Hope helps, and witnessing this electorial insanity in the time of a pandemic needs all the hope we can give it.

post #518 

                This week is pretty full, just thinking about Thanksgiving -- and about whether this year's is a one time only happening.  I can tell myself that I hope that's true because it is possible to imagine that a vaccine will provide some cover by a year from now. I also know that improved national leadership will make a huge difference.  January 20 can't come soon enough. 

            Hey, everyone, don't you think it's kind of hopeless to have so many people dying and so much golf being played and so much suffering by essential workers being unrecognized for the absolutely difficult work they are doing?  Admitting the problem and working together to solve it seems a lot more hopeful to me. 

 

            I've chosen just a few photos for today's post which speak to hope for me. I know there are more, but, as I said, it's a busy week. You all stay safe, and love your neighbor --- safely.  

 

 

the almost end, again, of the lavender blossoms, yesterday

a discovery of how a sycamore leaf could use an empty hook in my gallery area! for weeks!

three nearby friends --- two sisters and a cousin  ---- which is which --- all figuring out their lives

                  MaKayla is holding a quilt with a story.  A dear friend of mine, Gerda Wodlinger, whom I met during our two Coast Guard years in Kodiak, Alaska, had become a nurse as a teenager by escaping by train to work in England during World War II.  She was German and Jewish, and the only one in her family to survive.  Near the end of the war she went back to Germany to help with the resettlement.  She took with her this quilt where each block was knit by someone she had worked with while in London.  Gerda passed this quilt on to me, and I have now passed it on to MaKayla. It has always given me perspective about what hardship means and how important it is to hold on to hope. 

                The title of this photo --which I took in West Virginia from a moving train -- is SIDE-TRACKED.  It could also be called THE TRACK NOT TAKEN.  Somehow it speaks to me about always wondering about what the choices mean that we make in life.  Of course it could also mean that it's fun to look out the window on a train to see what you can see!

            Here's hoping  --  I'm saying it one last time -- we don't have to be subjected to this desperate and dangerous election behavior much longer. It makes everyone look very bad, especially the timid Republicans who can't speak up about who has fairly won this amazingly complicated but well executed election. Thanks for reading this blog, staying on track, Ann

England mop up

post #371
       I'm home again, after a full week in England (also called Great Britain or the United Kingdom...)  There seem to be some photos left to share, so here we go:

arriving in Paddington station, in London: the board shows which train is where.

Paddington -- the bear, that is -- continues to be on platform one, but his statue is better shown off now than when I was last here: 

I always love the designs on the rail stations. This is Paddington's look:

After the train, it's the "tube", or the "Underground" -- before the rush hour starts. I hear that the subways then become incredibly and uncomfortably crowded.  

I am using my iPhone here to show the escalator that was part of my transfer between two lines of the Underground. I also encountered stairs with no elevator option! But there was always a friendly person, both female and male, who would offer to help me with my two smallish suitcases.  That's what I call hospitality!

The walk from the Underground to the place where I was staying is only two blocks, and it includes a walk through the park called Russell Square.  I loved the quote on this bench -- from Charlotte's Web, one of my favorite books because it is by E.B.White. It's wrenching to be reminded about terrorist bombings designed primarily to kill people. Why does it happen!

This is the view back toward Russell Square from my window in the Penn Club B and B where I stayed.

 Very nearby is the famous British Museum, with its modern roof from within the building, transfering the very use of its venerable tradional shape. Entry is free and the place is fascinating. This is where the Rosetta Stone is located as well as the Elgin Marbles.

The ROSETTA STONE, within a glass case now, always surrrounded by people

A display at the neighborhood bookstore, operated by the London Review of Books:

Bloomsbury Park is at the other end of the street where I stayed, past the motorcycles..

 

This feels like a very random collection of photos, but I only had a day and a half in London. I did some pub hopping with a young friend from Morehead who lives nearby while working on her PhD. I also went to the theatre with a cousin and her husband who live now in France but who happened to be in town. And it was chilly and often rainy --- not a photography trip, but there are times I can't resist taking photos.  I hope some of this is interesting to hear about. I am delighted to be back home, however. I'm glad my stepmother seems to be doing well. I hope I've been able to share some of the adventure of travel, which is sort of, in my case, a bit off the beaten track. "Life is a journey, not a destination." (I just found out that this quote is quite accepted even though there seems to be no evidence of where it started. That's kind of ironic, actually.) Thanks for reading this, and Bon Voyage wherever you are going  -- Ann

more note cards, for the end of the year

post #264,
      and the last one of 2015.  I am sharing some additional cards today, with titles, and sometimes with a story, starting with three winter cards:

field research

well red

Joyeux Noel, en France [Versailles]

           Not all my cards are Appalachian, since I do travel to England, to see my step-mother, and occasionally to France, to see the French family I lived with when I was an exchange student there my junior year in high school. For the photo above, I had gone to the market in Versailles for groceries and flowers.
        The following photo was made early one morning. It shows "money tree" branches in front of the old fashioned windows on the third floor of my step-mother's home in a small town near Stratford-upon-Avon. This has been a favorite card for a number of years. Its title is "still light".

       Back home in Kentucky, here are some images from what I see that simply catches my eye. The first four are near the house where I live. Things just happen, and if I don't have my camera, I can go get my camera.

deer trio

writing spider

daisies from above

rose of sharon [in our yard]

     The next three cards are from the region. They required a different kind of preparation, which the first and main one is called BEING THERE:

country crossing

a window in a window

side tracked

        This track image was taken in West Virginia so I could try making images for a children's picture book about kids riding the train to travel between divorced parents. The train really was moving when I got this photo through the window, a good example of why being there -- and being aware while there -- is so valuable. While working to get such a book published I can use images such as this one as one of my note cards.
         For the final card image today, I am using another "had to be there" photo. I passed by this familiar-to-me location at just the right time in the evening to see this happening. I knew where to stop the car. I knew I couldn't wait to think about it. I knew I thought it was beautiful. This place doesn't always look as amazing as this, but sometimes things happen.... and come together. Again thanks, for being here with me.

after the storm

 

Moving on ... to more trains, mostly in France,

post #203
       Still on track for trains: I just added a photo to last week's post, another view on the way to London.  Today's  post will be mostly France -- I took the fast TGV from Paris to Rennes, spent three nights there, took a somewhat slower train back to Paris where I spent a night with members of the French family I lived with when I was a junior in high school, and the next day I went fast but not too fast from Paris to Mulhouse, in Alsace, in eastern France, the part of the country that kept changing its nationality, from French to German to French again, etc.  Wars can do that to a place.  In Mulhouse I stayed with the youngest of my French siblings, close to where the family lived during that year of my exchange.  (In the meantime, one of their daughters was living with my family and going to my school for that year.)
    
      My trip between Paris and Mulhouse was comparatively leisurely.  Each of the two stops gave the train an excuse to slow down for a bit.  Here are a series of views from that afternoon:

      

getting closer to Alsace, where many houses look like this one

Issue de Secours just means the window can be pushed out should there be an emergency...       

   I took a few other photos during that time, with my iPhone, when I was trying to be discreet.  It may be possible to notice what each camera brings to the moving train photo experience.  The first photo shows how, since I had a French railpass, I sometimes ended up in the first class car.  Very nice.  

that look of blowing in the wind....

I am standing in the exit section, looking out the door we will eventually be using to get off the train.

     I finally found some passengers who didn't mind having their photo taken.  I had gone to the upper story of the train to see if photos from there would be more interesting.  They were not.  But I did have a nice conversation with the guy who had these cats.

          Someday soon I will share my unpublished manuscript of a picture book for children which features photos from a moving train.  Didn't I already say that I love, love, love riding on a train and looking at the world go by?  I hope these photos from this week and last week have allowed me to share something of that pleasure.