Newport Oregon

Newport, Oregon



I have a soft spot for the fishing town (city in American terms)  of Newport, Oregon.

The first time we were taken there was by Marianne, (if you don't know who that is you can read back through posts, or just go with the flow as she will appear much in this blog.)

It's hard to not like a place when your first introduction is via a friendly library and great restaurants such as Local Ocean.

Harder still when it has beaches like this as well:

If you want to see some professional standard shots of Newport these are pretty good:, courtesy of the local Newport Times

https://www.facebook.com/discovernewport/videos/466204030794993/?t=1

The Wonder of the Internet - Part 2 - life before the Internet

I forgot to mention in my previous post how much the connections made possible by the Internet changed things for me.  I wrote for people who know me, with the mindset that only people who know me are likely to come here.  I am not on a mission to promote something so I am not going to be plugging my blog all over the place.

Since I was 10 or so I have wanted to be a writer.  For a while letter writing and scribbling in notebooks assuaged my desire.  I grew up in a Cornish fishing village where nothing much happened from decade to decade, or so it seemed to me - if in much simpler terms.  My world extended across the village but not much beyond it until I discovered the joy of letter writing.  It was hard back then to find penpals, or so it seemed to me if one didn't come across an invitation in a publication or by word of mouth it was a case of making it up as you go along.  Even then letters were just to people I knew, for a few years, and the odd publication or television show.  Later, with the help of a large tome titled Who's Who that I poured through in respectful silence at the local library, I expanded to writing to authors whose books I enjoyed.

In my teens, I became a fan of superhero comics, not just the adventures that they contained but the fact of where they came from.  My friend Robert writes much better than I about what it was like back in the 70s 

Comics as a metaphor  Part 1 https://www.facebook.com/rob.nott.3/posts/10156350819393688

Comics as a metaphor Part 2 https://www.facebook.com/rob.nott.3/posts/10156360006633688

Comics as a Metaphor Part 3 https://www.facebook.com/rob.nott.3/posts/10156388733658688

Comics and science fiction.  One November, while my Mum and I were staying with family friends in Somerset, they took us to visit the Cathedral town of Wells.  We wandered about on what I remember as a dull and dreary day, dull until I found my way to a branch of WH Smiths.  There were no comics but there was a science fiction section.  What caught my eye was a set of three paperbacks in a cardboard presentation case, something I had never seen before.  I flicked through one of the paperbacks, by an author called Isaac Asimov.  The set was The Early Asimov, a collection of his first short stories with an introduction to each one; it spoke of his early days getting into writing science fiction, I was hooked.  It cost me every penny I had with me but I didn't begrudge it as I knew this was something special.

I was a voracious reader back in the day.  I can recall times when I would walk to Helston, a town 2.5 miles from my home, reading a paperback as I strode along the side of the main road.  It never seemed a chore that 30 minute walk while I had a book with me.  I ploughed through all of the science fiction our local library had to offer.  Over time I was introduced to books of fantasy too.  Strangely, I thought, I can remember coming across Tolkien but not being able to get past the first chapter until my late teens.

From comics, science fiction and fantasy my friend Robert (whom I mentioned above) introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons and for some years we played in group sessions that I remember lasting 12 hours or more in the school holidays.  I didn't raise then but we were actually amongst the first groups that played this role-playing game from the USA.

It was in my mid-teens that my parents and brothers went to the USA to holiday with my Dad's sister and her husband.  I didn't go with my parents, I find it hard to believe how naive, even stupid, I was back then.  The trip was again in November, to celebrate my mother's 40th birthday it was a chance to spend time with Dad's sister in particular on their first holiday since their honeymoon.  The trip would clash with my mock O Level exams and the school advised that if I failed my mocks I would fail my main exams the following June.  I acquiesced and remained behind, though any ideas of partying it up were dealt a blow when my parents announced that I would be living with my Aunt and Uncle on their farm.

The wonders I would have seen, more importantly, the life I might have had, (in hindsight, ahh hindsight, I feel sure I would have had the motivation to spend longer over there once I had that first month).

From there I moved into postal gaming with opponents in the UK, no internet back then and the odd letter to authors who meant a lot to me.

All the above to paint the picture of a life in rural Cornwall with tentative links to what was going on in the outside world.  Life moved on, I got married and some things changed but I still remained that rural kid at heart.

The wonder of the internet - Part 1

Fair warning, this is a long post that sets out how the Internet made my life so much richer than it would have been otherwise.

The photograph above is one that surfaced on my dear friend Marianne's blog recently ( Marianne's World ).

