Category Archives: Life in General

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Why My Camera Is Not Good For My Health

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I probably won’t need to explain the title of this post once you see the photos from yesterday taken during what was supposed to be a brisk walk for my health. With friends my age having knee surgeries and long recoveries, I’ve been forced to pay attention to my own aches and pains instead of trying to medicate (acetaminophen) them away and denial is no longer a practical solution either.

Since I can no longer disregard my aging, overused, knees, and hips, walking has taken the place of running these days. Speed seems to be my biggest issue as I can’t seem to move fast enough to affect my cardiovascular system.

I’ve not really slowed down that much in shifting from running to walking as I was never the fastest runner in any race, but walking makes it easier to see my surroundings which makes me want to pause for a photo more often than is good for me. A brisk walk becomes a stroll and before you know it, all I have is a photo essay of my walk and a need for larger trousers.

I thought someone should get something out of it my ” exercise program ” so I’m sharing a few photos of my distractions from yesterday.

A walk though these woods in any season has the feel of a cathedral and I am always in awe of the changing light.

A few steps farther along the same path on the way to the buttercup field. Notice how the path forks just up ahead.

No need to explain these lovelies.

The photo above is the area that John and I refer to fondly as the buttercup field. I know it looks pretty ordinary now, but it will be a stunning field of gold by May.

This is just a peek over a hedge at the trees below waiting to shake off the last bits of their winter look.

I never seem to capture how lovely these stone steps really look. I work with angle and exposure over and over, but I am never satisfied and wish I could walk you to this place to show you what I mean.

I make my way back to the village green where the daffodils are in full bloom and cross down to the churchyard to see what kind of color I can find there.

Yellow flowers fill the churchyard for now, but soon they’ll be competing for a bit of grassy space with the many-colored primroses that come every spring. If you look above the church door in the top left of the photo, you can see a sundial near the arch.

This sundial may seem old with a date of 1780, but there are other dates around the churchyard and inside the church that are actually much older.

I’ve taken this shot before as some of you may remember from older posts. It requires getting into a prone position to get the right angle and after all my exertion from my big ” workout ” I was tempted to have a little snooze in the sun. I did consider that finding me lying prone in the churchyard surrounded by flowers might be a bit disconcerting for someone passing by.

My friend Patrice is the latest in my Atlanta circle requiring knee surgery and if you’d think a good thought for her recovery, I’m sure she’d be grateful. Ironically she was demonstrating the proper way to run to a patient of hers when her knee went. Patrice and I ran the Marine Corps Marathon together in Washington D.C. in 2007. Given our aging joints, I have a strong feeling that may be the last big run for both of us.

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Inspire Or Enflame – The Power Of Words

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When I was the not so sweet sixteen year old you see below, I thought my dad often talked a load of rubbish. Okay, I would not have used the term, ” load of rubbish ” as that expression has only crept into my daily language since marrying my British husband and moving to Cornwall, but it sounds nicer than what I actually said to him about his way of speaking when I was a teen with an opinion on everything.

Elizabeth Harper - Christmas 1976

I ridiculed my poor father unmercifully about the way he spoke every time he gave me what I saw as a lecture, choosing to focus on how he was speaking rather what he was saying. Looking back, I can see that he was trying to inspire, but his word choices then only enflamed the attitude of a teenage girl who could finally speak her mind without fear of being slapped in the mouth. Having moved to the safety of his home from my childhood house of horrors, I pushed almost every boundary that he and my poor step-mom suggested or imposed.

Soft spoken and always careful to use both good diction and the right words, if he lived here in the UK, one might be tempted to say his speech was a bit ” posh.” I remember many conversations where he would try to impress upon me the importance of speech and the perceptions of others particularly if one had a tendency to sprinkle too much color into a conversation with the use of what I would have referred to as swear words and he would have called profanity.

Pushed to his limit

My father died just over 20 years ago and I can’t remember how many times I’ve told this story since then. It’s been a funny way to share who he was with people who never had a chance to get to know him. People like my daughter Miranda who might have enjoyed a chat with him about her sometimes colorful speech had he lived.

Gene Harper WIth Granddaughter, Miranda

The only time I heard him swear

When I was dating my high school sweetheart, I was so ” Scott this and Scott that ” during those days that I’m sure my dad was concerned about the amount of time we were spending together. First loves can be life changing and I would bet that he was worried about the possibility of things like s-e-x and teen pregnancy.

