tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455136372031304732024-03-13T01:11:14.124+00:00My favourite thingsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-4566417772365985012013-10-08T00:55:00.001+01:002013-10-26T13:52:55.258+01:00Why I like walking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6W9Z0BYRXRmegwrJNGXOaynaQsb6C_xNLnhoU4FBxZ0GUk-pC6w6pYa9Kk7rmU22Zzk0eF3CqjDvG3G62rxx3yn97N5RvYgRMU7vBvxnRIsOmML0xxVeV9caTq4vO5OO4KiqVrKKKUOKU/s1600/Haytor+-+pond.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6W9Z0BYRXRmegwrJNGXOaynaQsb6C_xNLnhoU4FBxZ0GUk-pC6w6pYa9Kk7rmU22Zzk0eF3CqjDvG3G62rxx3yn97N5RvYgRMU7vBvxnRIsOmML0xxVeV9caTq4vO5OO4KiqVrKKKUOKU/s200/Haytor+-+pond.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I like
walking – particularly up hills and along coastal cliffs. </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s so invigorating to look at an
amazing landscape stretching ahead of you and enjoy the wind blowing away your
cares.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Walking not only makes
us healthier, by increasing our heart rates, it also provides a time and space
to think. To fully experience the world
around us, we first have to free ourselves from the distractions that are
constantly begging for our attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">For Nietzsche, "All
truly great thoughts are conceived while walking," (</span><i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Twilight of the Idols)</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">. While Thomas Jefferson walked to
clear his mind of thoughts. "The object of walking is to relax the
mind," he wrote. "You should therefore not permit yourself even to
think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding
you."</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Perhaps by taken out of our normal environment, we engage more fully with the world. In</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Iconoclast-Neuroscientist-Reveals-Think-Differently/dp/1422133303" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #0068cf; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Iconoclast:
A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently</span></i></a></span><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, Gregory Berns </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1007044/neuroscience-sheds-new-light-creativity" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0068cf; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">writes</span></a></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> <span style="background: white;">that "new
insights come from people and new environments – any circumstance in which the
brain has a hard time predicting what will come next."</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">According
to the Latin aphorism,<i> Solvitur ambulando,</i></span><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> virtually anything can be solved by walking. That's why I'm keen to spend more time enjoying some of the wonderful walks in the world. Here are my top ten for starters:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Top ten walks</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">- Carsaig Arches, Mull, UK<br />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">- Tiger Leaping
Gorge, Yunnan province, China<br />
- The Inca trails and Machu Picchu, Peru</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br />
- Jurassic Coast, UK<br />
- Cairngorns, UK<br />
- Haytor, Devon, UK</span><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I’d also probably add these to the list once I’ve had a chance to
experience them:</span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the Gower Peninsula, UK; Annapurna region, Nepal; Ardèche, France; and Pennine Way, UK.</span> </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-16387922503577957302013-08-30T20:06:00.002+01:002013-10-01T10:20:01.539+01:00It's all about the journey...not the destination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgacVCaKoK1utmGvmhQrfj7gIKF190cAQ2wEyn7fdv6B5t9azE5LObzSKkx0CR6mV_fg_5MGAp9gYcT_ffxEfptULktM39nfXgnFGeXH06gxEM6WYjmVkNmK_q6Px0DAF90SZQslWHoi6z4/s1600/Ithaka.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgacVCaKoK1utmGvmhQrfj7gIKF190cAQ2wEyn7fdv6B5t9azE5LObzSKkx0CR6mV_fg_5MGAp9gYcT_ffxEfptULktM39nfXgnFGeXH06gxEM6WYjmVkNmK_q6Px0DAF90SZQslWHoi6z4/s200/Ithaka.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've just come across a lovely poem called Ithaka by Constantine P. Cavafy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It focus on the importance of being "mindful" when you travel, fully inhabiting the given moment and experiencing everything around you to the full. It encourages us to be endlessly curious and grateful for the wonderful things we encounter along the way. Most importantly, it celebrates the joy of coming home.<br /><br />The word "dépaysement" springs to mind. It means to "decountrify oneself". When you return home from exploring a different country and culture, you see it with a fresh pair of eyes. You have a new perspective on the world you live in and your place in it.<br /><br />Some of the lyricism and rhyme of the original is probably lost in translation from the Greek, but it's still a powerful piece that speaks to the reader in any language.<br /><br />* * *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Ithaka</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When you set out for Ithaka</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ask that your way be long,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">full of adventure, full of instruction.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">angry Poseidon - do not fear them:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">such as these you will never find</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">emotion touch your spirit and your body.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">angry Poseidon - you will not meet them</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">unless you carry them in your soul,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">unless your soul raise them up before you.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Ask that your way be long.<br />At many a Summer dawn to enter<br />with what gratitude, what joy -<br />ports seen for the first time;<br />to stop at Phoenician trading centres,<br />and to buy good merchandise,<br />mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,<br />and sensuous perfumes of every kind,<br />sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;<br />to visit many Egyptian cities,<br />to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Have Ithaka always in your mind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Your arrival there is what you are destined for.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But don't in the least hurry the journey.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Better it last for years,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">so that when you reach the island you are old,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">rich with all you have gained on the way,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Without her you would not have set out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She hasn't anything else to give you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So wise you have become, of such experience,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Constantine P. Cavafy<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />The poet's wise words are draw inspiration from Odysseus’ ten year voyage home from the Trojan war. The twists, turns and adventures Odysseus encounters are used as a metaphor for a fulfilling life by Cavafy, just as they were by Homer in the original epic poems. <br /><br />Cavafy is saying that the things that really matter in life in the end are experiences and memories. Some people always find the straight and easy path, avoiding distractions and detours. When they reach the end, what do they have to show for it?<br /><br />We're told not to be worried about scary monsters like the Cyclops (there's no such thing). Equally a person without internal strife is less likely to encounter external strife.<br /><br />The harbours are happy times and places in the life of the reader where pleasure, knowledge and experience are gained. The Phoenician trading stations symbolize times in life when one is exposed to art and beauty and culture. The poet urges us to enjoy luxury and beauty when the chance arises. One should appreciate the fine things that come into one’s path for the sake of the experience and not to amass treasures.<br /><br />He suggests we visit Egyptian cities often, which symbolise times of knowledge and education. Education is not something that is sought once in life. Rather, we should be endlessly curious and enjoy life-long learning.<br /><br />Ithaka, Odysseus’ island kingdom, is both the starting and ending place. The place we come from shape us and make us what we are. Ironically, the farther people get from home (physically, temporally, and ideologically) the more they want to return.<br /><br />So, take your time on your journey through life, stopping to obtain wisdom, pleasure and experience. Happy travels folks and a happy homecoming too!</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-70695391434357254352011-03-26T09:13:00.004+00:002011-04-08T19:10:47.942+01:00Why I like giraffes...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjbSDMp4ZUDvhPHX95SdDN9FHDFJ8p2Xa3RvcRA05aSwwxKnfY5WXnh50zyi5I9lmXkdCZb-Glgt76vXN3k9KEXu5_Qscnz9HvQSk2m7grBpxXL6MBTx5WQLMeNdLEfbHB3xi3c7E1qFQj/s1600/048-GIRAFFES-ARCH%2540body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjbSDMp4ZUDvhPHX95SdDN9FHDFJ8p2Xa3RvcRA05aSwwxKnfY5WXnh50zyi5I9lmXkdCZb-Glgt76vXN3k9KEXu5_Qscnz9HvQSk2m7grBpxXL6MBTx5WQLMeNdLEfbHB3xi3c7E1qFQj/s320/048-GIRAFFES-ARCH%2540body.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I read the most amazing things about giraffes on my way home from work earlier this week. For instance, did you know that giraffes come across as being silent to us humans, but they're probably communicating using infrasound? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Giraffes are apparently unable even to warn their companions of the presence of predators such a lions, although they may pick on behavioural cues such as nervousness and whether their companions are startled.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This is very strange indeed. People also assume giraffes</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px;"> to be social animals because they are so often found in what appears to be family groups. Yet these groups are extremely unstable – giraffes join and leave them apparently at random.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Biologist<span style="color: #d5d5d5;"> </span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">John Doherty</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> from <a href="http://www.reticulatedgiraffeproject.net/en/RGP_Home.html">The Reticulated Giraffe Project</a>, speculates that perhaps they communicate using vocalisations below the frequency range of our hearing, in this month’s <a href="http://www.discoverwildlife.com/">BBC Wildlife</a> magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">“They are certainly big enough to provide infrasonic signals and it has been suggested that they do so by means of Helmholtz resonance – the noise produced by blowing across the open neck of a bottle.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This would be consistent with the way in which elephants use infrasound for long distance communication.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Maybe that’s part of why giraffes come across as thinkers. One of my first jobs involved working as a copywriter on the farm owned by Johnny Morris of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP5CQH7pEJw&feature=related">Animal Magic</a> fame. I know anthropomorphism (the attribution of human feelings and characteristics to animals) is frowned upon by some, but Johnny’s impression of a giraffe was very funny. If only I could find it on YouTube! </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I gave Johnny lifts to a few speaking engagement and he used to entertain me with stories all the way there and back. We'd usually be invited to a dinner in his honour afterwards and I then had to ferry a tipsy octogenerian all the way home. He did like his whisky our Johnny, despite being diabetic!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Anyway, I digress...back to the giraffes and what makes them so great. Size usually poses problems for big herbivores but giraffes have made it a virtue. Most large herbivores have such high calorific content that they must eat abundant but often poor-quality food – dry grass or touch leaves – whereas smaller species can pick and choose, favouring the best foods such as berries and seeds. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">In extreme environments such as African savannahs where food availability varies greatly with the season, this is reflected in the energy budgets of buffalos and other big animals, which can breed only in times of plenty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">But giraffes are different. Quite apart from their height – which enables them to munch the foliage of taller, deeper-rooted and thus more drought-resistant trees – their fine tapering muzzles, mobile lips and long prehensile tongues allow them to be unusually picky. Add to this a highly efficient digestive system (even by ruminant standards) and the result is ‘supercharged’ giraffes with enough of an energy surplus to breed all year round.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">A giraffe’s height also poses a problem though. A fully grown giraffe can raise of lower its head by up to 5m and might pass out with the blood rushing away were it not for a dense network of fine capillaries (the ‘rete mirabile’) that cushions its brain against rapid changes in blood pressure. Quite an amazing biological adaptation really. Although it has its limits. Giraffe actually sleep sitting bolt upright otherwise they might die from a lack of blood circulation to their brains! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpipzDvq2uzBBw-f0GdDT5eptndsgz1V9Hh5z7bez-gwQjD-vSB-pc8rC4cy_7lSkc3eHr0XoCUquWmoqSF7hi35kD-aj6___LLGIqr6cJon1R68wWLyEchkuJ94n6HwgzCRydYD31gISb/s1600/13-RETICULATED-GIRAFFES-SAVANNAH%2540body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpipzDvq2uzBBw-f0GdDT5eptndsgz1V9Hh5z7bez-gwQjD-vSB-pc8rC4cy_7lSkc3eHr0XoCUquWmoqSF7hi35kD-aj6___LLGIqr6cJon1R68wWLyEchkuJ94n6HwgzCRydYD31gISb/s320/13-RETICULATED-GIRAFFES-SAVANNAH%2540body.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">To Doherty, megaherboivores such as giraffes represent echoes of a younger planet, where giant life forms were commonplace. "When they are extinct such creatures become objects of wonder – think of our fascination with mammoths, giant sloths, and especially, dinosaurs."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I can completely understand what he means. When I was travelling across Kenya and Tanzania I went on a walking safari and it was all so reminiscent of Jurassic Park. These majestic animals move across the savannah with such grace and the odd comic moment when they shuffle awkwardly and splay out their legs to drink. It looks like they might very well get stuck and never get back up.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Sadly, my favourite giraffes – the reticulated ones – are endangered. They look quite different to Africa’s other eight giraffe subspecies due to their signature hide pattern: dark chestnut polygons divided by a complex tracery of narrow white lines. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">In 1998, there were thought to be 28,000 giraffes in northern Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, but this figure has plummeted by 80% in only 10 years. They inhabit a volatile area characterised by growing human population, poverty, habitat degradation and drought, regional conflicts, overstretched security forces and a widespread availability of automatic weapons. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">They’re tempting targets as they yield large amounts of meat and some pastoral groups value them highly as trophies and for their hides, tail hair and bone marrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Who could do such a thing to such a majestic animal? Although it’s easy for me to say that as I don’t face starvation or privation. Thinking about this, I must do something to support The Reticulated Giraffe Project.