It won't mean a great deal to anyone else but, for me, it is a clear reminder of the wonder of the internet that I came to know and love this woman.

What seems many years ago now, 15 maybe, I was a big fan of all things tech (still am, if a little more focussed) and involved with various websites and people online. My interaction was all online, there was no-one in my local area or even the UK, that I had much contact with apart from following Adam, Curry's Daily Source Code / No Agenda podcasts.

The internet is like Alice's rabbit hole and I had gone down it far enough to encounter a whole different world from the one I lived.  In time I got acquainted with various people including the late James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel of the JKOnTheRun podcast, and Josh Bancroft, a person who worked hard to promote the benefits of IT, with his TinyScreenfuls blog; a site no longer running but here is an example page via the immensely helpful Wayback Machine: tinyscreenful.com June 2010.

One day Josh mentioned a friend of his, who also worked at Intel; a lady who blogged about her Waltons-like life on a mountain (that is how the memory of it is to me and we all know how unreliable memory can be).  I had always enjoyed the Waltons, the thought of living somewhere remote enough to be away from others at the end of the day, so I took a look.

It was soon apparent that I had found somewhere I would happily return to.  The writing was informal in style and consisted of observations of the smaller yet important things in life.  Over time I interacted with the blog and the lady who wrote it, Marianne.  Time passed and I had no thoughts of meeting Marianne, our worlds were so different and I had never even been to America.

It's funny how things turn up in one's life.  I think that things turn up for everyone but it is being able to spot the opportunity while it is still grabbable, like riding a horse and brushing past some brambles and rather than avoid them, looking through the brambles and spotting treasure. I have a friend Cath, who mentioned she was hosting a course in something called the Passion Test.  I had no idea what this was but Cath said that she found it very helpful and I trusted the things she told me, so I signed up.

The course proved helpful at organising what 5 things I valued above all others and gave me a strategy to keep moving towards them.  Within 3 months I found an opportunity for organising a trip to America, ostensibly to celebrate my wife Cathy's significant birthday but I looked to what else we could do while across the pond.  After I had begun planning and had arranged to stay with my cousin, then in Utah, it was only weeks before my hairdresser announced that she was emigrating to the USA with her family.  I mentioned that we were going on holiday in the US and was invited to visit with them in the next-door state to my cousin.

With two locations sorted out for the holiday, I decided to look around to see if there was anything else we could fit in while they're.  I had a friend called Buzz that I had met on the internet through mutual friends like I had with Marianne and he always said that we should have dinner if I was ever in his area.  Well, it only looked like a couple of inches on the map to travel to get to Seattle and meet up with Buzz.  Using the same principle it was only a couple of inches for the down on the map to get to where Marianne lived in Oregon. I made contact with Buzz and agreed that we would meet up for dinner by flying over to him from Salt Lake City.  I then contacted Marianne and invited her to come to Seattle and have dinner with us while we were there.  Marianne made it very clear early on that I had no idea about the scales involved in travelling through America. a couple of inches on the map to me was a 6 or 7-hour drive for her so, Marianne being Marianne, she suggested out of the blue that we came and stayed for a week with her, which I readily agreed to.

if it was not for the internet I would never have visited Seattle for dinner and breakfast and then travel down to Oregon to stay with someone who is now, along with others of her household/extended family, a member of my chosen family.

A return of sorts

For a long while now I have lacked the gumption to write blog posts.  I had even forgotten, it shames me to say, that this blog existed.  

One of my closest friends, Marianne, returned to blogging recently and it has proved something of an inspiration to me.  From reading her posts at Marianne's World I began commenting, in a fuller manner than Facebook, Instagram or Twitter has ever drawn from me.  Once in a form of "flow", I penned a couple of longer than normal emails and began to realise that the pleasure in the act of writing returned to me.  

It is hard to explain the pleasure I get from writing more than a paragraph.  I get lost in what I say, the words tumble from my brain through fingers and thereby the page, by way of handwriting or typing.  At the other end, I look back on what I have produced and a "warm, fuzzy feeling" comes over me.  This is something I have crafted and the flow of words adds to my almost sense of wonder.  How can a few marks on a surface carry so much information still strikes me as a wonder after 50 odd years of doing so.

A lot of what I will write about may carry little meaning for anyone but me but I will be happy if I can write the occasional post as things occur to me or catch my eye.

I am grateful to Blogger, and Google, for keeping the faith with me, having this blog still on hand and ready to accept input from me, despite it being nearly 2 years since my last entry.