thoughts, tales and travels
Monday, October 26. St. Wandrille founded this Abbey in 649. Yes, that’s 649, not 1649. The Vikings sacked and burned it in 852. The present Abbey Church was reconstructed in 1969. It is still an active Benedictine community, and Benedictines believe in supporting themselves. They earn their money by restoring...
Monday, October 26. Honfleur is a port town dating back to the 9th century. The composer Eric Satie lived here, and Monet painted here. It’s a charming small town, perfect for a walking tour, but the cobblestones were hard on my knees.
Sunday, October 25. Today was a long bus ride to Normandy, where we will board our ship. We stopped in Caen for a delcious lunch. Caen was bombed twice during World War II: first by the Nazis to take France, then by the Allies to take it back. The town...
We arrived early to our hotel outside Paris, so our guide took us to Senlis, a lovely Medieval village about 30 minutes away.
at Alton Baker Park Double-crested cormorant, common merganser, and glaucous gull sharing a log. It wouldn’t be unusual for several cormorants to be stretching out their wings to dry on this log. If we saw the merganser swimming by, that wouldn’t be uncommon either. Gulls fly over from the nearby...
Sharing the words of the brilliantly creative thinker and writer, Annie Dillard, who was released from this life September 15. From The Meaning of Life, Life Magazine publication, 1991: “We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets...
From the turn off the highway at the red and gold liquor store sign, it’s three miles, winding along a curved macadam road through square, flat fields, to Bowers Beach. You pass a few large farmhouses framed by trees and clusters of aging mobile homes, their battered metal glinting...
End of summer; rain coming. Pulled weeds and dead-headed flowers in my back patio garden which I’ve left to its own inclination for weeks. Waiting for the weather to do its work.
Cooler weather this morning for our walk through the park. Fresh green shoots from the recent rain were pushing up everywhere through the bleached, dead grasses. The remaining cornflowers were a brighter shade of blue. More rain is predicted for this weekend, and it’s more than welcome.
Today I was in the University of Oregon library. UO starts late, so the students aren’t here yet. All the best seats were available, including my favorites with views of Pioneer Cemetery.
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