He would never say it, but I think all of his talk of 11:00 curfews and the safety of not being out too late had something to do how often he would see us in a clinch like the photo above. I’m sure it made him nervous.

Once when I was arguing with him over my desire for a midnight curfew like everyone else, he launched into his safety talk again to which I countered smugly by saying that anything that could happen after 11:00 could also happen before.

I did not let it go at that, but kept pushing, whining on and on about how I was missing out on all the fun things that friends got to do who didn’t have to be in at such an early hour. We were driving down our long gravel driveway having just turned off the main road when I said something that pushed him over the edge and he slammed on the brakes making the car slide briefly on the loose rocks as he said, ” Dammit, Elizabeth! ”

His voice went high in both pitch and volume with his temporary loss of control shocking him into silence. I don’t know what he was thinking in that frustrated moment having been pushed to the point of swearing which was something he never did in my presence and I would guess not at all. Seizing on the opportunity, I slipped in a comment that I thought was funny, but was actually condescending and sarcastic.

My response to my dad’s outburst

Feeling very sure of myself and my quick response, I lobbed a zinger at him saying, ” Pop, if I couldn’t swear any better than that, I wouldn’t do it! ”

As you might imagine, this did not go over well and all conversations about curfew ended with my being grounded for the next month. No dates, no nothing, only school and church and a serious talk later about how not being able to find a better word than a swear one was a sign of a lack of intelligence.

Lack of intelligence

The lack of intelligence talk was one I had heard many times before when I tried to fold swear words into my casual conversations with my father. I can’t remember why I did it, I think shock value must have been a partial reason or wanting to feel as if I fit in with the crowd at school. It’s funny though, I don’t remember using bad language at school because I already knew on some level that the people I wanted to like me were not people who used trashy language.

My view now

I think my dad was partly right about swearing, but I also know that it’s never a black or white situation. The trouble for me occurs when people use it to shock. By people, I am referring in this situation to bloggers and writers I read online.

I find gratuitous swearing a distraction and dislike how it takes me out of the writer’s story. Not because I am prudish or never swear myself, but because based on the overall tone and style of the blogger, it just doesn’t fit. I think the test for me is if I am humming along totally into the writer’s words and bam, there it is, a word that doesn’t fit except in my mind to shock … I tend to lose interest in the blogger.

Which is really less about losing interest and more about losing trust

This is not to say that a writer can’t change their style and shake me up a bit, but it needs to flow, not hit me like a ball I didn’t see coming. If I’ve willingly gone to a baseball game, then I know there’s a chance a ball might come my way, but if I’m just walking past a grassy meadow, on a path I take regularly, and a ball comes out of nowhere and hits me in the head, then I tend to want to avoid walking past the meadow in the future. I might creep back from time to time, but I will certainly be on guard in a way that doesn’t allow me to relax into the story in the way the writer likely intended.

There are also those bloggers I read who are terribly funny and shocking with their bad language and wild stories. I may read in disbelief at times and wonder if sharing what they say and do on the internet might be troublesome later, but I enjoy them because I know what to expect.

Yesterday, I caught an unexpected hard ball to the head. It’s happened before with this blogger and I had gone back even though something was not really right for me. As I said earlier, when someone writes a particular way and then tosses out something that seems purely designed to draw a crowd, it’s like shouting fire when there is none and I don’t trust it. I think this writer has the power to influence and inspire and I am disappointed when it seems her goal is really to start a fire in order to see how many people show up.

As John said yesterday, that’s her choice and I agree with him. Likewise, I have a choice and after dodging one too many balls, I’m leaning towards not to reading her anymore.

I’m tempted to send her an email with a link to this post before I unsubscribe, but I’m not sure any healthy debate would come of it and I’m not interested in uncivil discourse. I am interested in hearing your thoughts. Have any of you encountered a similar situation and if so, what did you do? Did you say anything to the blogger or just disappear?

I think my dad would smile knowing that for all the times I was rolling my eyes and looking bored and disinterested at his talks on the power of words and choosing the right ones, I actually heard him.

Could it be the way he said it …

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The Shadow Of Hope – Thinking Of Japan

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I took this photograph two days before the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan with such devastating consequences.

The hillside in Cornwall was brown and lifeless and easy to pass by, but the shadow on the dirt wall drew me in for a closer look. As I scanned the area searching for the origin of shadow bloom, I realized that it was one from last year’s season of growth that had dried in place.