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-3016140373482875872011-03-20T09:38:00.000+00:002011-03-20T10:12:20.740+00:00Why I like 'The Rivals' by Richard Sheridan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLmQUBkzdoOz26woUCv5NaF2w7M4wMRfZY9wF43IefYAXHGOwLZi6f85sLynR6eDyVLxSSNE_3mv2ChUkkUwitxZ4ajh4qAnSv4G5rUlzdZXbPhLQ3qLL2U_k2oamc82latUf8WoRgBAF/s1600/the-rivals_1769566b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLmQUBkzdoOz26woUCv5NaF2w7M4wMRfZY9wF43IefYAXHGOwLZi6f85sLynR6eDyVLxSSNE_3mv2ChUkkUwitxZ4ajh4qAnSv4G5rUlzdZXbPhLQ3qLL2U_k2oamc82latUf8WoRgBAF/s320/the-rivals_1769566b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Rivals was Sheridan's first play,</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> written in 1775</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">. At the time, he was a young newlywed living in Bath. At Sheridan’s insistence, upon marriage his wife Eliza (born Elizabeth Linley) had given up her career as a singer. This was proper for the wife of a “gentleman,” but it was difficult because Eliza had earned a substantial income as a performer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Instead, the Sheridans lived beyond their means as they entertained the gentry and nobility with Eliza’s singing (in private parties) and Richard’s wit. Finally, in need of funds, Richard turned to the only craft that could gain him the remuneration he desired in a short time: he began writing a play. He had over the years written and published essays and poems, and among his papers were numerous unfinished plays, essays and political tracts, but never had he undertaken such an ambitious project as this. In a short time, however, he completed The Rivals. He was 23 years old.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJoZRkfamiVkubNp6gLkx6ULvJaYO-mjCh8PsLgDJDVtIbJJ7PRehAqTtVGPcFlj8sSzrOBra8q4VudqeDxB88k_8RFum1W0hsmmtWTrS2tFvmM8TqJdTsTyGv4KzYF7MTyKXD-NxmRZno/s1600/The+crescent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJoZRkfamiVkubNp6gLkx6ULvJaYO-mjCh8PsLgDJDVtIbJJ7PRehAqTtVGPcFlj8sSzrOBra8q4VudqeDxB88k_8RFum1W0hsmmtWTrS2tFvmM8TqJdTsTyGv4KzYF7MTyKXD-NxmRZno/s400/The+crescent.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="apple-style-span"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #282828; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #282828; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This is a play about the comedy of courtship and duplicity in 18th-century Bath.</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #282828; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #282828; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I recently went to see a production directed by Sir Peter Hall in his 80<sup>th</sup> year. <span class="apple-style-span">The performances of Penelope Keith as the “Queen of the dictionary” Mrs Malaprop, and Peter Bowles as Sir Anthony Absolute, a man who rumbles and thunders with rage whenever his iron will is crossed, were outstanding. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #282828; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There was a mixture of hauteur, roguishness and vulnerability in Keith’s performance that is truly endearing. Mrs Malaprop is noted for what Julia calls, “her select words so ingeniously misapplied, without being mispronounced.” Bowles is terrific too, his sour, pursed face.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The dramaturgy is impeccable. Sheridan roots the play in the audience's taste for comic character: from Shakespeare (Mistress Quickly and Dogberry are Mrs Malaprop's antecedents) and Jonson (Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Sir Anthony Absolute bearing Jonsonian monikers that define type) via the Restoration.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In poking fun at poseurs, pretentious country arrivistes and snobs, Sheridan pushes the manners and stereotypes of the plays and society of the time to extremes. He is attacking attitudes to love and money, marriage and responsibilities, the battle of the sexes, and the age-old tensions between the generations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sheridan was satirising a new society, although he signed up to it in one chief respect: that anyone could be a gentleman through their own efforts and achievements rather than through birth or marriage. He was very American in this respect - the revolution in that country was just a year away.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 9.75pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Rivals is set in Bath, a newly invigorated city: new architecture, new fashions, new intellectual curiosity avidly embraced by newcomers. Bath offered a levelling of society. There was no hierarchy to be observed in the ballrooms, for example. But it also bred snobbery from the old order. With a fondness for the new comes the posturing of the nouveau.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 9.75pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bath was also where Sheridan had spent the most tumultuous time of his life on leaving school, as an employee of his father's elocution academy (there was a ready market in social climbers looking to knock the edge off their common accents).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 9.75pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The rivals is a c</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">omic gem in which Sheridan combines mastery of situation with an awareness of sentimental absurdity that Jane Austen went on to harpoon in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Northanger Abbey</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-80943009404138818312011-03-15T00:22:00.001+00:002011-03-20T10:31:44.464+00:00My favourite children's books...<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWl8S7ZIJNDF0PTzlqRXAZwbZJmHm8h63V-5EF4xrRnhvPlVqACVDOYNCAmRtihNGPsteRb9V9__YxHYkgA1owFpD6nIZbejhZGEyJQjbzavd_HS5tqU2B7HAnc0TNRl0Z_kaLRm07GeM/s1600/Wierd+Stone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWl8S7ZIJNDF0PTzlqRXAZwbZJmHm8h63V-5EF4xrRnhvPlVqACVDOYNCAmRtihNGPsteRb9V9__YxHYkgA1owFpD6nIZbejhZGEyJQjbzavd_HS5tqU2B7HAnc0TNRl0Z_kaLRm07GeM/s200/Wierd+Stone.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After reading<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Little Prince</i> the other week for the first time, I got to thinking about what would make it onto my list of my top ten favourite children’s books.<br />
<br />
In no particular order, the following immediately sprang to mind...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <u1:p></u1:p> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – Alan Garner<br />
<i>His Dark Materials<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>trilogy – Philip Pulman<br />
<i>The Cat in the Hat</i> –<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Dr Seus<br />
<i>Calvin & Hobbes</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– Bill<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Watterson<br />
<i>The Little Prince</i> or <i>Le Petit Prince</i> –<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Antoine de Saint-Exupéry<br />
<i>The Earthsea trilogy</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– Ursula Le Guin<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Alice's Adventures in Wonderland<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>Through the Looking Glass<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>– Lewis Carroll<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – J.R. Tolkein<br />
The Dark is Rising<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">–<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>Susan Cooper<i><br />
The Chronicles of Narnia</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– CS Lewis<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOrSF33jHNkg7IhdlghE3Hb429VAYFSq8bJwzm0icXnqMtvPMMT_qImKR7zNpViwr5WVsNLDnpWnMYb3-ek69kn6S6NTWE_HjkSC12QHBQCx6xuZGX4hs9y9u7ug1y2Bov_QBBctRIVBM/s1600/The+Cat+in+the+Hat.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOrSF33jHNkg7IhdlghE3Hb429VAYFSq8bJwzm0icXnqMtvPMMT_qImKR7zNpViwr5WVsNLDnpWnMYb3-ek69kn6S6NTWE_HjkSC12QHBQCx6xuZGX4hs9y9u7ug1y2Bov_QBBctRIVBM/s1600/The+Cat+in+the+Hat.jpeg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I'll try and explain why...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<b><i></i></b></span></span></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Cat in the Hat</span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – Dr Seus<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></b></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
In May of 1954, <i>Life</i> magazine published an essay by John Hersey, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, about why American children were having trouble learning to read.<b> </b>Hersey ripped the stultifyingly boring "Dick and Jane" stories of the era to pieces and pleaded for someone to do better. Theodor Seuss Geisel, an ad copywriter, responded with <i>The Cat in the Hat</i>.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <i><br />
<u1:p></u1:p>The Cat in the Hat </i>and its sequel operate on many levels. Yes, they teach us to read. But they also teach us about poetry, politics, ethics, comics, history and con-artistry - not to mention spot removal and indoor kite-flying. All this and the books use just 236 different words. This is experimentation with language and meter/verse at its very best.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi8vEguTnBe-4zaQksMWTJw2oRqiVOKttA7TdV74JyqU5r0xEWcwxYKH1PxDWuY3YSYIuSgWA4RVJR4etKF7QZAe8lMX2wowZqf5CMvhOGamQauRIO_m1JtWpVmkWg1JRkNrxnrlIKQfa1/s1600/calvin+and+hobbes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi8vEguTnBe-4zaQksMWTJw2oRqiVOKttA7TdV74JyqU5r0xEWcwxYKH1PxDWuY3YSYIuSgWA4RVJR4etKF7QZAe8lMX2wowZqf5CMvhOGamQauRIO_m1JtWpVmkWg1JRkNrxnrlIKQfa1/s320/calvin+and+hobbes.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Calvin & Hobbes</span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – Bill Watterson<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Calvin & Hobbes</span></i><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">tells the tale of a young boy whose stuffed tiger is as real to him as the people around him. It deals in the process with philosophical issues about free will and the meaning of life, via the perspective of a child with an extraordinary imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> </span><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s great to share with children for its sheer use of humor, puns, implied meaning, figurative language and sarcasm. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Weirdstone of Brisingamen</span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – Alan Garner</span></b></span></div></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Weirdstone of Brisingamen</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and Garner's other children’s books<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Moon of Gomrath</i>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Owl Service</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Elidor<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>are truly unforgettable.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brisingamen</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">is set in and around Macclesfield and Alderley Edge in Cheshire, and tells the story of two children, Colin and Susan, who are staying with some old friends of their mother's while their parents are overseas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> </span><br />
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Susan possesses a small tear-shaped jewel held in a bracelet: unknown to her, this is the Weirdstone of the title. As its nature is revealed the children become hunted by the minions of the dark spirit Nastrond who, centuries before, had been defeated and banished by a powerful king.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">They have to compete with a wicked shape-shifting sorceress and evil wizard but are aided by a good wizard and his dwarven companions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Garner didn’t write the book ‘for children’ who don’t spoken down to by it. For this reason people of every age can enjoy the jeopardy and magic of it all the more.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrImR-Ia2P3pVcaArEObgx9zvRS-s8NXOX2lJ-jyb34VkC5P8j6ssP3Iw6rAL5YJsMXszQdQzSCtMparcBiX1ekXR2Ryg9g7r1JaHZ4WF30SzSYAA5NqhNnRvnVjKq83M4COQ7jL5rPFSN/s1600/HDMT_ID_by_His_Dark_Materials.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrImR-Ia2P3pVcaArEObgx9zvRS-s8NXOX2lJ-jyb34VkC5P8j6ssP3Iw6rAL5YJsMXszQdQzSCtMparcBiX1ekXR2Ryg9g7r1JaHZ4WF30SzSYAA5NqhNnRvnVjKq83M4COQ7jL5rPFSN/s320/HDMT_ID_by_His_Dark_Materials.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
His Dark Materials</span></i></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">– Philip Pulman</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
<i>His Dark Materials</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>comprises three books,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Northern Lights</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(1995),<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Subtle Knife</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(1997) and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Amber Spyglass</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(2000).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Pullman has written an epic with the entertainment value to capture a mass audience, which simultaneously taps into the same profound themes as Homer and the Bible.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
It's a story with a dark and powerful undertow – a creation myth for the 21st century.<o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">His Dark Materials</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">has its origins in the writings of Milton, Blake and Kleist, but if that sounds literary and erudite, don't worry, it’s a page-turner too.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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The books attack such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrate love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity and human intelligence.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>It<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>alludes to a broad range of ideas from fields such as physics, philosophy, theology and spirituality.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The Little Prince</span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> or <i>Le Petit Prince</i> –<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Antoine de Saint-Exupéry</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Outwardly a children's book, <i>The Little Prince</i> makes various profound points about life and humankind. It looks at how and why we find joy in friendships, nature and the things around us and reconcile ourselves with the inevitability of death and loss.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
In it, the narrator tells of being stranded in the Sahara Desert (which actually occurred to the author on a pioneering flight) where he meets a young extraterrestrial prince. In their talks, the author reveals his own views about simple truths and the follies of mankind.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
<b><i>The Earthsea Trilogy</i> – Ursula Le Guin</b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Earthsea is the setting for six books, beginning with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>A Wizard of Earthsea</i>, first published in 1968, and includes<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Tombs of Atuan<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>and<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>The Farthest Shore.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfz5WHc3SY0XEymCZ2M7ny2n29wRD_rlp-EuOe-AVLtn98eqxNgCsFDS9PpBIOTbaijee92LvbKKvMeYWZijEPxidheKE7CS8AKy8NBugZZVUYtjD2YBUoA5-Rj2n0hfQfVL62tH-HPvS2/s1600/earthsea2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfz5WHc3SY0XEymCZ2M7ny2n29wRD_rlp-EuOe-AVLtn98eqxNgCsFDS9PpBIOTbaijee92LvbKKvMeYWZijEPxidheKE7CS8AKy8NBugZZVUYtjD2YBUoA5-Rj2n0hfQfVL62tH-HPvS2/s320/earthsea2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In <em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A Wizard of Earthsea</span></em> a young goatherd Ged discovers his talent for magic and is sent to the school for wizards on the island of Roke. There his pride leads him to folly, and the loosing of a terrible evil on the world and an epic quest to restore balance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
In <i>The Tombs of Atuan</i>, a priestess discovers an intruder in the forbidden labyrinth that is her domain. She chooses to turn her back on everything familiar, in exchange for an uncertain future.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
In <i>The Farthest Shore</i> something is leaching the wizardry and joy out of the world. Arren, the young prince of Enlad, joins Ged on a quest to find the source of the evil. Their search will take them to the raft people on the open sea, then across the wall into the dry land of the dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
A Taoist conception of "Balance" underlies Earthsea: the use of magic is dangerous, and can destabilise the natural order. They are also, first and foremost, spellbinding "coming of age" stories with memorable characters.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNfX1AWPA8vY_Zz77CpFjMH3ttzZKnxlD0dtdO2da9WPRIR1a6-mzpg8Vj_u5dwoARaWi-2vQyn6QgK1VJcq7QE4dqMihmlrSR3ENPAiGQ6Tzjc4-jI5X6fWJbQbWX27ykRqkx1uNZU8De/s1600/ET052009_teaparty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNfX1AWPA8vY_Zz77CpFjMH3ttzZKnxlD0dtdO2da9WPRIR1a6-mzpg8Vj_u5dwoARaWi-2vQyn6QgK1VJcq7QE4dqMihmlrSR3ENPAiGQ6Tzjc4-jI5X6fWJbQbWX27ykRqkx1uNZU8De/s320/ET052009_teaparty.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>Through the Looking Glass </i>–<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>Lewis Carroll<i><br />
</i></span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written by the Oxford maths lecturer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar creatures.<br />
