birthday trip

We had a lovely time in Santa Barbara. We wandered around State Street and ate at the Harbor and sipped coffee (well, I did) and went to see a popular movie on the Big Screen in an old-fashioned theater, had crepes twice, did the Arts & Crafts Show, checked out the jade festival (and ran in to A Musing Amma and her spouse who were celebrating his birthday. How fun and random is that?). And I did this:

So there it is…
The words are Old English (Anglo Saxon) and are something like faith, hope, love. I tried to find an Old English version of I Corinthians, but evidently King Alfred et al were more interested in the Pentateuch than the Epistles (I find this fascinating, but it’s matter for another post or a conference presentation or something). So the translation is backwards–Contemporary English to Old English–my own, best as I could figure it, with a check from FB friends who also studied OE. The artist seemed to get a kick out of the fact that, for the first time, Old English meant the words rather than the font.

My friend said, “Treow works for faith, but it means so many things.” That’s one of the things I like about it. It means faith and trust and truth and tree and, as the latter, is sometimes used to mean The Cross. And I think that’s really cool.

I had been warned that with the particular placement of the art, I wouldn’t be able to see it myself without a mirror. This doesn’t especially bother me except for one thing that never occurred to me: unless I get fancy with double mirrors, I’ll never be able to read my words right way around. Huh.