Our trip to Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii and a visit with Aunt Kate and cousins, Linda, Kathy and Becky

Nancy and I had a very short trip to Hawaii to visit my 92 yr. old aunt and 3 of my cousins.

We hadn't seen any of them in a very long time. This is Kathy, Linda, Nancy, Becky and me, with my Aunt Kate. Linda and Kate live in Lihue, which is on the island of Kauai.
Kathy lives on Maui. Becky stills lives in our family town of Dixon, Ill.

My Aunt Kate had several birthday celebrations while we were there. Her real birthday was March 28. Since we were leaving on the 27th. we celebrated before then. And the celebrations kept coming. She enjoyed all her cakes. I think there were three.

 Our hostess gift for Linda. 

She treated us to several nice lunches and dinners, plus a very nice tour
of the north shore of the island.

Linda's daughter, Betsy and her grandaughter Lily. They live with Linda and Kate. 

Betsy and Linda are both nurses, so Kate gets such good (and professional) care. 

 We had never met Lily and Betsy and we really enjoyed them.

 Linda said her favorite site to visit in Lihue is The Grove Farm. It's an old sugar plantation that has been kept very much as it was when it was a working plantation. We took a very interesting tour.

This is the office with one of the resident cats.

 There were also geese, turkeys, ducks, chickens and this pig:

More wildlife:

An unusual spider...

 that wove an interesting web with it's own little red porch light.

 

More of the resident cats. Just like at Hemingway's house.

The cook showed us how she still cooks on the old wood stove. 

She baked some cookies for us.

One of the old platters.

A beautiful, completely needle-pointed love seat in the living room.

Linda took us on a tour of part of the island.

Wild chickens are everywhere.  Some of them very beautiful.

Linda and Nancy on one of the beautiful beaches.

Linda, the mermaid!

We ate lunch at this luxurious hotel...

on the patio, overlooking the ocean.

We really didn't want to see any hula dancers but while having drinks in the bar at our hotel one night the musician asked if any of the audience wanted to hula. Of course, they did! It turned out to be a fun way to see a little impromptu real Hawaiian culture.

On our last day we wandered around a cute little town and stopped in for frappes at a little coffee shop. We had a delightful conversation with these two native Hawaiians who hang out there. One of them had been to Pala. Imagine someone in Hawaii having heard of Pala. It turns out he was quite a gambler and has apparently been to every casino. (in the world??)  He grew up on a sugar plantation.

The other guy was retired from the Coast Guard. He was so nice. He was interesting and even acted interested in what we were saying!  

Sepia Saturday- Camels, politicians....

When my sister, Nancy, saw the Sepia Saturday photo and theme this week -Camels, politicians, etc...(President Roosevelt riding a camel) she said "you've got the perfect camel photo".
And, indeed, I have.

(Sorry, it's not sepia)

 You would assume that this photo of me might have been taken at a "photo op" in Egypt. But if you look closely you can see The Great Wall in the background. I didn't know they had camels in China. I suppose they do in the dessert but that's not where this was. This was not too far from Beijing.

So there's the photo of me riding a camel and here's one of me and a politician (two of the possible themes):

 These were taken in about 1985 (before The Tianamen Protests of 1989).

We were there on a business trip. A sort of strange business trip. Our business at the time was needlework kits and books. Making things with doilies was popular at the time. We had several kits and books on the subject. So we imported doilies through an importer in San Francisco. He was the main (and at the time, only) importer of doilies from China. He was called "The Doily King". He took us with him on one of his buying trips. It wasn't a fun trip but it sure was interesting.

There weren't many foreigners in China at the time, so we often attracted attention.

Here's Nancy and I strolling on The Great Wall. 

It was actually quite steep, at least at this point and not at all good for strolling. More like climbing, and very exhausting.

To see more Sepia Saturday click here. 

Embarrassing travel moments- China 1985 (First in a series)

MING TOMBS-

Oh boy, a place to get your picture taken as a Chinese Empress. Who could resist? I get in line. At last I'm at the front of the line. Excitement mounts! I'm going to be beautiful. I'm prepped for the role by the Wardrobe Master.

A crowd forms to watch the foreigner turn into a Chinese Empress. The director gives directions (in Chinese) . I think he's saying tilt your head a little to the left. The crowd approves (in Chinese). I think they're saying "Isn't she beautiful?" (Is that a pizza I'm holding?)

I stand here like this on a little platform, for a very long time. Somehow I don't think they think I'm beautiful. It starts out as a few gentle giggles then builds to raucous laughter. The lead laughers are my traveling partners- Nancy, Dennis (our sales manager), Dickie Low (our host and benefactor of this trip), and Dickie's assistant (whose name escapes me). 

When are they going to take the picture? Where's the cameraman? It turns out you're supposed to have your own cameraman. No one in my party seems to know this and they all just stand there laughing. Please, somebody take the damn picture. Finally Nancy comes to her senses and snaps a picture.

It wasn't my finest moment. I did manage to smile, though.

