Alaskan Adventure: Part 1, Homer

Have you been to Alaska?  Perhaps on a cruise?  This was a different sort of trip, and I don't pretend to have seen very much of Alaska, but we did get to know a couple of places well, and to have a feeling for the way our friends live there.  Six years ago, we first visited Denise, my classmate from the High School of Music and Art ('63), and her friend Serge, who live in Homer.  It was a happy reunion and we generally fell in love with the place.  Peter's various illnesses prevented us from revisiting sooner, but praise be, he is well now, so this was not only a second happy journey to Alaska, but also back to our old way of life with traveling adventures!

We flew to Anchorage, and as flights from the lower 48 all seem to arrive around 1 AM, we spent the rest of the night at a Best Western, and in the morning drove the couple of hundred very scenic miles to the pretty town of Homer, on the Kenai Peninsula.  Above, Peter as we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the view of Cook Inlet.

We stopped first at Serge's house, a few miles outside Homer, and he and Denise had a wonderful salmon dinner waiting for us!  His homemade bread, and greens picked right then from his garden, were divine.  This is Denise in the garden.

This is Denise's cabin, where she has lived in the summers (winters in New York) since the 1960s.

Some of Denise's glass artwork

Even Denise's doorknob is all about color (particularly blue) and light!  As should come as no surprise, given my blog's title, I love one of her mottoes: "Always remember to love the little shiny things."   Denise's father was a famous sculptor, Ibram Lassaw, and she has continued practicing art since our Music and Art days.  Russian born Serge is a poet and academic.

Then we drove to our hotel, the lovely Good Karma Inn, owned and run by a Buddhist friend of Denise's.  The view, as you drive down into Homer is spectacular:  Kachemak Bay with snowy volcanoes arising from the water.  These flowers are called Pushki, or Alaskan cow parsnip, and it's a pernicious weed that leaves blisters if you handle it. 

These are the more benign and beautiful lupines!

We arrived at the Good Karma late, as dusk was falling, with a view of fields running down to the bay, and a rainbow.  In July it's only dark for a few hours, starting at midnight.

The rainbow a little later...this was about 11 PM.

Next morning, a bright sunny view from our deck.

The mountains beyond

The little Buddhist shrine in the garden has a most attractive dragon.

Peter at the Good Karma Inn

A room at Good Karma - I think this one was called "Wisdom."  There are only three rooms; it's really a bed and breakfast.  Another room is "Kindness."  Ours was "Mindfulness."  Perfectly quiet, with the the most comfortable king size bed...and great wifi!

Door opening onto our deck

The door to Mindfulness

Me on the deck, relaxed for a change!

Peter enjoying the peacefulness

Next day we drove into town.  This is a typical Homer scene, blue pickup truck speeding down the beach, almost certainly with a dog or dogs in the back!

Homer has the most wonderful used bookstore, a real treasure trove, The Old Inlet Bookshop.  It's connected to the attractive Mermaid Cafe.  I bought several books, but my favorite is about a "sourdough teacher" who went to Alaska to teach after World War I.

A coffeehouse.  Homer's a bit of an artsy, hippie town, with lots of galleries.  Maybe that's part of the reason we love it so much.

It has the most gorgeous new library - stunning design, with windows looking out on mountain and bay views, with lupines and irises all around.

Stained glass window in the library.

We went out on a halibut fishing excursion, since we hadn't done that on our last trip and always wanted to.  But seas were so rough nearly all the boats turned back that day, and a seaplane actually turned over in Homer's Beluga Lake, tragically killing a woman.  Our boat didn't turn back but at least half the people were sick.  I was not sick, and caught a halibut!  A small but legal one, 14 pounds.

Mine is the one with the pink ribbon.  The crew cut them up and bagged them, and mine was somehow reduced to about two pounds in the process...

But I brought it back to Denise and Serge, and he cooked some for me.  Here it is in a sandwich of his homemade bread, with his just picked greens!  One of the tastiest meals I ever ate. 

Me with my catch at Serge's house!

Next day Denise and I stayed on dry land and bopped around Homer (in 1962 as early beatnik chicks of 15, we used to "bop around" Greenwich Village).  Here we are at the attractive Ptarmigan Arts gallery and shop.  I bought sparkly dichroic glass earrings like Denise's, and a mosaic lamp for Paul, who stayed at home to work and watch the cats.

I drew this cartoon in 1962 (if you click, you can see it bigger), and it survived for fifty years in a trunk.  It's my Music and Art crowd disporting themselves in Morningside Park on a spring day.  Denise is the one dancing in the air (recognize her?) and I'm the little brunette sexpot on the grass.  (Don't worry, I don't recognize me either!)   It really sent chills to discover this, and to share it with Denise.  Remarkable.