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The books also critique the new mathematical theories and approaches which were gaining currency in the mid 19<sup>th</sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>C. Lewis goes on the attack using an approach familiar from Euclid – reductio ad absurdum – where the validity of an idea is tested by taking its premises to their logical extreme.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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This is seen best in the scene with the Caterpillar where Alice's size fluctuates wildly with every second that pasts. Proportion, rather than absolute length, was what mattered in Alice’s above-ground world of Euclidean geometry. In an algebraic world, of course, this isn’t easy as can be seen when Alice's neck elongates alarmingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyCaThbfjmfRw8fLvHpI3IFc2GEVaddA8lbtqoy3N5O3zwUfYXs6Atk-1OrxXRpuxsIr5jOcflsfMVU0RsfRcSxYSin4TXPV43d4b4Lv6AwPFsKAu5uImbi_MVrxJlt7QpH_dBE3IrwNgj/s1600/caterpillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyCaThbfjmfRw8fLvHpI3IFc2GEVaddA8lbtqoy3N5O3zwUfYXs6Atk-1OrxXRpuxsIr5jOcflsfMVU0RsfRcSxYSin4TXPV43d4b4Lv6AwPFsKAu5uImbi_MVrxJlt7QpH_dBE3IrwNgj/s320/caterpillar.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The books have given rise to some of my favourite phrases delievered by the White Queen to Alice, "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day".<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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The White Queen<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>offers Alice "jam every other day" as an inducement to work for her:<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Two pence a week, and jam every other day."<br />
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Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire ME - and I don't care for jam."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"It's very good jam," said the Queen.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"You couldn't have it if you DID want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"" Alice objected.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know."<br />
"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Queen's rule is a pun on a mnemonic for remembering the distinction between the Latin words "nunc" and "iam" (sometimes written "jam"). Both mean "now", but "nunc" is only used in the present tense, while "iam" is used in the past and future tenses.<u1:p></u1:p> In more recent times, the phrase has been used to describe a variety of unfulfilled political promises on issues such as tax.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><u1:p></u1:p></span> <div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The comment by Humpty Dumpty also sticks in my mind:<br />
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“Words mean exactly what I want them to mean, neither more nor less”. It was once a history of the English language university exam question, suffixed with the daunting instruction to “discuss”!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<b>The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – J.R. Tolkein</b></i><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</b></i></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXmWt18A_6OvCjkPreN8vRDboeN56pSgpWiHOwgfnBeMoGziNTj4KBASKGE_4Dc7wcEVH8xS3VTJPFVhykaHBD8d3IJblwnMjTK8r_ALB-nvjPg1O7fXt805h3z-mJYtBLpPF7l8q_c_5I/s1600/Hobbit2ndEd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXmWt18A_6OvCjkPreN8vRDboeN56pSgpWiHOwgfnBeMoGziNTj4KBASKGE_4Dc7wcEVH8xS3VTJPFVhykaHBD8d3IJblwnMjTK8r_ALB-nvjPg1O7fXt805h3z-mJYtBLpPF7l8q_c_5I/s320/Hobbit2ndEd.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," is one of the most memorable and charming lines in the history of literature.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span class="apple-converted-space"></span><i>The Hobbit</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>continues in this beguilingly unpretentious, delightfully funny and splendidly restrained way. Bilbo's journey from his cosy village across risky territory to the Misty Mountains with their goblin-infested caverns, and to the dragon-haunted Lonely Mountain beyond, provides the geographical and narrative matrix for Frodo's quest in the sequel<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Lord of the Rings</i>.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Moreover,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Hobbit</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is a neat little parable about the first world war. Plucked from his rural idyll and catapulted into a brutal and totally unnecessary conflict, Bilbo soon discovers the futility of old-style heroism, and learns that the best place for him is out of it all. He manages to get walloped on the head, and spends most of the battle unconscious — just as his creator Tolkien caught trench fever on the Somme, and was safely invalided out of the carnage.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Dark is Rising – </span></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Susan Cooper</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></b></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGnUlP07RafLPg8jXYchOg8MgQdDMRFAlxckJGjhg0Yz4x7APEI83nNVo4GzforoIfx7FROlYlw9OeSsGcB5i9xBaAt8I5PY9umz1q5aHo1PlRRH03xlYS4Sl0_oicOPLGz2Q8h91lkfVd/s1600/1298025861781scrising2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGnUlP07RafLPg8jXYchOg8MgQdDMRFAlxckJGjhg0Yz4x7APEI83nNVo4GzforoIfx7FROlYlw9OeSsGcB5i9xBaAt8I5PY9umz1q5aHo1PlRRH03xlYS4Sl0_oicOPLGz2Q8h91lkfVd/s320/1298025861781scrising2.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Dark Is Rising</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">is the name of a five-book series of fantasy novels (published 1965–1977) which depicts the struggle between the forces of good and evil. The series is based on Arthurian myths and Celtic and Norse legend.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Will Stanton, the main protagonist in the book, exists in two separate worlds. He is the last of the Old Ones, a circle of magical men and women who exist throughout the ages of the world fighting a constant battle against the powers of the Dark.</span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <br />
Traveling back and forth in time, witnessing the invasion of Wales by the English and observing the construction of a Roman amphitheatre in England, readers are given a history of the British Isles that is remarkable for its unconventionality. Both Herne the Hunter and Arthur Pendragon playing roles of vital importance in the fight against the Dark in this gripping tale.<br />
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<b>The Chronicles of Narnia</b></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><b>– CS Lewis</b><br />
The Chronicles of Narnia<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is a series of seven fantasy novels for children written 1949-1954 and published 1950- 1956.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Narnia is a strange blend of magic, myth and Christianity, some of it brilliantly fantastical and richly imaginative and some heavy handed and clunking.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
But despite this and a few unpleasant social attitudes it embodies, Narnia makes the list as nothing else springs to mind right now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Well, that's all from me for now as it's way past my bedtime for a Monday! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</div></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-46214147486344176212011-03-10T22:02:00.001+00:002011-04-08T21:45:31.651+01:00Why I love the theatre...<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCTAmACHUTcG4GzumUxcCbahaVVUrKyCl0we82b6bd7MZF5VooaAboCgTtQxaYFq980Dx1lIwtHn25fly5ixRv9XFOCXVdYukWCakg1rx50KSDv8rstCqjg08SBF6zKEvnyrRDHHTt5XQ/s1600/arcadia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCTAmACHUTcG4GzumUxcCbahaVVUrKyCl0we82b6bd7MZF5VooaAboCgTtQxaYFq980Dx1lIwtHn25fly5ixRv9XFOCXVdYukWCakg1rx50KSDv8rstCqjg08SBF6zKEvnyrRDHHTt5XQ/s400/arcadia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I love the theatre because it combines many arts in one – from writing and music, to set and costume design, as well as acting and dance or movement choreography.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Beyond that, anything that happens live is great. A play is recreated every time it is performed. It’s not exactly the same over and over again like a film. The audience’s experience is unique. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The audience plays a role in creating atmosphere which the actors feed off. We wait with anticipation to see the drama unfold...and the actors rise to that occasion and respond to each other. No-one knows what’s going to happen that night. Within this confluence, there’s an unknown factor. It’s risky.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Peter O’Toole once said, <span class="apple-style-span">“Oh, it's painful seeing it all there on the screen, solidified, embalmed. Once a thing is solidified it stops being a living thing. That's why I love the theatre. It's the ‘Art of the Moment’. I'm in love with ephemera and I hate permanence.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsdmOPw8BxU97DDwCxQ9QX4vDCbxymc8e-M8cIWyiRpSUAnPEhbdDkfta6x8P6wP1Ywp0NZ6z25gYV1WFufEKdQq0NQMV-6CeyW0GJphH23Yu5PsOv4Y-0PFZ4Iz3D1wt6QuXszg0oCbxn/s1600/Art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsdmOPw8BxU97DDwCxQ9QX4vDCbxymc8e-M8cIWyiRpSUAnPEhbdDkfta6x8P6wP1Ywp0NZ6z25gYV1WFufEKdQq0NQMV-6CeyW0GJphH23Yu5PsOv4Y-0PFZ4Iz3D1wt6QuXszg0oCbxn/s1600/Art.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The very best actors learn how to identify, internalise and magnify the feelings of a character. They have a special gift and can be “fully present” when expressing a character’s intent to the outside world. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Acting is making words into flesh,” according to O’Toole. He, “love[d] classical acting because... you need the vocal range of an opera singer...the movement of a ballet dancer...you have to be able to act...it's turning your whole body into a musical instrument on which you yourself play.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It takes amazing abilities of empathy to transpose a character into your being as an actor. The best actors portray characters as if he or she were real. The period or country in which a play was written should have no consequence. Actors have to live and breathe the motivations and the voice of their characters and bounce off the rest of the cast to create something that’s truly special.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We go to the theatre to be inspired and entertained, to learn and to seek answers about ourselves. We identify and we berate, we admire and we admonish. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZq0IgBSgrMJSBlr4CmCwUmWFINF_zcnjUhxIMwU9pdM13rSiiNIPAZmEt2fYgk54x9KuJJmzHGm3j3YUID144QMgIOwRiNmGC3ISqMxfwPwkTlIcyw4DobJjsLqMYQGJQgmmVEwSJJs_/s1600/Glass+menagerie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZq0IgBSgrMJSBlr4CmCwUmWFINF_zcnjUhxIMwU9pdM13rSiiNIPAZmEt2fYgk54x9KuJJmzHGm3j3YUID144QMgIOwRiNmGC3ISqMxfwPwkTlIcyw4DobJjsLqMYQGJQgmmVEwSJJs_/s320/Glass+menagerie.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s a really tough one to choose my top ten plays as I’ve seen or read thousands of plays...but generally only once. Despite this, there are things which have made an indelible impression on me to the extent that I can visualise the set at "curtain up" in my mind. And I can replay the drama that unfolds. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The fact that something "stays with me" is as good a sense I can get that it's good. Although I recognise the fact that perhaps I just needed that work of art at that moment my life, I was inspired by exceptional direction or acting, or perhaps my field of reference was more limited when I encountered the play</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">. Value in the world of the arts can be so subjective.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In no particular order, my top ten plays at this moment in time are:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>Arcadia</i> by Tom Stoppard<br />
- <i>Art</i> by </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yasmina Reza</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
- <i>The History Boys</i> by </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Alan Bennet</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdUCjxvXgs6ZRX20vMpe6zPcf_pZgXMpNPAcvhguSY2TgoIPks5zJVTlKGNx7rbOgXPuRzlYB8J0LEUJ1oC8BXtD9V0zPzTHoDfysxMW3m01q0KsscpQPXejyybW8eyBYNeN-YNtTdUyS/s1600/HistoryBoys350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdUCjxvXgs6ZRX20vMpe6zPcf_pZgXMpNPAcvhguSY2TgoIPks5zJVTlKGNx7rbOgXPuRzlYB8J0LEUJ1oC8BXtD9V0zPzTHoDfysxMW3m01q0KsscpQPXejyybW8eyBYNeN-YNtTdUyS/s320/HistoryBoys350.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>Welcome to Thebes</i> by </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Moira Buffini</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>The Glass Menagerie</i> by Tenesse Williams<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>The Rivals</i> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">by Richard Brinsley</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><em><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal;">Sheridan</span></em><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>The Tempest</i> by William Shakespeare<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>King Lear</i> by William Shakespeare<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf</i> by Edward Albee<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <i>The Cherry Orchard</i> by Anton Chekov<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There are many other plays have “spoken to” or “entertained” me, but don’t quite make the cut as lasting works of art. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Just missing out on this list are Aristophone’s<i> The Birds</i> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">as well as Michael Morpurgo’s <i>Warhorse</i>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I shall reflect on each work in subsequent posts...and make a point of re-reading them. It's something that I so rarely do. I'm drawn to the new and un-encountered in general. Life is so full of possibility...w</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">hich is a good note to end on.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-75664444494122252602011-03-02T21:33:00.000+00:002011-03-02T21:34:45.532+00:00My favourite books...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqVRcsPc1AfikwDgJCwSSykg__N4bPwYczXdAKP55i2UVukTb1KKU6gJaRkOKyrDPW_KhCB3Gqhkd0QD_E06OmEVJLHASkGZvHRiMvylx4csjAGLviMwrUk8vB_flr9NwT5i8QYkPRyi7/s1600/The+Little+Prince.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqVRcsPc1AfikwDgJCwSSykg__N4bPwYczXdAKP55i2UVukTb1KKU6gJaRkOKyrDPW_KhCB3Gqhkd0QD_E06OmEVJLHASkGZvHRiMvylx4csjAGLviMwrUk8vB_flr9NwT5i8QYkPRyi7/s320/The+Little+Prince.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">On my way to and from work today I read one of the most amazing books. It’s propelled itself into one of my top ten favourite books of all time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ll post a few immediate thoughts on it in the twenty minutes I need to wait for my sardines with chili, parsley and lemon to cook! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The Little Prince</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Petit Prince</i> was written by the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943. Since its publication, it has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide – making it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books">one of the best selling books of all time</a>. Yet, I’ve never come across it until now, which is strange. Perhaps I’m not the only person. Which is why it makes the perfect subject for a blog post.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Outwardly a children's book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Little Prince</i> makes various profound points about life and humankind. It looks at how and why we find joy in friendships, nature and the things around us and reconcile ourselves with the inevitability of death and loss. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">In it, the narrator tells of being stranded in the Sahara Desert (which actually occurred to the author on a pioneering flight) where he meets a young extraterrestrial prince. In their talks, the author reveals his own views about simple truths and the follies of mankind. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The book's essence is in the famous line uttered by the fox to the Little Prince: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The fox and the Little Prince had been discussing why we need to establish ties – to have our hearts tamed – to love life, friends and things.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">“To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you,” explains the fox. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">“And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The fox talks about being bored with his life. With hunting chickens and being hunted by men. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">“But if you tame me,” he says, “I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me? The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">When The Little Prince is about to pass away, or return to his own extraterrestrial planet as he frames it, he asks the narrator to look at the stars and know that he is laughing there. The Little Prince promises that,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">"And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I came across <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Little Prince</i> as it was mentioned in the funeral service of my very dear friend Niki who prompted me to start this blog in the first place. I suddenly remembered that Niki had been reading this book to her little boy - my godson - in the very last holiday we took together in Cornwall. I also found that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Little Prince</i> was the very first book Niki gave to her husband. It seemed to be very important to her so I thought I'd read it and I'm glad I did.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">One of the times when Niki had to cancel a visit from me because she had to go to hospital she said, "it's not fair, there was so much I wanted to do this month".</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">It's very sobering to measure out your life in months.</span> It’s why I started this blog. I wanted to define the things I really love. Many of these things have been introduced to me by dear friends like Niki and remind me of them. I wanted to understand why I like them so much and make them a central part of my life. I thought it would help me find new related things too - like a cross-genre version of last.fm. The idea was that people might say…”oh you really like X, I think you’d like Y too.” It's all too easy to amble along in life and not focus on the things that really matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Anyway, the oven’s just pinged so I’m going to go eat. It’s really difficult to do justice to such a profound…albeit whimsical book as <i>The Little Prince</i>. So I’ll just have to urge you to go away and read or re-read it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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Have a nice evening everyone.</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-11470936091745057822011-02-28T23:23:00.001+00:002011-03-20T10:46:27.179+00:00Why I like classical music...<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvTu7xCtqOTxkCZZGTASdcKq-t37HFmeVV6Z7cUofBzUU4ptMdV07B3LgAZklP2lGSn9RtHnRx322NYSoMT-nrHcCphaYpLbErTqVlWBDa2Hunir5-aRLiDplL2XWfQrLIOdqNb8qhG_U/s1600/Classical+music.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvTu7xCtqOTxkCZZGTASdcKq-t37HFmeVV6Z7cUofBzUU4ptMdV07B3LgAZklP2lGSn9RtHnRx322NYSoMT-nrHcCphaYpLbErTqVlWBDa2Hunir5-aRLiDplL2XWfQrLIOdqNb8qhG_U/s320/Classical+music.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In a previous post, I've shared some thoughts on why music's so important. My favourite bits of classical music are truly great works of art. My definition for that is something whose pleasure and significance with repetition. Something you can live with for life and still find new things in it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">At this moment in time, these make the final cut of my top ten musical works are:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Richard Wagner’s Overture to Tannhauser <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I love the cascading strings, the march that comes in, the solemnity of the trumpets. It has such power and provides me with inexhaustible pleasure.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Handel: Messiah<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSW0OaazEm6vgWn-aAzt248gnW7F_RUNqPzHl8zQue1tSz_yb7eF6LfVG3DJ9wly3KgBtaOPxb45OA4spSGP18-Jq8xWvv8MIzegi_8fv7pprCXHb-khtrfqoEiLFVAdTRiw1mrX7HD3x2/s1600/John-Mark-Ainsley-in-Mess-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSW0OaazEm6vgWn-aAzt248gnW7F_RUNqPzHl8zQue1tSz_yb7eF6LfVG3DJ9wly3KgBtaOPxb45OA4spSGP18-Jq8xWvv8MIzegi_8fv7pprCXHb-khtrfqoEiLFVAdTRiw1mrX7HD3x2/s320/John-Mark-Ainsley-in-Mess-001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mozart once said, <span class="apple-style-span">“Handel understands effect better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt.” That’s quite a complement. Handel has such control - knowing when to hold back because restraint is important, and when to turn up the power of the music to full notch. <br />
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He works to the utmost to convey the emotion of a text and his word painting is part of that. </span>Perhaps the most famous and oft-quoted example of the technique is in, "Every valley shall be exalted", the tenor aria early in Part I of Messiah. On the lyric "...and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain". The notes climb, descend and alternate together with the text.<br />
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I also really like Serse - Accompagnato: Frondi tenere.<br />
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</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion shows human achievement at its greatest and most humbling. I also really like the cello suites</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">.</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is something so very English about The Lark Ascending. The softness and warmth of the French horns coming in evoking a delicate pastoral scene. The violin has a whimsicality and complete sense of freedom. Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis comes a close second.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEufDcnX2XIzIHDhmCPD0QUgUBvnYfx5Z_8eSHFrvPkFDUBbWZmAR2jyZPUIUrA_2PrB6AX45QX46F4QTKsLip3NS73B9vOe-NipFz1NYGH46CogIPRddZLJ5ngv2KbiZK4LnJOVcgzzMK/s1600/Requiem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEufDcnX2XIzIHDhmCPD0QUgUBvnYfx5Z_8eSHFrvPkFDUBbWZmAR2jyZPUIUrA_2PrB6AX45QX46F4QTKsLip3NS73B9vOe-NipFz1NYGH46CogIPRddZLJ5ngv2KbiZK4LnJOVcgzzMK/s1600/Requiem.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Mozart’s Requiem, Mass No. 19 in D minor, Sequenx: Lacrimosa</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Mozart's Requiem is one of the most personal, impassioned and profound of his works, despite the fact that the composer died leaving it unfinished.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1 in G minor<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">It was as a prodigy on the violin that Bruch began jotting down ideas for his First Violin Concerto at age nineteen. It was nearly eleven years, however, before the piece was finalized in the form published in 1868 in Wiesbaden. The resulting work, in the words of American music writer Jonathan Kramer, “is a virtuoso's dream...dramatic, fiery, and melodic.” </span></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Gustav Mahler’s 2<sup>nd</sup> symphony – The Resurrection Symphony.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mahler’s second begins with doubt and ends in massive optimism. The grand choral finale is outstanding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRHTU6UVk94NbecIYaAWR6Fd3zy1IHR0Nst_fI3iUsqfZ8e-YJqxENRdIIbIjBDUfjOLf2QkAr6YQhIA_N_PFJbMwdp5u5iJ-ossYeu37lhDu1V4xDJINs0grg6TIuX8qgdqpogDO39nO/s1600/Fingal%2527s+Cave+Staffa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRHTU6UVk94NbecIYaAWR6Fd3zy1IHR0Nst_fI3iUsqfZ8e-YJqxENRdIIbIjBDUfjOLf2QkAr6YQhIA_N_PFJbMwdp5u5iJ-ossYeu37lhDu1V4xDJINs0grg6TIuX8qgdqpogDO39nO/s320/Fingal%2527s+Cave+Staffa.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Hebrides Overture captures the restlessness of the sea perfectly. It conveys a sense of excitement with danger lurking. Mendelssohn’s </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Violin Concerto and Midsummer Night's Dream are also pretty amazing too. The Fingal’s Cave overture of the Hebrides symphony holds a special place in my heart though as its the home of my ancestors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Allegri Miserere<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The unaccompanied choral setting of the Miserere ("Have Mercy on Me, O God") from Psalm 51 is truly beautiful. It was composed for the Sistine Chapel in the 1630s for the Tenebrae Holy Week service, as candles were extinguished one by one, leaving the faithful in darkness. More than a century later, Mozart marvelled at it. The sound of a boy treble, soaring to a top C, is near miraculous. It’s so beautiful that the Vatican even banned it at one point. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Piazzolla’s Milonga Del Angel<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is a languidness and playfulness about Piazzolla’s Milonga Del Angel. I particularly love the version by Yo-Yo Ma. The Libertango is also pretty amazing too. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No doubt there are gaping omissions in this list, but it’s a good start for a desert island long list!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-81918997698837820112011-02-19T11:36:00.000+00:002011-02-28T23:26:09.325+00:00Why I like Brancusi...<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: small; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDk7eoUscNrdu4QP3OiSuD_z2CyUuKcl5JsSz_NnsEjhkelr0mCPwBushf65xpdb77ip6H5X7cyR1Ni8WOdL4LznZUI2VyfJyVFAtn3aTP2opwYufO_TojszJtFUQDZmE5v9M_rA69IBy0/s1600/Brancussi+with+Google.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDk7eoUscNrdu4QP3OiSuD_z2CyUuKcl5JsSz_NnsEjhkelr0mCPwBushf65xpdb77ip6H5X7cyR1Ni8WOdL4LznZUI2VyfJyVFAtn3aTP2opwYufO_TojszJtFUQDZmE5v9M_rA69IBy0/s320/Brancussi+with+Google.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Today would have been<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Constantin Brancusi’s 135<sup>th</sup> birthday so I thought I'd post up a few quick thoughts on why he's so great. <br />
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Brancusi (1876-1957) was one of the founding figures of modern sculpture and one of the most original artists of the twentieth-century and one of my favourite artists. His groundbreaking carvings introduced abstraction and primitivism into sculpture for the first time, and were as important as Picasso’s paintings to the development of modern art.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini080FQTPZ-xXaw0xd9BlHks6hjvymasaWbYzUPlw7lss_eKVXqBjOsoIfbhoY3TzNyBJhC81IxMK_PPKiNsWPyHdHpbN8V4v-9hVYOCcznWXyuOzVkOmeLaVhG6GpFRkQwued2A5pL7Z/s1600/Mademoiselle+Pogany+brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini080FQTPZ-xXaw0xd9BlHks6hjvymasaWbYzUPlw7lss_eKVXqBjOsoIfbhoY3TzNyBJhC81IxMK_PPKiNsWPyHdHpbN8V4v-9hVYOCcznWXyuOzVkOmeLaVhG6GpFRkQwued2A5pL7Z/s200/Mademoiselle+Pogany+brancusi.jpg" width="112" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brancusi’s serenely simplified sculptures are widely acknowledged as icons of modernism. His choice of materials including marble and limestone, bronze and wood, and his individual expression through carving, established him as a leading avant-garde artist. He was a close friend of both Amedeo Modigliani and Marcel Duchamp, and his work has inspired sculptors from Barbara Hepworth to Carl Andre and Donald Judd.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Brancusi was born in Romania in 1876. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">His parents were poor peasants who earned a meager living through back-breaking labour, and from the age of seven he herded the family's flock of sheep. He showed talent for carving objects out of wood and often ran away from home to escape the bullying of his father and older brothers. At the age of nine, Brancusi left small village and went to work in bigger and larger town.<br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSE4IlQ5qN-fxivXYnqjbaGWsk58SiKsqmRlif_fnFF_dnECq43IR1UREOTqmhHZEvXyrwkqggDe1BqAWAL-wnulFdsfgZbl3r4BqVGmTY751DfYLyXrMjyd_sznwYN1rjEaJS2Q0IB0iQ/s1600/Brancussi+-+Sleeping+Muse+1909-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSE4IlQ5qN-fxivXYnqjbaGWsk58SiKsqmRlif_fnFF_dnECq43IR1UREOTqmhHZEvXyrwkqggDe1BqAWAL-wnulFdsfgZbl3r4BqVGmTY751DfYLyXrMjyd_sznwYN1rjEaJS2Q0IB0iQ/s200/Brancussi+-+Sleeping+Muse+1909-10.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">At 18 his grocery store employer was so impressed by Brancusi's talent for carving, he financed his education in Craiova. Brancusi went on to study in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bucharest. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">His masterfully rendered écorché (statue of a man with skin removed to reveal the muscles underneath) was exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903. Though just an anatomical study, it foreshadowed the sculptor's later efforts to reveal essence rather than merely copy outward appearance.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: small; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfRx0YzaamYbJs0Zc7-B44nWkHWNMdvpXJPJ9VpfpCaOq7CtVuJrVb9Ll87wBsVwJeWcTjvYnTN_Gh7GnvZKZfVCp4H0K3Do4vyio4OdQh1NIAkICAcEtvqNS_jqjDeoe8jnbK3zvDbWU/s1600/Brancusi-TheKiss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfRx0YzaamYbJs0Zc7-B44nWkHWNMdvpXJPJ9VpfpCaOq7CtVuJrVb9Ll87wBsVwJeWcTjvYnTN_Gh7GnvZKZfVCp4H0K3Do4vyio4OdQh1NIAkICAcEtvqNS_jqjDeoe8jnbK3zvDbWU/s200/Brancusi-TheKiss.jpg" width="180" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In 1904 Brancusi moved to Paris<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> (legend has it, on foot). He washed dishes, enrolled at art school, and got himself a job - briefly - as studio assistant to Auguste Rodin. Shortly after that Brancusi made a stone carving he called</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333;">The Kiss</span></i><span style="color: #333333;">. <br />
<br />
Of course, there was a precedent. A decade before, Rodin had made a stone sculpture, now very well known and loved, called</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333;">The Kiss</span></i><span style="color: #333333;">. Its pair of over-lifesized figures grapple mightily on a Promethean rock, bodies surging with Michelangelo muscle. And what is Brancusi's reply? An object about a foot high, in which two little cuboid figures are pressed together in a childlike hug, face flat to face, arms wrapped round each other's backs.</span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It is a critique of Rodin, certainly. It eliminates all trace of Rodin's muscliness. It stands opposed to Rodin's production methods. Rodin had done the modelling of his sculpture in plaster, then had assistants copy it in marble. Brancusi's sculpture is ostentatiously a piece of true carving. The square block of stone it was made from is still visible, hardly transformed at all, in the shapes of its compacted huggers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: small; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQvOy9i8vwRNtcBOuQlq7MZL4hKWx74DxvkricyhyDoJ-zeKkTdisbaRzH799seAb6UqTaDbb5CpFLkQtf_BZMaCnwA62cWYehxbYacY2mFXiyOFPiUTrY8QbbJ0FUhb4tA85Iad8aoA71/s1600/Rodin+the-kiss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQvOy9i8vwRNtcBOuQlq7MZL4hKWx74DxvkricyhyDoJ-zeKkTdisbaRzH799seAb6UqTaDbb5CpFLkQtf_BZMaCnwA62cWYehxbYacY2mFXiyOFPiUTrY8QbbJ0FUhb4tA85Iad8aoA71/s200/Rodin+the-kiss.jpg" width="170" /></a></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">More than a critique, Brancusi's simple, sweet </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px;"> lovers </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px;">are a joking riposte to Rodin's inflated and theatrical clinch. Beside the Rodin, the Brancusi looks absurd and crude. And beside the Brancusi, the Rodin looks absurd, grandiose and explicit. Which is sublime, and which ridiculous, is a matter of taste. The two embody quite irreconcilable ideas of sculptural seriousness.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 11.25pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And Brancusi's is a very serious, beautiful, transfixing and uplifting art - and at the same time it is a comic art. It works with all the tricks of comedy: bathos, caricature, the pun, the anticlimax.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bathos - the comic comedown - is a favourite Brancusi effect. He insisted, crossly, that his work was never abstract. "They are imbeciles who call my work abstract." The subject is vital - a human head, a torso, a bird, a fish, a turtle. But there is always a gap between Brancusi's subjects and the objects that depict them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCproJqccJcdaM6N1MM3AqPUKJ2_aof3DYerrP_fBukg4-4x_oFw-r1kgfqeei-AKOb-uw-56a2oXhMtiBV5NCW7y2WfxlO8ibhTTjx4Ph7jcMNd35i6aq3zyh6Jll6eJrrgMUUK8xo046/s1600/The+Newborn+-+Brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCproJqccJcdaM6N1MM3AqPUKJ2_aof3DYerrP_fBukg4-4x_oFw-r1kgfqeei-AKOb-uw-56a2oXhMtiBV5NCW7y2WfxlO8ibhTTjx4Ph7jcMNd35i6aq3zyh6Jll6eJrrgMUUK8xo046/s200/The+Newborn+-+Brancusi.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">These objects are so emphatically objects: pieces of raw stone, wood and metal, shaped into basic geometrical solids, cubes, ovoids, hemispheres, cylinders and half-cylinders. Brancusi's sculpture holds a tension between the handmade and the unhandmade. His figures involve a sense of distance, a jump, a jolt, between the animate organic subject, human or animal, and the inanimate geometric or mechanical entity to which it is reduced. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: small; text-align: center;"></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span>Brancusi's art is a kind of impressionism: in the mimic, not the Monet, sense of the word. It knows its creatures from the inside. It empathises. The rising yearning appetite of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Young Bird </i>- you feel it straining greedily out of the nest - is captured perfectly in a shape that might be mistaken for a fingertip and fingernail.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1WBrT_vYEpZlcaMLV7HIEAXOlF4VSTfXG_cGu4wFRhyFHH3coyQL2tz4ij6LHj_d_Px0gbmHgAj9GD9VSVI8iWmLuS5hKKg7mwMOrhXnu1TFgy1E3mkUypMT6zuP1pHURf9zlSFGkwPVh/s1600/The+Cock+brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1WBrT_vYEpZlcaMLV7HIEAXOlF4VSTfXG_cGu4wFRhyFHH3coyQL2tz4ij6LHj_d_Px0gbmHgAj9GD9VSVI8iWmLuS5hKKg7mwMOrhXnu1TFgy1E3mkUypMT6zuP1pHURf9zlSFGkwPVh/s200/The+Cock+brancusi.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px;">The barely awakened consciousness of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Newborn</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is created from a minimally transformed white marble egg. What he represents is not the look of things, as much as a bodily sensation, a state of mind, a gesture, a movement, a sound.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The Cock</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">is nothing much like a cock to look at. Its zigzag edge rising to a pointed tip suggests, but can't really be read as, the cock's comb. What it summons up is the cocky stance of a cock, and the jagged piercing cry of a cockcrow. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px;">Which way is it pointing? The sharp point at its apex; do we take that as the creature's raised head, or the tip of its stuck-up tail feathers? Or both?<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1tGlaaZefgTxtL-EwDzk7vexPUvzptnYP2ZOFVwi7cd7JjKcAYYCDvR5EvM_sELwpfRuPC3NEU6PQDciIjTICtZ43NCUN-Lc7EvyQan5lmvpGPgpoabXf1IAL18rz9prwl1-d1tqbcj-/s1600/Bird+in+space+brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1tGlaaZefgTxtL-EwDzk7vexPUvzptnYP2ZOFVwi7cd7JjKcAYYCDvR5EvM_sELwpfRuPC3NEU6PQDciIjTICtZ43NCUN-Lc7EvyQan5lmvpGPgpoabXf1IAL18rz9prwl1-d1tqbcj-/s200/Bird+in+space+brancusi.jpg" width="143" /></a></span></div><div class="font-null" style="line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Bird in Space</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">is the supreme example of an ambiguous object. What does this swelling vertical boomerang evoke? The flying wing of a bird? The upright stance of a bird? The trajectory of a bird's flight? Soaring, or touching down? Windswept motion? All of these things at once. And it's a piece like<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Bird in Space</i>, so breathtaking, so piercing in its sudden shimmering presence. <span class="apple-style-span"><i>Bird in Space</i>. The whole point of this sculpture is that it almost isn't. It teeters on the brink of being just a shaft of upright stone.</span> It soars.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 11.25pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brancusi's art offers an answer to Bergson's theory. Bergson saw matter as "dulling the outward life of the soul, petrifying its movements, and thwarting its gracefulness". </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px;">But in Brancusi the inanimate achieves a transcending gracefulness. His works propose that highly purified material forms are nearer to pure spirit than a living body is. But to Brancusi's credit, that is not the whole of the story. He doesn't just seek to transcend.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5AAR2CQAbL0lphKGNis8b6wIWJpExlBY93jZkZptTctQGmupYrUaAh1rPd3FjvNFF4Hw0WSmchS8c4T-C0mRjnuvdjUVr3-2SfpvBHg-FJ9XtkhBcrfE5KD-m-KGQUO01SWmp3l19efp1/s1600/Endless+column+brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5AAR2CQAbL0lphKGNis8b6wIWJpExlBY93jZkZptTctQGmupYrUaAh1rPd3FjvNFF4Hw0WSmchS8c4T-C0mRjnuvdjUVr3-2SfpvBHg-FJ9XtkhBcrfE5KD-m-KGQUO01SWmp3l19efp1/s200/Endless+column+brancusi.jpg" width="134" /></a></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The sculptor's great monument is his<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Endless Column</i>, in Tirgu Jiu, Romania. Nearly 100 feet high, it rises like a vertical string of beads, a tower of identical lozenges, of alternating hips and waists, in a shallow zigzag, in and out, upwards, indefinitely. It just goes up and up - and at some height it must simply end. As it does after 15 whole lozenges, and at a hip, not a waist, opening out, not closing...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="font-null" style="font-size: small; line-height: 11.25pt; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">You can take this end as a mere material limit to a form that continues spiritually, invisibly, all the way to heaven. But stick to the visible facts, and it's an abrupt and arbitrary halt. The whole point of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Endless Column</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is that it's an anticlimax. Comedy has the last word. We rise. And we just stop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: small; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 11.25pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span>Happy 135<sup>th</sup> Birthday, Constantin Brancusi! <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-84338285174184419032011-02-12T12:04:00.002+00:002011-03-20T10:31:09.655+00:00Why I love the British Museum...<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTbdzbPIPUr6NkXSkcLxXhOmsAYf5taIL4z7NDwTPdi1rvuhqQZO25BPjWYESo1Er7Uzx-LJREjW7Npk0PqcEr5QtKRxYRjzkxiXwscx2m4gCwaoBlSnO3VaitFxyDlu7FzQwnKGsGMw1/s1600/British_Museum1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTbdzbPIPUr6NkXSkcLxXhOmsAYf5taIL4z7NDwTPdi1rvuhqQZO25BPjWYESo1Er7Uzx-LJREjW7Npk0PqcEr5QtKRxYRjzkxiXwscx2m4gCwaoBlSnO3VaitFxyDlu7FzQwnKGsGMw1/s400/British_Museum1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I love the British Museum. It houses seven million objects documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present day. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39uBoo8JgxNq5Cd0fYtRxrzvG2LKTj4u1BpJanufZFfkFNJZ7lQWNrRhq4gftxS4vqkBdCC_y4E0rNPX0i6pQn-ilLHfUv-k9lIinkkeCwJjflzO7cdRajSKeL6ZkkRx6PZr0ADXu0Nu6/s1600/Rosetta+Stone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39uBoo8JgxNq5Cd0fYtRxrzvG2LKTj4u1BpJanufZFfkFNJZ7lQWNrRhq4gftxS4vqkBdCC_y4E0rNPX0i6pQn-ilLHfUv-k9lIinkkeCwJjflzO7cdRajSKeL6ZkkRx6PZr0ADXu0Nu6/s1600/Rosetta+Stone.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When I’ve travelled to places like Egypt, Greece, Greece and Turkey, there is always a sense of guilt when the tour guides say, “and this particular beautiful thing is a copy, the original is in the British Museum.” Debates whether to repatriate those objects rage on. In the meantime, we have such a enviable collection of objects that tell stories about some of the most momentous periods in history.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">By comparing between ages and objects you make inferences about how mankind’s beliefs and attitudes have changed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: 18.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">My favourite objects in the British Museum are the:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rosetta Stone</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> – which is such an amazing </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">icon of understanding. The work that went into decoding the script and the insights that then brought about Egyptian and Greek society are quite incredible.<o:p></o:p></span></h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggHAMCMBXYRBcqO9_n0Y1YlbjVq00ln8kGYCy6XW-AXW7Jw8BXmWlvYUovk_5xqhTKFxM7-bGtT_fL9PqhAXS8UuS38Pj4Ure2b5N3M63nxLKNo2tL_VoNFathB-hF4g98FcN7rbMWJn9k/s1600/Statue_of_Ramesses_II__low_1250_BC_%25C2%25A9_The_Trustees_of_the_British_Museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggHAMCMBXYRBcqO9_n0Y1YlbjVq00ln8kGYCy6XW-AXW7Jw8BXmWlvYUovk_5xqhTKFxM7-bGtT_fL9PqhAXS8UuS38Pj4Ure2b5N3M63nxLKNo2tL_VoNFathB-hF4g98FcN7rbMWJn9k/s200/Statue_of_Ramesses_II__low_1250_BC_%25C2%25A9_The_Trustees_of_the_British_Museum.jpg" width="138" /></a></div><h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses II</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> – I work in public relations and have a general interest in how leaders create and manipulate their own image for immediate political and personal reasons but also to create legacy. This sculpture shows a "desiny politician" at work.</span></span></h3><h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></h3><h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Elgin marbles</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> – Some pieces from the Eglin marbles are incredibly beautiful. I love the horses in particular.</span></h3><h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tomb of Halikarnosos</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> - </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, designed by the sculptor-architects Pytheos and Satyros, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The workmanship and artistry are amazing.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></h3><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.75pt; mso-hyphenate: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TdXI2FHpy7aXXb4TYWiyVGw7d_V75t0FnnhD3r12mIHFLN9U9WqqAea8gKiD5hO3rElNOzBtzoyXfbHkgmMEOmhDFEmeTPiDNn1foWUVEiJSOVGiKEvkHi9JGAroqPNSTl3M4wj8U8H5/s1600/horses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TdXI2FHpy7aXXb4TYWiyVGw7d_V75t0FnnhD3r12mIHFLN9U9WqqAea8gKiD5hO3rElNOzBtzoyXfbHkgmMEOmhDFEmeTPiDNn1foWUVEiJSOVGiKEvkHi9JGAroqPNSTl3M4wj8U8H5/s1600/horses.jpg" /></a></div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Portland Vase - </span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This is most famous cameo-glass vessel from antiquity. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The scenes on the Portland Vase have been interpreted many times with a historical or a mythological slant. It is enough to say that the subject is clearly one of love and marriage with a mythological theme. I just can’t believe it was made so long along - perhaps from Rome, Italy, about AD 5-25 – and is so finely worked. No wonder it went on to inspire Josiah Wedgewood in the 18<sup>th</sup> century, one of our great ceramicists.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.75pt; mso-hyphenate: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-20672973857852675292011-02-10T21:14:00.000+00:002011-02-10T21:54:05.607+00:00My favourite children's toys<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This was a really easy list to write. Without question, no debate or any further ado, my top ten children's toys are:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Scrabble<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Giant jenga<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yatzee<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Micado<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kerplunk<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Buckaroo<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Space hoppers<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Slinkies<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Connect Four<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lego</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And I don't think that needs any further explanation. I did almost include Monopoly but I've always found that a bit dull to be honest.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-14890715177665671832011-02-03T23:07:00.000+00:002011-02-03T23:10:46.481+00:00My favourite poems...<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Two more of my favourite poems...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There Was a Child Went Forth</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
HERE was a child went forth every day; <br />
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became; <br />
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. <br />
<br />
The early lilacs became part of this child, <br />
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, <br />
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf, <br />
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, <br />
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid, <br />
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him. <br />
<br />
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him; <br />
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, <br />
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road; <br />
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately risen, <br />
And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school, <br />
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys, <br />
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl, <br />
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. <br />
<br />
His own parents, <br />
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him, <br />
They gave this child more of themselves than that; <br />
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him. <br />
<br />
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table; <br />
The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by; <br />
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust; <br />
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, <br />
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart, <br />
Affection that will not be gainsay’d—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal, <br />
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how, <br />
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? <br />
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they? <br />
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, <br />
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries, <br />
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between, <br />
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off, <br />
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat slack-tow’d astern,<br />
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping, <br />
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself—the spread of purity it lies motionless in, <br />
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud; <br />
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Walt Whitman<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I love the way the child in this poem absorbs everything he looks upon in a day and in a lifetime and it becomes part of his being. The universe is full of life (‘the song of the phoebe bird’) and meaning (‘the curious whether and how’). Whitman offers this sparklingly brilliant composite of impressions – ‘flashes and specks’ – so that we might open ourselves to experiences.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">To Whitman, all the objects and memories are how we become ourselves, by truly connecting with our own experience, by realising, I am that child that went forward.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">On Children</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Your children are not your children.<br />
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.<br />
They come through you but not from you,<br />
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">You may give them your love but not your thoughts, <br />
For they have their own thoughts.<br />
You may house their bodies but not their souls,<br />
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, <br />
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.<br />
You may strive to be like them, <br />
but seek not to make them like you.<br />
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">You are the bows from which your children<br />
as living arrows are sent forth.<br />
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, <br />
and He bends you with His might <br />
that His arrows may go swift and far.<br />
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;<br />
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, <br />
