The grandkids found a wild blueberry patch in the woods across the street from our house. How many years has that been there and I didn’t know it?
After 2,700 miles in the last 24 days, consisting of two round trips from home to West Texas, first to pick up grandchildren to stay with us then to return them, things are back to normal today. That also includes our special bug infestation earlier in May, something I haven’t written about here.
I took the grandkids to a Wednesday evening service project at our church, packing meals for the food challenged.
Well, not quite back to normal. This afternoon we have our quarterly pest treatment. We always have some prep work to do for that and putting things back afterwards. Then there’s the question of groceries and whether we have enough or if we need to make a quick trip to the store. Then there’s getting the checkbook and budget up to date for all the debits on the trip, and filing the receipts. The latter isn’t critical, but I like to have finances up to date always.
Then, there’s my speaking engagement tomorrow, to the Village Lake Writers and Poets. This was supposed to have been in April, but I got bumped when another speaker was booked over me. I’m mostly prepared, but would like to run through it a couple of times today and tomorrow morning. My topic is “Genre Focus Disorder: Is Poetry the Cure?”
One other thing is an assignment from my former company to write a construction spec. I’ll need to look at that a little today, consider the deadlines, and decide how much time I’ll need to put into it. It isn’t huge, but it’s the first “major” assignment they’ve given me since I retired on January 1st this year.
Couldn’t let them be on screens all day. Chores were assigned, and done cheerfully—for the most part.
As for blog post, I have nothing planned. I’ll be thinking about them over the next few days. I hope to quickly get back into my rhythm of Monday and Friday blog posts. I normally try to plan ahead for those, knowing a week or two out what I’ll be posting about.
Trips aren’t over yet for the summer. We will soon make an overnight trip to Oklahoma City for a church event. Back to Texas a little later to help the kids out, and maybe one more time for the oldest grandchild to come stay with us for a week. It’s all good. I enjoy long distance driving, as does the wife. A road trip us usually a joy.
Now, will I be able to accomplish a little writing today? Documenting America waits. Stay tuned.
At the moment our grandchildren are with us, the three older ones, ages 11, 8, and 6. They’ll be here until next week. That’s after we spent ten days with them and their parents in Texas. So it’s been a busy time for me, for us, and I have little progress to report on writing.
The Kindle e-book was published on May 6, 2019. Print book was published May 27, 2019.
But I do have a little. Adam Of Jerusalem is now published in paperback. Sophie did a good job with the cover, and Amazon accepted it on the first submittal. At the last moment I found a stray comma in the introduction and had to correct and upload that. I’ll need to do that to the e-book as well. That will be after the kids leave.
I was able to complete tasks on my friend Bessie’s book and it is now published in both e-book and paperback. Once Again Upon An Island follows upon her first book of similar title. I did the cover: me, with my limited skills. It had been a year since I worked with G.I.M.P., and forgot much of it’s use. Fortunately, I had made some cheat sheets for some tasks. I think, once we are a quiet house again, I’ll do more G.I.M.P. practice.
I edited the first chapter of Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition while we were in Texas, and yesterday I typed it. Tonight I’m going to either edit more early chapters or write my portion of two or three later chapters. At least I’ll be able to show some progress in the midst of busyness.
The weekend will be full, between yardwork and grandkids and preparing to teach adult Life Group. Still, maybe I’ll get a little writing done. That’s the plan.
Can a graphics duffer create the print-book cover to go with this? Enquiring minds want to know.
As I look out from The Dungeon windows at 06:47 a.m., the sun is hidden by the tall trees at the rear of our backyard. But enough sun gets through I can tell it will be a sunny day, at least to start. Storms are predicted for tomorrow, and might start in a small way sometime today.
Yesterday was a busy day. In addition to stock trading in the morning, I did a few writer things. I’m trying to create the print book cover for my friend’s book. I made a good start on it despite the fact that it’s been a year since I created a cover. Using G.I.M.P., a no-cost alternative to Photoshop, I managed to get the overall sizes of each part of the cover in place. I found some good notes I wrote on that. Alas, I’ve forgotten enough that I didn’t get it done in the time I had. Hopefully I will this morning.
