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...

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.

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.

A World with Frost

I would love to go back and photograph PEI in the winter time.  For now, I must do with with the similarities
that my own homeland shares with our sister in Canada.  We had a rogue snowfall here on Christmas Day.
This photo was taken in Salisbury, North Carolina.

November - "The Queen's Class is Organized"

"It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove."
  Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

A few more random photos - Green Gables

Signage at Green Gables

The more I look at some of the photos, the more I become intrigued with particular shots.  Here are some of the ones that I don't think that I previously posted.  Sometimes, the photos seem to be dancing with light and shadows.

Coming out of Balsam Hollow, Green Gables

Lover's Lane

Lover's Lane

Back of Green Gables

Lover's Lane

A walk through the Haunted Wood

The Green Gables portal to the Haunted Wood (Wood without an "s")

 The portal to the Wood is located at the bottom of a steep slope which constitutes the front lawn at Green Gables.  This spooky path eventually leads to the Macneill Homestead.  My experience on the path was of a pleasant stroll through cooling shade of trees and foliage.  Still,  I saw some eerie shadows dancing around me during my short sojourn there!  I personally would not want to experience this place alone at night!  (No matter what Marilla says!)

The Wood ends with an opening into the splendid vista of the Macneill homestead.

Exiting the Haunted Wood and entering into the open vista of the Macneill Homestead  

"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?" "Nobody," confessed Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so—so—COMMONPLACE. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things."  (AoGG)

Light and Shadows

In the long ago days of my childhood there was an alcove near the altar that served as the library for our little Baptist Church. On one Sunday morning I found myself there, glancing at the titles which were lined up neatly on a lonely bookshelf. The room appeared or rather seemed to be dusky, but there was a little spray of light swimming through the smoky window above me which diffused into the shadows of the shallow room and made it seem a deeper, different dimension. It was on the dusty bookshelf that I spied a book whose spine appeared to me to look straighter than the others.. The book was clean , but jacket-less, and it gave the impression of having held it's sway amongst the other, similarly aged titles. The title on the spine read as follows: "Anne of Green Gables." The book, in my memory, seems to have shivered and quivered on the shelf. It shouldn't be hard to guess the rest of this story. "Anne of Green Gables" is the book that came home with me that day. From the first page to the end I was enveloped with a keen consciousness of feeling that the magic of my life had finally fallen upon me.

Over a span of 40 years since, I have read many other books and short stories written by Lucy Maud.Montgomery. Though I looked and tried over most of those years, there was scant information to be found concerning the life of Maud herself, so it wasn't until my Mother took a trip to Prince Edward Island back in the 1980's and returned home with a gift which was happily a bio, "The Years Before Anne" by Mr. Bolger, where I finally was able to get an idea of the life of my favorite author. I learned from Bolger's book, or rather was given a hint, of the heartache and unhappiness that seemed to have grabbed on to Maud and followed her throughout her life. Of course, there must have been some happiness for her. There had to be. How else could she know it and write it so well?

There has been scant information over the years concerning Maud Montgomery that I could find in the bookstores of the sandy plains of North Carolina. So, imagine my delight when the Internet Age came upon me, and there I discovered that diaries, 5 volumes of diaries, had scupulously been kept by Maud and then published 40 some years after her death, beginning in the late 1980's. It's hard to fathom the time and work that it took in order to decipher the old fashioned scrawl as was written by hand on the lined pages of ledger books. But thanks to Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, the work was done, and all were published by the time I found them in the late 1990's. It was in the diaries that I discovered Maud's unhappiness for real. However, I drew the conclusion on reading the journals that Maud in writing about her own life, was rather ambiguous and almost manipulative in what she presented , knowing that someday the world would see what she wrote. The biographies are truly just a rendering of her side of the story, a terrible story really.

So, with my deep interest in the subject and because of a characteristic curiosity about things, I have spent a great deal of time in reading all that I can about the life of Maud Montgomery, and mostly reading between the lines. I get impressions and perceptions as I'm reading. These intuitions, right or wrong, run deep with me.