Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
Above: All-you-can-eat cheese on conveyor belt at Pick & Cheese Seven Dials
Restaurant listings arranged alphabetically might not prove user-friendly in a city as sprawling as London, but I’m stubbornly persisting in that practice. As in the earlier part one, these are scattered all over the map.
Continue reading “Postcard from London, England: Italian, Philippine, seafood and cheese, please”
Above: Byzantine-style 12th-century mosaics relate Biblical stories inside the Cathedral of Monreale
Tired from a day of hunting in the woods of Monte Caputo above Palermo, King William II (1153-1189), later known as William the Good, lay down under the shady canopy of a carob tree. He was awakened from his nap by a vision of the Virgin Mary, and she requested he build a church on that very spot in her honor.
This meant the tree had to go, but, when it was chopped down, lo and behold, a golden treasure was found amongst the roots. Gold to fund the project. According to legend.
William the Good commissioned a mammoth church and a Benedictine abbey for Monreale. He gifted the church in honor of Santa Maria Nuova, a contributing factor to his reputation as good, forever distinguishing him from his father, referred to as King William the Wicked (1120-1166).
Continue reading “Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Gleaming mosaics of Monreale”
This woman’s anxious expression on a wall in Oaxaca is a bit frightening to have surfaced close to my birthday. I’ve decided to consider her as successfully defiant.
Some years are harder than others. The image below of the late Vicente Fernandez did not weather well this past year.
But walls in Oaxaca are everchanging canvases for artists, new discoveries encountered with every walk. As prints peel and fade, other layers soon are plastered over them – palimpsests of life.
Continue reading “Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Always welcome more candles on your cake”
Postcards from Barton Springs 