I then at a quick lunch, hopped in the van, and went to do some engineering work, final inspection of one site and monthly inspections on three other sites. I completed the final inspection, with a little arguing with the contractor thrown in. Not bad arguing, just them obviously not appreciating the things I found. I got a little testy at one point when they gave new information about a structure I’ve been trying to get them to modify. Why they didn’t give me that info months ago is a mystery.
I went to the first monthly inspection, walked the site, saw only one or two things out of the ordinary. This has been a problem site, with me constantly finding things they are doing in violation of City codes. They’ve started to get much better. They had installed almost all the handicapped ramps incorrectly. I decided to let the first few go, but I found a new one wrongly constructed. They will have to change that. They also had one where they attempted to construct it correctly, but came up short. Fortunately the correction is inexpensive.
The engineering work to that point took me from 12:30 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m., with two more sites to go. I was beat and dehydrated, as I hadn’t taken water with me. I decided not to do the other two inspections, leaving them to the employee of my former company who joined me yesterday for training purposes. I came home, rested an hour, then wrote the reports for the two inspections.
Then I took it easy in the evening. We had plenty of leftover chili to use for taco salad, so had that for supper, and a slice of turtle pie for dessert. I spent much of the evening on the computer working on the reports as well as trying to find some photos in the company files to prove the point I tried to make on site.
I’ll soon be creating a cover for “Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition”. It will be a simple re-creation of this one.
I wrote an e-mail to the CEI project manager, telling her my inability to do the two other inspections was “most likely a combination of too much sun, frustration with [the other] engineer and developer and contractor, age, and perhaps a creeping retirement-starting-to-care-a-little-less each month.” I haven’t heard back from her yet. I have trained the other man to do these inspections and had no doubt he could do the remaining two and write acceptable reports.
I spent no time in the sunroom, didn’t work on my own books at all, didn’t make much progress on my to-do list. My wife and I did a little reading aloud, and we took a very pleasant call from our oldest grandson and had evening devotions with him. Our reading carried us after normal bed time.
So, up this morning after sleeping through the night, ready to “awaken the dawn” that I see unfolding out the window. It’s fully light out, though the trees still obscure direct rays. On to other things for a couple of hours, then back to the book cover work.
The Kindle e-book was published on May 6, 2019. Other versions will be coming soon.
Those who read this blog regularly will realize I missed my normal posting days of last Friday and yesterday. Extreme busyness of a few out-of-the-ordinary things consumed so much time I just couldn’t see my way clear to carve out the time to write posts. Those unusual activities have eased just a little, enough for me to write today. I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.
Here then is a short post, to say that my latest novel, Adam Of Jerusalem, is published—at least the e-book is. As always, the print book will lag a little. I put this up about a week ago, just before the busyness set in. I was planning on making this announcement last Friday.
So, now my church history novels series has books 1, 2, and 4 published. I know what book 3 will be, and I have a program for books 5 through 9, or maybe it’s 5 through 11. I need to gather together all my writing idea sheets and bring them into some sort of useable arrangement.
I’ll now finish the next volume of Documenting America, my current project, then will see what to work on next.
Here’s what I got up to this morning—a nice, steady rain. Yet, it didn’t put me back to sleep.
I’m starting this post at 7:05 a.m. I’ve been up since 5:20. I got up a little before 5:00 for a call of nature and never got back to sleep. My right shin was hurting and kept me awake. I finally got up, went to my reading chair and tried to sleep. It was raining hard. The noise of the rain from the open window behind my head, and on the skylights and the roof, was soothing, but didn’t do the trick for putting me back to sleep.
So, a few minutes before six I got up, put on the coffee, then came back to my chair and opened the book I’m reading on my cell phone. It’s Thomas Carlyle’s Miscellaneous Essays, specifically his 1829 essay on Voltaire. I don’t know much about Voltaire so was looking forward to this particular essay. Alas, 68 pages into a 73 page essay and I don’t know much more than I did before reading it. I’m either reading distracted or Carlyle’s style is working against comprehension. I won’t re-read it immediately to see which it is.
Now I’m in The Dungeon, typing this on the fly. It’s going to be a busy day. I have to call my dentist when the office opens. For some reason I think I have an appointment today that I failed to put on my calendar. Later, at 12:45 p.m., Lynda has a medical appointment in town that I’ll accompany her on. That will consume about three hours including the driving there and back.
