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

Billie and Walter at Nobel parties

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Frank’s Aunt Billie and Uncle Walter came with us to all the Nobel fun in 2004. Now a new adventure–Uncle Walter (although, I’m sad to say, not Aunt Billie) will be joining us in Poland to visit the village where his mother was born, Babice near Cracow.

In the photo, Uncle Walter is getting ready to say something funny, as is so often true in real life. This is going to be a lot of fun! Many thanks to Adam Zielinski and to the Foundation for Polish Science for arranging this journey of discovery.

Blogging this, as so often, from yet another airport!

Sun god Ra on Kon-Tiki sail

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

…in a balsa raft with the sun god on your sail.

Talk about adventure! And Kon-Tiki was an adventure my father talked about, with enormous enthusiasm.

And, from all the books my father urged me to read in my pre-teen years, Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl wrote two of the ones I loved best.

So visiting Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum with Frank was both sweet and sad. It was sweet when I thought how my father would have loved to be there with us. It was sad when I added this to oh-so-many adventures I’d love to have shared with him, in all the years since he died.

Here’s what I still share with him–sailing the paths of the universe with every one of your friends, every one of the people who have shaped your life. Some of them, when you are lucky, will be by your side. All of them, always, will shape your future adventures.

Not even Kon-Tiki’s sun god could be more powerful.

Happy in the Asylet

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This Oslo restaurant used to be a home for orphans (“asylet“) but now they serve codfish, moose (“elg”), and ice cream with hot berry sauce.

I also enjoyed the conversation where I learned quite a few new things including that Dirac liked to spend time reading Sanskrit, that when Pauli called weapons work the “böse Hinterseite” of science that translates from German as the “evil backside” and that Norway’s moose season comes in October.

If any of these new facts of mine are things I heard wrong, blame the house red wine, which was almost as good as the elg.

Fokke, I still think life is worth living

Originally uploaded by katzarella

… and I mean that in a good way.

Rough travel day yesterday, though Stockholm to Oslo flight takes only an hour.

I never have trouble falling asleep at bedtime, but sometimes a hotel room wakes me up long before dawn. Getting up to “check email” or news ends up in surfing webstuff for braindead hours and spending the day afterward in zombie mode.

Two things often work, in case you’re ever in the same boat.

First, silly peaceful alphabet games as I lie in bed with my eyes shut, trying to sleep. My favorite is “Alabaster Botticelli”–four-syllable words such that syllables one and three start with two successive alphabet letters. I don’t have the whole sequence yet–no, no, don’t tell me!–but I like to keep trying. If that gets frustrating, thinking up a tree or flower name for every letter works just as well.

Second, if that doesn’t work, some work reading (hard-copy only) or writing (on paper) relaxes me with the feeling I’m being productive but doesn’t galvanize bits of me into let’s-do-this-for hours.

Last night I exhausted (haha) both methods in sequence–but still did not get enough hours of zzzz. This cat, however, has just given me a truly great idea…

Elf lessons!

Starting in April … and only in northern Finland … there’s now one-year vocational course in elfing! (Will Orlando Bloom be teaching it? One can but dream.)

If the course includes blonde hair and archery skills, I’m there!

Thanks to always-improbable Ig-nateer Marc Abrahams for yet another truly informative email, and to Shamus Young for the great webcomic seen here, “DM of the Rings.”

The newspaper “Voice of Galicia” sounds sweet this morning, with a story by Kiko Novoa. Novoa enjoyed my account of “The end of the classical earth” and calls me “la conocida periodista estadounidense Betsy Devine.”

The deservedly well-known Galician journalist Kiko Novoa adds a quick, charming, colorful explanation of blogging:

Betsy dispone de un blog (http://betsydevine.com/blog/) en el que comparte sus experiencias con los cibernautas.

Roughly: “Betsy has a blog, in which she shares experiences with the cybernauts.”

Welcome, cybernauts! And thanks to Jorge Mira Pérez for calling my attention to Kiko Novoa.

Today we travelled to the end of the earth and had an amazing seafood lunch with the mayor.

Heh. I’ve traveled a lot, but never expected to get to write that particular sentence.

On the westernmost point of Spain, there is (Wikipedia says) “a notable lighthouse” whose Galician and Spanish names (“Fisterra” and “Finisterra”) derive from Latin words for “end of the world.”

I’m sure the pre-Christian pilgrims, who came there for sunsets, were struck by the symbolism of its shifting fog, which motivated (much later) that notable lighthouse. One minute you can’t see halfway down the hill–clouds shift and you see rocky scenery across the bay–before fog returns and the view shivers back into mystery.

If you come to Galicia, which I recommend, don’t miss Fisterra, the lighthouse, the fog, the view, the fog again, and the delicious food at the Semaforo Hotel. You can find the hotel, no matter how foggy it is, because it is next to the lighthouse.

pilgrim path to Santiago de Compostela

Originally uploaded by Nós da Montanha

Like the medieval scholar on pilgrimage (“And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche”), Frank is spending time with a whole new group of scientists. And Chaucer would have loved our current location in one of Spain’s loveliest cities, Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela.

