Peter Behrens's Blog, page 486

A Hawk, 2 Trucks & a Highway. Eastern New Mexico

Another 1950 Studebaker Commander, Canyon Texas

I ran into herd of these bullet-noses  last fall on my way to Palo Duro Canyon, on the Texas Panhandle.






Palo Duro is a canyon and a state park on the eastern rim of el llano estacado, a huge mesa, which stretches into eastern New Mexico. A piece of my new novel is set there. Mostly, though  it's is set in Frankfurt, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties.

North Seamus Heaney Sligo John & Ellen

Came across this photo of Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at Sligo, Ireland. I've spent a bit of time at Sligo over the years, digging around after a family myth. The last time I saw my  grandmother, Edith Hamilton Lillis, she was ninety-four, and she told me a story she'd not spilled before. When her parents were married at the Cathedral at Sligo in 1877, they were pelted with garbage as they came out of the church after the wedding. This inspired them to leave Ireland directly, which they did. It was a 'mixed' marriage: John Lillis was Catholic, Ellen Ormsby Hamilton was Protestant, and in Ireland at that time and place, never the twain shall meet. To marry in the Catholic church Ellen would have had to agree at a minimum to raise all the children Catholics, a promise she held to, even after the early death of her husband. Probably this 'disloyalty' would have enraged some elements of the Protestant population: but no one like mixed marriages, so perhaps two communities got together for a nonsectarian pelting. You never can tell, in Ireland. "Great hatred/little room/maimed us at the start" says Mr Yeats, who ought to know, as he grew up (mostly) in Sligo.  And Seamus Heaney from the North (Derry) had something to say about hatred, and how to survive it, if you were a writer:


NORTH     Seamus Heaney

I returned to a long strand,the hammered curve of a bay,and found only the secularpowers of the Atlantic thundering.
I feel the unmagicalinvitations of Iceland,the pathetic coloniesof Greenland, and suddenly
those fabulus raiders,those lying in Orkney and Dublinmeasured againsttheir long swords rusting,
were ocean-deafened voiceswarning me, lifted againin violence and ephiphany.The longship's swimming tongue
was buoyant with hindsight--it said Thor's hammer swungto geography and trade,thick-witted couplings and revenges,
the hatreds and behindbacksof the althing, lies and womenexhaustions nominated peacememory incubating the spilled blood.
It said, "Lie downin the word-hoard, burrowthe coil and gleamof your furrowed brain.
Compose in darkness.Expect aurora borealisin the long foraybut no cascade of light.
Keep your eye clearas the bleb of th icicle,trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.

1973 Chrysler Newport Marfa Texas

1981 Ford F100, Marfa Texas. Winter light.

"Memory and Myth"--the Hollyhock Institute Workshop, on the Left Coast, June 2014

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Behrens
Memory & Myth: Transforming Personal HistoryJun 1 - 6, 2014Presented by: Peter BehrensWritingShape personal history, family mythology, and memory into written memoir or fiction. Participants will focus on organizing, writing, revising, and polishing one memoir essay, short story, or key chapter. In the workshop process, directed by Peter Behrens, writers analyze, criticize, and respond to each other’s work in a helpful and energizing atmosphere. For some participants, the workshop experience will jump-start the longer journey of writing a book.Peter Behrens’ novel The Law of Dreams won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2006, was a finalist for Amazon.ca’s Best First Novel Award, and has been published in nine languages. In 2012 the New New York Times called Behrens’ second novel The O’Briens, ‘a major accomplishment”. Behrens’ stories and essays have appeared in Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Short Story, The Globe & Mail, Best Canadian Essays, Best Canadian Stories, Saturday Night,  Brick, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio in the US and Europe and CBC Radio in Canada. Behrens is the author of two collections of short stories, Night Driving and Travelling Light. A native of Montreal, he held the Wallace D Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and has worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. In 2013 Peter Behrens was a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. He teaches at Colorado College and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and son.  peterbehrens.org TUITION: $565 CDN / 5 nights  (meals & accommodation extra)

Maine Coast Vernacular: federalist houses and the Granite Farm dairy barn

It's called Federalist architecture here in the US, Georgian in the UK and Ireland. In the US version, often restraint went out the (fanlight) window. Here's a boisterous example from 1805, in Wiscasset Maine. Why only one fanlight, when three can fit?  And here's Van Morrison singing about cleaning fanlights. I wonder if Van's remembering Dublin or London in this song--not much Georgian building in his native Belfast.
The Granite Farm dairy barn is on a backroad road between Brunswick and Freeport. Much bigger and more serious than a typical Maine saltwater farm hay barn. Only in New England do people proudly name their farms after rocks.

1951 Mercury, 1940 Cadillac, 1955 Chrysler 300

Don't they look like toys?

1950 Chevrolet Thriftmaster + antelope grill Marfa Tx

1941-46 era Chevrolet "Wurlitzer" pickup, Coral Gables FL

Javier Reyes caught this astounding late-Art Deco Chevrolet from the "Wurlitzer" era(1938-45) in downtown Coral Gables, Florida. We've had a few of these trucks up on the blog. The painter Chris Baker caught one in Santa Barbara; the artist Michael Moore owns a radicalized specimen; and of course there's 2013's Autoliterate Truck of the Year from Colorado Springs.