Last night, via e-mail, I received the final information needed to publish Adam Of Jerusalem. At some point today I’ll plug that into the publication files, then complete the final formatting. I hope today I’ll get the Kindle e-book edition published, tomorrow the Smashword edition, and maybe Wednesday complete the print book and order a proof copy. This may sound like a lot but it’s all doable, depending on the time to make the print book cover from the e-book.
Of course, at 8:00 a.m. I’ll get on the elliptical for 5 minutes, then go into my Monday morning stock trading routine. Meanwhile, last night I completed my research in the source document for one chapter of Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, a chapter I hadn’t yet done any reading for. I identified the excerpt I want to use and will today add it to my book file. That will give me three chapters edited, waiting for my original words to be added.
Somehow, when adding the photo to the cover, I caused the text to be offset from center. I’ll correct that later today.
Then, I also need to spend some time on books for two other authors that I’m helping. One is the retired missionary from our church. I’ve written about this before. I’ve created a rudimentary cover for it, which, while not professional, will likely suffice for this book. I have the same publishing tasks ahead for that book, that I can start any time.
A second book, for a different author, is not as far along. She came to my attention through the critique group I’m in, as she’s the church friend of a young man who has attended a couple of times. Her book is encouragement for women who have a church background but are working to recover a strong spiritual relationship with God that they either lost or perhaps never had. I may work on that some today, though more likely tomorrow.
So there you have the outline of my day. How much of this I will actually accomplish is a mystery. But, I’ll try. With God’s help and strengthening I’ll complete much of it.
The United States Constitution. What a great system of government.
As I mentioned in a previous post, as I’m going through the source documents for Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition, much good material gets edited out. It winds up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, using the movie industry term. Some of this is good material. I’d love to use it in my book, but, alas, I need to keep the book a reasonable size.
The thought came to me to use it for blog post material. So, instead of just dumping it, I’ve been saving it for use when it’s time to write a blog post and I have nothing else in mind. It could also be newsletter material, I suppose, if I ever take the plunge to writing a newsletter.
But, again alas, something I put into a file last week, from one of the Federalist Papers, is now nowhere to be found. What did I do with it? Did I save it to my Documenting America Vol 3 folder? It’s not there. Did I save it to my Blog folder? It’s not there either. Maybe, without paying attention, I saved it to the root folder of my Documents. Nope, not there either. Did I fail to save it and let it go drifting off into the ether?
Whatever, the excellent item I was going to use for today is not on my computer. I could spend an hour looking for it, but think, instead, I’ll find something else. I saved other stuff.
Here’s one from an anonymous writing from someone from Pennsylvania who didn’t like the proposed constitution.
The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves, very successfully, of this favorable disposition; for the people thus unsettled in their sentiments, have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government; all the distresses and difficulties they experience, proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present confederation, and thence they have been led to expect full relief from the adoption of the proposed system of government, and in the other event, immediately ruin and annihilation as a nation. These characters flatter themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence, and now triumphantly exult in the completion of their long meditated schemes of power and aggrandisement.
Whoever wrote this, a small part of a much longer article, was, I think, spot on concerning what happens when power is obtained and then applied to government. Wealthy and ambitious people do tend to lord it over their fellow citizens. They are successful, often from their own work, and they see this as a reason why they should 1) be held in high esteem by others, and 2) have positions of political power.
The writer of the original document seems to have been wrong, however, about the motives of those who wrote the Constitution and about how the government would function under it. Things turned out much better than his dire predictions. He knew things weren’t going well under the Articles of Confederation, and saw this new document as setting up a government of the rich and powerful. I believe most of our 232 year experience with it shows us that this isn’t so.
My Documenting America series focuses on our historical documents, and tries to inspire people to seek the documents out and read them.
Or is it? As I look on Congress today, I see lots of multi-millionaires. I see people who make laws that apply to others but not themselves. I see the rich and powerful say the government should take over your health care while they keep a very nice plan for themselves. Same with pensions and Social Security.
I could go on and on. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of Congress? I think most of the ills in the nation that are often attributed to the president—every president, no matter who it is—are often the fault of Congress, either due to their action or inaction.
So why didn’t this particular passage make it into my book? Simply a matter of space. This document, like all of them I’m using in the book, is chock full of good phrases and arguments. Some turned out to be wrong arguments, some right. It’s all worth reading. If someone reads Documenting America and then digs into the source documents, they’ll see this. All the better. If they don’t, this will remain obscure and unread.