I photographed the dead husk of the flower and the shadow bloom on the wall together as I did, thinking it would be a good to use to herald the coming of spring, but now I find it a more fitting memorial for the Japanese tragedy.

In the middle of so much death and physical destruction it feels overwhelming even to me even from such a distance to see the possibility of life after recovery, and I have to wonder how the people living through it can bear the pain and loss.

I am unsure of the best way to offer support and while I can send money, I want to do more somehow, to offer something other than just an anonymous check, something more like a sympathy card.

While I cannot begin to understand the fear and heartache the people of Japan must be feeling, I do hope that somewhere they can see the memory of new life waiting in the shadows.

 

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Vintage Dresses And Wedding Day Dreams

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Vintage 1940s Wedding Dress (click to enlarge)

Like many women, I’ve had a box that has moved with me many times over the last 25 years. Even as I write that I can’t believe the contents have been with me for so long. In 1986, I bought a vintage wedding dress from an antique store in Athens, where I was in the middle of my third year at the University of Georgia.

I’m not sure why I longed for a wedding dress from another era, but when the shop owner carefully helped me into the dress she’d brought out from a safe place in the back of her shop, I felt like I had stepped into a black and white movie. She guessed the age of the dress at 1940s, and I liked that it had a history before me.

I wondered if the bride who wore it originally, felt as elegant in the candlelight colored satin as I did and I loved that it had a rich weightiness to it that modern-day dresses did not. The delicate glass beadwork that circled the neckline added to the simplicity of the dress, making it seem like something from Walt Disney’s, Snow White.

While I looked much larger than my petite mother, Judy, I was an American size 9/10 (Probably more 10 than 9) when I wore the dress which was long enough to allow my  5’5″ self to wear heels with it.

Vintage 1940s Wedding Dress (click twice to see glass beadwork)

I spent much of this weekend recovering from a virus of some kind and during moments when I felt well enough, I read up on Etsy and Ebay sites for directions on how to sell items online.

After my daughter reconfirmed that she did not want my professionally cleaned and stored dress, I decided 25 years was long enough to keep it locked away. I’m putting together a sale page to move a few things on to a new home and hopefully, this will be one of the first items to go.

If you know a bride who is looking for a dress that is true vintage and not a reproduction, something that will be a unique look that she won’t find variations of in current Bridal magazines and will make her feel special without taking too much of her wedding budget, please send her my way for details.

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42 Hours To Share What I Love About Cornwall Life

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We’ve got a visitor arriving by train in a few minutes. It’s Donna Freedman, who until now has been known only to me through her blogging here and her column at MSN Money.

Lest you think she’s a total stranger aside from being blogging buddies, Donna used to work as a journalist at the Anchorage Daily News with my brother-in-law, Leon. She has an interesting history and writes about how to live well on less.

She’ll be pleased to know that the flowers in her room are from the garden and the blackberries I’ll be using in a cobbler tomorrow, are frozen from the fifteen pounds of berries I picked last summer after reading about how she freezes them for winter use.

With only 42 hours, we’ll be moving pretty quickly. I have no idea what she’d like to see as she has left that up to us. We still have a few normal commitments during those 42 hours, such as a funeral service for our neighbor, but I figure we can leave her in downtown Bodmin for an hour to explore some of my favorite charity shops or she might want to stay home and write.

She’s posting about her frugal travel experience some of which includes staying in hostels in London. Having stayed a few hostels myself, I think she’ll find our guest room a nice alternative.

 

 

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Nobly And Faithfully, She Did Her Duty

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Bessie, wife of  J.H. Henderson, was a woman it seems with little history other than this beautiful tribute given in her memory at St Mary’s Church in Tenby, Wales. Like many places of worship in the UK, there has been a church at this location in some form as far back as Norman times although the oldest part of this structure is only as old as the 13th century.

You may laugh when I tell you that I spent at least six hours trying to discover more about the woman who inspired the memorial above. I wanted to know what type of duty she did, ‘ Nobly, and Faithfully.’

I was disappointed to find little information about her, right down to not being 100 percent sure I’d discovered her true given name. I found evidence of a son who died at 38 in wartime France in 1917, but as hard as I searched I could not find much more than that.

I’m usually very good at this type of detective work and while I located loads of family, Bessie, Betsey A, or Betsy, never seemed to be around at census time and with no marriage license it was hard for me to confirm some of what I found.

She showed up in documents twice during her childhood, but only once during her adult years and even then, she was with her in-laws on the day of the census. While her plaque identifies her as Bessie of Red House, in the two census reports that occurred during the time she and her husband were living at Red House, only John Henderson, her husband, made the census report.