A long pilgrim path winds all the way from France to the plaza in front of its glorious Baroque cathedral, next to a hotel established by Ferdinand and Isabella as a refuge for needy pilgrims in 1492.

Our kind hosts are putting us up in that very hotel, where we have spent some time wandering semi-lost among various fountained courtyards and huge granite corridors. After a lonnngg day of travel yesterday (it began with a 3:45 a.m. wake-up call in Dublin), we especially enjoyed the silence and darkness made possible by granite walls and huge wooden shutters that let us sleep until almost 9 a.m. today.

Many thanks to you, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!

Corbett Court, Mitchelstown

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

On the plane trip to Cork, I finally got around to reading my mother’s 1963 journal. She and my dad visited Ireland in mid-October of that year. 

Summary: They rented a car and took off to see–everything! That is, everything compatible with sleeping late, taking naps, picking up hitchhikers, and making stops to drink tea. They hadn’t made a single hotel reservation–something that on this trip they never regretted. They enjoyed everything they saw, every person they met.

Left Limerick 10 a.m. 10-14-63.
3 sheep or cows? in Croagh
Thatched roof with TV antenna in Adare
Ruined church and fortress
Gypsy carts
Hitcher to Abbeyfrale–peat smoke. No talker.
Farmers market — cows, horses, pigs (in ricks), boxes of cabbages and of apples
Spent 3 hours going 56 miles. Ferns like a miniature ferngully.
Lunch delicious fricasseed lamb. Castlerosse Hotel. JMD [my dad] bought an Arran sweater 6/13.
Looked at various hotels in Killarney. Some stuffy, others quite unappealing. Settled on Hotel Europe, out of town on “lower lake,” lovely neat new hotel (German) fabulous view and food. Nap.
Dinner — sole — wow!
After dinner went into town. Bought Irish coffee glasses 6 for Mary 6 for us–all sent to Mary. Also 6 charms for cousins.
To bed. Awoke to howling wind–but warm.

10 – 15. Too cloudy for Ring, so going to Cork. Left K 11 a.m.
Aghadve — ruined cathedral and towers.
Filled tank 14 shillings. Button for battery. Blue-tail sheep.
Picked up lady near Low Bridge who was on way to a funeral in Ballyvourney cemetery next to Ballymakeery.
Took picture of fortress outside Macroon.
“Anglers Reast” in Beamish, prop. R. P. Leary. “Road Up.” Slate roofs with moss.
Lunch of tea and sandwiches at The Four Seasons in Dripsey. Irish Sweepstakes man–
Road to Blarney. hunter with dog. School bus — no one over 7 got off.
Blarney Castle — no lighting on wellworn circular stairs. Rooks. Boiling oil. Trees along walk–vines have to be cut off lest they weigh down the turrets and topple them. Old man at Druid’s well. Blarney indeed!
Into Cork through the Blackpool area. Whellbarrows of steaming mash. Man lying directly in road to check underside of car.
“Garda” in re map — “You’ll get me all confused with this thing” i.e. map. “It won’t take you any time at all, at all.” He was right.
Imperial Hotel. Victorianism is a Johnny-come-lately here! Heated towel racks–double pulley windows. V. comfortable. Good food. Wandered around town in evening just looking. Called Kim and Grampa 1:30 our time.

10 – 16 Slept over. Had fine breakfast in our room. 11:45 a.m. left.
Called Dr. Atkins. Retiring.
Men secretaries, lady bartenders.
Mother’s Pride Bread–unwrapped bread.
Stables marked by horse’s head.
Aghada — miles of fortifications to protect Cork harbor. No Murrays there now.
Church in Soleen (?) hooked shut. Flock of sheep–blue tail, red tail. Fat lady singing.
Midletown–poppies and daisies wild by the side of road–Prosperous town.
Bought harp charm 6/3 ear rings pin 16/ pendant for hockey 7/6
“I’ll have to ask himself.”
Stopped for early tea at the Blue Dragon Inn and Bar 5 mi. outside Mitchelstown–down the road from the Glocca Maura.

Mitchelstown–talked to 3 men–story of Jack Devine the laboring man and the rosary. Talk with Mr. Barrett at the tax collector. Visit the grave year–lichen covered crosses — old church — a hollow shell for vines. No perpetual care. Nettles.

But what was the story of Jack Devine and the rosary? The fat lady singing? Who was the “Irish sweepstakes man”? I’ll never know.

Frank and I, tracing part of their path, stopped for a delicious lunch at the Corbett Court–which turned out to be their own Blue Dragon Inn.

More in some later blogpost–we’re in Dublin now.

Doesn’t the landscape look timeless?

Limestone caves, under the hill I was standing on to take this picture, were carved out when Ireland sat near the earth’s equator, with my “timeless” hilltop lying under a shallow sea full of coral and other warmwater-type creatures.

But enough philosophy–just enjoy the greens on these fields and the blues on this sky.