Month: October 2022

Father Christmas

Dear father made Christmas a real treat

He cracked the walnuts with his feet

Hi Xmas crackers had real dynamite

His eyebrows were a very weird sight.

He got a gift for the cat each year.

Until the dog said that’s not fair.

So he said they should join with a human choir

Singing carols by the read coal fire.

The cat could waul in any key.

She could screech and moan so she got some tea

The dog could bark but could not speak

Otherwise he would have been a freak.

In the kitchen mother cooked the goose.

With all the family we could have scoffed a moose.

Is the plural of moose meese?

I have no dictionary what a beast

The Christmas pudding with a great delight

The silver sixpence always started a fight.

We had bird’s custard never cream

We had no fridge so it would have turned green.

The birds were so angry that they told the queen.

Ever since then she’s never been seen

We listened to the carols on the wireless set.

Cuddling the cat we called our pet

Dear father said we must go to bed

We always disobeyed him whatever he did.was such fun

He was such fun though very odd

When I was still tiny I thought that he was God.

Does grief ever come to an end ?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/magazine/grieving-loss-closure.html

The Myth of Closure” is also her attempt to make sense of simultaneously unfolding catastrophes in her personal life and around the world. “This is the first time I’ve raised ambiguous loss to a higher level regarding the pandemic, a societal level,” Boss told me. In trying to describe losses that society doesn’t always recognize, Boss might be helping us to rethink the nature of loss altogether.

Ez

Image

My father was a very strange man

My father was a very odd man

He cooked our porridge in a frying pan

He went to work and he came back home

Carrying a bag full of garden gnomes

He hated them with pure sweet hate

He buried them all by the garden gate

We had no garden we had no lawn.

Despite all that the Sun came up at dawn

He never had a car and he never had a horse.

He was an artist but quite untaught.

He wanted several children and that’s what he got

There were three of us sleeping in one cot.

Three more slept on the landing too.

We have no beds but a wonderful view.

My six older brothers slept in one bed

There was no light but they were very well read.

Then he died and left us all alone.

Please don’t leave any mobile groans

Change

Turning points occur when we we must choose

The moment comes and it seems opportune

Can you still the voices cruel amused?

Find your own perspective, view the scene.

Turning points occur when we must choose.

Who to ask for guidance, and the means.

I feel pessimistic then enthused .

I shall ask my friends to be discreet

Better talk than be alone and brood

Rumination is no friend to me.

Better turn and see what is to be

Gerald Stern, prize-winning American lyrical poet, dies aged 97 | Poetry | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/29/gerald-stern-prize-winning-american-lyrical-poet-dies-aged-97

There is a sweetness buried in my mind

there is water with a small cave behind it

there’s a mouth speaking Greek

It is what I keep to myself; what I return to;

the one thing that no one else wanted

Stern was sometimes mistaken in person for Allen Ginsberg and often compared to Walt Whitman because of his lyrical and sensual style, and his gift for wedding the physical world to the greater cosmos.

Stern was shaped by the rough, urban surroundings of his native Pittsburgh, but he also identified strongly with nature and animals, marvelling at the “power” of a maple tree, likening himself to a hummingbird or a squirrel

Taking a look at anger

Photo by author

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/learning/is-anger-an-underrated-emotion.html

Learning to manage anger is a lifelong skill that allows children to function at home, in school and out in the world without losing control.

Ms. Pearson suggests several ways parents can help children express and manage their anger. First, recognize that anger is normal:

When it comes to kids and anger, it can help to remember a few simple facts: First, anger is a basic human emotion. And second, emotions exist to tell us about ourselves and our relationships, explained Dave Anderson, a clinical

Stan cleans the TV remote

 

