Today's Wonder of the World is...the Churches of Brittany, and Their Fabulous Outdoor Sculptures! Remember, we're on slide show mode here at the blog for this one last post. I'll be back Monday, refreshed and ready! But until then, let's enjoy the wonder of churches in Brittany. The sculptures really are amazing. And unique. See?
According to Ann Pringle Harris, who wrote a wonderful article in the New York Times Travel Section back in 1994, HERE, churches in Brittany invented a completely new architectural feature: the parish enclosure. And each one is different. But all contain a stone wall around the church (to keep the animals out,) with a showy gate, a calvaire, "showing Jesus on the cross flanked on a lower level by the thieves, with stone-carved scenes from the Passion at the base; an ossuary, or charnel house, once a repository for the bones of parishioners when burial space in the church was lacking but now generally used as a funerary chapel or parish museum; and the church, traditionally named for the founding saint of the town."
Here's a little more from her article that I found interesting, "Within walls that are sometimes chest-high and sometimes low enough to be climbed over (the original purpose was to keep animals out), these enclosures seem to the visitor to make up a small community dedicated to the religious life and afterlife: God in a worldly milieu. It is hardly a world of pious evasions. It is a world in which the Holy Child is shown being circumcised as well as worshiped; in which the Virgin may give birth in a bed instead of a manger; in which those who have lived lives of lechery betray themselves in their facial grimaces and their evident sexual attributes. Here, Latin inscriptions warn that death comes to us all -- "today to me, tomorrow to you." Hell's flames licking at the damned are carved in stone and what they lack in refinement -- most were done by local artisans -- they more than make up in imaginative power."
Take a look at our pics and you'll see what she means.
See a close up? Amazing.
Here's the nativity.
Look at that happy cow, and the Smiling Baby Jesus!
Today's Wonder of the World is...French Postcards! Like this one! Remember, we're still in slide show/show and tell mode, while I'm on a little blogging break. I thought I would share some of my French postcards with you. I love to collect postcards. Some mean more to me than others. I like to give away my most special ones as gifts.
Some postcards I keep to myself, because they're so racy. I wouldn't want to give anyone a heart attack.
Sorry to give you whiplash. Yesterday sacred paintings, today racy postcards! Will wonders never cease?
Why don't I share a couple of those postcards with you? You won't tell anyone, will you?
Are you ready? Prepare yourself! These are pretty...revealing! Here goes! Here's two from a series called La Passion de Colinette. Naughty Colinette, running around her apartment in her drawers!
Even posing for a pic of her derriere! Ooh la la.
It's over. Are you alright?
Here, focus on this one. Unless the Notre Dame cathedral makes you hyperventilate!
Here's one of the cathedral at Lourdes. Remember our trip to Lourdes in French By Heart?
And here's an Easter card from 1915. Whoa! Those are some big eggs! Remember eggs? HERE?
I also like the back sides of postcards. Here's the back of the Easter card. Don't you love that pretty French handwriting?
Today's Wonder of the World is...St. Maurice-sur-Loire. Flickr photo by JimCat Did you remember to bring your popcorn? Remember, we're on slide show mode, while I'm taking a little blogging break. So here, my friends, is my birthday trip from 2002. Todd asked me where I'd like to go for a day trip on my birthday. I knew right away!
I had read about St. Maurice-sur-Loire in my Michelin Green Guide. It's a tiny village near Roanne, about a two hour car trip from our house. It's known for the 13th century paintings in its Romanesque church. How about that! Just a run of the mill, tiny church in a little known village...with vibrant paintings from the 13th century! I was happy to go. Can you tell? I love that picture. Don't we look content? Sarah is still shorter than me, and I don't have as many wrinkles as I do now. Man is my hair short. Anyway...back to the slide show. Here's the town.
We're getting closer to the church! What monkeys I have.
And here it is! Flickr photo by JimCat Click on the picture to get a good look. I didn't take this one. I was so struck by its beauty that I didn't think to back up and get a shot of the whole apse. Lucky my flickr friend did. It really is a Wonder of the World!
(And as usual in France, nothing is roped off, so we could get really up close and personal to the 13th century paintings!)
Today's Wonder of the World is...Corsica! Are you ready for my blog version of a slide show? And are you old enough to even know what a real slide show is?
My mom and daddy always took slides. That way, when we were home from a trip, we could put a sheet up, invite people over, and keep them captive while they looked at our pictures!
I'm going on a little vacation from the blog for the rest of the week, so I thought I'd do the same for y'all for the next few days. Prepare for a whole series of Wonder-Full Slide shows! Today's subject is Corsica!
If you've read French By Heart, you'll know that we had a dear neighbor friend who hailed from this place. In case you don't know, (as I didn't until I met the Corsica Man,) Corsica is an island between France and Italy. It belongs to France--if it belongs to anyone. It's wild and beautiful. Really. We went there for vacation our last year in France. Here are some pictures.
Anyone have popcorn? Here's the hotel we stayed in. A ninety something lady named Mimi ran the hotel and did the cooking. We ate dinner there every night. She told us she'd open early for us, since we had kids. Early meant 8pm. My children look a bit like zombies. (Something is wrong with the time stamp on the photos, in case you're wondering.)
Goats were in charge of the transportation system.
Take a look at one of my favorite places in Corsica. It's a church, supposedly built overnight by angels, out of the green Corsica stone. We barely made it up the mountain to see it that foggy morning.
We weren't the only ones who loved that church. Look who kept us company!
A cemetery in Corsica:
Ah, Corsica! I can just smell the wild herbs! Have a Wonder-full Tuesday, everyone! And come back tomorrow for another slide show feature! Love, Becky
Today's Wonder of the World is...Brownies! All kinds! Like this stack of chocolaty heaven. Flickr photo by Bender Works Oh good gracious, that photo is waking up the chocolate monster within me! MUST. DIVERT. ATTENTION. NOW!!!
Let's look at another type of brownie, all right? Like this one, from my 1971 Brownie handbook. Aren't those girls cute? And they all have the same haircut! That Brownie uniform was the whole reason I started Girl Scouts. Though I don't think I ever wore gloves with mine. Gloves would have gotten in the way when I was licking my fingers while eating all those Girl Scout cookies.
Uh oh. Now I'm thinking Thin Mints. Sorry, I have chocolate on the brain.
Let's look at a Brownie from Folk and Fairy Tales by Peter Christen Asbjornsen, a Norwegian naturalist and folklorist. (He's one of the authors of Three Billy Goats Gruff!) Flickr photo by puzzlemaster The caption reads, "The brownie flings the crockery." What a naughty brownie! Who would have thought that there was such a thing as a bad brownie?!
And how about this kind? Flickr photo by mHudson It's Brownie, the old mascot from the Cleveland Browns! Apparently he's back in style with their new management, though I couldn't seem to get a straight answer about just who is the mascot of the Cleveland Browns. Is it a dog? A brownie? The letters CB?
Oh dear. I feel a rant coming on. Remember the mascot post, and how my children's high school mascot is now the letter R? Go HERE to relive the drama. Or not.
Brownies are supposed to be helpful, for goodness sake, not flinging crockery.
Arthur Stillwell would stick up for Brownies, because apparently they helped him out a lot! He's the founder of Port Arthur, Texas, and he claimed that brownies told him where to put the city.
Hmm. Not to be critical, but maybe he should have named it Port Brownie, Texas. Just a thought.
So what else do Brownies do, when they're not planning out cities? I looked it up in my old handbook, just to refresh my memory, and that's when I started to feel a little like flinging crockery. Well, not really. I'm not an angry person. But look! The handbook said we should look at what our mothers do, to see how we can be helpful. And this is what Mothers do, apparently. And if we're really quiet and don't interrupt his manly work, I suppose we can watch what daddies do too. Hey. Wasn't this in 1971? Hadn't we learned things by then about what girls can do and boys can do? Then why isn't that daddy sitting criss-cross-applesauce and watching his daughter complete the circuit? I'm glad we've moved on since then.
I need to calm down and go eat a brownie. And remind myself of how much I loved scouts! And how much it taught me! Like when I earned my photography badge. I guess they didn't cover centering. Or maybe I was being an artist, making some kind of statement about being kept behind a gate, in the playground of life.
Or maybe not. Hey! I just thought of another kind of Brownie! This one! Flickr photo by BENDER Works And that gives me a great excuse to show you this AMAZING art that I just discovered on Etsy! Look! Isn't Elmer Wonder-full? It's by the artist at Artsy's Shop, HERE. (Thanks, Artsy, for the photos!) Go visit! Browse around! You won't believe the cool things you'll see! Some are so whimsically wonderful that you may want to tattoo them to your arm!
