Return to "Place of Harmony"

For those who have not visited this site before, the title refers to the utopian community established on Malcolm Island, 250 miles northwest of Vancouver, at the end of the 19th century. Here is a pretty good link to the history of the community. The founders were Finnish, thus the Finnish word "Sointula" indicating a place of harmony. I was invited to give a paper at a conference on utopian ideas in the 18th century at a small conference that was held here in 2013 and have been coming back every summer (excluding 2020) since. I have only been running this blog for a few years, which consists mostly of reports of my stay here. I am a totally urban person who lives on the Upper West Side of New York, and the contrast could not be greater. No car horns in the morning. No garbage trucks. No sirens traveling past to the retirement home on the corner of my street. No robo calls, as I only have my flip phone here. I'll erase all of them on my return in September. Yes, it will be another summer-long stay. I live again in the same cottage, where the mornings are full of my own work, and occasionally the afternoon as well, but mostly I go out and see all my friends, go on hikes, associate with people who can identify mushrooms and trees, who fix their own roofs, who build things.

 

( I hardly ever mention my own work here. For that, you can go to my Goethe blog, but FYI I managed to finish my long article on Goethe and am now revisiting a a literary essay begun at the beginning of the year.) 

Previous posts on this blog have introduced many of my Sointula friends and activities. For the blog this summer I might concentrate here on new sights, including, for instance, the lovely pattern of shadows cast by the plum tree outside my window. (Click to enlarge.) Below is a picture of my desk, as messy already as in New York. There is also a table in the living room, where I keep all the books and papers in connection with various projects. Those funny growths on the tree are oyster mushrooms, which Milan picked for dinner on our walk on the road to Mitchell Bay. And always there are the Sointula skies, which I cannot get enough of.

 More to come.

Return to Sointula!

 As soon as the embargo was lifted on foreign travel to Canada, I booked my flight. It was late in the summer, but I decided that even a month away from New York was worth it. All was familiar on my arrival here on August 13. I brought a couple projects on which to work, but have time for Sointula projects as well, which include forest hikes and beach combing, sitting on the deck of my friend Yo’s house. A month passes quickly, and I leave already this coming Friday. Next year I hope to make an entire summer of it. In the meantime a few photos as reminders of my stay here.

First, my hike with Milan to Malcolm Point.

I love beech trees

And moss

Can't get enough of driftwood

Milan on the beach

And then there is my "desk":

Visits on Yo's deck at "happy hour." Also, everyone in Sointula seems to have expanded their gardens or their greenhouses, including Yo. I have been the beneficiary of her kale, swiss chard, potatoes, etc.

 Janet, Yo, Janine

Prolific kale

Learned about mushrooms on this hike on Rupert Road trail:

Doug points out signs of poison varieties

Intrepid Linda

The hikers

Paintings on hydro boxes in Port McNeill showing the life activities of this part of Vancouver Island:

Fishing

Logging

Not to forget, the Sointula sky, always changing, always splendid:

One thing I noticed on my arrival on August 13 was the number of tourists in Sointula. The wildfires in British Columbia and Alberta had sent a lot of people to Vancouver Island for their summer holidays, and many of them traveled all the way out here. The museum has been open seven days a week, people were biking all over with the bikes available at the Resource Center The island has seen lots of sales of property. Whether a big change will take place here, with the influx of urbanites, remains to be seen. In the last few days, however, the island is quiet again, not that it was noisy in my first days here, but it now feels like Sunday every day. Stay tuned for my report next summer.

Summer sights in New York City 2021

I see that I have not posted recently. Gee, I had hoped by now to be back in Sointula. Maybe July 20 will bring good news. In the meantime here are some photos I have taken of sights that struck me as interesting, both regarding New York and modern life in general in the postmodern world. Click to enlarge.

 

At Whole Foods

Workman

Detail of painting at Frick Museum

 

Subway station entrance

Last scenes of 2020 in New York

 

Elizabeth with friend Rebekah upstate

 For friends far away I am attaching some pictures from life in NYC in the closing months of 2020.  (Click to enlarge.) A New Year is already underway.

Upstate tomatoes

Sunset along the Hudson

On the subway

On the way to ComicCon

Empty Café

Thanksgiving at Elaine's

Covid memorial

Christmas at Rebekah's

Looking forward to kayaking in 2021

Autumnal views

There is not much in the way of colorful autumn foliage in the parks in Manhattan, but I managed to capture at least an almost extinguished tree producing some color. The photos of trees below remind me of my many walks with Sointula friends during my summers there. There are some pretty good hiking paths in both Central Park and Riverside Park, though nothing to match Sointula. Also, as in Sointula, where I found myself fascinated by driftwood of enormous size on Malcolm Island, I also love the many distorted arboreal forms, as pictured here.

Below these fairytale like trees is an image of one of Manhattan's "natural" forms. Since living here, I have always been intrigued by the reflections of high rises on the glass faces of skyscrapers. Click on pictures to enlarge.

Museum visit

My friend Barb and I made a trip to the Metropolitan Museum today. She is photo researcher and a colorist of historical photos and an all-around expert at computer imaging. Herewith a cool photo manipulation of us in the Cypriot galleries of the museum.

Life goes on in NYC

 It's time to post a few pictures for my Sointula friends. Recently I had to go to a doctor out in Whitestone in Queens. It was a long trip: a bus ride, a subway, and a taxi, for a total of over an hour. Hey, as usual, I had a book to read. The reason I go to Queens for M.D. visits is because my husband taught in Queens and we spent a lot of time out there (we had a house in Bayside), so, back then, it made sense to go to the same doctors. The attached scenes struck me as quite fun, and quite unlike Manhattan, and yet Queens is one of the five boroughs of New York City. (Click to enlarge.) Enjoy.

 

As wearying as the long travel to Queens was for my appointment, I have to say that I always appreciate an opportunity during this time of pandemic of being forced to do "ordinary" things. One's social skills really decline with "distancing," and so it is important to keep them up to par at least, by engaging in such tasks as subway travel, filling out papers at the doctor's office (every visit, the same old questionnaire: don't they have it computerized by now!?), shopping at a new store, seeing new sights.

Sointula weather

After a summer of very high temperatures and humidity, the weather in New York is turning toward autumn: 62 degrees this morning! As I sit here typing, it is almost like a Sointula morning. When I would wake up in Sointula during the summer months, I immediately put on a long-sleeved shirt and my warm long pants, along with socks. The temps were generally in the 50s, going up by August to 70 during the day. How I have missed that weather this summer, and I was reminded anew of it the other day when there was an email from Heather saying she had just come in from working in the yard and that the weather was "fabulous." I know exactly what she meant, and hope to enjoy it again next summer.

Still, I made the best of the hot weather and spent time on the Hudson River kayaking. Tomorrow I am going on a paddle to the State of Liberty. We won't actually land on Liberty Island, but will circumnavigate it. In the meantime, a photo of a recent outing. (Click on photo to enlarge.) That is New Jersey in the background, not Manhattan. Another outing in hot weather was a trip to the Jersey shore. The other photo is of my friend Nona on that outing. I was sitting on a beach chair under an umbrella, like those sensible folks on the right-hand side of the photo.