All of the dead ends today made me think about what someone might be able to discover about me 92 years from now. I think I’ve made it pretty easy having written and published 470 posts (a combination of this blog site and my first GOTJ) so even if I don’t get to say everything I’d like to before I die, I will have left enough for someone to have a pretty good idea who I actually was in this life.

While standing close to the memorial, I snapped a few photos quietly, respectfully, and without flash, just like I always do when I’m visiting a church and then I snuck the two pictures you see here. I never moved from my location and was a fair distance away so I don’t think woman I was trying to photograph noticed me at all.

I didn’t linger after taking the photo as I didn’t want to disturb her, but I wondered then as I still do now, who she might be remembering with her candle.

Nobly And Faithfully, She did Her Duty

How about you … do you have any idea of how you might want to be remembered ?

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Riding The Memory Train To Destinations You Can’t Forget

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I am ten and sitting quietly having learned the reality of the physical threat implied in my stepfather’s words that, ” Children should be seen and not heard. ” Safe for the moment and out of reach of the driver, I choose my side of the car because I have learned that although my mother’s hands are capable of causing physical pain, they are attached to arms too short to reach me if I stay pressed close to the door.

My sister claims her regular space on the right side of the backseat in the only car we own and I am surprised when my mother turns slightly and reaches back from the passenger seat to give me a paperback copy of a book I will come to treasure. Setting out on a long car trip once again, moving as we have so many times before, it doesn’t take more than a page or two for me to disappear into Judy’s Journey, a story published in 1947 that reveals what it’s like to be ten year-old Judy, the daughter of a migrant farm worker.

Some books stay with you all your life and even if you no longer have the book in your hand, the story never leaves you. I saved my copy of Judy’s Journey after our move from California when I was partway through my fifth year of school. Back home again in Georgia where I’d been born, I found myself confused by many of my subjects as the American school curriculum varied from the east to west coast.

While I may have struggled through some of my classes, I excelled at reading and lost myself in the school library and books wherever I could find them. Beaten into silent submission at home through both psychological and physical blows, I longed for the safety of someone else’s life and found them in books about other children.

My mother came from a family of readers and writers, and books were always among the gifts I received from my extended family on birthdays and at Christmas. I had acquired a good number of them by the time I was able to escape from my mother’s house at fourteen when I made my last childhood move into safety of my dad and stepmother’s home.

My mother would not allow me to take my books and they were left behind with my childhood things after she decided that I could only take my clothing and gifts that my father had given me.

I remember how sad I felt seeing my fourteen years of living packed into only two or three boxes when they arrived by bus a few weeks later.

My books from childhood were marked as mine by my name written in varying degrees of penmanship. Some had Elizabeth in the adult script of my grandparents and great-aunt, while others were identified by a more childish scrawl and dated from when I first began to write my name.

With two sisters still with my mother, my books bypassed my sister Margaret who at twelve was too old to be interested in many of them and went straight into the hands of my four-year old sister Pam who later claimed them completely by scratching through my name and adding her own. It would be many years before I saw my mother, my sisters, or my books again.

Judy’s Journey disappeared somewhere along the way like many other things from my past, but the memory of the story made me talk about it at times and one Christmas, I found a used copy under the tree, a gift from a friend who understood its significance.

I didn’t begin this post to write about this topic. I’d intended to carry on from yesterday’s post about books and libraries before it took off in its own direction. Memories are like a train with multiple destinations and today’s post is an example of all the directions one story can go especially when writing about it.

John came into my studio space about a week ago and said that he thought I needed to write my story. I told him that memoirs were filling the shelves of bookstores everywhere and people were beginning to write disparaging reviews about those who spilled their secrets in a book for all to see. I added that there were many stories out there like mine and why add one more to the mix. I said I was bored with it most days and imagined others might be as well.

I went on to say that there were parts he did not know and more still that the people involved might not want shared, but he reminded me that it is my story and said quietly that he thought it would be good for me, and to think first about myself in the writing process and not worry about the rest.

Yesterday, I was reading what this gifted writer said here about how writing heals and intellectually I know she’s right. I’m sure John is on to something as well, knowing me as he does.

It’s always bothered me seeing my name replaced in books that had been mine, so much so that I don’t have those books with me anymore. I offered them to my daughter in case she has children one day, although she might rather have new books than those with such a sad history. I mean really, how would she explain that to her children …

I wondered what my sister Pam thought as she was too young to remember me when I left. Did they bother to explain the name already in the books or did they say, ” Just scratch it out and put your own in there.”

