Our new national holiday. Juneteenth, marks a landmark moment of black liberation, when federal troops entered Galveston, Texas to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved black people were freed (2-1/2 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation). As a gay woman, I’m also celebrating Pride Month, which honors the Stonewall […]
“There Is No There There” — Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (1874 –1946) was a free soul, a giantess of gay history and the arts (photo 1). As a novelist, poet and playwright, she eschewed the conventional narrative and the linear in her writing and in her choice of artworks, widely acknowledged as an important advocate/patron […]
My Journey to Ballymaloe, County Cork, Ireland I was lost, and what’s more, driving on the “wrong” side of the road (for an American). I slowed down, rolled down the window, and stopped alongside a man with a sturdy walking stick. He laughed, then said “Ballymaloe, been there for dinner and scoops. Cailín, follow your […]
“Your work is very organic,” an interviewer remarked to Barbara Hepworth (photo 2) late in her life. “It’s meant to be. I’m organic myself!” was the British sculptor’s succinct, though revealing, reply. Hepworth (1903-1975) has been characterized as an artist totally in tune with herself and with nature. Her sculptures evoke the play of wind […]
With its Gulf Stream influence, great gardens in Cornwall can splash out with tropical plantings and trees, that would shiver in winter or expire of frost elsewhere in the UK. For several days, I just wandered about — from the seacoast, to artist and writer haunts, and a selection of different inspiring green spaces. Let […]
As hummingbirds are New World birds, the niche of nectar-sipping birds is filled by fascinating other avian groups. Honeyeaters are part of the large avian family called Meliphagidae and are native to Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand. This family includes 187 species, half found in Australia, including miners and wattlebirds. Here are a few […]
A whirr of wings Motionless, as if perched on an invisible precipice Along with owls, hummingbirds are my favorite family of birds. They belong to the avian family Trochilidae; their closest relatives are swifts. The almost 340 hummingbird species are found only in the Americas. Traveling beyond the “New World”, the niche of nectar-sipping birds […]
My Passage to India Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan I thought long and hard about traveling to India — the difficulties of the journey, health and safety concerns, the thought of being immersed for ten days in a totally unfamiliar society and culture, whose people have suffered so much poverty and exploitation, where suppression of women […]
When at last I found Ithaca’s shore, I gave it all I had and all I have been. For like the poet, Sara Teasdale, I understood that in life one must barter…. “Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And […]
Astonishing Topiary of England and France Topiary is the art of clipping hedges and trees into ornamental shapes. Topiary is ostentation, whimsy, a compulsive impulse to have nature resemble geometric contours or animals. A fine madness of human creativity; however, the opposite of Japanese niwaki, which seeks through minute pruning and training to create the […]
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