I had a nice visit with my Mom on Memorial Day, and I took a few pictures around her place. This is one of the out-of-territory indulgences I can enjoy posting, now that I'm done with Willits Daily Photo.
This scene behind her woodshed includes a section of metal fence that I've seen in photos of my great grandfather. He was an old Cornish immigrant who retired from blacksmithing, and then kept some farm animals when he lived up at this place. The gray tin ladder used to be attached to the old water tank. Most of the bricks are from the old Victorian house that burned down in 1961. The gardening pots are all my Mom's. The plant shooting up on the right is a blackberry cane, which grow very easily here. If we couldn't eat the berries, I suppose we'd call them weeds.
11 comments:
nice scene :)
A lot of history stacked there.
Did your great grandfather make the fence?
It's a beautiful picture and story of a family.
When did your family move into the area? I wonder if your family and mine were old friends.
Babzy, thanks.
Dina, the thought crossed my mind when I first saw the photos years ago, but now I see that the metal strips are drilled with screw holes at regular intervals. He wouldn't have needed to do that if he fabricated them. It probably was a customizable system that he assembled.
Kym, he came to Ukiah with his Cornish born family in 1904. That's where my grandfather finished growing up.
I want to know how you ended up in Temple city.
PA - If I ever get down to LA, I'll tell ya. Are you listed under P or A?
I'm in love with the fence.
Do you speak any Cornish? The language is being revived.
Cornish is being revived, really?
Yes, but there are so far only about 2,000 fluent speakers. I've done a little research for something I'm writing. Apparently when you travel in southwest England you'll even see signs in both English and Cornish in some of the villages now.
Ooops! Hi! Here I am!
No I don't speak it, but yes, I'm very aware of the efforts to revive it. There are several schools of thought about how to build it into a workable language. Since the last full-on Cornish speaker died before the age of sound recordings, there is much dispute over pronunciation. There was also very little left of the language in written form, so reconstructors have had to improvise the vast missing vocabulary too. It's all led to some heated competition to claim the most "authentic" Cornish.
What they can tell so far is that Cornish has more vocabulary in common with the Celtic language alive in Brittany, France (75%), than it does with Welsh (60%), which it often gets lumped with first. I have a language book, place names book, a people names book, and some cookbooks from Cornwall, if those can be of any help to you, P. I used to be up on the latest back when I pursued my genealogy more. There are many "diaspora" groups around the world, including California Cornish Cousins. I used to join and get the newsletters, but eventually moved on to other things when the most well documented of my people were "done". Haven't looked at it for a while, but I strongly identify ethnically, for what it's worth. 8^)
I'm curious about what you're working on, P...
I'm sending an email.
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