Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Ashmolean Museum at 6 a.m.

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

…under the cloudless 5 – 6 a.m. sky of beautiful Oxford.

Look closely at the Ashmolean Museum’s facade, and you can see the sharp shadow that each statue is casting.

More images of Oxford springtime on Flickr. One shot that isn’t there–it came out too blurry, to my regret–a patch of old moss on a very old wall with a jiggly silver line from end to end where a little snail had taken its own morning walk, even earlier than I did.

I realized this morning — Snails are bloggers!

snow.

Originally uploaded by hrútur73.

…did I mention that it’s May 21, 2007?

Then again, did I mention that I’m on a stopover in Iceland?

In 10 minutes I’ll board a different plane and fly to London where, I very much hope, it won’t be snowing.

Wish me luck!

Update–in Oxford. Lanscape green not white. Cloudy skies but the drizzle is rain not snow.

Big pink roses in gardens promise better weather–and smell so lovely.

Jet-lagged Betsy promises, see you later!

Radcliffe Camera with tea drinkers

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Headed for Oxford, beautiful Oxford, tomorrow.

To see, among other glorious sights, the Radcliffe Camera, which Tolkien hated–it was his imaginary basis for the temple of Sauron.

I love JRR Tolkien–but would he like me? He didn’t like modern stuff–Saruman’s dirty orc-factories. He liked hobbit yeoman farmers with loyal servants.

My own French-Canadian great-grandparents poured out of picturesque farmwork into dirty factories. Freedom, they wanted–maybe just one small chance for a better life.

And just a tiny few of them got that chance–my father’s grandfather Hugo Dubuque became a lawyer, called in his obituary “a credit to his race.”

My French-Canadian mother’s aunt Leda Charpentier didn’t go back to school on the day she turned 12 because that was the magical age to start work in “the mill.” Leda’s luck turned later, when the mill owner rented her out to some friends as a temporary maid/helper.

And my own luck began when, many years later, Leda’s orphaned niece Clothilde struck the warm-hearted fancy of maiden ladies for whom Leda was now cook-housekeeper. In time they adopted my mother and sent her to Smith. I remember those lovable maiden ladies, including “ma tante” Leda, from my own early childhood.

But back to Oxford, back to JRR Tolkien. How foolish it would be for me to try to refute Tolkien because my family history doesn’t fit in with his fantasy. I love his fantasy–reading through one page of its watered-down quotes puts tears in my eyes.

Part of growing up is re-finding the missed connections where cranky cynicism cut us loose from stuff we once loved. I’ll be looking for Tolkien’s magic next week in Oxford–even as I (maybe) drink tea next to Sauron’s temple, which Tolkien, on so many levels, would have despised.
***

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.

Greensburg [pre-tornado] has a great BIG WELL-come for YOU!

Originally uploaded by jschumacher.

Route 54 runs kitty-corner into Kansas– “smooth open highway” (says my long-ago diary) “through fields that got greener and lusher, wheat giving way to corn, as the day went by,” said day being June 18, 1987.

Greensburg, Kansas, now so sadly in the news has two local sights of great local pride. One is The World’s Second-Largest Stony-Iron Meteorite. The other is The World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well, 109 feet deep and very cool at the bottom, which is why it made an excellent trip-interruption stop for two little girls, then 12 and 5, in those long-ago not-very-air-conditioned days.

These two magnificent sights were housed right next to each other, so after lunch “at Burke’s coffee shop, enjoying their display of vintage beer ads inside and their little replica western town out back”, we admired the meteorite and then climbed doowwwwn the well before setting off again, “past Wichita, Emporia, and El Dorado…dinner in Ottowa, all you can eat smorgasbord for $3.99.”

Later, my 39 year-old self recorded with disappointment “a very chaste sunset, preppy shades of cream and fading denim.” But the people of Kansas–they were something special– “uniformly friendly, from Tom who swept the hall outside our motel room and brought me a free cup of coffee to every cheerful, pleasant waitress everywhere we stopped.”

