Wednesday, December 21, 2022
On a moist and breezy morning in 2012, Rachel and I rattled along the motorway in her Toyota. We were leaving the Cambridge fens for the river heathlands of East Anglia and Sutton Hoo. The 625 CE ship burial was excavated in 1939, its chamber packed with treasures: Byzantine silverware, gold jewelry, a feasting set, […]
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
The British occupation, the potato famine, and Dillon family migration to the United States were factors throughout our trip to Ireland in 2006. These factors weren’t discussed outright, but their shadows, both horrific and hopeful, followed us throughout our three weeks in County Clare. Potatoes were the diet staple of the poorest Irish, and County […]
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book set on this island, was read by perhaps every book club in the United States, including mine in Salt Lake City. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ book, published in the US in 2007, is set during the occupation of Guernsey by Nazi soldiers starting in 1940. […]
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
I had thought it would be on display on a wall in the great room Along with the tanks, medals, cannons, uniformed manikins patriotic photos, letters, weapons, maps But no. The painting was hung in a smaller room up the stairs all to itself in the Imperial War Museum in a corner of this former […]
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
She was a woman I’ve admired my whole life. Her first name was Helen, like mine, and her mother’s name was Helen, just like mine. She was called by her middle name, like I am. And boy could she draw. She collected fossils and enjoyed categorizing them. She also drew several hundred paintings of mushrooms, […]
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. – John Muir The Muirs must have been a pretty sorry sight when they first arrived in New York in 1849. The father Daniel, two young girls, […]
Thursday, December 15, 2022
In England, American French fries are called “chips,” and our potato chips are called “crisps.” Both are made from potatoes, of course, but somewhere and somehow the words got turned around. The English do an excellent job with chips. Such an excellent job that I order them almost every day. I’ve tried to be on […]
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Corn flakes, coffee, curtains My space, her space Breakfast for me on a little table with fine china Hers in the kitchen on paper towels First class, economy class, first class, curtains Our space, their space Complimentary Diet Coke for me, complimentary wine for them Tolerance for us, importance for them.
Thursday, December 15, 2022
In the 11th century, the tradition started of Benedictine monks eating bread with cream and jam at Tavistock Abbey in Devonshire. A proper Devon cream tea has a scone split in half with clotted cream and jam spread on both halves. One of my guidebook smirks that older “blue-rinse ladies” are the ones most interested […]
Sunday, December 11, 2022
I walked through the Coventry Transport Museum that October Exhibit after exhibit of what the German bombs had done those November nights in 1940; Old newsreels of the dazed, the smashed, the burned Firestorms having wiped out most of the city center 800 people dead, thousands injured and homeless Different rooms had piped-in air raid […]
