Friday 27 July 2018

We Are the World Blogfest ... # 16 - Justice, Equality and Sustainability ...




Palewell Press - an independent publisher has as its tag line the title of this post ... Justice, Equality and Sustainability ...




So a brief foray to introduce you to them ... an appropriate publisher at this time ... which features narrative poetry on relevant subjects ...




- the land: the future of the British landscape in the wake of investigating the past;

- abuse: being protected from it and injustice;

- authors: who have something important to share;

- refugees: who write or have their story written into books;


The book of poems I bought:
The Soil Never Sleeps


The titles of the publications ... range wide, evocatively and enticingly asking me to tick the 'to buy list', for now a wish list ... I set out a few titles:

Travelling East by Road and Soul by Camilla Reeve ... a longitude journey ...


Travels of a Spider by Camilla Reeve ... on human rights, war, the environment ...

Tutu's Rainbow World - selected poems ...

Three days in Damascus -
a Memoir by Kim Schultz
The Soil Never Sleeps - poetry from the pasturelands of Britain ... which was the publication that I was introduced to when a blogger was referencing that her blog was going into permanent slumber mode … but the soil never does …


Having found Palewell Press ... and seeing their Webpage and services - I am hooked.  I bought the Soil Never Sleeps collection for myself and for the cow farming family out here ... but feel sure you will find publications to draw you in ...


Tiger and Clay - Syria fragments
by Rana Abdulfattah



Camilla has a video introduction on how Palewell Press came into being ... included in the media page ...



Palewell Press - Human Rights Publisher ...not a commercial publisher … there are four categories used on the Welcome to our On-line Bookstore … 




Refugees, Human Rights, Third World …

Climate Change, Environment, Nature …

Mental and Physical Health …

Social and Personal History …

I hope you'll enjoy looking through, but also remember this small independent press ... and at some stage support them ... 

We are the World - In Darkness Be Light


PS I've got some new system bits ... so this is a bit of muddle - I'm scrapping to find my way to doing things easily!!  I hope I can get it sorted soon - techie stuff ... can be troubling!!

Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Saturday 21 July 2018

Point Ellice - the O'Reilly House ...




Learning more about the pioneers (on the Canadian west coast) of what I would call 'our age' ... ie Victorian life onwards - we'd recognise houses, tea parties etc ... earlier than that it'd have been pretty rustic and rough ...

Water colour by Kathleen O'Reilly - showing the drawing
room awnings to protect the textiles from the sun
(the house today is protected with sun blinds)

 Point Ellice house built in 1861, bought six years later by the O'Reilly family ... and as Peter and Caroline's family expanded the house was altered, the gardens developed ... with meticulous records being kept ...



Boating celebration for Queen's Birthday late 1800s



Access to the house was either by the water ... the Gorge Waterway was one of the many fjord-like inlets that abound in this part of the world ... or a rough track ... yet Peter O'Reilly insisted the gravelled driveway was meticulously raked and graded .... 



Cottage Garden Border




... it would have been quiet, surrounded by nature, yet easily accessible from Victoria, by then capital of British Columbia ... 'invasion for the gold, by the Americans, was to be avoided at all costs!' ... being here kept control of this part of the west coast ...



Love the stained glass - reminds me
of some we knew as kids down in Cornwall



The industrial nature of their surroundings started coming to the fore in the late 1800s ... sawmills and rail-yards arrived ... but family and guests could boat down the quieter waters of the Gorge.




Part of restored vegetable garden




The family owned the house for 108 years before selling it in 1974 to the Provincial Government - leaving everything, except their personal possessions, behind ...





Fremontodendron ... clambering around the front door


The cottage altered in those beginning years to accommodate their way of life ... but by the 1880s became a rambling asymetrical home in the popular Italianate style of that era ...


Lots of old perfumed roses, and foxgloves
were out for us to enjoy




Restoration has been possible through the archives available to house and garden conservators ... 





Croquet set ... a fielder was needed
to make sure the balls didn't
disappear into the gorge!

... original wallpapers, paint colours, locations of pictures, clothing, earlier layouts of rooms, garden plants and seeds ... 


Restored wallpaper by the
front door

... so much could be faithfully reproduced to bring the house back to its earlier glory - and give us an overview of life for those pioneering settlers ...


Dining room ... or warm winter room



Guests had wicker shields fitted over the dining chairs - so they didn't get the intense heat from the fire ... 