Perhaps my book and this blog will help others to find and read it.
Our adult Life Group (a.k.a. Sunday School) is still in the midst of our Easter study. This is because my co-teacher, a couple of years ago, mused about whether we could do a beginning-to-end Easter study one year, beginning with the Triumphal Entry through Easter day.
The main problem with that is the volume of material. I worked it out, and determined that you had more than 60 lessons to do if you didn’t skip anything. I don’t like to skip things, so that was a dilemma. I worked out a program where we did that in five parts, meaning you do one part each year. My co-teacher agreed with that.
Year one covers Sunday-Monday-Tuesday of Holy Week. Yesterday we had lesson #10 in that, covering when the Sadducees questioned Jesus about the resurrection. It was a bogus, exaggerated question, not for illumination rather than to support their ill-informed beliefs. Jesus, of course, destroyed those beliefs quite easily.
Do you remember the story? Using the Levirate marriage, as defined in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, the Sadducees said a man married, had no children, and left his widow for his brother to marry. He did so, and died in the same status. This went on for seven brothers, all who died, then the woman died childless. Their question was: At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since she was married to the seven brothers?
Jesus’ answer was: You err because 1) you don’t know the scriptures, and 2) you don’t know the power of God. The Sadducees considered only the five books of Moses as authoritative. Naturally their question came from that source. So, naturally, Jesus’ answer came from that source as well.
First, he said they didn’t understand what the resurrection would be like. In it would be no marriages, births, death. It won’t be like life on earth, extended to another realm. Those thought worthy of the resurrection would become like angels, who have no need for such earthly activities. So Jesus answered their question: Yes, silly Sadducees, there is a resurrection but she won’t be anyone’s wife in it.
But Jesus went on to prove there would indeed be a resurrection. In the account of the burning bush, Jesus said that God said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Since they had all died centuries before Moses lived, if both their bodies and souls had died, God couldn’t have said that. He would have had to say, “I was the God of…”, of something similar. Instead, He said “I am the God of….” Thus, He is the God of the dead.
The Sadducees rejected the concept of an afterlife and resurrection because it isn’t explicitly stated in scripture. Jesus showed them sometimes you have to dig deeper. See what the words imply but may not state as clearly as you’d like them to say something. The truth is there, if you just know the scripture through deep study.
Concerning the power of God, it is also seen in the account of the burning bush. The bush in the desert burned, but wasn’t burned up to embers and ashes. It remained an intact bush. A miracle? It was certainly something that defied the laws of nature, so, yes, it was a miracle. It was a demonstration of the power of God. The God who could make a bush burn but remain a bush could make a resurrection happen.
My final words in class were: Don’t be like the Sadducees. Know the scripture, and know the power of God. We discussed how we can do this.
It was a good class. Sixteen of us had the chance to see what the scripture was really telling us, and what the power of God was like. I hope we all take Jesus’ words to heart and really, really get to know the scriptures and his power.
Depending on where I sit I can see birds at the feeders from the sunroom.
I’ve written a little about writing in retirement. That was just a few days into my new situation, however, so I hadn’t had much time to establish a habit. Then, afterwards, I wrote moreabout what retirement was like for me. Again, that was somewhat early on in my “leisure” years—less than two months in to be precise.
As of today I’ve been retired for almost four months. A new normal has finally settled in. Yesterday was somewhat typical. I rose at 6:45 a.m. without an alarm, got up and said my new prayer, “I will awaken the dawn.” Weighed, took my blood sugar, made coffee, and headed to The Dungeon for my work, er, I mean leisure. I check on book sales (so far this year only four); I read two writing related blogs; I check e-mail, weather, and new additions to my 23andMe DNA relatives.
They bloom any time of year they have a mind to.
That doesn’t take long, and I move on to a combination of writing and stock trading. I’m quite active in both, working on several writing projects. Every hour from 8 till 12 I spend four or more minutes on the elliptical, trying to keep active while being sedentary. I typically do around 1 to 1.25 miles. Occasionally I start a sequence of rock and roll oldies on YouTube. I don’t do that much, however, for I find it distracting rather than helpful.
