Donna, can you grab the hammer?
Post Script (Or...should it be "Fore Script" ...or "Before Script" but then that would be B.S....I started this post a good 3 days ago. Downloading, uploading, side loading...it's all quite harder on the road, at least for me. )
The title of this little post is my small amusement at these quotes from our instructor who was teaching us encaustics, for which one might think one did not need Vodka or a hammer. And, really, one doesn't. But useful, it appears!
Since my last update, my traveling bud Jeannie and I have found some excellent ways to spend money and help the New England economy.
We returned to the Beauport to see if the drinks were still quite tasty. They were.
At the recommendation of a local, we drove to Newburyport. Oh. Wow. Lovely, lovely town. Galleries, paper stores, olive oil shops, scenery, and the big, independent Jabberwocky (or, as Jeannie calls it, Jackawobbly) bookstore, quite fun for spending a couple of hours lusting titles and sampling reading.
From one of my choices, Why Travel Matters, the Life-Changing Effects of Travel, is this: (in the author's definition, travel is different than tourism and is to a foreign country and a different culture):
The essence of travel is encountering difference. (Although) people travel for different reasons...almost all travelers share a basic attraction to what is unfamiliar. For the true traveller the object of a journey its not pleasure, or comfort...He is really traveling - even if he might not put it that way himself - in search of excitement, challenge, and the endless fascination of the unknown. Craig Storti and John Julius Norwich
The Charming Women of Newburyport.
We are finding Portsmouth NH as we expected, both of us having it in our lists of favorite places, It's hard to put a finger on it, but some places just have the magic. It just feels good to wander the streets. We loved finding popovers at Popovers, books at Riverrun Books and two other small and quirky bookstores (we are collecting them - the bookstores, that is...!), enjoying a perfect pastry at Breaking Grounds right at Market Square, clearly, the friendly gathering places for locals.
But the best surprise of all was walking into Books and Bar our first evening to find they were having their monthly sketching night. And, although I travel with my sketchbook at all times, I did not have mine with me. I searched out something I could buy at this used bookstore, found a poetry pamphlet with some blank pages, and sat down to draw. People volunteer to pose for ten minutes and participants sketch away. I would not like to sit under a lamp and have people stare at me for 10 minutes, but I'm glad others don't mind. Jeannie was encouraging me, brought wine for her, coffee for me, and watched all of us draw. It's a very quiet time, everyone concentrating on their lines and shapes. It was all very serendipitous. And I should just never leave home without some paper to draw on; you never know what will come up.
Vermont is all that its photo spreads say it is. Lovely landscapes, liberal-leaning, a sense of independence.
We are collecting independent bookstore like this one in Woodstock, VT.
Can anything beat a weathered leather chair by a sunny window reading a good book? I think not.
Burlington, VT: This was the best meal so far on the trip. Farm to table food prepared on site.
When I find the name of this artist, who paints wonderful things on cardboard, I will tell you.