Dichroic glass earrings...light, bright, and sparkling.

Here's a lovely house belonging to a friend of Denise's in Homer.  The gardens slope down to the bluff, overlooking the bay.

Irises in the garden.

Whalebone gargoyle in the garden of another artist friend

Later Peter and I went for  drive on the Skyline road above Homer.  This is a cache, used by hunters to store game.  I don't know what the flowers are - wild yellow roses?

And in a nature park we saw some chocolate lily flowers, which I've only ever seen in Alaska...

And the road goes on...Next post, Seward and the sea...

A Thrift Extravaganza

Here is my semi-annual report on my Salvation Army, eBay and thrift shop finds.  Intervention not quite necessary yet (in my opinion; perhaps not in yours).  There's nothing on our beds but cats, and nothing on our chairs but books.  When the piles of Victorian Chinoiserie become threatening, then you can call Dr. Zasio from the Hoarders TV show. 

Limoges plates

I thought it would be fun to arrange this blog post in order of my top ten finds of the year. Of course there are more than ten...but these are the best! Oddly enough, there are no duds. (Another thing you may disagree on, as one person's treasure is another's trash.) Herewith, the List:



1.  Hammersley and Roses...and Tiles

All right, that's at least two items.  But if we're going to make this top ten thing work efficiently, I'll have to stuff them in.  Also, I can't decide which I love most, my flowery chintz Hammersley pieces, or my beautiful hand-painted Italian tiles.  Certainly, the lot together makes our pathetic closet of a 1960s kitchenette look Paradisal to me.

 Got these on eBay, from a man in Pennsylvania who brought them back from Naples in the 1970s.  The two together were $15.  Below, a Delft tile, after the Gerard Dou painting, of an old woman reading, and a hand painted Wheeling tile from the 1950s.

Hm, I packed rather a lot into #1.  Let's move on, then, to Plates.

2.  Big plates.  Turkish plate, found in Salvation Army.  I'm told it shows scenes of the comic Turkish folklore figure Nasruddin.

But as long as we're looking at large plates, I also love this one from Portugal (another Sally Ann find), and that also gives me a chance to show a pair of dear little Murano glass red birds.

And here's the plate with a piece of Parian ware on it.  Do you know Parian ware?  I first read of it in Little Women, when Laurie gave a piece to Meg for her wedding:  "I don't think the Parian Psyche Laurie gave lost any of its beauty because John put up the bracket it stood upon."  This reproduction is from the Met, and the price at Sally Ann was about a tenth of retail at the Met.

One more plate.  A Bavarian pretty, which is now home to several of my little animals.

And that brings us to:

3.  Favorite Animal.  Green Murano glass duck bowl with gold flecks is my favorite among the new beasts.

Moving on to another category...Boxes!

4. Blue Dresden Box.

(Paraphrasing Pete Seeger)  Little boxes, on a desktop, little boxes made of porcelain. There's a pink one (lots of pink ones) and a green one and a yellow one.  And they're all made out of porcelain, and Paul thinks they all look just the same. 

Haven't heard the song in awhile?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La21jYGIQ8k

Though actually Malvina Reynolds, the original songwriter, sings it better.

Blue box seen above with Hammersley "Queen Anne" pattern leaf dish. 

Now, just one more box for you.  The square box on the right is new. It's from India, and is made out of hundreds of cut-up pieces of bangle bracelets!   A very intricately made, sturdy little jewelry box.   $10 at Salvation Army...

And now...

5.  The Best Vase

Too wonderful. Cobalt blue Venetian glass with Bacchus scenes hand painted all over it!  And I'm pleased with its surreal setting, with Prince Albert and the naif Japanese cat.

6.  An Interval for Cats

Tully's Blanket.

All the cats love this old-fashioned afghan which I bought on Etsy, but it is most peculiarly Tully's.  She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, or she wouldn't piss on my shoes, which she most certainly has done.  She has expressed her opinion more than once upon a pair of bright yellow Michael Kors loafers.  (I'm afraid she's right actually.  A cat of good taste, if poor manners.)

Pindy's Footstool

Sorry no pictures of Marshy this time.  She is not a materialistic cat.

Paul Saves the Glassware

Paul narrowly saves a free-form Murano glass modern snake sculpture from almost certain destruction in the neverending war between the Great Enemies, Tully and Pindy. 