so He loves also the bow that is stable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kahlil Gibran</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The thought of children being the product of "Life's longing for itself"...the instinct for survival is an amazingly powerful one. The poem is about how children will strive and thrive no matter what if we give them a stable environment in which to grow up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 16.2pt; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I think these poems pair well together...and I like them both immensely.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-80658350710021690842011-02-02T04:32:00.000+00:002011-02-01T20:50:49.339+00:00My favourite poems<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>love the way poems are published on the tube in London, giving sustenance for the soul for the hundreds of thousands of commuters on the network each day. I saw this yesterday and it particularly struck me as a particularly lovely thing:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The way the red sun surrenders </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">its wholeness to the curving ocean</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">bit by bit. The way curving ocean </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">gives birth to the birth of the stars </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">in the growing darkness, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">wearing everything in its path</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">to a comic smoothness.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The impulse of the stones rolling</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">towards their own roundness.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The unexpected comets of flying fish. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And Forest-Great-Breathing-Spirit,</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">rooting to the very end for the life of the planet.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Grace Nichol,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.bookbite.org.uk/reading/poetry/poems-on-the-underground/celebrating-25-years-poems/">From the Life of This Planet</a>. (b. 1950)</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet which perhaps makes her reference to Forest-Great-Breathing-Spirit particularly poignant. Guyana is the home to prime rainforest which is under threat, just like the Amazon further South.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Although it's not a focus here, the oceans drive the winds, the winds drive soil erosion in the Sahara and that very iron-rich soil from the deserts feeds the nutrient-hungry rainforests of South America. A while back I read how climate change is threatening the currents, winds and those vital dust deposits so it's a poem that made me stop and think. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In my very first post I talked about loving the way the sun suddenly disappears like a tuppence below the horizon which is particularly noticeable at sea. In many ways, it's a really lovely poem.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Poems on the Underground” celebrated the 25th anniversary last week. Every season, the British Council Art Group selects six poems. This season’s selections address the value of the written word and include the well-known opening lines from John Keats’ “Endymion.” A good choice for the “gloomy days” of winter:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A thing of beauty is a joy forever:<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Its loveliness increases it will never<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Pass into nothingness; but still will keep<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> A bower quiet for us, and a sleep<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Full of sweet dreams, and health,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> And quiet breathing.<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> A flowery band to bind us to the earth,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Some shape of beauty moves away the pall<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> From our dark spirits.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Lines to a Movement in Mozart’s E-flat Symphony” is a rare, hopeful poem about spring and love from the usually dour Thomas Hardy:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Show me again the time<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> When in the Junetide’s prime<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> We flew by meads and mountains northerly!–<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fullness, fineness, freeness,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Love lures life on…<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Show me again just this:<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> The moments of that kiss<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree!–<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Yea to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,<br style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial;" /> Love lures life on.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Council also selected "Riddle” by Gerard Benson, a fourth-century translation of “Loving the Rituals” by Palladas, and a Seamus Heaney translation of lines written by Colmcille, a sixth-century Irish saint. Heaney and Nichols, notably, were also featured in the very first set of London Underground poems.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Poems on the Underground" has inspired similar programmes on public transport in Dublin, Paris, New York, Vienna, Stockholm, Helsinki, Athens, Barcelona, Moscow, St Petersburg and, most recently, Shanghai and Warsaw. It's a great thing and long may it continue.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-56007699289153780532011-01-28T20:15:00.000+00:002013-10-08T00:12:16.872+01:00Why I love photography...<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8g5rnLE8FEG1zF7x_7YurmpIK5sfaVBaedbgfXqm99Ce-8BOBmDrDGfNth2NdU0LDzadTO6rZsQQMS1FxGFMmrs9s6OoMRe8YQyOrXgP9gUlWbnoD4YGIrv93Xoez4nZXYDyXvLxSUFG-/s1600/behind-gare-st-lazare+-+Henri+Cartier+Bresson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8g5rnLE8FEG1zF7x_7YurmpIK5sfaVBaedbgfXqm99Ce-8BOBmDrDGfNth2NdU0LDzadTO6rZsQQMS1FxGFMmrs9s6OoMRe8YQyOrXgP9gUlWbnoD4YGIrv93Xoez4nZXYDyXvLxSUFG-/s320/behind-gare-st-lazare+-+Henri+Cartier+Bresson.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I love Henri Cartier-Bresson’s idea of the "decisive moment" – of capturing the “whole essence of some situation” that is “unrolling” before your eyes with a single photograph. It’s the neatness of it – the concision of saying so much with just one image. And the very greatest photos will always reveal more and more to you as you live with them over time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cartier-Bresson talks of how he, “prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life - to preserve life in the act of living."</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">For him a, "slice of ordinary life is picked almost at random, and acquires a new meaning by its recontextualization through the strategy of dépaysement". <br />
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"Dépaysement" means to "decountrify oneself" and is defined as the experience of re-seeing. "One leaves one's own culture to face something unfamiliar, and upon returning home it has become strange – and can be seen with fresh eyes."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This chimes with theory of many of the surrealists at the time. However, for Cartier-Bresson this find expression in the capacity of the photographer to uncover facets of everyday life that go unnoticed until the photographer reveals them. He hunted in the street for juxtapositions whose ironic contrasts would surprise people and make them see the world with new eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This approach has been taken forward by many famous photographers, some of whom talk eloquently, movingly, about what they do. Steve McCurry, most famous for his shot of the Afghan refugee on the cover of National Geographic, commented:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape that you could call the human condition.”</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgK6en96oxFBZecAeRfFIeff-oU6gaZ1lZF3C5HgGcNwQpWQ25ej1qARZzOGFeVi7iv3y2ig3eq8aRT0lhzEdPdnD26UUID5zVZJ3ybK533BADGzkziYw-gFQF05cLIA5_7Dlu8G0jOXhL/s1600/adams_winter+sunrise+-+sierra+nevada+from+lone+pine%252C+califonira.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgK6en96oxFBZecAeRfFIeff-oU6gaZ1lZF3C5HgGcNwQpWQ25ej1qARZzOGFeVi7iv3y2ig3eq8aRT0lhzEdPdnD26UUID5zVZJ3ybK533BADGzkziYw-gFQF05cLIA5_7Dlu8G0jOXhL/s320/adams_winter+sunrise+-+sierra+nevada+from+lone+pine%252C+califonira.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s another tough one to choose my top ten, but I’ll give it a go...I won’t even attempt to stack rank them though!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ansel Adams <br />
Yann Arthus-Bertrand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Edward Weston<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Dorothea Lange<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Henri Cartier-Bresson</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bill Brandt</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Galen Rowell <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Art Wolf<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ami Vitale</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yousuf Karsh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-7448904460666930942011-01-18T22:18:00.000+00:002011-01-20T01:18:13.260+00:00Why I like Bill Hammond...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6frwGSC49vwYvMUGf5uQcdPxci5B6Wg6qpqoFBoWcOa5l48m4787wY69dgDqcH8GVW9kcyeX6Lb_D_wvhVaPynJwJKFVDoOuySkUiXAMfa9OJF-kZgzQPtI-4DrY5pJWrIKCblXXw4vYK/s1600/BillHammondTheFallOfIcarus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6frwGSC49vwYvMUGf5uQcdPxci5B6Wg6qpqoFBoWcOa5l48m4787wY69dgDqcH8GVW9kcyeX6Lb_D_wvhVaPynJwJKFVDoOuySkUiXAMfa9OJF-kZgzQPtI-4DrY5pJWrIKCblXXw4vYK/s1600/BillHammondTheFallOfIcarus.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hello again...today's post was supposed to be about my top ten classical composers and works. I'm very close to finalising my list, but not quite there, so I'll delve a little deeper into one of my favourite artists from an earlier post.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bill Hammond took as his motif Buller’s birds for a substantial period of his career. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Victorian ornithologist Walter Buller documented New Zealand’s birdlife in a beautifully illustrated book. He </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">viewed native birds as being on the verge of extinction and saw no irony in encouraging the large scale destruction of the birds on which his own success was based. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Like many Victorians of his time, he continued to </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">collect specimens for his own research.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hammond looks at the idea that man sought to civilize a wilderness, when in fact he was destroying it. So, in some paintings you see a string quartet playing against a vast backdrop of turmoil.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjh2CEXeEDBiwevGq5Wyt072Ymf7x2z_4k9MfjPeNOw7PEj04rB0NJdFJbOkufbKMlME3FqJUXYSJvvQTwE_mo19iXX-nn57fNxOWxcKkF03g5B7FJ2A8JS4aeruKUjl2t2qTcIATmcw8c/s1600/Whistlers%252C+mothers%252C+sticksand+stones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjh2CEXeEDBiwevGq5Wyt072Ymf7x2z_4k9MfjPeNOw7PEj04rB0NJdFJbOkufbKMlME3FqJUXYSJvvQTwE_mo19iXX-nn57fNxOWxcKkF03g5B7FJ2A8JS4aeruKUjl2t2qTcIATmcw8c/s1600/Whistlers%252C+mothers%252C+sticksand+stones.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Birds in all cultures across time feature in creation myths, sagas, parables, liturgies and fairy tales. They have come to represent among many things, the realm of the spirit world. They are harbingers of both fortune and evil, and in dream mythology they represent the personality of the dreamer. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hammond's </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">hybrid bird, horse, human and serpent figures change and morph before our eyes. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Egyptian-looking, always in profile, theoretically capable of flight but never flying, they are meticulously and disturbingly recorded. They stand in a denuded, but beautiful, landscape. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">His version of Horus, Lord of the skies in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Assyrian/Egyptian legend, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">is in fact the extinct giant New Zealand eagle. Narrative stone bas-reliefs from Nimrud, in particular Protective Spirit in Sacred Tree 875-860 BC, depicting a winged eagle-headed magical figure, inform these paintings along with burial sites, rock drawings, moa in pre-historic New Zealand (prey for the giant eagle), and the shape of the landscape in and around Banks Peninsula.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhbGbRUT9PI3DLpzRXwVP8XXOGcrgZZyhk5_FLNj0KlmT35aGHfUm8LxbcTSFtQPUrNj0lXvJEQe82YGfShrRz44qcCw-AyfNgwV2zYLchMlLJBU-zPiE7RfW7yAyvQF6NczhLObvCXVf/s1600/bill+hammond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhbGbRUT9PI3DLpzRXwVP8XXOGcrgZZyhk5_FLNj0KlmT35aGHfUm8LxbcTSFtQPUrNj0lXvJEQe82YGfShrRz44qcCw-AyfNgwV2zYLchMlLJBU-zPiE7RfW7yAyvQF6NczhLObvCXVf/s1600/bill+hammond.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hammond’s paintings show a collapse of foreground and background that provides a sense of infinite space in the art of traditional Chinese painting and Ukiyo-e. Often reminiscent of Italian Renaissance painting and tapestries, Hammond’s compositions combine a graphic ability with delicate decorative qualities.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Daubed backgrounds overrun with trails of dribbling paint, patinas of embellishment, reminiscent of </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">the intricate textiles of the Middle East and Asia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I love the vast sweep of events unfolding in his paintings and the sense of foreboding. There's many stories waiting to be told of mythic proportions about these works and for that reason you will never tire of them. That has to be a defining characteristic of the very greatest works of art.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-32754072483654950012011-01-08T15:03:00.001+00:002011-01-20T00:54:41.029+00:00Ever so caring elephants<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrrgKMFVBNIy2zwTjpAV6nnDFCucQJFpHCbIYoJqgsB7yeFxFhJ-xWJB9OffWDrTh5TrCA0s4JUU46WLLo3LK2QX7_F_Qgy2Ao9NcxjcyaBJ0kOmZv9hABab5MsVnflrL6CXY0VRuvyAx/s1600/Elephant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrrgKMFVBNIy2zwTjpAV6nnDFCucQJFpHCbIYoJqgsB7yeFxFhJ-xWJB9OffWDrTh5TrCA0s4JUU46WLLo3LK2QX7_F_Qgy2Ao9NcxjcyaBJ0kOmZv9hABab5MsVnflrL6CXY0VRuvyAx/s1600/Elephant.jpg" /></a></div><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The African bush elephants are the largest living land mammals. They always seem to be constantly in motion – flapping their ears to create a cooling breeze, swishing their tails at flies, breaking off grass or tree branches and nuzzling each other. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Although elephants are typically greyish in colour, they often seem brown or reddish from wallowing in mud holes of the iron-rich volcanic African soil. The elephants love squelching in the mud which acts as a sunscreen, protecting their skin from the harsh ultraviolet radiation of the sun.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After bathing, they even use their trunks to blow soil on their bodies to help dry and bake on their new protective coats.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Trunks are pretty useful things really. African elephants have two “finger-like” projections at the tips of the trunk which are sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass, yet strong enough to rip the branches off a tree. They even greet each other by entwining their trunks, much like a handshake.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38OS5FVxXpGVC53IybQebFKhyK3TRIESMpAUpFHHi2lS85JulEMg6EW6eZvUbXnwrc_lT9UN4zZUVccIQ9O_gLGhBfxhJj4d7YMXDM9RNcKkxhFLny7y-tgVWEPWgk79LDtuF61DP2ODb/s1600/Elephant+feet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38OS5FVxXpGVC53IybQebFKhyK3TRIESMpAUpFHHi2lS85JulEMg6EW6eZvUbXnwrc_lT9UN4zZUVccIQ9O_gLGhBfxhJj4d7YMXDM9RNcKkxhFLny7y-tgVWEPWgk79LDtuF61DP2ODb/s320/Elephant+feet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">They’ve also got great hearing and are great at making deep, low frequency sounds that enable them to communicate with other elephants up to <span class="apple-style-span">10 km away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Elephants listen by putting trunks on the ground and carefully positioning their feet. Their trunks are sensitive to vibrations, they have special receptors in their feet which pick up the sound as it travels through the ground, and hearing receptors in their ears.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Now, isn’t that amazing?!</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-34508137998955355202011-01-08T15:02:00.001+00:002011-01-20T00:59:03.987+00:00The hummingbird<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.75pt; mso-hyphenate: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQX9OllQs1xhmQ1NnPz1rjGxYc1uKCAsO8I5FUkcc93YayvMBWytDTPYlaKnnjwiOtYVNZHDRS3jGt_ber431dbdiMqGZppQqktQI9xf2-0NYBdARBSNJVq4lqRySN9ZKYj1S5_FjzC-XW/s1600/Hummingbird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQX9OllQs1xhmQ1NnPz1rjGxYc1uKCAsO8I5FUkcc93YayvMBWytDTPYlaKnnjwiOtYVNZHDRS3jGt_ber431dbdiMqGZppQqktQI9xf2-0NYBdARBSNJVq4lqRySN9ZKYj1S5_FjzC-XW/s1600/Hummingbird.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The sight of hummingbirds hovering to refuel on the wing never ceases to astonish. Their mechanics of flight seem to defy the laws of physics. They are true masters of stationary flight and can even fly backwards — the only birds able to do so. They flap their wings around 25 times a second, though the smallest of the family (the bee hummingbird) beats at up to 90 times a second. The noise their high-frequency beating makes gives rise to their name.