http://lithub.com/how-art-can-defeat-boredom-and-loneliness/

An extract

http://www.thedialectdictionary.com/view/letter/Lancashire/

Quote

“Humans do not have a basic, fundamental,
pure human nature that is transhistorical and transcultural.
Humans are incomplete and therefore unable to
function adequately unless embedded in a specific cultural
matrix.
Culture “completes” humans by explaining and interpreting
the world, helping them to focus their attention
on or ignore certain aspects of their environment, and
instructing and forbidding them to think and act in certain
ways (Heiddeger, 1962/1977). Culture is not indigenous
clothing that covers the universal human; it infuses
individuals, fundamentally shaping and forming them
and how they conceive of themselves and the world, how
they see others, how they engage in structures of mutual
obligation, and how they make choices in the everyday
world.
The material objects we create, the ideas we hold,
and the actions we take are the consequences or “products”
of the social construction of each particular era.
They are cultural artifacts. However, these artifacts are
not only the expression of an era. They are also the immediate
“stuff” of daily life, and as such they shape and
mold the community’s generalized reality orientation in
subtle and unseen ways. Consequently, they inevitably
reinforce and reproduce the constellations of power”

Philip Cushman

https://99u.adobe.com/articles/6842/99-excuses-for-not-making-ideas-happen

“3. I’M NOT INSPIRED.
Inspiration comes from action, not the other way around. Our friends at Red Lemon Club shared this insightful tidbit from leadership guru John C. Maxwell: “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.””

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/humorous.html#DhGxIoZ7uJkpjkLP.99

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-parkin/read-ebooks-without-a-kin_b_1357493.html

“Read e-Books in Your Browser

Although some may be averse to reading books on the computer, this is a great option for reading ebooks.

Google’s Internet browser, Chrome, offers apps that you can download for free and access directly from the browser. (Other browsers may also support ebook reading).

Google Play Books and the Nook Reading App are two apps available on Chrome. These apps access e-books and allow you to read them directly in the browser. Readers only need an account with Barnes and Noble or Google to read books using the browser apps. An ereader is not required.

For both apps, simply search the Chrome Web Store for the app and install it. Again, once you’ve downloaded a book, read it in Chrome.

Readers can also access the Kindle Cloud Reader on their browser; it’s a website that syncs with your Amazon account and showcases your ebook library. Because it is a website it works on every browser. You can start using it by visiting https://read.amazon.com/. Readers can “download” Kindle ebooks they’ve purchased and start reading”

There is no absolute way of determining how vigilant we should be.It depends on where we are, as ,say  a battlefield or a buttercup meadow.It will depend on past trauma or disturbances and no doubt on our personality.But on a battlefield or a violent home it is normal to be more vigilant
But maybe we can’t turn if off………

Whitby Abbey steps by Katherine

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319289.php

“This super alertness makes people with hypervigilance feel and act as though there is always a threat around the corner.

Normally, they are not responding to a real threat. Rather, their brain is overanalyzing, and overreacting to, input from their senses.

Hypervigilance can be a symptom of:

• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• anxiety
• other mental health conditions”

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover

An old article but well worth reading

Extract

Our DNA—specifically the 25,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project—is now widely regarded as the instruction book for the human body. But genes themselves need instructions for what to do, and where and when to do it. A human liver cell contains the same DNA as a brain cell, yet somehow it knows to code only those proteins needed for the functioning of the liver. Those instructions are found not in the letters of the DNA itself but on it, in an array of chemical markers and switches, known collectively as the epigenome, that lie along the length of the double helix. These epigenetic switches and markers in turn help switch on or off the expression of particular genes. Think of the epigenome as a complex software code, capable of inducing the DNA hardware to manufacture an impressive variety of proteins, cell types, and individuals.

I spread my body  like a summer mist
To cover you and hold you with my joy
Recalling days when we were both well kissed
And how our gentle hands were sweet deployed

Eternity is here if we can feel
If we are open to the singing air
In that place our love is much more real
And all the world is smiling and  is fair

The sword of love will run us through and through
The agony of love is also fierce
Yet who would   wish to live untouched and new
No love, no pain,no torment,nothing pierced.

Then  living with  hearts open and reclaimed
Indifference cannot  wrap us in its chains

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/what-binds-us

The gramophone, the records and the sound
The music  was my essence and my ground
The needle  and the groove were made with skill
What artistry, what craft,what vital will
When money was in short supply. how found?