People are always asking, "Don't the cats break things?"  Amazingly, no.  Pindy in particular loves to tiptoe across that tinkling sea of flowered china on my computer table, and she places her little paws just so, with extreme delicacy, sometimes inside a dish, sometimes between.  Never breaks anything.  However, when they do break something it's spectacular - like the time Pindy and Marshy flew over Paul's living room with one bound for leverage on the coffee table, and their dual bellyflop strike took out five prized Venetian glass goblets like so many bowling pins. 

7.  Department of Teacups

Let's get this out of the way.  Here is my solution to keeping all the teacups off our tiny kitchen counter or higher in shelves than I can reach:

And here are some pretties.

Venetian Latticino

The most golden one of all. 

Antique Hammersley, sitting on top of the Limoges plates.

8.  A little bouquet of Carnival glass

9.  Starting to move on to the end quickly...Small French Limoges plates.

The pictures are Chamonix, Napoleon and Montreaux respectively.

And speaking of small collections, here are my Eggs:

I can sense you calling Dr. Zasio.  Hoarders!  Well, I'm almost done, so before she gets here...

10.  To finish with a flourish - Paul's Peacock!  Murano glass.

Oh, dear, Marshy (Martial the Epigrammatist Marsh-wiggle Marshmallow) is feeling left out.  She is far more beautiful than a gaudy glass peacock, so I will close with a picture of her instead.  As I said, her sin (if cats can sin, which I doubt) is not Materialism but, alas, Gluttony...

Here she is saying what she thinks of me going on about all these thrift shop baubles, instead of keeping to the proper topic, which is Cats. 

Into King's Canyon

Me and Peter in King's Canyon

It's been a long time since we took a road trip, all three of us together, because usually one of us has to stay home with the cats.  But this time we left them in the good care of neighbors Pam and Richard for a few days and took off to one of our favorite places, Cedar Grove Lodge in King's Canyon National Park, which is the northern part of Sequoia National Park. 

Peter and Paul by the river

Just before Memorial Day is a great time to go, for the crowds haven't arrived yet - and King's Canyon never gets the traffic of the more well known parks like Yosemite.  Perfect weather, but it's been an extremely dry year in the Sierras, so the King's River that flows through the canyon wasn't raging as it normally would be now, but was rather low.  They're predicting a bad fire season.

Cedar Grove Lodge

Cedar Grove is a modest, inexpensive lodge, unchanged in any detail for many years, and that's why we like it.  We used to go to Sequoia all the time - usually every month or so - until they tore down the 1930s cabins ostensibly to protect the sequoia trees, and built a monster modern lodge, Wuksachi, instead.  It's not near the sequoias but is a sterile unatmospheric structure that could be anywhere.  So we quit staying in Sequoia, and when we need our escape from Los Angeles into primeval wilderness, we now choose the area around Mammoth in the Eastern Sierras, or King's Canyon.

Peter and Paul at our favorite spot on the porch.

The great thing about Cedar Grove is the unchanging peacefulness.  You sit on the porch, with the river rushing by, smell the incense cedars and fragrant fresh air, and are visited by Stellar's Blue Jays.  The snack bar is sort of minimal and not cheap (the rooms are inexpensive, though), but you can get an eggy breakfast and a steak or some grilled trout for dinner. Then we went for walks in the forest by the river, which is as soul restorative as anybody could wish.  We didn't see any bears this time, but plenty of deer.  King's Canyon can be hot in summer, as it's in the bottom of a canyon at only 4,000 feet, but in May it was perfect.



With a river behind me

On our last day we drove through Sequoia and had a hike on our old favorite Sugar Pine Trail.  To my surprise, the knee that's so dysfunctional in the city (from post-ballet injury arthritis), ran up and down the trail like a rabbit's joint.  Possible explanations could be 1) endorphins from hiking 2) dirt trails being much easier on the knee than city pavements, and 3) my hiking stride, from the hips, doesn't bend the knees much.  Whatever the reason, it was a double adrenaline joy to realize that I can actually still hike as well as ever!

Indian pinks in Sequoia on the Sugar Pine Trail

On the drive home, we finally gave in to some modern technology and figured out how to use the GPS on Paul's Android, and to very good purpose.  We were wanting to stop for a Basque dinner in Bakersfield, which although an uninspiring Central Valley city, has a Basque community famous for its restaurants.  But we didn't know the names of any, or which were good.  So (since it's a long drive with nothing to do) Paul read out all the restaurant reviews, we picked one, and laughed like savages seeing their first Coke bottle while the GPS lady voice instructed us how to get there.  The Wool Growers proved to be one of the oldest and most famous, and we had a thumping good dinner of hearty bean soup, lovely Frenchy salad, sheep tongues, oxtail, and other hearty delicacies. 

Paul at the Wool Growers Basque restaurant