I go upstairs for breakfast at 9:00 and for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Then my routine varies. Depending on how my morning went, I will either go back to The Dungeon to continue my morning pursuits, or I go outside to work in the yard, or I go for my afternoon walk. I’ve been doing between 2 and 3 miles as many days as weather and strength permit. Whichever I do, the time is filled.
It’s a little cool in winter, but I still enjoy it.
That brings me up to somewhere around 4:00 p.m. At this stage I’m done typing, done with the stock market, done with exercise. At this point I take a mug of coffee and retreat to the sunroom. This is a fairly large room, filled with chairs and plants. We have a table in it with a lamp. For the winter months we run a space heater and I try to keep the temperature around 60 degrees. For summer, we have a window fan but no air conditioner. It does get hot, but with a chair placed strategically to the fan it’s bearable.
In past years, while working full time, I’ve used the sunroom some, typically on Sunday afternoons when I’m taking rest. Now, I use it almost every day. We have a table out there that came from my mother-in-law’s kitchen, a small, drop-leaf table. It’s a little high for the easy chair, but it works.
The too-tall table, plants, and an open window.
I keep a couple of books on that table, which I read only there. One is the letters of Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m going through that very slowly, as in I’ve been at it off and on for over two years. I have a couple of printouts for research purposes that I sometimes pick up and read. One is the Didache, which I have selected as the source document for my next church history novel. Another is one of the source documents for Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, my intent being to pull some blog posts from that document.
The woodpeckers are fun to watch.
Much of the time I sit in the easy chair, open the window right behind it, and read. Often I fall asleep. It’s not hard. With a little breeze coming at the back of my head, even if it’s hot in the room, I lay my head back whenever tiredness comes upon me, and I’m asleep almost instantly. Fifteen or thirty minutes later I awake and realize what’s happened. I read some more, sipping coffee. Perhaps I sleep some more.
Around 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., I leave this oasis and go back to the main part of the house to work on supper. I’m not a gourmet by any means, and cook simple things most of the time. Our microwave over went out about a week ago, but getting the two of us out to a store to find a replacement is difficult. So right now, even with leftovers, fixing supper is taking a little extra time.
Once in a while I go back to the sunroom in the evening. I like it after dark. I turn on a lamp on that too-high table, which gives just enough light for comfortable reading in a book. I read something, maybe even on my cell phone. I recently re-awakened my Nook and I may start reading on that in the sunroom.
We have six Christmas cacti out there. Four of them bloomed in March, one still having a few blooms. I enjoy looking up from my reading and seeing them. Other plants in the room don’t bloom, but they make the room more pleasant.
I hope to spend much time in this room in my retirement. Hopefully I’ll get much reading done there, both for research and pleasure.
I haven’t said much about this recently, but our son is Dean of Students at the Law School at the University of Chicago. He’s been slowly working his way up through university administration since he earned his PhD in 2011, a degree he worked long and hard for.
In past positions (not at the Law School) he’s had a lot of interesting things come up, such as a student who presented letters saying he was a C.I.A. operative and therefore needed some type of special treatment. Or such as the student who forged her admission papers, showed up at registration, and tried to force her way into enrollment and housing. Some things weren’t so benign, such as student deaths to deal with when Dean on Call.
How may the right of free speech be abridged, if at all?
An interesting situation came up on April 9, 2019, when pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted a talk by a pro-Israel speaker. The talk concerned the boycott of Israel wanted by Palestinians. The talk was by a visiting professor. The Palestinians entered the room and began shouting, preventing the speaker from continuing. Someone called the campus police. Charles was close by in the law school, and so came down and tried to restore calm and allow the talk to continue. You can read about it in this article in The Chicago Maroon, the university newspaper.
Embedded in the article, in tiny print, is an e-mail Charles sent to the students later in the day, explaining what had happened, what his actions were, and how all this applied to University policy, especially the policy of free speech. I particularly liked this from his e-mail:
The heckler’s veto is contrary to our principles. Protests that prevent a speaker from being heard limit the freedoms of other students to listen, engage, and learn.”
This brings me to something concerning free speech that I’ve been thinking of for quite some time. It’s relevant to me now as I work on my next book, Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, especially in relation to the discussions on the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech is covered in the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble….
As has been pointed out many times, the Constitution was written in a way to restrict the government, not the people. Laws of Congress restrict the people, but not the Constitution. Over time this has been re-interpreted as applying to the people as well. In certain areas, people must restrict their behavior based on the provisions of the Constitution.