The cat was watching as the disc went round
A gentle paw extended till we frowned
She was the softest cat we ever owned
When she died we  heard our hearts grow still
The gramophone

When we lost  another cat, we groaned
As the pebbles on the seashore moan
We hear the sound  of laughter, high the hill
The children that we were  will play there still
The music  lingers where  we children roamed.
The gramophone

I said , here is the lemon mousse.
Just what I need to rub out my pencil marks

Here is the Vindaloo!
Can’t I use the toilet?

I roasted the potatoes
So it wasn’t just me!

The dinner is hot
How about you?
I’m still cold

The meat is well  browned  now
That’s racist
Alright, it’s black.
You idiot!

The sprouts taste like strawberries
I wondered where  they had gone.

I’ve lost the shopping.
It’s in the kitchen
And I lost my dress
Mmm come over here.
Why are you licking my head?
To see  if I need to put salt on you.

It’s sweet and sour chicken
Chinese?
Do they export chickens?
Dead right!

I saw  a bull in Dublin
Ireland’s green and pleasant land
There   was a  bullfight
I blame the EU.
Why,is it compulsory?
No, but Boris Johnson seems to be.
Put him in the ring!
A matador is hard to find
I’ll take a pot shot.
But is it British?

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/figure-of-speech-examples.html

Extract:

“Using Hyperbole

Hyperbole uses exaggeration for emphasis or effect. Examples are:

• I’ve told you a hundred times
• It cost a billion dollars
• I could do this forever
• She is older than dirt
• Everybody knows that

Using Irony

Irony is when there is a contrast between what is said and what is meant, or between appearance and reality. Examples are:

• “How nice!” she said, when I told her I had to work all weekend. (Verbal irony)
• A traffic cop gets suspended for not paying his parking tickets. (Situational irony)
• The Titanic was said to be unsinkable but sank on its first voyage. (Situational irony)
• Naming a Chihuahua Brutus (Verbal irony)
• The audience knows the killer is hiding in a closet in a scary movie but the actors do not. (Dramatic irony)

Using Metaphor

Metaphor compares two unlike things or ideas. Examples are:

• Heart of stone
• Time is money
• The world is a stage
• She is a night owl
• He is an ogre”

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/trope

https://rhetoric.sdsu.edu/resources/what_is_rhetoric.htm

Extract:

Cicero (ca. 90 BCE):

There is a scientific system of politics which includes many important departments. One of these departments—a large and important one—is eloquence based on the rules of art, which they call rhetoric. For I do not agree with those who think that political science has no need for eloquence, and I violently disagree with those who think that it is wholly comprehended in the power and skill of the rhetorician. Therefore we will classify oratorical ability as a part of political science. The function of eloquence seems to be to speak in a manner suited to persuade an audience, the end is to persuade by speech.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1872-73):

What is called “rhetorical,” as a means of conscious art, had been active as a means of unconscious art in language and its development, indeed, that the rhetorical is a further development, guided by the clear light of the understanding, of the artistic means which are already found in language. There is obviously no unrhetorical “naturalness” of language to which one could appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts. The power to discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing, a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is, at the same time, the essence of language; the latter is based just as little as rhetoric is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things. Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, p 21.

Steven Mailloux (1989):

[Rhetoric is] the political effectivity of trope and argument in culture. Such a working definition includes the two traditional meanings of rhetoric—figurative language and persuasive action—and permits me to emphasize either or both senses, differently in different discourse at different historical moments, in order to specify more exact

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jul/23/incantata-review-pain-poetry-and-potatoes-with-paul-muldoon

Extract:

“In Townsend’s compelling performance, it certainly can. He glides through Muldoon’s torrent of wordplay and allusions, before slowing to a low growl of fury with his lover for her refusal of medical treatment in favour of herbal remedies, through a sense of fatalism: “The fact that you were determined to cut yourself off in your prime / because it was pre-determined has my eyes abrim.” The rush of tiny memories that catch him off-guard, the snatches of music from their shared past, the truths about the ways in which they could hurt each other – all flash across his face as his deep voice falters. He captures the one-step-forward, two-steps-back experience of grieving, its iterative nature reflected in his physical process of creating the rows of shapes, imprinted on paper.

