"All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood;...
...So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine...
The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and--lo!--Infinity came down and settled over me..."
(-- from Edna St Vincent Millay's poem "Renascence")
"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!" (--John Muir)
(photos from the plane window coming home this weekend, from Portland Oregon, through Utah and the Rocky Mountains)
Well, I'll be up before the crack of dawn tomorrow, and all of this week: it's Orientation for our new students at Duke's Nicholas School. It's been very busy these last few weeks. I'll be at Duke from very early mornings until night, so it will be a while until I can do much blogging. I'll be back as soon as I can, though, so I hope you'll bear with me! I can't believe that by the day after Labor Day, I'll be off and on the road, but I'll be busy here in the meantime...
Enjoy these late summer days for me! I'm anxious to start painting again!
"People may not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get." (-Frederick Douglass)
I'm heavily in the throes of trip-planning for my fall hejira across the nation for Duke. It occurred to me that I'm always taking photos of other campuses, and I never take photos of the Duke campus, which is quite beautiful in its own right.So here are a few I snapped on our campus yesterday as I was walking to my car.
Every summer about this time, I start the excruciating process of planning my fall trips all over creation. I will be gone from right after Labor Day, on September 8th, until early December with only a Thanksgiving break. I will only be home in North Carolina for a total of 8 days, (5 of which are weekend days.) I'm usually gone three or four weeks at a pop, and then I'm only home a day or so and right back at it again.
While I wind up seeing some fascinating parts of the country, I do miss home. I'm essentially a home-body, so I have to muster up my strength to get myself psyched for this peripatetic lifestyle that awaits me.
This year, I'll be traveling to some familiar places, but I'll also see some new sights which I'm excited about: for example, I'm building into my trips this year some good forestry schools, and so one of them I'll be seeing is Humboldt State University, up in the far north coastal region of California, where the redwood trees live. (It's also earthquake and tsunami territory, mind you!)
I'll be visiting Washington state, Oregon, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Alabama, Louisiana, Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia and Tennessee this year.
I have never been to Alabama or Louisiana before, and I'm already primed for new adventures. It should be a wild ride, and I hope you'll stay with me for some of it. I'll try to take photos as I see interesting things. I will also try to sketch, nights in hotels, when I can.
In the meantime, I no longer work from home when I'm not on the road--I'm commuting in to Duke every day, so here and there, I'll have to try to take some Duke campus photos when I AM home! It's a lovely campus, and deserves my attention.
When my son Eric was looking into colleges, I arranged for the track coach at Duke to meet with Eric, hoping I could entice him to go to school here in North Carolina. Eric was a strong cross-country runner, and I figured if he liked what he saw, maybe it would convince him to stay here nearby. They did hit it off, and Eric really loved the Duke campus architecture as we wandered the campus, but ultimately, he decided to go to Williams College in Massachusetts, which is a wonderful school. It was a great choice for him, but I did my best to keep him near me, honestly, I did!!He's very smart, and I knew he'd get in wherever he applied, but Williams was a great "fit" for him.
I really do get to see many beautiful places in the course of my travels, and I'm fortunate, but I will be exhausted by the time Christmas rolls around again this year.
And every year, as I see the day lilies stop blooming, and the end of my hydrangeas, I get a knot in the pit of my stomach, realizing it's all starting over again, and for me, at least,--summer is almost over. I am definitely in "Trip-planning Mode." Bear with me!
"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." (-Robert Louis Stevenson)
I haven’t had much time for painting recently, aside from this lone rose, (above) but I have tried to do some browsing through some of the wonderful art books I have, and I thought today I’d share some images by an artist I have grown to love over the years.
Every once in a while, I discover an artist who just touches me, and Alice Schille is such an artist.
I first came across Schille in the pages of Victoria magazine, over ten years ago.At that time, I had never heard of her, and immediately sought out additional information about her.
She was born in Columbus, Ohio, and lived from 1869-1955, and was among the most influential watercolorists ever to come out of America, but many people are sadly unaware of her art. That's probably because first of all, she was a woman, and secondly, watercolors were historically never taken as seriously as oils on canvas. I think her work is diverse and just beautiful.
There are so many obvious influences in her art, from Monet to Prendergast, to Sargent and William Merritt Chase, to Homer. She was also influenced in some of her later works by Rivera and the Mexican muralists. I see the influences of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and even Pointillism in a number of her paintings as well.
Her mother/child images are exquisitely gentle and luminous, and her landscapes are jolts of color, with brushstrokes that indicate the shapes and direction of objects.
She was experimental, and because she came from a fairly wealthy family, she was able to travel extensively, and painted beautiful images of her travels.