Did you want pepperoni on that pizza? 

To see more Sepia Saturday posts go to sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

Travel sketches

My new favorite blogger is Vivian Swift.(vivianswiftblog.com ) She has written a wonderful book called "When Wanderers Cease to Roam." It's her travel journal and it's full of her beautiful little watercolors. I bought it because of the watercolors but as I read it I realized I liked the writing as well as the paintings.  She's so inspirational and full of information on writing,  journaling and painting...and she's funny.  I found myself identifying with her so much that I've emailed her several times and she actually wrote back.

She's inspired me to start writing about my own travels. I've been looking through my sketchbooks to find things I've sketched while traveling. I've done a lot of traveling but surprisingly little sketching. I buy sketchbooks all the time and take them with me but when I look back at them they'll have one or two half finished sketches in them and lots of blank pages.

Nancy, Megan, and I went to Paris and London in 2002.  These are the only sketches I could find although I do remember doing some others.

When we got to our teeny- tiny hotel room in Paris there were three beds jammed together. We thought we could save money by all 3 of us sharing a room. We would have had to walk on the beds to get to the bathroom. So we splurged and I got a separate room. This is Nancy resting before we hit the streets. Nice socks!

We had a friend who lived in London who we hadn't seen in more than 20 years. We called him while in Paris and he insisted we come to London.  So we took the train through the Chunnel. It was a little disappointing because while going through the chunnel you obviously couldn't see a thing. I liked the ferry better.

Our friend, Jim Singer, was an Oriental art dealer. He had specialized in Tibetan art but said it was too picked over now and he had gone on to other Oriental art. His large apartment was full of paintings, prints, textiles and statues.  The one of the Buddha was almost life sized. The smaller one sat on his fireplace.

This was the view from his living room window. (not a very good sketch, but it helps to remember it.)

Jim came to visit us in California a couple of times when he moved from London to Tiburon, Ca.

And then he disappeared. Every time I called I got no answer and no answering machine.

So I googled him and, to my shock, he was dead.

We had just seen him about two weeks before this and he had talked about being depressed. It hadn't seemed that serious, though. He had been recently divorced, both his parents had died and his only sister had died years before.  So he had no family left.  We've never really found out what happened but we assume he committed suicide. Just when we found him after so long we lost him again.

More from our Art-full L.A. trip

 

One of my favorite places in L.A. is the library. When you're there, always look up.

This is the ceiling in the main lobby.

Another ceiling.

One of the many exhibits at the library was of old movie posters. We loved the titles of these two.

 

  

The lobby of the beautiful Biltmore Hotel, just a block away from the library.

The inner courtyard of another of my favorite L.A. buildings- The Bradbury.

  

Nancy snuggles up to Charley Chapman in the Bradbury Building.

On our walk to the Grand Central Market - 

the window of a curandero shop.

All sorts of herbs and potions and religious statues were on sale here.

They promised to cure you of everything from liver to love problems.

Christ on a crutch (or two). 

The window of a shoe store in the art gallery area.

From the L.A. Art Show and Zentangles

Here's a couple of the artists that were represented at the L.A. Art Show.
These first two pieces are by Oh, Kyong-Mi. I didn't notice it at the time but my latte photos from my last post must have been taken with these in the back of my mind.

Hers are ART, though.

After our Zentangles class we saw Zentangles everywhere, in tile patterns, carpet patterns, nature, etc. 

I don't think this artist knew he (or she) was doing a Zentangle, but it looks like one.

This is by Poli Marichal. It's a lino-cut called Regerenaciones/Transcendence.

 

 Lino-cuts are a lot harder to do than Zentangles.

What are Zentangles?  Doodles turned into art.

They were developed by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. They can be used as a form of meditation and relaxation. (You know, that space you can get into while doodling). Rick Roberts noticed that Maria (a calligrapher) was hard to reach while she was working on a very involved illuminated letter.

He was an ex- Buddhist monk and thought she might be in a Zen-type space (don't quote me on this- it's just my interpretation). 

Suzanne McNeill has a book called "Zentangle Basics", (by her publishing company-Design Originals)- which is a great way to get started.

Here's my first attempt- a bookmark. It's fun and really is relaxing.

 

Here's one by Suzanne showing how complex and beautiful they can be.

An art-full trip to Los Angeles

Our friend, Suzanne McNeill, was here for a visit and we spent a few days in Los Angeles. It was all centered around art and started with a Zentangle class at my cousin's store TheART bar in Santa Ana and ended with The L.A. Art Show.

Zentangle by Penny Raile whose loft we visited in L.A.

 

One of Suzanne's Zentangles 

One of the murals in the L.A. library

Also in the wonderful L.A. library

Murals, while walking to the Grand Central Market for lunch.

 

A bridal shop on the way to Grand Central Market.

Suzanne at the Market.

 

Penny and some of her Zentangles in her loft.

One of Penny's paintings.

The model.

More art... on our lattes at breakfast.

 

At the Neon Museum.

More tomorrow about the Art Show.