With its recapitulation of the poem’s lines throughout, and in voiceover at the end, this performance beautifully suggests that the processes of printmaking and of composing the poem have become one. Here the poet salutes the artist, both of whom have their “ink-stained hands”, and the production becomes a celebration of the ways “art can be made” from pain”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/18/the-future-of-poetry

Extract:

“The simplest and best answer I got at the event in Oxford was “for paying attention”. Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, echoes that phrase. “One of the things poetry gives all of us is a way of developing an attentiveness to life, a way of observing the world, of noticing things and seeing them differently,” she says. A good poem looks closely at the world; does that Martian thing of trying to see it for the first time. Everything else – the emotional charge, the lyrical delight, the intellectual pleasure – is secondary.

The Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes, who teaches poetry at the University of East Anglia, says poems try to capture a reality that is deeper than language. “You’re trying to say: I know what this thing is called,” he says. “It’s called a chair, and that thing is a table. I’ve got this word ‘chair’ and I’ve got this word ‘table’, but there’s something peculiar about this chair and table which using the words chair and table will not actually convey.” Readers, he says, may race through novels because they want to know what happens, but they should look to inhabit poems. “Nobody reads a poem to find out what happens in the last line. They read the poem for the experience of travelling through it.”

I ask Szirtes whether he thinks “What is poetry for?” is a valid question. To my surprise – because plenty of poets think it’s an absurd question and that no art form should worry about its function – he believes it is far from academic. “It’s a question that does preoccupy you the longer you do it,” he says. “When you first do it, you never ask that question. But as time goes on, you begin to be conscious of it. My sense now is that when people begin to speak, when language develops, there are two essential instincts: one of the instincts says, ‘What is this?’; the other one says, ‘So what happens?’ So what happens is the beginning of syntax, of storytelling. The other feeling, where you are confronted by some aspect of reality for which language is always inadequate, is the instinct that goes into poetry.” Poetry, he suggests, “begins with a cry” – of anguish, fear or frustration. Szirtes quotes Emily Dickinson’s maxim that “a poem is a house that tries to be haunted”

Lemon mousse that tasted  amd looked like rubber but was eaten   by  the guests anyway[Error in recipe]
A joint of spiced beef meant to last for the weekend was  consumed  on Friday by  two visitors
A mock turtle soup made of marmite could have killed  someone on antidepressants
A plum tart caused a guest to have a temper tantrum as she was on a diet [I was 2 stone underweight and never had known about being on diets]
A beef vindaloo meant to feed 3 or 4 people shrank  so much owing to vinegar it was only enough for one person
Banana icecream would not thaw  enough to be edible before the guests left
A man  friend had a row with his wife as  he said  she should make apple  mousse  like I did plus I had knitted my own jumper  and she could not knit [Don’t do this please’]
Someone was very rude when I used  carnation milk in a pudding [ and green jelly from a packet]We never saw her again, thank the Lord.
My hair set of fire when I opened the oven door  to get the meat out to serve{Still have a gas cooker, why?]
I dropped a gammon joint after getting it out of the oven,washed  and dried it and said nothing!
My mother in law complained all the time she was here that I did not take her into the West End, see all the shops and get home to make her a  hot dinner by 1 pm[.If I had stayed up all night maybe I could have]We lived 12 miles from the West End

So always have  enough food and more
Check  gelatine amounts carefully
Never make anything with pastry in it
Have gas cookers serviced
Carnation milk is  a moot point
Don’t attack your partner when eating with friends  as it makes YOU look bad
Remember it’s tough to please your mother in law
Don’t make your own icecream

Keep a sense of humour

Why not meet people out in cafe or pub instead of  cooking all day?

The end of nothing is  where life begins
The good, the mad, the trouble and the sins
The dancing of the particles of night
Makes connections ,brings us our day light
In the end will  creation always win?

Now the world turns on its  wreckers’ din
Armenia, and Rwanda and Katyn
The Holocaust  of  Europe’s Jews, our kin
What kind of God could conjure  with  such plights?
None, in the end.