Well done, Dean Todd!
What about in this case? The professor who was speaking has a right to free speech. The protestors who were preventing others from hearing him have a right to free speech. Do those in the audience have a right to hear the speaker? Is there any free speech when hearing is prevented?
Which brings me to something I’ve thought of for a long time. The right of free speech doesn’t guarantee the one speaking or publishing will have an audience. This, I think, is sometimes a problem with the press, especially the broadcast press, who decry alternate voices that crowd them out when they consider themselves to be “legitimate” news outlets and the others not. Sorry, but no one executing their right of free speech or free press has the right to an audience. No one.
But what about those who came to hear the speaker? Do they have a right to hear? I’m not sure. Certainly civility would say that they ought to be allowed to hear the speaker they came to hear, and that the protesters should find a different way to protest. Silently holding signs, confronting the speaker before and after speaking, establishing an alternative talk in another place. These would all be ways for the protesters to be heard and seek to gain their own audience.
This brings me down to what I’ve been thinking about: when rights clash. I have freedom of speech, but not where that right clashes with someone else’s right. I have freedom to practice my religion, but not where that right clashes with someone else’s right.
In a clash of rights, whose right should come out on top? Maybe before I ask that I should say, when rights clash, find a way to accommodate both people’s rights. Then, if you somehow can’t do that, whose right should come out on top? In the USA we have always said it should be the right of the weaker person.
I hope our nation always takes that position. The government was established to protect our God-given rights. When the rights of two people clash, and when no reasonable accommodation of both can be found, then the right of the weaker person should prevail. I can think of one huge area where, in a clash of rights, the Supreme Court and some of the States have come down on the side of the stronger party, but that will be a subject for a different post and perhaps a different blog.
I imagine just about everyone who has a blog and who at some time has visited Notre Dame will be making a post about it. I’ll join that army.
We visited Notre Dame in July 1982 while touring Europe en route to the USA from Saudi Arabia. We had just finished our first year in Saudi. Charles was 2 1/2, Sara a little over a year. Perhaps we were foolish taking two youngins’ on such a trip. We were young ourselves back then—and probably foolish.
Hard to get close enough to see people and much of the structure.
Lynda’s must-see city in Europe was Rome and mine was Paris. So we started our 28-day tour in Rome and ended it in Paris. It was a magical time, a once in a lifetime experience. Lynda and I have lots of good memories of that trip.
And a few photos. I think it was our last full day in Paris that we went to see Notre Dame. We had five nights and four days there. The day we arrived we learned the Louvre was closed due to a labor dispute. Bummer. We did other things, and I think the third day we were to go to Notre Dame, but the Louvre opened so we went there, leaving the famous cathedral for the last day in Europe.
Wish I were a better photographer.
We were at Notre Dame somewhat late in the afternoon. After relaxing and taking photos around the outside we went to go inside. A worker stopped us, saying mass was just starting. Not being Catholic that didn’t lure us in, but they would let you in if you wanted to attend mass. Lynda did that while I kept the kids outside, then, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later we switched. I felt a little guilty telling the worker I wanted to attend mass when I didn’t really, but, sometimes we do what we have to do. This was our last opportunity on the trip.
The interior had many beautiful views.
I remember inside as dark but beautiful. I made a quick pass around the inside perimeter, admiring all that I saw. I don’t have specific memories of this or that piece of artwork, but no matter. I went, we went, and that’s what was important.
While inside I snapped some photos. We had a good camera, a Nikon SLR with a telephoto lens, but I wasn’t much of photographer I’m afraid. You can see them on this post, not quite in focus, looking like they were taken in haste instead of with care. Alas.
The cathedral dominated the entire area.
I don’t remember which of us took the outside photos, but it was probably me as I’m not in any of them but Lynda and the kids are. They might be a little better than the inside ones.
We didn’t keep a trip diary then, so have no notes of what we saw, only the photos and perhaps a postcard or letter mailed home, which parents saved and gave to us years later. If time allows, I’ll find them in a file and see if I have anything to add. Given that this was our last day and we were then to head home to see parents, I don’t think I’ll find anything in there.
The fire was, of course, devastating. It’s a shame, though we look forward to rebuilding. I suspect I won’t ever get back there again, as there are too many places in the world to see should I ever again make an overseas trip.
