We went out for a walk this afternoon. We started by going around the block along the shore walk. The water was grey. The sky was pretty grey, too, with hints of pale blue.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Bright and Grey
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
Six lovely photographs.
I especially like the different blue and grey shades in the first one.
All the best Jan
Planning can be part of the fun :-)
Thanks, Jan!
I love all the pictures and how home-like they feel. Of course it reminds me of time spent in the PNW and near the water with my Nana. Oh speaking of home, my heritage profile is starting to fill-in and I found out that I have strong ties with some of the counties you've been to / lived-in. Donegal is one of my higher ones. I think we must have an innate pull to these sort of places from our heritage - that they feel 'familiar to us' even if we didn't know. I haven't seen it all yet but so far it looks like I've both been to most of the places as well as continued to be influenced by their various things like TV shows/Films etc. Because of the Irish history people tended to hide their ties with it here in the States. I have been there but didn't know that I had such strong ties there until this week. I'm looking forward to see what more discoveries come of this. Did you guys choose any of the areas you've lived based on family history or just on what felt like the right places for you? The places I've spent time all over abroad are starting to make a lot more sense to me now lol.
No biological history ties for me in Ireland ('family' is a loaded word for me that, except for my daughter, has nothing to do with biology or genetics). The paternal genes come from Germany and the maternal ones from Italy. Bill's grandparents were born in Ireland, but in a different part of the country than where we've lived. We ended up in Mayo first, because that's where we were able to find a place quickly when we got here. It was accessible from where we were staying and we wanted to get into an apartment instead of booking another week at a B&B. We moved in on the day our week was up. After that, it was just wherever one or both of us wanted to go when the opportunities showed up :-)
I do feel similarly about that word and when I use the word I'm only using it in that sense of heritage. I do have a few people I could refer to as family whether they are related to me or not. I think that is the reason why I was seeking both a country and 'something better' in a group of people for most of my life. I have known of a few extended family who seemed pretty nice (just not anyone I got to spend any time with), so it makes sense to me that this sort of 'searching' for hopefully something redeemable 'out there' started so young. I knew it was Bill's people but since you had 'taken on' Ireland with him I worded it that way. I thought maybe he had looked around online to see where his people had spent time to see where might be a nice place to start out. (Checking out the cities and surrounding areas where they came from etc to see if anything looked interesting.) They have nice societal benefits (and they've built some awareness around where they've gone wrong even in the schools, which is better than it is here) now in Germany and Italy, I'll give them that. I have some German/French but the rest of me is Scandi-English-Irish. Oh I don't know if you've read Outlander, it's literally thousands of pages and still more books coming out in the next year or two (the TV version is pretty good and a good cast), one of my areas was the Scottish Highlands which is where that story takes place. I was surprised I was drawn to the story as much as I was but somehow that makes more sense to me now. The iffy family in that book goes through a lot of hardship, difficulty, and mistreatment but they manage to openly work through things and keep pressing forward for a better life and that's an inspiring thing to see.
I've heard of Outlander, I think, but never read it. I know genealogy is very meaningful to many people, and that's cool. It has never been anything that I have felt drawn to--it doesn't matter to me where ancestors came from. As an anthropologist, I guess I take the long view--we can all trace our lineages back to some common ancestors if we go back far enough through our evolutionary history/prehistory :-)
I get vibes about places, both good and bad, but it doesn't have anything to do with heritage or anything like that. I know it is different for you and many others and I am not making any judgements, just relating my own experience. :-)
No it's perfectly sensible. I just have a natural curiosity because we were never told anything and I guess that built a longing for connection to anyone who 'might be more like me'. I love learning what people's jobs/hobbies etc were because it shows me a little why maybe I have something that I'm good at or inclined to where maybe others in the family didn't. My paternal line has little to do with me in what I love and value and maternal line isn't that close either, so it's nice to see it when some ancestor (on either side) had made a whole life of that sort of thing. I sort of grew up feeling adopted (and not in a good way) so I guess I just am happy to see any positive similarities at all. I'm not into the genealogy 'just for the sake of it' tho. You are right there. I have delved a bit and found a cousin who is buried in Normandy and another one who was on the Nuremberg Trials team from Norway. It's nice to have found a few people who showed some courage during historically difficult / controversial times.
There's a strong historicity to the Outlander series and a bit of magic too in a Narnia sort of way but not 'that magical', the rest of it is almost just interesting because of the story she tells. Many times these kinds of great sagas are about people who sort of 'ride the rainbow' through life and rarely experience waves and waves of challenges (which is more like my life), so for that I wonder about the author because I rarely find people like me in stories lol. (Some people think I'm trying to 'appropriate their history' when I talk about the struggle of things like that but no it's mine too despite not being the same heritage as them.)
I think it's fun that something like weather, sky and flowers - things in nature, can feel 'like home' anywhere in the world.
I don't remember which book/books have Narnia--I never read them. I don't like the magic/fantasy stuff. What I do remember about Outlander is that there's a book of knitting patterns based on the series! If there is yarn involved, I pay attention--LOL
LOL well not as magical as Narnia for sure but more in the way they can sometimes go through the wardrobe and have a life on either side. Who knows maybe that's where she got the idea. The historicity of it seems to be pretty accurate. Some learned people I know who are very educated simply love her stuff because of how it addresses the human condition. I do well to watch the series, my eyes haven't done much to help my reading, I reserve it for research on topics of interest usually around human behavior and the like. Did you ever make any of the Downton Abbey crochet? Some of those patterns are nice too lol. Oh the female character in Outlander is a Dr so it's good to see the way her more stodgy husband manages to support and defend her gifts/abilities in that area while also using a lot of local herbs and things when there's lack of medicine/medical understanding. Most authors probably wouldn't take-on that many deep themes which require so much accuracy in so many higher fields, as she did.
I didn't know there were Downton Abbey crochet patterns. I've never seen the show, but I can see that there would be a lot of crochet of various sorts.
Post a Comment