The malicious  foment  rage, in evil grin.
The Congo  is not  far from Reich Berlin
The holy Jesus  downed in his last flight
The lips of  our observers tense and tight
Eyes, as sharp of  slivers, bite and  thin
The end  is nothing

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/the-guardian-view-on-the-pope-and-the-death-penalty-a-welcome-hardening-of-the-line

Extract:

“The Bible was written by believers in capital punishment. As recently as 2001, Avery Dulles, an American Jesuit scholar, noted that “The Mosaic Law specifies no less than thirty-six capital offenses calling for execution by stoning, burning, decapitation, or strangulation. Included in the list are idolatry, magic, blasphemy, violation of the sabbath, murder, adultery, bestiality, pederasty, and incest.” This list is not just of antiquarian interest: Saudi Arabia still beheads women for adultery and “sorcery”; Iran hangs people for blasphemy. But all the historically Christian countries of the west bar the US have turned their backs decisively on the death penalty, and so have most of the churches within them. The most important of these is the Catholic church, which also supplies a majority of the justices on the US supreme court. Pope John Paul II, in other contexts a champion of reaction, taught that the death penalty had no practical application in the modern world, even though it was theoretically permissible. Pope Francis has now hardened this position. He has changed the catechism to say that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”. This is no longer his personal opinion, but something that Catholics ought to believe; he adds that the church should work for the abolition of the death penalty everywhere.

This is more than a matter of concern to Catholics. He has touched an issue that is a political live wire in several countries where the church is an important political force. In the US, the pope’s decision has been greeted with rage and anguish on the Catholic right; on the other hand it will give heart to campaigners against the death penalty, and some of the most prominent of these are also Catholics. In Britain it can stand as a rebuke to the efforts of the May government to ship jihadis to the US without seeking assurances that they would not face execution.”

Tarts free.Custard £2,
Ice free.Cream £3
Strawberries £2 Shortbread in the small bread bin
Almonds on tree,sponge in bath
Chocolate £3.Bring your own eggs,
Tea  free .Cup £4
Water free.Ice £2
Soup £6 Bowl £2
Potatoes £2 each. Meat loafs.
Eggs in aspic.Waitrose.Taxi £20
Bring your own eggs.Sperm £800  [if available.]Cups £3

• 

  You are never too old to yearn.
  Who is ever too bold for disdain

• Your watch stops a cold  going   fast
  Hypervigilance is often the worst
• Stop,how real are those holy  poses?
  Drop  it and feel degraded
  He who meditates is bypassed
  She who cogitates  feels wrath
• Strike while the irony   laughs
  Like if the trying is tough
• Book  dreams before you sleep.
  Looks scheme before your very eyes
  Many demands make  eyesight worse
  Many sea sands make eyes curse
• Two heads are better  and fun
  The  beds are wetter if    in a lake
• Too many looks are hard to match
  Ready made glances can’t catch
  Measure vice at once
  Leisure at a price in advance
  You can’t kiss your date and beat him too.
  You can miss a date and have a new crew
  A  sore in the head is worse than two bouts of  thrush
  Brides come inside  the Mall today
  The wide come to the Mall for the plus, they say
  Don’t haunt your children  after you  pass
  Don’t count your sperm before you  dispatch [ Donors]

The weather forecast  is our Bible now
To wise advice, forbidden acts,  we bow
Always wear a hat upon your feet
Keep  mum quiet,make sure to be discreet
Check to see what sun and wind allow

On the summer wind, the  moths may flow
Till pulled to flowers by scent and honey glow
Where they linger in  this Hebraic heat
[Says the weather forecast]

To your pessimistic self ,say No
For this heat makes calculation slow
Let the furrows in  all brows unpleat
Muse upon the News  detached at least
From the Weather Forecast

http://thecreativemind.net/3124/philip-pullman-write-to-please-yourself/

Extract:

“What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?

Don’t listen to any advice, that’s what I’d say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they’re not. Especially don’t listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want.

Readers don’t always know what they want. I don’t know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself.

So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone. That way, you’ll have a chance of writing something that other people WILL want to read, because it’ll take them by surprise.

It’s also much more fun writing to please yourself.

Quotes from philip-pullman.com”

https://youtu.be/XFX8S9aAgvw

Let Us Eat Eggs

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/good-eggs-for-nutrition-theyre-hard-to-beat#1

With science on our side, we can once again enjoy the wonderfully nutritious egg. Along with milk, eggs contain the highest biological value (or gold standard) for protein. One egg has only 75 calories but 7 grams of high-quality protein, 5 grams of fat, and 1.6 grams of saturated fat, along with iron, vitamins, minerals, and carotenoids.

The egg is a powerhouse of disease-fighting nutrients like lutein and zeaxanthin. These carotenoids may reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older adults. And braindevelopment and memory may be enhanced by the choline content of eggs.

Plutarch’s Moralia: “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting