Do you need time? In the 1970s we crooned about wanting ‘a little more time’ all the time to try and rectify we things we did too hastily or other things we did without thinking out the consequences. One that sticks in my mind is a group of nattily and glittery dressed not-so-young men called … More ‘Give me just a little more time’, before you go. As go you must!
What will your life be like in three years? Man Proposes, God Disposes depicts an imagined Arctic scene in the aftermath of Sir John Franklin‘s expedition in 1845 to explore the Northwest Passage but lost in the process. It is by Edwin Landseer – 1864 painting, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9065315 Edwin Landseer’s Man Proposes, God disposes of 1864 is supposedly a lesson … More To propose is not to dispose
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate. This is a question that seems asked over and over again so why not start responding by referring to an old blog on what holidays mean to the retired and ruminant. A celebrant of the holy days of retirement. Some thoughts about the fate of … More ‘Love Choice Day’ 28th January
Middle East and North African Art, the cult of Orientalism, Western stereotypes of Arab art and the culture of resistance. Voices: A fine exhibition at the Durham Oriental Museum, Durham University. 29 September 2023 – 12 May 2024 Let’s start off with a theme and it would seem to me on first sight that there … More Middle East and North African Art. A fine exhibition at the Durham Oriental Museum, Durham University.
What are your favorite websites? Today’s is not a question that I immediately relate to for I use the web as a tool and rarely ‘favour’ a particular site, except when it meets a need in my learning, leisure and, in the case of social media, pleasant (and sadly unpleasant) aspects of my personality. I … More Do I have a favourite website?
Matthew Rugg says in film of him shown at the current retrospective of the late artist’s work at The Hatton Gallery in Newcastle University that that there is ‘something intrinsic about the nature of making marks that slows down, when you start interpreting them’. This blog is an attempt to learn what he might mean … More Matthew Rugg once said that there’s ‘something intrinsic about the nature of making marks that slows down, when you start interpreting them’. This blog uses the book by Michael Bird with Harriet Sutcliffe (2023) ‘Matt Rugg: The Many Languages of Sculpture’.
Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live? I would relive the moment of the death Of your frail ‘love’. The month, the day, the minute of that breath Obscuring now the hours since you lifted The latch above The door guarding space wherein was sifted Hard memories from the daily … More Sad but not destroyed, I am not that keen on reliving that time. But there ya go …. !
What historical event fascinates you the most? Prompt – blog 3rd November 2023 Thomas Carlyle wrote a book on The French Revolution in three volumes in 1837. It contains a lot of words. The purpose of those words is to turn actions by people that occurred in France from 1789, although the book starts well … More ‘Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity’. Applying Thomas Carlyle to the Stonewall Riots.
In a review of a book of poems by Paul Muldoon in 2015 Fran Brearton in The Guardian writes that: ‘In a 21st-century context where everything seems instantly “knowable” for everyone, where we are “assailed by information”, what is “worth knowing” or what remains unknowable have become pressing questions. … The earth … is now also … More “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”: Beware those who claim that there is only thing you need to know.
What does it mean to be a kid at heart? You always have to start with terminology in these questions and the most glaring term here is ‘kid’. For, of the many stereotypes Western society (and perhaps more globally now with the primacy of Western values on social media and the long reach of the … More Children, even the ‘child inside’, are the object, and sometimes the victim, of theories not based on finding ways of effectively finding out about them from them. Isn’t it time we changed all that?
Daily writing prompt: You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for The line of poetry in my title comes from Samuel Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (read the poem from this link if you wish), a very specifically English eighteenth-century version of a satire by Juvenal. The story it tells so … More Why three wishes when even one is prone to: ‘The secret ambush of a specious pray’r”?
Describe a family member. My husband does not want to appear in my blog and my parents died a dozen years ago. Their siblings live a long way away from us and aren’t that interested in keeping in touch. Thus I have to fall back on Daisy, for I will restrict my working definition of … More Can our dog be treated as a family member?
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