Hilton Head Island: MAN OF ARAN; joys of travel; early bird.

 

For months I have read about ten pages of Tim Robinson each morning.  First the three volumes  of his Connemara trilogy and now PILGRIMAGE, the first of the two books he wrote about the Aran Islands just off the Connemara coast.  When I finish it I will start LABYRINTH.  PILGRIMAGE describes walking the edge of Inishmore, the largest of the three islands, eight miles long and two miles at it widest.  In LABYRINTH  he explores the interior.  At ten pages a day I have two more weeks with Tim in PILGRIMAGE and two months with him in LABYRINTH.  I will be miss visiting him and western Ireland when it ends.

Tim Robinson writes about a famous film about and filmed on Inishmore by Robert Flaherty in the early 1930s.  Flaherty is better known for his earlier NANOOK OF THE NORTH.

I found the film at YouTube and Carol and I watched and enjoyed it last evening.

There is controversy about the film mostly by revisionists who dislike any effort that is inconsistent with their political or religious agenda.  I consider them irrelevant.  A work should be judged as it stands by itself, and on that basis, MAN OF ARAN, does very well as a depiction of people living a hard life in a hard world.

Above are two of the posters promoting the film. Here is a link to an article about Flaherty and the film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Aran

And here a link to the film itself, which runs an hour and fourteen minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwmc05qW0xc

From what I have read it depicts life as it was lived on the islands, though not at the time of filming, and it includes dramatic and spectacular footage of a sea swept coast.

Flaherty praised the courage of the local fishermen, particularly those in the scene toward the end when they are trapped between lines of breaking waves.  He commented that in one filming the men were not able to make it through the surf and had to row twenty miles to Galway Bay on the mainland to reach land until the seas diminished.

I am also reading TRAVELS WITH MYSELF AND ANOTHER by Martha Gellhorn, a talented war correspondent and writer who was also for four years Ernest Hemingway’s third wife.  The ‘another’ in the title is Hemingway, who is not mentioned by name.  I am not far into the book, but am enjoying it.  Here is a selection that you may enjoy too.

I have been dutifully biking to GANNET around 7 AM each morning.  In doing so the early bird disturbs the birds.  I am the first human about the docks and birds who are diligently seeking their breakfasts are not pleased.  Egrets, both great and snowy, often hold their position as I bike past.  So does a Great Blue Heron, but the numerous smaller green herons vehemently express their displeasure as they take flight, often landing five yards ahead of me and taking flight again and again as I herd them toward A Dock.

This morning I applied a second coat of Deks Olje to the interior wood and chipped some loose paint on the deck between the pads of Raptor nonskid.  Then, it still being relatively cool, I took a five mile bike ride before returning to the condo and a cup of coffee.

l have not yet marked ‘oil interior wood’ off my list because the floorboards and the wood around the companionway are going to require a third coat, but I have reduced list by more than half, and again have the illusion that I am in control.