Delia Sherman's Blog, page 18

Packing

It's late winter/early spring in the Southern Hemisphere.  Given the geography and size of Australia, and the fact that we're jaunting up to New Zealand as well, this means we have to be prepared for anything between (say) F 50 to F70, give or take a degree or so.  Which means that I have to ignore all my easy-to-pack, light-as-a-feather summer clothes and haul the midweight sweaters and turtlenecks and pants, grumbling and protesting, out from under the bed and the top of the guestroom close...

Photographic Standoff Achieved!

Finally.

Here are some Rye Bread rocks on an island in the Turku Archipelago, just in time for me to leave for Australia.

I have 405 pictures, some of which need to be pruned, but I've put as much time into this project as I've got right now. Do visit if you like, and browse at your leisure. If I've misspelled names, please send corrections, and if I haven't identified someone, it's because I didn't write down their name and it therefore receded into the event horizon of my horrible...

Dealing With Photos

As you can imagine, I have Quite A Few photos of my various trips lurking in my computer.  Some of them (if I do say so myself) aren't at all shabby.  Some of them are cute.  In any case, I'd like to put them in a place where someone other than me can see them.  

My questions are two:

1) Which of the on-line photo services is the most user-friendly for the tech-challenged?

2)  How do I upload images from iPhoto?  When I go into the whole "browse" menu, all I can find on my hard drive is an "ipho...

Clarion 2011!

Out with the Old, in with the New!

Now that the Clarion Class of 2010 has critiqued its last story, dyed Jeff VanderMeer's hair purple, and is preparing to scatter to three continents and I can't even remember how many states, it's time to turn our attention to Clarion 2011.

The teacher line-up is fantastic:

Week One:  Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Week Two:  John Scalzi
Week Three:  Elizabeth Bear
Week Four:  David Anthony Durham
Week Five and Six:  John Kessel and Kij Johnson

Something for everyone...

History of Marriage

I am happy, I am relieved, I am skeptical about the future of a decision in courts that are both conservative and cautious.  I think Judge Vaughn Walker is a smart, conscientious, and careful writer.  But when I read the following two sentences in his decision, it gave me pause:

The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to choose a spouse and, with mutual consent, join together and form a household. Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage during eras of race and...

Helsinki 3--Farewell to Finland

The end of a trip is always a slightly melancholy time.  I'm there but not there, viewing the scenery with an elegiac eye, already looking back on the trip, already remembering what the trees look like, the architecture, the faces, the clothing, the voices of the people I've seen.  On the train from Tampere to Helsinki, I rode backwards, with Finland receding behind me.

We've stayed long enough so that Finland no longer looks as much like Maine to me (although there are certianly similarities)...

Kalevala Adventure

An adventure, in our family parlance, is a trip you're genuinely not sure is going to work out.  By the strictest of standards, our Karelian journey was not an adventure, because any journey planned by Kati Clements is well-planned in the article of accommodation and regular meals.  None of us, however, was at all sure that the Kalevala Village in Kuhmo would be worth a 4-hour drive in an un-airconditioned car on the hottest day of an unusually hot summer.  So it was in a spirit of adventure ...

Home Tomorrow

We're more or less packed and ready to go.  I'll be sorry to leave, you betcha, although our last-minute upgrade to business, the promise of pastures of plenty at Helsinki airport, and the prospect of clean clothes and my own bed at the end of the journey are going some way towards reconciling me.  I'll have 8 hours in the air to catch up on posts about Our Excellent Adventure in the Kuhmo Kalevala Village and our last whirlwind tourist day in Helsinki, when we saw four museums and walked for...

Helsinki 2

We had a lovely time in Helsinki, mostly having to do with The Decorative Arts--ours and Ellen's mother's as well as Eliel Saarinen's house at Hvittrask and the Gallen-Kallela museum outside of Espoo. Plus, Moomins.

The house tour took place under the auspices of the sisters Sari and Merya (yes, everyone has last names, but my brain is unable to deal, just now, with anything over 2 syllables, so they'll forgive me for the informality, I hope). They picked us up at our hotel, popped us into ...

We Haven't Been in Finland Too Long

Tero forwarded this to me, and I thought I'd share.  1, 2, 3, 8, and 12 all but had me convinced that we are, in fact, Finnish.  But we're having a spot of trouble with 15.  In fact, we got yelled at by some (admittedly not entirely sober) guy for crossing against the light yesterday.  My current compromise is only to j-walk in the company of other scoff-laws.  So far, it's working fine.

We're getting on a train in an hour or so, at which point I'll catch up with a post on our two days in Hels...