I didn't find out who these were ... but just liked them -
they were in the kitchen!


...while the warmth from the chimneys kept the table linens dry by means of the narrow cupboard fitted into the sides of the chimneys above the fireplace.




The family Bible



Ingenious - those early settlers .... that dining room as it was warm in winter from the fire - became the family's room for 'working in' ... hence the Bible, writing table, piano etc ...






Joseph Trutch's desk - which Peter used

Remember that WEP challenge we had in February last year - Back of the Drawer ... the family in the 1960s found letters from the first Prime Minister of Canada (1867 - 1873; 1878 - 1891), Sir John A Macdonald, to Caroline O'Reilly's brother, Sir Joseph Trutch, when he was appointed British Columbia's first Lieutenant Governor ... the O'Reilly's bought his desk when he decided to move back to England.




Peter and Caroline O'Reilly


The exterior walls have been scored to make the stucco material appear as though the house was built of stone blocks.  It was painted in pale rose, dark brown trim and with red detailing round the window sashes - faithfully restored.



A quick note to other points of interest I spotted or appear in the guide book ...

Kitchen range on which the Chinese cook made their meals


The kitchen was very modern for the 1880s ... a cast iron French range (coal and wood-burning) ... a copper hot water tank, heated by the tubes running through the stove (an earlier one had exploded).  








There's even a ceramic water filter ... a block of charcoal inside purifies the drinking water!  Made in London by the Silicated Carbon Filter Co. Patented Self-Aerating Moveable Block.







Butler's Pantry
A 154 piece of Minton china, King's Border is on display in the dining room ... along with other sets of china in the butler's pantry ... including large serving platters and what looks like a cake plate - which is actually a dark blue Wedgwood covered cheese plate decorated with a raised white fern motif.


The curators have secured the china ... so it hopefully doesn't get damaged in one of the many small earthquakes we get here ...


The drawing room ... with the piano and harp given
to Kathleen by Lady Trutch

A Victorian drawing room's overcrowded arrangement was common at that time ... Kathleen O'Reilly was very talented and simply decided she did not want to leave Point Ellice ... staying on after her parents died ... devoting herself to keeping the house and garden going as her parents had aspired to.





Jerusalem Sage - drought resistant plant ...
but I loved it - Phlomis Russeliana
Rudyard Kipling visited Victoria, but not Point Ellice house, however he remarked that the city was 'more English than the English' ...


... the house reminded me of my early home ... particularly the garden with the borders, roses, and hollyhocks - which weren't out ... but the guide book shows them ...





Kathleen, Frank and John


Point Ellice is a true historical record of the life and times of a family home and garden at the end of the 1800s ... not many properties are able to boast this sort of accurate history ... a lovely day out and visit ...



Back of the Drawer Bloghop post ... linked here ... 


Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Tuesday 17 July 2018

Educational Book Journey (part 5) ...




The last book (for now) is titled Circling the Midnight Sun: Culture and Change in the Invisible Arctic by the Canadian geographer, writer, speaker: James Raffan.





I found this book riveting ... it's about the four million people in eight countries, speaking dozens of languages and representing almost as many indigenous ethnicities.







Yamalo Nenets -
 autonomous region
in Russia



It highlights that we (in the middle latitudes - as Raffan describes it)  may be worrying about climate change - but they (the indigenous peoples) are concerned about their loss of language, cultural decay, loss of land - which we purport to own - yet they have travelled and accessed those lands for millennia ... their lands are their home - their soul ...



Nomadic Nenets - reindeer hunters


I made lots of notes ... but as I was leant this book - I need to get my own copy ... that says it all really.







Raffan decides to circumnavigate the globe at 66.6 degrees latitude: the Arctic Circle.  He is Canadian,  but starts his journey in Iceland, and on via Norway, Sweden, Finland, various places across Russia, over to Alaska and then into Canada ...



... this is where having read Island of the Blue Foxes, as mentioned in part 2, was really helpful ... I had some notion about Siberia ... and now recognise some of the names.


Yes, I have other books on the go ... but I thought you'd be interested to know about these ... back to normal posts in the future - but more books will follow anon!


The Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Region - Russia's most important source of Natural Gas ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Saturday 14 July 2018

Educational Book Journey (part 4) ...




