Have Pen and Camera, Will Travel: December 2020

MERRY CHRISTMAS What a year it has been. Anne and I have worked hard to stay safe and sane. We play golf whenever the weather and injuries allow, always social distancing. We only venture out when we need to shop. Anne has gotten quite good about knowing the best times to go to the safest places to get what we need when we can’t have delivery. We have a couple of social contacts we meet safely in garages or on patios. Otherwise, we’ve become very adept at Zoom Meetings. We hope you are well and safe and we all look forward to a

HAPPY HEALTHY SAFE 2021.

SIGNS — Maybe from Places We’ll Get to Next Year

As a senior at Linfield College (now Linfield University) I attended the Pi Kappa Delta National Speech Tournament where I competed in Oratory (persuasive speaking) and debate. My persuasive speech was really just a hippy-type college student’s rant against the machine. It was really a poor speech, but radical enough that I still placed in the top ten in the tournament. The speech was about the signs of society’s collapse. I could probably produce a speech today on the same topic and have it be relevant rather than rant. But that’s not the point of this post. That speech was likely the start of my fascination with signs.

Signs of all kinds are interesting on several levels and they tell us a lot about ourselves and the world we live in. They also tell us about those who came before us and thus our history. Petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings) are part of the cultural language of many of our ancestors (for me, particularly Native American ancestors).

Other signs also speak to our history. For instance, “the barber’s pole reminds us that once upon a time a barber was a leech, and practiced phlebotomy, the red and white pole he hung at his door being supposed to represent the bleeding limb and the white surgical bandage twisted round it.” [Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England, Jennings, 1895]

Pitlochry, Scotland

In our travels, especially to the UK, I’ve collected pictures of many interesting signs. It’s been easy because as one English essayist noted, “Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions, not to mention flying pigs and hogs in armor, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Afric.[sic]” So I here present some of those signs categorized as signs of Business, Direction, Information, Inspiration, Place, and Miscellany.

Business Signs. We have plenty of business signs in the US, but few match the interesting signs of the UK which has a history of compelling by law businesses to display signage since 1393.

B&B in St Ives, Cornwall. Strange name means a tropical food fish.

A Cornish pub in the tin mine area in Zennor, opened in 1391.

Pub in St Ives, Cornwall.

Pub in Linlithgow, Scotland, named for Mary Queen of Scots' handmaidens (all named Mary).

York pub.

This Red Lion is a pub in Avebury, Wiltshire, and is in the middle of the Avebury Stone Circle. This pub is one of the most haunted in England with at least five ghosts including a ghost coach with horses which pulls up to the inn at night.

A pub in Porlock, Exmoor Park, England, named after an English children's game we would call Keep Away.

The Dolphin Inn, Penzance, Cornwall, is another very haunted site with a violent smuggling history and used as a courthouse and jail from a famous hanging judge. Room 5 is the most haunted with many guests leaving in the middle of the night.

A subcategory of business signs are those which relate to the products being sold by the business.

Bourton on the Water, Cotswolds

Signs which Direct. We stayed once in a small village on the English side of Solway Firth where we complimented the B&B host on the good signage between the village and Carlisle. She was astonished and asked if we really followed the road signs to get to the B&B. We told her we did and she said, “You must live a charmed life because those sings change in the wind each day.”

Falkland, Scotland

Durness, far NW Scotland

Lonely sign on North Yorkshire Moors

Signs to Give Information. Many signs are meant to provide vital or interesting information and many do that job well. Sometimes, though, the information isn’t appreciated.

Political Protest

Warning of bears on the trail in Banff National Park, Canada.

What are you doing fishing? On Sunday you should be in church in Scotland.

Signs to Inspire. These signs might inspire (or instruct) us to mighty deeds or profound thoughts. In other cases they may just cause us to say, “Duh!”