And Greensburg itself–its warmth, its civic pride–Greensburg was memorable–so much so that I got email today from my then 12-year-old, “sad news from the home of the hand dug well.”

The Kansas town just tornado-smashed into kindling was little Greensburg. On Friday an F5 class storm leveled the town–this is the strongest and very rare kind of tornado, not seen in the US since 1999.

Says CNN:

Greensburg is best known for having the world’s largest hand-dug well and being home to a 1,000-pound pallasite, or stony-iron, meteorite. After the storm, the structure around the well was gone, and there were reports the meteorite was missing.

So, if you are one of the people who thought, “A tornado in Kansas? No big deal” — the goal of this blogpost is to ask you to think again. And I hope that Tom, and all like him, will be OK.

NYCNight

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Remember that old song?

Here’s a view of Manhattan from the 40th floor of 7 WTC on Greenwich Ave.

Springtime in Manhattan is surprisingly lovely.

Jim Clash of The Adventurers" with Frank and Betsy

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

…and even more so when hanging out with Jim Clash for his Forbes TV show The Adventurers.

Another adventurer (the one who took this photo) was Kevin O’Brien, whose adventures involve exploring caves and the waters therein. Watch out for Gollum, Kevin!

Before the show, I got to geek out with cool TV studio toys, and afterward we went out to lunch at the Gotham. Now, if only Jim had told us about his own terrible South Pole adventure before I ordered that plate of petit fours…

It was 64 degrees in Tampa this morning and everybody was saying how cold it is. Oh boy! After the last month of snow and ice (Cambridge got its December in March this year), I feel like running outside in my bathing suit!

On the flight down I sat next to a NH family also headed to visit relatives–mom and dad and three nice kids ranging from 5 to maybe 15. I had an aisle seat next to cute teen boy curly-mophead and his 30-something dad, who wearing the shaved-head “I am cool” look but not the “I am nobody’s dad” tattooed and pierced look. The dad told me that he and his wife had been to Florida 20 years before but this would be the first time for their kids. The kids were sharing a bunch of game-boys and walkman type electronics around. As we were landing the dad was telling his kids with great pleasure and pride, “Look–palm trees.”

And since this was just about what I’d been thinking myself–“Oh boy, Florida! Palm trees!” I felt old and young at the same time, but in general, just wonderful.

Mmmm! Let us all eat Marie-Antoinette-knows-what, but first let us photograph it and blog it here.

Thanks to Rebecca Blood for the link, giving me an excuse to re-post this gorgeous piece of Vienna liebeschaum from 2005.

“Valdivia is a little city with some big rivers flowing to the Pacific Ocean, not very far away. The riverfront market every day has lots of very fresh fish as well as farm vegetables, and raspberries for about 35 cents a basket. If you buy fish from one of the kind fisher-ladies, she guts them on her wood table and tosses the skin back over her shoulder to happy sea lions who wait in the river below.

We have a nice two-bedroom apartment, to get hot water you need to light the special hotwater heater, but it is really quite modern with a tv, lots of US shows with Spanish subtitles which (I like to think) will improve my Spanish if I watch them.”

That’s from some email I sent in 2001, during a previous visit to Valdivia, in southern Chile. In about an hour, we’re headed there again (three changes of airplane, about 24 hours door to door).

All absolutely worth it to be part of the party celebrating the inauguration of Chile’s wonderful Centro de Estudio Ciéntificos.

Then we head a bit further south, because we’ve been invited to ride around below Tierra del Fuego on a converted Chilean navy ship–a few days there, then another 24-hour trip home, then 24 hours to do all the laundry, and a 24-hour-ish flight to Japan.

If my younger self, who longed to travel the world, could see me now she’d be very satisfied.

Another day, another happy iguana

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

… I’m just very busy thinking about Christmas.

Wishing you too a lovely solsticean holiday of your own choosing!