A biographical book ... I read earlier this year ... that has been a-lingering for me to do a brief overview of Lucy Maud Montgomery's (1874 - 1942) life ... the author behind the sparkling eyes of Anne of Green Gables.



Not having read Anne of Green Gables, nor yet knowing anything of Montgomery - this was another fascinating journey into early Canada ... dealing with Maude Lewis, the artist (in the film I'd seen at the start ofthe year) 'Maudie' and Lucy Maud Montgomery ... I was getting my Mauds muddled ...



Apart from the story ... we learn of her early life on Prince Edward Island, Lucy's prolific output, her life as she travels the female path trying to get recognition for her writings and thoughts, the male dominance and down-putting ... that was considered the woman's place in that era ...


Lucy Maud Montgomery's birthplace

... and the part I found really interesting, as I know just about nothing of the publishing world, was the introduction to this world in Canada and in the USA back in the early 1900s ... where the chauvinist world came to the fore ... to Montgomery's detriment.



Leaskdale Manse - Ontario years
 


This biography by Mary Henley Rubio has many acclaimed acknowledgements - which to my mind are completely true ... and I'd say understatements ... it's a really exceptional biography - and if any of you haven't read it ... I'd recommend you check it out.



Rubio has been so thorough ... researching all Montgomery's letters, essays, correspondence in general, diaries et al ... once the book is written - it is long, but well worth the read, she goes into an epilogue on each of the main players ... which ties up loose ends, but explains things and gives us that overview on the book's contents ...


First Edition ... written in Canada - but
published in the States ... 


... then Rubio goes into 'Acknowledgements' ... a number ... then 'EndNotes' at the completion of her publication ... subdivided by the different location eras in the book ...




... then she gives us her 'Select Bibliography' ... which as she remarks is selective ... and finally we have an index ... bliss - I do like indexes to refer to ...






A photo taken in 1935
Mary Henley Rubio's book has been highly recommended ... and I add to that - for the various reasons given above - apart from the fact that Montgomery wrote one of the more successful books that has stood the test of time ...


If you haven't read it ... I hope you'll go looking for a copy ... as I was riveted ... especially the literary forays she made, and tried to make in the world of male dominance ...


Wikipedia's entry: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Tuesday 10 July 2018

Educational Book Journey (part 3) ...




Next small world:  I went to the local garden show and put a bid in for a small art work ... and 'won'.  


Sue Coleman's print - it doesn't appear to have a title - when I
go to the studio I'll check up 
Get rung up - please come and collect ... after some shenanigans here ... I make a plan to go down for the signed print by a local artist - in indigenous style ... to be collected from a couple's house nearby.



He's there, she's in Ottawa/Toronto researching ... what an amazing home and I get shown round, shown the garden ... the view across to Mount Baker on the mainland ... and we chat about all sorts of things ...




Exeter College founded 1314


... and that Oxford connection yet again ... she's a member of Exeter College - so he was bemused to know I'd spent 10 years of my life in and around the city.



Mount Baker from the Frazier River
by Albert Bierstadt (1890) in the
Brooklyn Museum



I was admiring their art, artefacts, plants, sculptures, talking ... and me being me ... asking more of what they do - knowing I'll be out of my depth ... but again: start somewhere and the pieces will fill out slowly.






This amazing couple are anthropologists ... research consultants engaged in anthropological and linquistic work here in British Columbia and Washington State.


Their specialisation is with ethnology - the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between them.




As I was leaving with my art work I was asked if I'd like to go round for a meal sometime ... of course was my answer!  I also asked if I could have a book of theirs ... so I could try and get my head round their work: that sounds so amazing.


These are the two books I was lent or given ... the Lil'wat World of Charlie Mack, and the translation of an 1895 German edition of Indian Myths and Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America.  Well I've only glanced at them ... and am treasuring them ... as someone who's very lucky.




Franz Boas', who wrote the 1895 book, has an interesting background ... I've linked across to wiki, if you wish to look ... he has been called the "Father of American Anthropology".


Cowichan girl from 1913





So I am adding voraciously to my knowledge of many things and particularly getting a brief glimpse into indigenous life ... it will be a tiny understanding - trying to relate to their world ... which has so much to offer us.


These are here to be noted as reference books should anyone be interested in further research at some stage ... but I wanted to mention them.  I'm not sure how much I'll read of them ... but know that others here might be interested.


PS I'm over in Vancouver for 2 nights ... so will get back to replying at the end of the week ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories