Dreams of Cavendish

Cavendish Shore September 2015

Feeling a bit like Emily of New Moon

North Rustico

I found this photo in my PEI Archives from September 2015 pilgrimage to PEI.  With a little photo effect ambiance added, it is not hard to identify myself with Emily Of New Moon...Rosemary

   "Beguiling laughter and old songs of merry maids and men.  Good line--I suppose.  New Moon is full of ghosts."  Emily of New Moon, by LM Montgomery

Rilla

"I b'lieve it's going to rain," said Cousin Sophia. "We have had an awful lot of rain this fall already. It's going to make it awful hard for people to get their roots in. It wasn't so in my young days. We gin'rally had beautiful Octobers then. But the seasons is altogether different now from what they used to be." Clear across Cousin Sophia's doleful voice cut the telephone bell. Gertrude Oliver answered it. "Yes—what? What? Is it true—is it official? Thank you—thank you."

Chapter xxxii, Rilla Of Ingleside, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Anne Collage

Fox Point, PEI

New Anne Doll

I bought a new Anne Doll from EBay.  Although it was in a box like new, the "Avonlea Traditions" doll is missing an eyelash.  Not so evident until I did a close up photograph...

Lighthouse PEI

I must say that I was quite surprised at how small the lighthouses were on PEI.  Compared to our lighthouses here in NC, they seemed rather like pygmies.  How functional they were is a puzzle, but must have been so.   The lighthouses, small as they were, still provided a romantic ambiance to the Island Scenes.  They were also very hard to locate as they were not well signed and sometimes sitting in the middle of a pasture.  I don't remember the name of this lighthouse.

My new Anne postcard and missing PEI Conference

Anne of Green Gables

So, I missed the LMM Conference in Charlottetown this year due to work end of the fiscal year responsibilities  By all accounts it was a good conference, the theme being LMM and Gender.  I'm so sad and sorry to have missed it.

So today, on my USA holiday of July 4th, I took myself and my Anne doll back to Abegweit in my mind.  I've taken my sunflower field photo (in Park Corner September last) and the photo that I took of the Anne bedroom at Green Gables and I printed them to wood panels. Then, I set up my photo shoot and made a postcard.

Now, I can sweetly remember that I was once (twice) there where LMM once said that she was able to find her soul there.

my new photo

Taken from the book jacket of "The Gift of Wings" by Mary Rubio

Anne of Green Gables Marathon on PBS today

Anne of Avonlea

frontispiece

"to my former teacher HATTIE GORDON SMITH
in grateful remembrance of her sympathy and encouragement"

"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks

The careful ways of duty,

Our hard, stiff lines of life with her

Are flowing curves of beauty". -WHITTIER

Miss Stacy, in Anne of Avonlea, was based on LM Montgomery's beloved teacher, Hattie Gordon. My latest viewing of Sullivan's Anne II on PBS has brought the transparency of Miss Stacy's character to the forefront of my awareness concerning Montgomery's mindset at the time of writing the Anne series.

Miss Hattie was indeed an important, real figure in the memories of childhood, and Montgomery breathed life into her again in the penning of "Anne of Avonlea."

Anne's Room, Comparing Dickinson, A brush with Browning

If it weren't so far away, I would go back to Cavendish today and retake the photo of Anne's room at Green Gables and figure out how to get that window from blowing out like that. Of course, good photography takes concentration and that's one thing you can't have in a Tourist attraction, especially a small, crowded space like Green Gables.  

I added a lot of contrast and color to the photo by using a Vintage photo editor. The vintage effect applied a strong vignette which will not print out well, but I did get a fairly nice 5 x 7 on this without all of the added vintage drama.

I Compare this room to Emily Dickinson's room at Amherst and I find similarities.

On another note, I have found I have a relative in our local graveyard when I had my sisters DNA tested. I was able to line this person up in her dna matches and family tree, so I wrote to the living relative and got a portrait and a lot of information that local historians did not have before, including the family history such as a candlelight wedding in the Episcopal Church and the telling that one of his descendants had enjoyed tea with Robert Browning while taking a tour in Europe. Cool. 

I love the poem by Dickinson called "a day" and I wanted to share it as it is very very pretty and it reminds me of Maud, and if you compare the rooms of the two writers, (though not literally) you can see that there perhaps were some similarities.

A Day

I'll tell you how the sun rose,--
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!" 
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

Emily Dickinson

A collage of Anne's Room in Green Gables , Dickinson's Room in Amherst, MA and my Washington relative buried here in New Bern.

Anne's Room, Green Gables

Anne's Room at Green Gables

Happy Easter

The Lake Of Shining Waters

I think I may have run into Matthew Cuthbert here, coming from the stable in overalls, and he smiled at me! Park Corner, PEI, September 2015.

Avonlea whimsical collage

Is Campbell home at Park Corner haunted?

Pam Campbell, owner of Campbell home at Park Corner (and double cousin to LM Montgomery), told me that a few visitors have asked her if she had seen the spirit that lives upstairs in Stella's bedroom.  She claims to have never seen the spirit, and neither did I make any detections.

Is Park Corner haunted?

Fun with photo effects...

Fox Point And Green Gables

Sunflower field somewhere between Stanly Bridge and Park Corner

September 2015

Thinking of Avonlea

Gone to Avonlea in my mind today...

I have been reading some of LM Montgomery's journal entries written during month of January. 

Typically sad at this time, her voice seemed eerie and mournful.  After reading the entries again (from a distance of many years hence), I noticed some things on her radar, specifically which concerned issues of aging, that I had not noticed before. 

For instance, when a childhood chum sent a photo of herself in maturity, Maud states she would not have known her, and she wished she had not seen the photo.

If you mix that in a bag with grief (her beloved cousin Frede died in January) and a long list of vain regret and tragedy from behind her, one sees that she was stressed and not at peace. She perhaps could see nothing in her future but more of the same...

"I need for something good to happen," is how she put it in one entry.

I wish I could reach back and help her.

Lighthouse using Golden Ratio, PEI