I thought about what my sister Margaret said about how they never said my name in the house after I left, how my mother and stepfather if pressed by situation would only refer to me as, ” The one who left,” which made me sad on earlier reflection, but now feels more like the name you might give warrior who was brave enough to leave on a vision quest.

As to healing through writing my story, I thought I had done most of that by talking with two remarkable women I’ve mentioned before, but perhaps writing my story rather than telling it might be a good next step whether anyone ever reads it but me.

Time now for she who has been called, ” The One Who Left ” to go out for some sunshine and exercise. Having worked on the past a good bit today, it’s time now to work on my body.

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Compassion Cake, A Sad & Sweet Recipe

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Normally a woman with a ferocious sweet tooth, my lack of  interest in the extra cake I made today surprised me. It was a new recipe and I made two to be sure it was a good one.

If you read my post yesterday, then you know our neighbor’s husband died suddenly at home on Sunday. I deliberated a great deal about how I might offer support based on the different customs here in England versus my home in the American South and slipped a card through the door on Monday following the guidance of some close to me locally. Still … I felt as if I needed to do more.

After writing about my feelings yesterday, I received many helpful comments most of which seem to suggest that it would be okay for me to follow my heart rather than the generally accepted behavior here. Thank you for that. I appreciated all who took time to comment or to email me privately. It was just what I needed to make me dust off my cake pans and look for the right recipe.

Watching the cakes baking today made me sad and no amount of sugar could change it for me. The extra cake John and I sampled tasted fine, but I wondered aloud to him if he thought it was too dry. He said that it was as light and fluffy as it looked and that it was certainly not dry. After another bite, I decided that it must be the sadness I was feeling that made seem as if it was sticking in my throat.

As soon as the other cake cooled enough to wrap it, I walked next door and knocked softly. I introduced myself to a relative and after explaining briefly who I was, gave her the cake and said that I made it to say we cared and so our neighbor might know we thinking of her.

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Dancing Lessons In The Great Hall In Christchurch

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Walking into the building known as the Great Hall, in what was formerly part of The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, I saw a girl onstage doing what appeared to be a ballet jump. She paused for a second when I came in with my camera, but went back to her leaping after I encouraged her not to let me interrupt her dance.

I took photos with and without flash and became frustrated when I could not get the shot just right. You’d think that I would have studied the instruction manual from front to back before going on a seven week trip to New Zealand, but even after having had the camera for three months, I was not ready when an opportunity presented and I struggled to capture her leaping in a way that I thought showed her delight in what she was doing.

I shifted focus to take a couple of photographs of the opposite side of the room and saw that like many of the buildings being used as part of the Christchurch Arts Centre, this one was still being repaired from damage sustained during the September 2010 earthquake.

Turning back to the stage, I noticed the man now in the picture and spoke to him long enough to confirm that he was her father and that it was alright for me to take her photograph. She had given me permission earlier, but I wanted to be sure it was okay with him as well.

We spoke briefly about the beauty of Christchurch, how they were Americans on holiday too and how we both wished we had more time to explore the city. While we talking, his daughter never stopped practicing her dance steps and when I left a minute or so later, she was still leaping through the air.

Reviewing my photos later, I decided the blurred images of her body as she practiced might be a lesson for me, a reminder of just what it takes to perfect a skill.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

~ Martha Graham

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Updates And Answers From Christchurch

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If you read the post I wrote about the terrible earthquake in Christchurch, then you will know that I was hoping to hear some news about the welfare of the woman in the photograph below. I met Vanessa Hardy in Christchurch two months ago and was worried after seeing pictures of the devastation in an area near her shop, Tete-A-Tete.

With no way to get in touch, I checked the internet for news of her or her partner, Warren Chilton and I waited. Coming home this evening after going out for dinner, I was so relieved to see a kind reader had sent me a link to a newspaper article where Vanessa was talking about her experience during and after the quake.

I was also happy to have an email response this morning from Peter from Fortuna Books letting me know that he and his staff were safe as well.

It’s difficult to see my photographs of the city taken before this earthquake especially when the landscape looks so different now. I hope they continue to find survivors and thanks to all who have taken a moment to leave a comment here over the last two days. I hope New Zealanders can feel the love and concern flowing round the world and I appreciate all who have shared their thoughts.