2019, A Summary

I was about to entitle this post "a brief summary," but that is redundant.  And I am not going to bore you all with an introspective of this last year of a hectic decade!  We all know and feel the intensity.

This year I have been really fortunate to travel to places of immense beauty, immense quiet, and immense majesty, all of which remind me of the wonder of this planet.

 I will post my personal year in the pictures I have painted of my travels.  Given that I have painted these from photos I took, I cannot and have not, and will not paint everything.  These are but a few studies and I hope that I have done the places justice in my own small way.

Good health and good luck to all of you for the year to come.

A year of fire and ice!

I am here

Hi you all.  I am alive, just have not blogged as you may have noticed.

Promise to put up a post soon and in the meantime, be well and take care out there - it is INSANE!

Some Patagonian Scenery

This photo is a view from our hotel in Torres de Paine, in Chili

Views from Hotels

Above is the view from our Hotel in Bariloche - A view of Lake Nahual Huapei (I can NEVER pronounce it correctly.  An enormous lake with snow capped mountains in the distance.

 This is the view from our hostel in Ushuia,  in Tierra de Fuego - It is the end of the world!!!  We stayed here 4 nights - the first night we were not impressed.  By the end of our stay we declared we could stay here the rest of our lives!

The lovely garden in Hoteleria Paula in Trelew. A little town founded by Welsh immigrants!!!!!  Argentina has some surprises. This garden was fragrance filled, jasmine and honeysuckle, and full of birds and birdsong.

 Not a great view in Puertos Palos in Puerto Pyramides in Peninsula Valdez. Ricardo requested a room with an ocean view, this is what we got - the little place was lovely despite this view

The most unprepossesing of all - in Buenos Aires

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo from our room in El Calafete - a lovely garden.

Argentina

Yes, Argentina. This year I am visiting the southern hemisphere!

Whereas Namibia is a palette of clear deep blue skies, ochres, siennas, umbers, browns, Argentina - especially Patagonia is a palette of azure, turquoise, lapis, emerald, aquamarine, sparkling white - startling in its contrast.

This was a visit with my sister and brother-in-law that was supposed to have happened two years previously.  Life events postponed it, but we did it!  For me three jampacked weeks of non-stop activity.  Bariloche, el Calafete, Chile, Torres de Paine, Ushuia, Peninsula Valdez and Buenos Aires.

On buses, off buses, on katamarans, off katamarans, on boats, on rafts, on foot, up hills, down hills, up steps, down steps, on rocky footpaths, muddy paths, quaint cobbled streets of towns, stunning glacial lakes, waterfalls, craggy mountain peaks, stunning glaciers, condors, graceful huanocos, pellargic birds,  cormorants, a puma, flamingos, penguins, a fox, whales; southern right whales, humps of them, heaps of them - nursing mothers, randy males.  Springtime after all.  In Torres de Paine we experienced winds so fierce they actually knocked my sister down.  Quite shocking to witness.  Thank goodness no broken bones, a few bruises, grazes and an impressive scar down her nose!  Friendly people, wonderful knowledgable guides, fun fellow travelers, an uncrowded and unspoiled landscape, delicious seafood, meat, pastries, chocolates, malbec, mate, cerveza.

Buenos Aires that everyone had warned us was a filthy grafitti ridden place crawling with violent predators waiting to strip us of everything we had was gracious, old worldly, beautiful.  By contrast with San Francisco it seemed sparklingly clean with just a few not aggressive homeless.   We took a tour of the Teatro Colon and the Recoleta Cemetery, and strolled through the Caminito La Boca.  Of course we absolutely had to be on buses, so we took a two day hop on hop off bus ride.

And now it is over.  I am filled with gratitude that we had this wonderful, exhilarating experience.  I will publish this piece then eventually, hopefully work out how to upload photos.  It is a struggle each time. I have to learn this because it is very easy.  I will post the view from the window of each hotel we stayed in, then I will post other photos. The visual aspect is better for most of us, rather than reading, but as I personally still read, you will get both!

Subtle Signs

The sun sets a little earlier each day. The path outside my front door is carpeted in fading pink hibiscus flowers. I see humming birds dip their graceful curving finely pointed beaks into the feeder more frequently. The wind rustles through trees, and leaves begin to fall.  I feel a chill in the morning and evening. It has a different timbre to it from the chill of foggy summer mornings and evenings. I am knitting again.

The seasons are changing, and inevitably, I am reminded of the 6th of October 1973, when my life, and many countless lives, were changed forever.

A group of us were gathered on the lawn of the swimming pool. It was Yom Kipur, and on the kibbutz noone fasted. It was a beautiful cloudless Saturday.  The lawns were browning, autumn flowers had appeared.  And then, at two o-clock two mirage jets shrieked overhead.  "Strange," we observed, on Yom Kipur? And then David Solomon, on his bike, skidded to a stop alongside us. He held a transistor to his ear.  "There is a war," he said. "Israel has been attacked."

And so, on that lovely peaceful fall day everything changed.  And now for me, every time I experience the signs and changes that herald the fall, I also remember that day, that war, and how life changed.

More thoughts

My latest piece is this:

Sunset over the Etosha Pan

It is from a photo I took while at Onkoshi Lodge.

My art teacher heard me talking about the nightsky while I was in Namibia, which I wrote about in my previous blog, Random Thoughts on the Meaning of Home.  She saved an article from New York Times of August 18, 2019. entitled

In Search of the Night Sky

The writer, Kelsey Johnson, discusses the threats of light pollution, which are multifold, like all the environmental threats, and affect everything on this planet of ours, from the tiniest creatures at  the bottom of the food chain, and upward.  I was particularly struck by this paragraph.

"I think there is even an existential cost.  A dark night sky, unpolluted by artificial light and thousands of artificial satellites, serves as a visceral reminder that we are part of something unfathomably large, that our petty differences on this tiny speck of a planet are ultimately insignificant.  In the face of the
universe, human arrogance is absurd."

And then last night, before bed, I read this in Anam Cara by John O'Donohue

"The animals are more ancient than us.  They were here for millenia before humans surfaced on the earth.  Animals are our ancient brothers and sisters.  They enjoy a seamless presence - a lyrical unity with the earth.  Animals live outside in the wind, in the waters, in the mountains and in the clay. The knowing of the earth is in them...."



This is our birthright also, but we have lost our way