I hope that if you're unfamiliar with her work, you’ll look her up and enjoy her art as much as I have.(I have a hardcover volume of her work that is supposed to have cost $50, and I got it for a mere pittance.I think the $2.92 postage cost more than the book itself did! )
"Every good painter paints what he is." (--Jackson Pollock)
Today, I head home after almost a month of being on the road this time.I’ve seen some incredible things, and I can’t complain, but I always know I’ve been on the road too long when I find myself wishing I could just pop into the kitchen to fix comfort foods without eating on the road:
Tuna Melts with cheese oozing out of crusty bread for lunch... Big, tossed, fresh salads with the ingredients I want, and homemade dressings... French toast with orange zest, cinnamon, berries, warmed syrup, and whipped cream for breakfast... Bowls of steaming soups brimming over with veggies…
Simple things that I can grab whenever I want to, without having to orchestrate driving out somewhere or ordering in.Aaaaahhhh… I'm starting to really miss reaching into a cupboard and finding my own selection of teas and honey right there on the shelf with a teacup of my own choice.All those things I otherwise take for granted…
At home.
Four trips down; one to go! And next week is Thanksgiving, so I can relax... Have a great weekend, everyone!Yay!I’m heading home. I'm also heading to Georgia to be with family, so in the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! See you in a while...
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” (-Calvin Trillin)
The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. And yet the world, In its distress, Displays a certain Loveliness—
Saturday night, I was extremely restless, and could hardly sleep.I tossed and turned all night as my mind was anticipating the trip I’d planned for my day Sunday. I wound up with about five hours' sleep. Here I was in Carmel by the Sea again, one of the most beautiful areas of California, over a weekend, with no other pressing obligations, and I couldn’t resist the tug of adventure. Why was I stressing? I’d traveled this route before, and so I knew what would be awaiting me: ...steep, twisting, narrow roads and treacherous precipices, my car meandering around the mountainous terrain of the California coastline.
I was also worried about running into fires in the southern part of California, near Santa Barbara.(I do have a reputation for worrying in advance. My brother continually teases me about this.)
But I was determined to set out on an adventure and so off I went, early Sunday morning, in pursuit of San Simeon and the HearstCastle.
And...off to an interesting start, I headed out, drove about 20 miles and realized I'd left my camera battery and charger in the outlet at the hotel after I'd already checked out. (It's always the things you DON'T worry about, n'est ce pas?) So I turned around, and, disgusted with myself, retrieved it. Always the auspicious start, eh!? Then, I white-knuckled it, and faced my demons head on: my fear of heights was in full force all day long, but I was rewarded for all that stress!
I’d always wanted to see the HearstCastle, and the last time I took this trip, I vowed I’d go to see it if I came again, and I am so glad I went. (I had called and made a reservation, which is also why I stressed. I was afraid I wouldn't get there in time for my reserved time, knowing how long it takes to travel that route.) As it turns out, I was there JUST in time, even though I left quite early.
The views are just incredible, and the castle and guest houses were more magnificent than I’d imagined them to be.
The waves crashing against the coastline were amazing, too, and I was reminded once more of why I push myself to explore when I am in an area where I can see new things on weekends as I travel. As it turns out, I did see some of the smoke from the Montecito fires, and even closer to Malibu, I still smell the smoke, but thankfully I was safe on my journey.
“You lose sight of things…and when you travel, everything balances out.”(-Daranna Gidel)
Often, when I’m on the road for work, I’ll find interesting little restaurants in out-of-the-way places.I’m used to settling down at a table with some flowers, accompanied by salt and pepper shakers at the table.But as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I’m just so tired that all I want is room service and a quiet meal alone.
Some hotels actually have services where it's not the hotel itself but local restaurants who will deliver meals to your room: now, those meals can be absolutely atrocious, but last night, I had one that was delicious: a really tasty, fresh, house salad with a homemade dressing, homemade cheese ravioli and a sliver of exceptionally good New York-style cheesecake. (Not exactly diet food, mind you, but pretty decent comfort food!)This service even followed up with a phone call to inquire about how my meal was.I was impressed.Who knew.
Maybe it was just that I was starving at the end of a long day, but last night it was just splendid.Meals on the road aren’t the same as home-cooked meals, and so last night wasn’t half bad.
“Never eat at a place called ‘Mom’s, ‘ but if the only other place in town has a sign that says ‘Eats,’ go back to ‘Mom’s.’”(-W C Fields)
Yesterday, I left Reno and the distant snow-capped mountains I saw out my hotel window, to head for California, via the rugged landscape of Lake Tahoe. What a glorious day, filled with majestic mountains and vast, pure waters.
I’d always wanted to see Tahoe, and once again I was reminded of how fortunate I am to have a job that allows me to see so much of the United States.
It was encouraging, also, to see people hastening out of cars, as eager as I was to savour the beautiful vistas along the way.
The past week left snow on some of the mountains of the Sierra Nevada range, but I was fortunate to have a clear day to spend taking it all in.
Some of the houses along the lake have stunning views from their back yards.
Saturday, there were numerous controlled burns along the road, which I suppose was fitting since I was coming back from a Society of American Foresters conference.
I saw a lone bird perched atop a tree, surveying the beautiful views as well.
“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees and then names the streets after them.”(-Bill Vaughan)
"All I could see from where I stood
...So with my eyes I traced the line
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