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.75pt; mso-hyphenate: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Unlike other birds, hummingbirds get a portion of their lift during the upstroke of their wings. Because flying objects cannot generate lift without creating drag, birds close their wings partially and set their “angle of attack” (the wing’s incidence to the direction of flight needed for generating lift) to zero during the wasteful but necessary upstroke. That minimises the drag and conserves energy.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETpvrf2InkZrWxacwT0fdZH29eiDhC2lO4CudfQoAS5Hn0txntbO7-ogLsZloJynsPCJszdTHncYRL6L2oRxfJJrNG-4vlGkZthymxmKWFmjAA-RxbuVza9JvKbfyM-rONMIWxUJwBDHJ/s1600/Hummingbird-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETpvrf2InkZrWxacwT0fdZH29eiDhC2lO4CudfQoAS5Hn0txntbO7-ogLsZloJynsPCJszdTHncYRL6L2oRxfJJrNG-4vlGkZthymxmKWFmjAA-RxbuVza9JvKbfyM-rONMIWxUJwBDHJ/s320/Hummingbird-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">They then get their lift and forward thrust using a high angle of attack during the downward working stroke. By spreading their tail feathers and curling the tips of their wings back as they bring them down, the large energy-loaded vortices spilling off the leading edge of each wing can be channelled in the required downward and rearward direction to provide both lift and forward motion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">By contrast, to get the extra lift needed for hovering, hummingbirds do not simply flap their wings up and down, but oscillate them through a figure of eight pattern. By angling their bodies near to the vertical, the lift-generating vortices are thrust straight down beneath them. The hummingbird is literally buoyed on a vertical jet of air, with its head held stationary as it uses its long bill to feed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The wings create the main vortex with a high angle of attack on the downstroke. They then flip their wings around on the upstroke, so as to create another vortex on the other side of the wing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Pretty cool, huh?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-4302127991747922942011-01-08T15:01:00.000+00:002011-01-20T01:13:57.683+00:00The amazing world of bees...<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoHaI6DQxDUn52lOoEeRwcY_VNb-zQNz7sVPxQeeI-dHfPiYqTLguIEMDQclj_8bhr3UnHMpfX6AocHq42InTiOWB5n9Zgdwm_3UaT1i-uPmSP8KzM6nzqmPnVknr34NBKmpqFi_x0O1n6/s1600/Bumblebee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoHaI6DQxDUn52lOoEeRwcY_VNb-zQNz7sVPxQeeI-dHfPiYqTLguIEMDQclj_8bhr3UnHMpfX6AocHq42InTiOWB5n9Zgdwm_3UaT1i-uPmSP8KzM6nzqmPnVknr34NBKmpqFi_x0O1n6/s1600/Bumblebee.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The bee is aptly described in the proverbs, “as profitable, laborious, loyal, swift, nimble, quick of scent, bold, cunning, chaste, neat, brown and chilly as a bee,” according to Charles Butler in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Monarchy or the History of the Bees</i> from 1609.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is no dull fact about bees, whether we regard them for themselves, or for the metaphorical uses to which they are put by social commentators.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bees are a “keystone species” which have a disproportionately important effect on their environment, relative to their biomass. Such species affect many other organisms in an ecosystem and help to determine the types and numbers of various other species in a community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">They play a role analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone is under the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bees play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are the major type of pollinator in ecosystems that contain flowering plants. Bees either focus on gathering nectar or on gathering pollen depending on demand, especially in social species. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXJJ5KwWC1_ySen_ISDtDZWZtDnw_AloJn1IodFMod-DP2vgo7OGgbOzzkmTSbDabPjw_o4TpJb6gVW41CzilGdVXLeUcyz5LJ1cUtT9bF9MnOjiJRK6juimainfwhb16_kRnyQL3rxEC9/s1600/flower-honey-bee-amazing-petals.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXJJ5KwWC1_ySen_ISDtDZWZtDnw_AloJn1IodFMod-DP2vgo7OGgbOzzkmTSbDabPjw_o4TpJb6gVW41CzilGdVXLeUcyz5LJ1cUtT9bF9MnOjiJRK6juimainfwhb16_kRnyQL3rxEC9/s320/flower-honey-bee-amazing-petals.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bees gathering nectar may accomplish pollination, but bees that are deliberately gathering pollen are more efficient pollinators. It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees, especially the domesticated European honey bee. The former is primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used as food for larvae.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven to nine recognized families, though many are undescribed and the actual number is probably higher. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In 2005 researchers at Caltech studied honey bee flight with the assistance of high-speed cinematography and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing. Their analysis revealed that sufficient lift was generated by "the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency". Wing-beat frequency normally increases as size decreases, but as the bee's wing beat covers such a small arc, it flaps approximately 230 times per second, faster than a fruitfly (200 times per second) which is 80 times smaller.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bees figure prominently in mythology and have been used by political theorists as a model for human society. Journalist Bee Wilson states that the image of a community of honey bees "occurs from ancient to modern times, in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; Tolstoy, as well as by social theorists Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAeP57GGPUjPr7gpY2WxX2qzw7F53Kr3ydxjyYt44Mp-OuBLX0bnuiKGqlkIurkO9YOqJmn4-uLkq1RvxPjLnx7PXWpJiNvrMw2Oj6LkFcLY4QiAtURqbSMEVvo-As1bO_rkGxGLRtmS9/s1600/bee_swarm-743656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAeP57GGPUjPr7gpY2WxX2qzw7F53Kr3ydxjyYt44Mp-OuBLX0bnuiKGqlkIurkO9YOqJmn4-uLkq1RvxPjLnx7PXWpJiNvrMw2Oj6LkFcLY4QiAtURqbSMEVvo-As1bO_rkGxGLRtmS9/s320/bee_swarm-743656.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As for the insects as symbol, bees have been used to endorse monarchism, republicanism, hard work ("non nobis" - "not for ourselves" do we work, runs the tag along many Renaissance images of hives) and indolence.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Bees have provided templates to explain or guide human society - although we've been almost always wrong in how their society forms and operates.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Honey bees actually live in hives of up to 80,000 insects. They are divided into social classes – the queen, around 6,000 unhatched eggs, 9,000 hatches eggs or brood larvae, 20,000 older larvae or pupae, 300-1,000 drones and 40-50,000 work bees. That's a lot of insects working together for a common purpose - to make life go on - and the delicious honey is a great by-product along the way!</span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-20114041629232711602011-01-08T14:52:00.000+00:002011-01-28T21:05:03.908+00:00My favourite animals...<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtO0j9GWhJcwa5k2V3zREShXOTmrgiCUYJ8l__zSEwmh5cF_CO505E88Rk8gPX4pFpP_oj6RZvQ4Qvawu9hkrsPDo8Tt8hB9Dd8xit7fq2aDnXq3SbGJYixpoIn15YxydwjCGTdvSSipJ/s1600/Meercat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtO0j9GWhJcwa5k2V3zREShXOTmrgiCUYJ8l__zSEwmh5cF_CO505E88Rk8gPX4pFpP_oj6RZvQ4Qvawu9hkrsPDo8Tt8hB9Dd8xit7fq2aDnXq3SbGJYixpoIn15YxydwjCGTdvSSipJ/s1600/Meercat.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There are so many animals that possess many astonishing qualities that we can learn form or which play a role as a keystone species </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">determining the types and numbers of various other species in a community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Some enjoy the ideal hydrodynamic form to allow them to move through water others have the most amazing sensory perceptions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Thanks to the science of biomimicry, products emerging from the imitation of these features. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For example, scanning electron microscope studies have revealed that tiny "teeth" (riblets) cover the surface of a sharks’ skin that produce vertical vortices or spirals of water, keeping the water closer to the shark’s body and thus reducing drag. This led to the development of new swim wear.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There are loads more examples I could give, but here are ten for starters:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6w_PpECdusU768Cc-TN8zoy6bxVwFmM4z-lPWKVv_JPgA-UbNY8acHY2BFT5ZnJIH9i1w4OIsP7syFuLmZiT2V1tdr8JSvrHGRekuVglrsEKJzlpoRRFuWYtQwBH5FV02Vg2EHfWTMo8y/s1600/biomimicryed03+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6w_PpECdusU768Cc-TN8zoy6bxVwFmM4z-lPWKVv_JPgA-UbNY8acHY2BFT5ZnJIH9i1w4OIsP7syFuLmZiT2V1tdr8JSvrHGRekuVglrsEKJzlpoRRFuWYtQwBH5FV02Vg2EHfWTMo8y/s320/biomimicryed03+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bees<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Elephants<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Giraffe<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hummingbirds<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Butterflies<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Swallows<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Meercats<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cheetah<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Otters<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Dogs<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-54278641760892904152010-12-29T21:02:00.000+00:002011-01-28T21:06:51.284+00:00Why I like music (continued)...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWGzVZVrEczM9iSXNEuvz4Ob7y3iOhmaGMrxBUM0h2iYcI-9gs7k1ehlNx2REUnXrDS_PG2oPJm5mUAYTAzzLV188VhWpp4XnOqEKGpGTCts_Hw9d1_-M40tTxOPmxxX09c2fmF-_oh6t/s1600/Stacey+Kent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWGzVZVrEczM9iSXNEuvz4Ob7y3iOhmaGMrxBUM0h2iYcI-9gs7k1ehlNx2REUnXrDS_PG2oPJm5mUAYTAzzLV188VhWpp4XnOqEKGpGTCts_Hw9d1_-M40tTxOPmxxX09c2fmF-_oh6t/s1600/Stacey+Kent.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Here's my first quick attempt at some top ten favourites, although I'm sure are lots of people I've forgotten...</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Favourite female singers<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Madeleine Peyroux<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Stacey Kent<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Corinne Bailey Rae <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Norah Jones<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cara Dillon<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">KT Tunstall</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Diana Krall</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Billie Holiday<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Gwyneth Herbert <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Ella Fitzgerald<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Favourite male singers<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">James Brown<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Paul Weller<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">John Legend<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Van Morrison<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bill Withers<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Stevie Wonder<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sting<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Marvin Gaye<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ray Lamontagne<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Paul Simon<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Favourite bands<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Crowded House<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Red Hot Chilli Peppers<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Foo Fighters<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Goldfrapp<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Maroon 5</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rodrigo Y Gabriela<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Gotan Project<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Blondie<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Pearl Jam<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Rolling Stones</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-13006494593905354432010-12-29T19:47:00.000+00:002011-01-20T01:23:33.927+00:00Why I like music...<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwrW48sTQBY03C_53hiF3Ys86zp0zHLowUMta-B_CCswTLt5-AYr-7pxZ3O74lSZLI2Px3xEKmq8VQ0ThZCDLFl2AmWUSdXlxz3-54Tw48sKhjNw9iZ-Ceije27hRTlVj2PawvLBVy_0o9/s1600/0805200991166shackleton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwrW48sTQBY03C_53hiF3Ys86zp0zHLowUMta-B_CCswTLt5-AYr-7pxZ3O74lSZLI2Px3xEKmq8VQ0ThZCDLFl2AmWUSdXlxz3-54Tw48sKhjNw9iZ-Ceije27hRTlVj2PawvLBVy_0o9/s320/0805200991166shackleton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Music is great in so many ways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music is a universal language.</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It bridges gaps between cultures that spoken languages simply can’t, leading the way to shared feelings and emotions. It brings people together and creates communities. <br />
<br />
Many travelers – even to this very day – take musical instruments with them on trips. In the early days of exploration music could help “set” the mood, expressing the fact the visitors came in peace out of curiosity and were not a threat.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">According to biomusicologists, music entered the world from the time animals started to roam the earth and have a very important role in socialisation. Most notably the songs of birds and humpback whales have inspired many of our own composers.</span></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6iT2nib1MhN131tOQvF1l_s6KEJjoFyq0RdIbCgZ7E-s1oUTW4goj0ZkivjPv7YllO_uIYSMH8qFOfSMBcMnzMdT19xuoR5vzuJue4u6FZF_q7UnvG9N3Pr5qwwHNDPYsUZXE02tNwAK/s1600/Whalesong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6iT2nib1MhN131tOQvF1l_s6KEJjoFyq0RdIbCgZ7E-s1oUTW4goj0ZkivjPv7YllO_uIYSMH8qFOfSMBcMnzMdT19xuoR5vzuJue4u6FZF_q7UnvG9N3Pr5qwwHNDPYsUZXE02tNwAK/s1600/Whalesong.jpg" /></a></div><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music inspires and evokes emotion in a healthy way.</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It touches our emotional being and evokes moods and feelings that are sometimes difficult to express in words. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music creates ambiance.</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">You can use music to enhance any environment. That’s why it’s used to create dramatic tension in movies or build up a sense of anticipation at sporting events.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music is spiritual.</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music is</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <i>of the spirit </i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and inspirational</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <i>to the spirit</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">. All religions use music to help express spiritual values and all religions use music to uplift the spirit.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was crushed in a thousand miles of Antarctic pack ice in November 1915, he allowed each of his crew to take 2lb of possessions from it, including their boots. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzyis8_FE6UNAu0LDg1Vr5WaOxpDuNdkyLtE7f5xCTtL8ux6STVjSM-ItgVk1Pa74LSXs-XYH9-q4kpKuya715onC0g73Tp1jKH7HWr8aaRj9me4Cl6PXHc9DRsxDDomQmRVIvBU3gdIgS/s1600/hussybanjo-350x0.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzyis8_FE6UNAu0LDg1Vr5WaOxpDuNdkyLtE7f5xCTtL8ux6STVjSM-ItgVk1Pa74LSXs-XYH9-q4kpKuya715onC0g73Tp1jKH7HWr8aaRj9me4Cl6PXHc9DRsxDDomQmRVIvBU3gdIgS/s320/hussybanjo-350x0.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Only one exception was made to this rule: he let his meteorologist Leonard Hussey also salvage his banjo from the sinking ship. Even Hussey was surprised by that decision, but "the boss" was adamant: "It will be vital mental medicine," he said. And so it proved. Music, as Shackleton well knew, was as good a defence as anything against cold and dark and oblivion.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Music sparks the imagination.</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It invokes mental imagery and inner scenery that opens the mind to amazing insights.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I’m sometimes amazed by the ability of great music to reveal new things. Music intensifies with repetition – like memories whose pleasure and significance grow with the passing of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I'd find it really hard to pick my top ten pieces of music. Perhaps I need to warm up to that by picking my favourite songs in each sub-genre of music!</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-28289445424213666762010-12-28T21:58:00.001+00:002011-01-20T00:45:09.653+00:00My favourite Blackadder quotes<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59qBfotfuAM9bKqvIJQUH80JhlZNSdrEL77NJs_gs4mpYIvSW3XlleNANFy9bqbaRBvKKY66SDbQmqMQEanBkoF2rBDWPg4DnPkOEmhHDyzXOBFEmF8PvUT6ennwujhW2Q0m5X3inDMNj/s1600/Blackadder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59qBfotfuAM9bKqvIJQUH80JhlZNSdrEL77NJs_gs4mpYIvSW3XlleNANFy9bqbaRBvKKY66SDbQmqMQEanBkoF2rBDWPg4DnPkOEmhHDyzXOBFEmF8PvUT6ennwujhW2Q0m5X3inDMNj/s1600/Blackadder.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">“E: Baldrick, where's the manuscript?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">B: You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">E: Yes, Baldrick - the manuscript belonging to Dr Johnson.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">B: You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">E: Yes, Baldrick - Dr Johnson.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">B: So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">E: Yes, Baldrick, I am, and if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers. For the last time, Baldrick: Where is Dr. Johnson's manuscript?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">B: On the fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">E: (shocked) On the *what*?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">B: The hot orangy thing under the stony mantlepiece.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Baldrick, believe me, eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil if we can't replace this dictionary.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Wibble”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” - General Melchett<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck in a sticky bun.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“A man may fight for many things; his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a wad of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Bugger me with a fish fork!"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"You see, the ancient Greeks, Sir, wrote in legend of a terrible container in which all the evils of the world were trapped. How prophetic they were. All they got wrong was the name. They called it "Pandora's Box," when, of course, they meant "Baldrick's Trousers." We are told that, when the box was opened, the whole world turned to darkness because of Pandora's fatal curiousity. I charge you now, Baldrick: for the good of all mankind, never allow curiosity to lead you to open your trousers. Nothing of interest lies therein."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"God you really are as thick as clotted cream, that's been left out by some clot until the clots were so clotted up that you couldn't unclot them with an electric de-clotter"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Madam, life without you was like a broken pencil...totally pointless!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-8616522095530745992010-12-28T21:19:00.000+00:002011-01-28T22:07:46.904+00:00Why great comedy matters...<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIG7WZiEPzpvo6Cas3hCHpoLBbLJCXXnCQBsAUkAkn5HOJHm4pnWvLNLbBGi3mEih_V8HD83W4CFr4hZ1dvxlVtVJWYq2r4Z0nsy6aR6WW2QKtxne-MCsd5nycb0Q48UPpK-vnnJ1e86tN/s1600/yes-prime-minister-logo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIG7WZiEPzpvo6Cas3hCHpoLBbLJCXXnCQBsAUkAkn5HOJHm4pnWvLNLbBGi3mEih_V8HD83W4CFr4hZ1dvxlVtVJWYq2r4Z0nsy6aR6WW2QKtxne-MCsd5nycb0Q48UPpK-vnnJ1e86tN/s320/yes-prime-minister-logo1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The ability to laugh at yourself is very important. By encouraging us to recognise the eccentricities and flaws in others, and ourselves, and forgive them - or even find them endearing - i</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">t prompts a very healthy sort of self-analys.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
I guess a lot of comedy could be seen as jokes made at someone else's expense. Virtually </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">any joke could be taken out of context and read out with mawkish solemnity to someone most likely to be offended though. Then we’d really stop making jokes which would make the world a poorer place.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There’s definitely a British approach to comedy. A lot of our humour stems from our class system – our divided society – our sense of embarrassment, understatement and respect for the rules, even if we don’t follow them at all times.<br />
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<b>Blackadder</b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Blackadder manages to combine history and comedy so well, covering so much ground from the Middle Ages, and the adventures of King Richard IV, to World War I and the ever funny Captain Darling. The slapstick comedy and word play is brilliant – such great put-downs and witty puns. I particularly like "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08">Ink and Incapability</a>" from the third series about Dr Samuel Johnson’s dictionary.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Monty Python</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The brilliance of Monty Python lies in the absurdity of the many situations which the sketch writers explore. This can be particularly seen in "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNBNqUdqm1E&feature=related)">The Village Idiot</a>" sketch.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Two Ronnies</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY">The Two Ronnies</a> punned like no-one else. I like way they use and abuse linguistic meanings and structures and sounds to find and create humour. They were great at slapstick humour, as well as being amazing character actors - imbuing each character with believable emotion, acting with a lot of subtlety and taking the joke as far as anyone possible good and still getting the audience to laugh.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yes Minister</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yes Minister made the driest possible </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">subject</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">- the minutiae of politics - into sparkling comedy. It opened the lid on the way the Government really operated.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Much of the show's humour derives from the antagonism between Cabinet ministers (who believe they are in charge) and the members of the British Civil Service (who think they really run the country).</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
<br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Always buffeted by fate, wanting to do good but too scared of losing votes and status to do anything, the Right Honorable Hacker, MP, is the symbol of all of us, wanting to be better, and not quite making it.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Sir Humphrey, on the other hand, genuinely believes that it is the Civil Service that knows what is best for the country. His actions are motivated by his wish to maintain the prestige, power, and influence he enjoys.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hacker's use of catastrophically mixed metaphors, his Private Secretary Bernard's fondness for awful puns and maddening pedantry, and Sir Humphrey's laconic wit and brain-wrenching sentences designed to confuse are just brilliant!</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I particularly like "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62z3JFmd64Y">The Ministerial Broadcast</a>", in which Hacker is advised on the effects of his clothes and surroundings on his media personae and "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qidMjJHu34Q">A Conflict of Interest</a>" which lampoons the various political stances of Britain's newspapers through their readers. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That Mitchell and Webb Look/Peep Show</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Comedy these days seems to be more about developing long running returning characters whose comedy is found in the way people speak and behave. It’s all about observation of human nature, exaggerated and made grotesque. <br />
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It seems to be more about the eccentricities of people and less about the underlying eccentricities of communication. There are definitely fewer puns around. I think the best of the bunch is David Mitchell and Robert Webb. The "<a href="http://www.videohippy.com/video/70659/Toothbrush-Company--That-Mitchell-and-Webb-Look">Toothbrush Company</a>" sketch is particularly memorable.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Fawlty Towers<br />
</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8spJd-bMaA">Fawlty Towers</a> is more than just a comedy, it's a work of genius. It gave us the most unhinged sitcom hero ever, a brace of unforgettable comedy moments and a biting portrayal of a loveless marriage.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Farce doesn't normally work on television, but somehow in Fawlty Towers it did. Basil attacking his car with a tree, found straddling Manuel in the hotel lobby, being hit on the head by a stuffed moose… all priceless television moments. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The setting was a pretty ordinary hotel, with Fawlty constantly struggling to inject a touch of class into his tawdry surroundings. His escapades included trying to hide a rat from a hygiene inspector, keeping a dead customer hidden and pretending to a party of his friends that his wife Sybil was ill during their anniversary party (when in fact she's walked out on him).<br />
<br />
Basil was the perfect vehicle for Cleese's comic talents: mixing the biting verbal tirades against his wife and guests with the physical dexterity utilised to charge about between self-induced disasters.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Only Fools and Horses</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFuYIi5-igc">Only Fools and Horses</a> was about loveable, doomed aspiration. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It gave the world Derek Trotter, the fast-talking, quick thinking whirlwind at the centre of the show who stirs up clouds of cash, dodgy goods off the back of lorries and affection wherever he turns. And it gave us Rodney Trotter, the ultimate sidekick, straight man and annoying kid brother. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The show celebrates family values, practical morality and workaday virtues. Family and friends, loyalty and decency, fish and chips. It handles the heavy stuff - thwarted dreams, miscarriage and even death. But can still turn this unpromising material into comedy gold sometimes in a single sentence.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Only Fools even had the perfect ending. The boys started off on their usual journey but this time came away with their dream of becoming rich realised. This happened only once they had grown up, learned how to be kind to each other and everyone else and turn into fully rounded human beings.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Porridge</span></b><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Porridge is set in the grimmest place imaginable - a prison. And yet still manages to be both gritty and witty.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Fletch laid down the template for comedy rogues which Del Boy and Fools and Horses followed shamelessly. And who could be a better comedy foil for Barker than doe-eyed innocent Richard Beckinsale. 'Porridge' had proper villains too! </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No sitcom has ever had a character quite as mean as the man who really runs Slade Prison - Harry Grout. And prison officer Mackay, played to neurotic perfection by Fulton Mackay, very nearly stole the show from under the convicts' noses. It's comedy gold.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Father Ted<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/father-ted">Father Ted</a> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">charts the misadventures of chain smoking morally suspect Catholic priest, Father Ted Crilly (the late Dermot Morgan) who’s been banished to a stark, desolate off-shore ecumenical limbo somewhere off the Galway coast, named Craggy Island, for numerous misdemeanours and character defects. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">With him are a young, inexperienced, child-like and likeable, but staggeringly stupid curate, Father Dougal Maguire (Ardal O'Hanlon) and the alcoholically hazed, psychopathically monosyllabic retired veteran cleric, Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly). Rounding out the central quartet is the excellent Pauline McLynn as the manically devoted parochial housekeeper, Mrs Doyle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From this basically simple scenario, writers Linehan and Matthews created a near self contained universe of inspired lunacy and comic invention, which more often than not revolved around Ted's (forever) just out of reach dreams of striking it rich and effecting an escape to the civilisation, and tantalising pleasures of the fleshpots of the mainland.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Everything from the cult of celebrity through the blatant (but very funny) recycling of plots borrowed from every imaginable genre, to the lure of sex and existence of God Him/Her/Itself were routine grist to the comedic mill of the Craggy Island foursome.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-6620081263908091512010-12-21T23:16:00.000+00:002010-12-29T20:12:52.587+00:00My favourite quotes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGasu77TaFGx3hL94ezOH8Qsf6zjf9CuetzoTWDvk7njcqaGhcbtnO9U1Sv2ZoBx0ZOq36rzSwNJ51ke-sMmaEymnptWTYL6_YuDQGTRaK2zGmTigsoQoMhYsofAefu1krxXyy6BfyBnz/s1600/Audrey_Hepburn_003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGasu77TaFGx3hL94ezOH8Qsf6zjf9CuetzoTWDvk7njcqaGhcbtnO9U1Sv2ZoBx0ZOq36rzSwNJ51ke-sMmaEymnptWTYL6_YuDQGTRaK2zGmTigsoQoMhYsofAefu1krxXyy6BfyBnz/s320/Audrey_Hepburn_003.jpg" width="272" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Am I allowed an 11th quote? I couldn't possibly leave this one out...<br />
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</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others."</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Audrey Hepburn</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245513637203130473.post-54788683258207702422010-12-20T21:40:00.000+00:002010-12-30T09:15:34.152+00:00My favourite quotes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibWN1LW5TQNBNgDufbFnvmVy4MdFeJ2bErXarN21crEv0zzO1tSmIjAsJzzeiyk-KPaFot3YTPLu866Hsy0IWrBQlh2NeFG7cHfo-ZJlLbyGaNroWrxNp27VdEfTBY73g8lHOF3Lr3tY7B/s1600/Mount+vaughan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibWN1LW5TQNBNgDufbFnvmVy4MdFeJ2bErXarN21crEv0zzO1tSmIjAsJzzeiyk-KPaFot3YTPLu866Hsy0IWrBQlh2NeFG7cHfo-ZJlLbyGaNroWrxNp27VdEfTBY73g8lHOF3Lr3tY7B/s320/Mount+vaughan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">These are my top ten favourite quotes at this moment in time and very much capture my philosophy on life:</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"The only death you die is the death you die every day by not living."<br />
Norman Vaughan, Antarctic mountaineer on reaching the 10,300 ft. summit of Mt Vaughan, aged 89.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.” George Bernard Shaw<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Being humble is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Anonymous<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation..." Robert Kennedy<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." Eleanor Roosevelt<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“May I forget what ought to be forgotten; and recall, unfailing, all that ought to be recalled, each kindly thing, forgetting what might sting.” Mary Caroline Davies<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYJu2lu5gLd0lt3ppq1Z_kdFkp3_xosSL1dKj43TU-C7ET7FTynNiDB182t0dFFV7jNYXbnymQ59WMUC8gr6LiZ8tLZkULnod6Da0wVae4z86Kjs8Qx1mYkTuLc5q-Zo8gESRs_D5RTju/s1600/imagination-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYJu2lu5gLd0lt3ppq1Z_kdFkp3_xosSL1dKj43TU-C7ET7FTynNiDB182t0dFFV7jNYXbnymQ59WMUC8gr6LiZ8tLZkULnod6Da0wVae4z86Kjs8Qx1mYkTuLc5q-Zo8gESRs_D5RTju/s1600/imagination-1.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will be fed for life." Unknown.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipuutnr-rozk_UQqPoG36XtDbzDaILFVfwmAWDMi4Sxr3_VKvKACLudBr8ozeBgHxVWKuSIqLpmMA6U5wEiwXbJv4JBFSKuA7I2362ZEnAnrhUsy5WZbyJ5FZIIyC46QS7MilyCYEeTmPb/s1600/NSAPMY31_LARGE.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipuutnr-rozk_UQqPoG36XtDbzDaILFVfwmAWDMi4Sxr3_VKvKACLudBr8ozeBgHxVWKuSIqLpmMA6U5wEiwXbJv4JBFSKuA7I2362ZEnAnrhUsy5WZbyJ5FZIIyC46QS7MilyCYEeTmPb/s320/NSAPMY31_LARGE.JPG" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mark Twain<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“People get disturbed not so much by events, but by the view which they take of them.” Epictetus<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548083261442797833noreply@blogger.com0