See what I mean? I love those mixer pups! And they're making me think of mixing up some chocolaty goodness! Like this. Another Etsy wonder! This clever artist used brownie boxes and other food boxes and made them into postcards! See the back? Aren't those fun? Go HERE to see the whole stack.
I can't stand it any more. I must go feed the chocolate monster within me. Are you in a Brownie mood? If so, feel free to use this recipe if you don't have a mix. I warn you, if you eat them as you sneak into your bedroom, (not that I would) you'll leave a Hansel and Gretel trail behind you. Very crumbly delicious!
Killer Brownies 4 oz unsweetened chocolate 2 oz semisweet chocolate 1/2 lb. unsalted butter 3 eggs 1 1/2 cup sugar 2/3 cup flour 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Melt chocolate and butter together and cool. Mix eggs and sugar. Add flour to chocolate and butter and stir well. Add rest and mix well. Grease a 9x13 pan and add batter. Bake for 25 minutes or so at 350 until done.
I need to change the name. "Killer" scares me. Maybe The Moist Delicious Brownies In The World!
Today's Wonder of the World is... Eye Trickery! Or, as the French say, "Trompe L'Oeil!" This 1874 painting, Escaping Criticism, by Pere Borrell del Caso, makes me think of the paintings at Harry Potter's Hogwarts. It also makes me think that if that poor boy does step out of his frame, he needs to go have that eye looked at ASAP. It's freaking me out. Let's move on.
Here's a much less disturbing example of trompe l'oeil, found on the streets of my own lovely Greenville, South Carolina. (Remember Greenville and how cool it is? HERE?) It's a koi pond, right on our city sidewalk! Trompe l'oeil is art that fools the eye. I started remembering how much I love trompe l'oeil when my friend Barb, here, did a post about it. Thanks Barb! You inspired me!
You know, now that I take a second look at that koi pond, I'm not so sure I like that snake in there. Let's hop on over to France, shall we?
Flickr photo by chimera There, that's better. No snakes around these parts. Isn't the wall of this building incredible? It's in Clermont, and I used to walk by it all the time. Here's another view. Flickr photo by chimera. It's hard to tell which features are real and which are not. None of them are real. It's just a flat sided building.
The French are masters of trompe l'oeil. You can find it all over France.
I searched through my photos and would you believe that I didn't take a single photo of these works of art the whole time we were there? Or maybe I did and the trompe l'oeil is so good that I can't tell that it's trompe l'oeil! I guess I took them for granted, but now I don't!
Look HERE for some more examples of trompe l'oeil in my former French life. (Really, take a look. They're amazing!)
Maybe the reason I enjoy trompe l'oeil so much is the same reason I like writing stories. The challenge of bringing a scene to life to such a degree that the reader forgets for a moment that they aren't actually inside the story, listening to the people, feeling the wind, or smelling the cheese. (I do write a lot about France. I can't forget to mention cheese.)
Or maybe I just enjoy examples of trompe l'oeil because they're beautiful or grand or bizarre. Or maybe I just like being tricked. Or maybe I just like the French word oeil. Did you know that in French, the eye = l'oeil, and the eyes = les yeux? Such a beautiful, impossible language!
But as I said, trompe l'oeil is not just for the French! Here's another example in my state capital, Columbia. Flickr photo by sisudave Can't you just imagine the roadrunner tricking the coyote into running smack dab into that wall?
I like trompe l'oeil so much that I've thought about doing a small one on a wall of my house. (Not that I want my children to run into walls. Though it might be funny once.)
When we were in France I used to love French decorating and craft magazines. I still do, and I make Todd bring me a bunch every time he goes on a business trip. The ladies at the airport Tabac probably think he's a very sophisticated man, always picking up issues of Marie Claire Idees and Campagne Decoration. Not that he's not really sophisticated. But he'd be just as likely to read one of my deco magazines as I would be to read his cycling magazines. Snore snore.
Anyway, I also liked this one. It often featured trompe l'oeil.
Take a look at this bedroom. Can you tell what is real and what is painted? Rug? Painted. Curtain swag? Painted. Headboard? Painted. Artwork? Painted. Wall lamps? Painted. Not. Ha ha. Tricked you.
How about this? Most all of it is painted. I'd love to include a little touch somewhere in my house, just for fun. Maybe a fake light switch, just so I can watch the teenagers try to turn it on.
Take a look at this trompe l'oeil master, Julian Beever. Barb shared him with me on her post, and I found this Youtube video of his works. You won't believe it! But I guess that's the point!
Have a Wonderful Friday y'all! And a great weekend!
