to be a kamikaze and that she has a half-sister in Japan. She goes to Japan to meet this sister and learn more about her father...then the plot thickens...
"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. Picked this up on the Fast Read rack in the library as I had noticed it's been on the best seller list for quite a while. Yuck...what a pile of blithering sentimental nonsense. I gave up after 50 pages but don't think it would have got much better.
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