Cities and the interesting places within them
Robert H. Johnson’s ‘Three Great Abolitionists’ unites Abraham Lincoln, John Brown and Frederick Douglas in a hand-clasp that eluded these three leaders of the abolition of US slavery in their lifetimes. It is an arresting start to a rousing exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. – all vibrant colours and stylised imagery in celebration of American freedom fighters, liberationists, emancipators, socialists, mostly people of colour.
The changing of the seasons on earth also marks a shift in the ascendancy in the skies, with Bootes taking over from Orion as the most prominent constellation in the heavens. In Welsh mythology, Bootes represents Hu Gadarn, the first farmer to use oxen to pull a plough. The moment at which Hu Gadarn, his yoke (the Roman constellation of Auriga), and ox (Taurus, the bull) first line up after sunset was a reminder to ancient Celts that it was time to plough the fields and sow seeds.
Sami artist, Britta Marakatt-Labba, campaigns for environmental protection and indigenous rights in Norway through the medium of embroidered landscapes and maps of epic beauty and subtle detail. The two hours I spent viewing a large retrospective of her work – ‘Moving the Needle’ – at the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo last weekend counts as my most enjoyable 2 hours wait for a hotel check-in. Sometimes delay really does generate pleasure.
The inspiration for today’s blog is ‘The Pennal Letter’ – a double-A3 sized piece of parchment, penned in Latin in March 1406 by Welsh hero, Owain Glyndwr, and addressed to Charles VI, King of France. Last weekend I spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon viewing a replica of the manuscript in the Canolfan Owain Glyndwr, and then following a trail around Machyllneth and beyond which charts the 10 year period when Glyndwr threw off English colonial shackles and briefly established Wales as an independent nation. (Nb there is an accompanying podcast for this blog).
Despite part-inspiring one of my favourite Clash songs, ‘Spanish Bombs’, until visiting Andulucia this summer I knew nothing about the legendary Spanish poet and playwright, Federica Garcia Lorca, other than the intriguing reference in Joe Strummer’s lyric: “Oh please leave the ventana open / Federico Garcia Lorca is dead and gone”. Today in the small tourist village of Pampaneira, a dense huddle of whitewashed stone houses cramped onto impossibly steep terraces on the southern edge of an escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, I was intrigued again by Lorca – this time generating enough impetus to read up a bit.
This is going to need some fleshing out on subsequent visits, but getting back to the original roots of markontour.com, here are fragmentary reflections on Barcleona, from three days working there and one day of leisure.
Ms Markontour and I have been enjoying a blissful bank holiday weekend at Knepp Wildland Safari in southern England. We’ve been wanting to visit since reading Isabella Tree’s ‘Wilding’ a few years ago – an account of how she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, decided to see what happened if nature was permitted to manage itself on their 3,000 acre loss-making farm. The result is the most exhilarating nature site in Britain. A place that echoes all day and night to bird-song, has welcomed back multiple species that were on the brink of extinction in Britain from the Turtle Dove to the Nightingale, and where bramble and scrub have proven to be the catalyst for abundance, variety and beauty, rather than a nuisance to be cleared away. I could have happily stayed forever.
The Museum of Broadway made for educative departure-day lunch break after a busy week in New York. Charting the genesis of the world’s most famous theatre district, on what an opening frame recognises as Lenape land, the museum takes the visitor on a chronological entertainment journey filled with song, costume and, less expectedly, mirrors.
Swansea’s Dylan Thomas Centre pays fitting homage to the unique talent of Wales’ greatest writer. While the exhibition space is modest in comparison to the depth of Thomas’ literary contribution, it is so wonderfully curated, with Thomas’ sonorous voice regaling visitors with excerpts of his poems, letters and plays at every turn, that a full afternoon was necessary for our visit.
Cranes, large white wetland birds, standing 1.3 metres tall with flamboyant tail-feathers that bob about as they graze, were hunted to extinction in Britain four hundred years ago. But last weekend we went to visit a now thriving resident population at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre on the Severn Estuary near Bristol. It was a magical and uplifting experience, and it turned out that the Cranes shared the billing with an astonishing cast of other beautiful wildfowl.
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