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Stan was annoyed that since the days were getting brighter and longer, the dust on the furniture was becoming more evident..Not that his wife Mary was a tyrant but she was out at work whereas he was free from his purgatory working with gamblers and homeless drug users but had to keep the home clean instead
Of course he had been pleased to be working to improve society ,but enough was enough.He already was helping two people on a voluntary basis at his church, Still Mary was labouring in the lecture hall. explaining how linear algebra might help folk to lead better and more virtuous lives ,especially if they were going into Parliament or the higher reaches of the Civil Service which aided government ministers dealing with strange confusions in the Economy ,and indeed in the entire world.
He picked up his microfibre dusting rag cut from an old towel and started to dust the TV set.After that he sprayed Dettox onto the keyboards of all their laptops,ipads,phones and remote controls.Then he dried them with an old tea towel made of cotton and linen.
Suddenly he heard the back door opening.In ran his beauteous mistress Annie wearing a green and red tracksuit and purple trainers with pink spots on.
Shall I make some lovely coffee,she asked positively.
I have not done much housework yet,Stan cried in alarm.
Let me see,she responded with the ripe interest of the retired and bored.
My, this remote control is very,very clean.
She put it in front of her eyes and glared myopically at it.
All her mind power was concentrated on this one object, which was at this moment in  time her whole world;usually myopia is a bad move as it impedes a wider balanced view of life.
You have done brilliantly with this but you do need a break from this tedious and arduous work,she enthused laconically.
Oh, OK then,Stan answered gently.
She poured coffee into two Portmeirion pottery mugs and took them into the conservatory where she admired his potted plants and his herbs.
What’s this here, she called.It wasn’t here last week,
It’s cannabis,he informed her unwilfully.
Are you a user now she enquired tactlessly.
No,I am keeping it for a friend.Stan lied truthfully
That’s what they all say,she riposted jocosely.
Well,I don’t know how to use it.I believe you smoke it so does it have to be dried?
I guess so,she said like a cowboy from a  desert in Alabama on a diet of coke and french fries.
Well,I am not going test it,he said pensively.I don’t even smoke a pipe any more.I suck my thumb instead.It’s free,he continued and needs no licence
Would you like to suck my toes,she asked him lovingly.
After all,the Duchess of York had hers sucked and I am her equal in some ways .
Sucking toes has so far not been part of my repertoire and neither
has whipping women and smacking them either.I prefer to suck their lips and caress their cheeks.
Which cheeks? she asked suspiciously, as if she was an examiner in an oral examination for a law degree.
Sorry,dear..I am happy to caress any part of your warm voluptuous flesh but I need to get on with the housework.
Just ignore it,she ordered him. rudely.I’ll help you after we have been to bed
I didn’t know we were going to bed, he said in a very puzzled tone of voice
Well,you do now,she giggled un-furtively
And so does Emile who is already on the landing from where he can see the mirror opposite the bed.What a naughty boy he is,but what would you do in his position?
I thought so.Ask a missionary at once.You have to believe me… or turn pale with horror at this evil couple.

http://youtu.be/Mb3iPP-tHdA

Understanding the Anxious Mind – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html

PEOPLE WITH A nervous temperament don’t usually get off so easily, Kagan and his colleagues have found. There exists a kind of sub-rosa anxiety, a secret stash of worries that continue to plague a subset of high-reactive people no matter how well they function outwardly. They cannot quite outrun their own natures: consciously or unconsciously, they remain the same uneasy people they were when they were little.

Most of the high-reactive kids in Kagan’s study did well in adolescence, getting good grades, going to parties, making friends. Scratch the surface, though, and many of them — probably most of them — were buckets of nerves. “It’s only the high-reactives who say, ‘I’m tense in school,’ ‘I vomit before examinations,’ ‘If we’re going on a class trip to D.C., I can’t sleep the night before,’ ” Kagan told me. “They don’t like it, but they’ve accepted the fact that they’re just tense people.” Invoking Jungian terminology, he called it the difference between persona (the outer-directed personality) and anima (the inner-directed thoughts and feelings). The persona can be controlled, but the anima often cannot.

Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland says that when the anima erupts in high-risk children, it often takes the form of excessive vigilance and misdirected attention. In the first of his two longitudinal studies of temperament, begun in 1989, he followed 180 children from the age of 4 months and gave them a set of neuropsychological tests when they were between 13 and 15. One test, called the spatial-cuing task, measures vigilance and the ability to disengage attention from a perceived threat. It shows two faces briefly on a computer screen, one on each side — the same face looking threatening on one side and pleasant on the other. The faces fade away, and an arrow appears on one side of the screen, sometimes on the side the threatening face had been on,

A humorous old poem

img_20191126_111302

‘Twas but a reptile passing by.
It flew across the deep blue sky
Why do reptiles fly so high?
I’ll love you till I die.

“Twas but a cat under the moon.
Did you have a silver spoon?
Why can’t cats all waul in tune?
I’ll love you very soon

‘Twas but a wooden legged man,
Carrying a large brass saucepan.
Can men do what women can?
I’ll love you better than.

Why are adverbs?
What are nouns?
why do circuses have clowns?
I’ll love you lying down.

Where do dreams go in the day?
What game can we adults play?
Can you or can you not say?
I’ll love you,i n my way.

‘Twas but a verse that seemed so free.
It floated over my oak tree.
I have eyes but cannot see.
I’ll love you when I be

Are you tormented by your eyes and your vision?

Choose your email address with as few dots as possible. We will always need.com or .co.uk etc

On Gmail it doesn’t matter whether you put the dots in or not because they ignore them but some people don’t

ghwood@gmail.com

Easier to type in than g.h.wood@gmail.com

Each of these will be treated the same by Google but I have learn that WordPress will treat them as two different people so you could have 2 distinct blogs

Make your email address short and simple

Before you begin to use any new device have a good look at the keyboard. They have subtle differences in where they put the comma and the full stop. It’s less frustrating to find out before you start than caught by surprise. Samsung keyboards different from other Android devices. ⁰

me@live.com

alfred@lost.com

If you’re vision is very good and it won’t matter.

