Today, let’s talk about the vacation you never take. Oh, you dream of this place — the beautiful blue water just outside the balcony of your hotel; the charming cobblestone streets where you will buy lovely pottery to display back at home; the restaurant patio where you will linger over dinner, enjoying the evening breeze, and never gaining an ounce from the most delicious dish you ever poked with a fork.
For us it was the Smoky Mountains. Year after year, the subject came up. Year after year, neither of us could ever lock ourselves in and declare, Yes! We’ll spend all that money! Yes, we’ll take the time off! Yes! We’ll board the cats!
One year, it loomed before us again and we said, Well, since we’ve never gone, maybe we don’t really want to go there. Let’s try somewhere else instead. Say, Nova Scotia.
Oh, yes! All that maritime loveliness!
Do you know how long it takes to drive to Nova Scotia? Or how pricey it is to cut the drive time by flying to Boston? Supposing we could get ourselves there, how many days would we have left to see it’s rocky shores and visit its Celtic music festivals? And how would we make sure we saw the best shore and heard the best music?
We ended up going to the Smokies.
And if that’s how we roll, it will probably take pondering a moon landing for us to say, Nah, Nova Scotia’s simpler. Let’s go there.
We could always try a little virtual Nova Scotia.
This is where Beatrice MacNeil’s Where White Horses Gallop comes in. Set in Cape Breton, an island on its far reaches, the story commences in a small seaside town where the young men suit up for a Saturday night dance. It’s their last fling before they all enlist in World War II.
White Horses garners a lot of five-star ratings on Goodreads, but I couldn’t stick with it. I love beautiful writing, just not so much that it gets in the way.
So here’s my other virtual Nova Scotia idea. Check out Natalie McMaster, who grew up surrounded by Cape Breton’s music (that’s why I want to go there—to see what this Cape Breton phenomenon is all about). She plays it livelier than her forebears ever imagined it could be played. It’s not a good idea to drive while listening to McMaster. You risk a speeding ticket for sure.
This will have to do until we plan our moon landing (wink, wink).
I traded World War II’s gloom for Baltimore in 1849, in which Edgar Allan Poe has just died. Matthew Pearl’s Poe Shadow introduces us to a young lawyer so enamored of Poe’s stories and poems that he wrote the author and offered his professional services. But now that Poe’s dead, the lawyer seems to think there’s a mystery to solve.
Gonna have to admit here that I only read Poe under duress. Pearl’s book plays with Poe’s lines, weaving in the famous ones, the obscure ones—I really can’t tell ‘cause, like I said, I got away from Poe as fast as I could. Some people see the beauty. I only see the disturbed mind.
If you’re a Poe fan, maybe Pearl’s book is for you. Let me know.
I’m gonna forget the books for a day and go on a picnic instead.
We were supposed to eat all this good stuff at an outdoor concert. Which got rained out.
But by golly, the meal is going to happen because picnics are on my summer bucket list. We’re packing it up and toting it to a park with a swinging bridge over a (probably-swollen) creek. We’ll be eating:
Chips
Wish you could be here.
ummmmm yum…ok….I am virtually at your picnic. And I~ll try the swinging bridge….if you will!
Yes, LD, let’s meet on the bridge.
Me too,wish I could be tjhere