Touch screen laptops are easier for people with poor vision people with diabetic related eye problems and so on ll

I have found that HP will often have a reduced one in 0 their sale.

You can buy sticky labels with visible letters and numbers on? Sex,

But if you can afford it get a backlit keyboard.

There’s nothing like getting accustomed to a device start off with a few emails or looking at your blog until you feel you know where the main keys are..

Using the microphone to dictate your emails saves you looking on the keyboard to find the letters and numbers and although it may come out badly at the beginning once it gets used to your vocabulary it will improve but what it’s ok for using a friends who loves you but may be not for people different type you don’t know about your eyes and they may judge you harshly for any typing errors

On the other hand it may be very funny as my sister discovered when I wrote to her she said she had not laughed so much for ages.

I’ve been using devices for 12 years and I’m still learning. Further hints from my readers are most welcome.

Find my device app it’s very useful and I recommend that we should try it before we lose any device to reduce the adrenaline in our bodies as it is not a matter of life or death

Why did humans first start making art?

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/nov/03/on-the-origins-of-art-exhibition-tasmania-why-did-humans-start-making-art-comment

Yet for me, the first true art is cave painting. Even if we concede that handaxes have sculptural qualities, the leap forward when homo sapiens started painting and drawing animals on the walls of caves in Spain and France during the ice age is astounding, and it is difficult to see how cave art could be sexual display. The sublime charcoal portraits of bisons that I recently saw in Niaux cave in the Pyrenees are located far underground in a vast natural vault: it is hard to picture a cave artist leading a girlfriend or boyfriend this deep underground by the light of a flickering torch in order to have sex in the cold and damp. “Come and see my etchings. They’re a mile underground.”

On the contrary. The deliberate mystery and estranging subterranean location of cave paintings suggests that the origins of art have much more to do with religion than sex.

Handaxes from the Middle Palaeolithic era, circa 70,000 BC.
Handaxes from the Middle Palaeolithic era, circa 70,000 BC. Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy

The sexual display theory is advanced in the Mona exhibition by one of its four curators, the psychologist Geoffrey Miller. The other scientist-curators suggest similarly audacious explanations for the existence of art. Steven Pinker, author of books such as The Blank Slate, shares a hard-headed Darwinian perspective. He suggests that art evolved as a byproduct of other human skills and needs, including conspicuous consumption, and that aesthetic pleasure originates in our practical appreciation of “cues to understandable, safe, productive, nutritious or fertile things in the world”. Brian Boyd, like Miller, thinks art has grown out of the signalling systems that all animals use in mating and the avoidance of danger, while Mark Changizi suggests it reflects our capacity to mimic nature.

It’s fascinating stuff, but such theorising needs to be set against a firm history of how and when art actually did evolve. This story is becoming ever clearer. Some of its milestones can be seen, far from Tasmania, in the British Museum’s South Africa show. It is dangerous to confuse decorative instincts, or even the sense of beauty, which handaxes suggest evolved very early in the human story, with the higher, more complex activity that is art as we know it. The art in ice age caves such as those in Niaux has the same qualities as the art of Rembrandt, Da Vinci and Picasso, and is as hard to reduce to a simple biological urge or obvious evolutionary need. At its point of origin in dark caves deep in the Earth, art is enigmatic, poetic, profound and dreamlike. It is born sublime. You can’t explain it until you can also explain Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals.

Darwin had Raphael prints in his bedroom, but I doubt if he thought they were as susceptible to logic as the honeycombs in his beehives.

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ART REVIEW; A Spectrum of Watercolor Technique – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/nyregion/art-review-a-spectrum-of-watercolor-technique.html

Because Mr. Straight does not come from the traditional ranks of the watercolor world and paints canvases of geometric designs, expectations were considerably raised. However, the show has no major surprises. It reflects a broad range of techniques, but subject matter is rather traditional. Most of the works are very attractive outdoor scenes, like Gwen Kovach’s ”Grand Canal, Souchou, China,” with its exquisitely rendered reflections, or the well-saturated patches of color in ”Clearing” by Deborah Fowler Greenwood of Moorestown.

”Sunday Morning in Riverton,” by Rosemary Hutchins of Cinnaminson, who was one of the 10 winners of the juror’s award, captures bright sunlight as it shines on the wood-framed houses and the laundry blowing on the clothesline. The subject suggests a bygone era, and its classic application of transparent layers of color on white paper even brings to mind the late-19th-century American masters of the medium.