Month: October 2022

5 Basic Watercolor Techniques for Beginners | Artsy

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-simple-watercolor-techniques-beginners

”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

Is Emile a dog?

Mary was looking at the carpet in the hall.

Look at this carpet,she said to Emile

I can see your paw

marks all over it

Yes I trod in some red paint that someone has spilled on the pavement.

I think I will have to get you some shoes said Mary but you can take them off when you go in the back garden.

Do you mean we’ll have to go to the shops to buy me some shoes said Emile hopefully

I don’t know. If I went to a toy shop they might have some dolls wearing plastic shoes.

I don’t want plastic shoes the cat responded angrily.

My feet need to be able to breathe

So you would like leather shoes will you Emile?

The only alternative seem to be Wellington boots.

But do they make Wellington boots small enough for cats?

I don’t know the cat said wisely

Well if you would only learn to read you could look on the computer yourself.

It goes against my wilder nature to learn to read.

Well Mary said do you believe that I have no wilder nature ?

I believe you did at one time but I haven’t seen much evidence of it recently

That’s because Stan is dead, she shouted.

That would not bother a cat,

Well you may not have noticed but I am not a cat. And if you’re so pretty and wild, love me love me do

Don’t be so ridiculous. I am too small to make love to you.

You could run up and down my spine with Algipan on your feet

I’d rather wear perfume on my feet and run up your bosom.

Naughty cat, bestiality is not allowed in Britain.

Well don’t tell anybody about it. It’s not real bestiality just running up your body with perfume on my feet.

Well it’s something that no human being could do without seriously injuring me.

So you see there could be an advantage to marrying the cat

Yes my love I do love you very much Emile but I would really like a man as well as you and maybe you could find a lady cat that you could marry then we can all live in this house together then you and your wife could have some kittens

I’ll have to see who the man is before I agree to that. He might not like cats.

Is that case I should tell him you are a dog.

And so say all of us.

Mary visits Sally 1+ 2 +3+4+5

By Katherine v2015

Mary got all  dolled up in her new pink wool dress.She was going to visit her former neighbour Sally in her pleasan and friendly Care Home not far away

Which handbag will match this, she asked her tomcat  Emile.She did love a bag of fine quality as did he.

Not a black one, he muttered

How about blue?

Yes cerulean blue is pretty.

Mary put her keys and money into the bag,

It is very large,but never mind

Emile thought, Now my chance has come.

He donned his denim jacket and got a clean Hanky

Then when Mary was powdering her nose he hid inside the  gorgeous Enny bag

Powder puff £4 by Barks 2 Often

Buy  bag in G bay for £5000

Mary put the bag on her

shoulder and went to the

bus stop

And so will all of us

Soon the bus arrived.She picked up her beautiful bag and almost fell over.It was very heavy.

  I am getting old, she thought I can hardly lift my handbag Little did she suspect the truth That Emile was inside  trembling in fear in case Mary should drop the bag off the bus.He weighed 5 kg without his fur,so he had been told by the Doctor.

The bus went off and soon they reached Naughty Hall with it’s lovely Cedar Tree and its rose gardens.They got off the bus and walked to Pewter Road where Sally was waiting for Mary.She did not know that Mary had this errant cat hiding in her bag

But she soon will

Mary rang the bell on the front door of Suffolk House.

Come in the receptionist cried.

I have come to visit Sally, Mary told her Is she still in Room 13?

No we call it 12a now because 13 is unlucky

For whom?

Well someone broke a tooth eating nuts in there.

That’s not bad luck.Its stupid to bite hard nuts when you are old

In the Guardian last week  it said that old people could still enjoy sex They advise using sex toys.So why not food

But not to help one to eat nuts I guess!

Can’t tell you as I have never seen a sex toy.

We will ask Matron

Do you think she uses them?

God knows but it is not part of the job description.

Not yet

And so cry all of us.

Sally was happy to see Mary

What a pretty dress she shouted.

Thank you said Mary.

Oh, lord your handbag is shaking.Is there a bomb in it?

Who would bomb a Care Home?

A crazy old woman!

That would be stupid.

Oh dear, it’s moving .Oh, God.

The women froze.

The two women stared at the bag.

And so have all of us.

Then they heard a loud Miaow.

It’s a cat.A large one.

Now Emile what are you doing?

Can’t breathe.Let me out, mother.Quick

Are you the cat’s mother, asked Sally?

Not literally, Mary confessed.

She let Emile out and it was a lovely treat for Sally.She had not touched an animal since her husband died 6 years ago.

She usually preferred dogs but Emile was such fun

And so are all of us .

This reminds me of some of Turner’s of great paintings

This is a photograph by Mike Flemming of the recent partial eclipse of the sun. It is very beautiful and just awe inspiring. I’ve never seen a photograph that was such a work of art. It reminds me of some of the paintings that Turner did which I believe we’re in Kent looking at the wonderful sea and sky views. It reminds me also of The Fighting Temeraire.

Raspberry canes that chuckle in the wind

The empty canes of raspberries hang low

Red maple leaves are mashed up in the mud

Nature seems to hover by death’s door

Animals and humans drained as whores

No feeling ,no green sap,no flowing blood

The crackling canes of raspberries hang low as

What can we say un-cliched, metaphored?

At dawn the sun will burn despite the Flood

Nature did not force us through death’s door

Can the death of God mean this and more,

Though love and hate are fractured, life is good?

The chuckling canes the berries sang below

Can a life with heart not be restored?

End retaliation, understand

Nature did not wave us through the door

At the edge of Europe are no hordes

Jesus is more small than any bud

The crackling canes stored laughter in their cores

The remnants of the foxgloves in the wood

Wave politely . even seem to nod

The raspberry canes, the honesty know more

Nature ,light and darkness, affect stored

Sunlight at Easter

The Easter sun came through the rich stained glass

A little child, illuminated,  passed.

The shining floor below the roof above

The glowing light a symbol of deep love

At this moment normal time had gone

Absorbed into the mysteries of the sun.

Then the child ran off, a cloud came by

Eternity has passed with just a sigh.

Buttercups

in fields of lushest buttercups we ‘d lie
We’d watch the clouds as gently they blew by.
Love was born we thought would never die.
But you are gone, and so I sadly sigh

That love itself remains without your form
Yet tears of loss enfold me like a storm.
I knew you’d never hurt or do me harm.
I felt your smile’s embrace, so wide, so warm.

How is the world,now emptied of your being?
No sound, no touch, no smell, no sight, no seeing.
How is the world when you have gone ahead
Yet I must linger in this empty bed?

Yet those who’ve loved are grateful for this gift
Our sorrow is that life itself’s t,oo swift

The light in autumn

The leaves have not yet fallen from this tree

It makes my room so dark I cannot see.

Winter clocks will change and lengthen nights.

The sun will scarcely rise nor give much light.

The angle of the sun brings danger near

It blinds the eyes and fills us with great fear.

in Sudeley Castle chapel the stained glass

Concentrates the light and let’s it pass

The world is different every day and hour

it is the same for little winter flowers

Look a[ modern life we are too rushed

The artist in us all is daily crushed.

When we struggle fearing we are lost

The spirit we all share will pay the cost.

It doesn’t save that you have great wealth

As long as there are poor you have no health.

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Euphoria by Elin Cullhed

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/elin-cullhed/euphoria.htm

This is a novel based on the last 6 months of the life of Sylvia Plath the great poet.

I have only read a bit of it but it’s beautiful written although it is very sad.

Do people sometimes take risks which are too great?

Marrying someone you met 3 months ago in a country a long way from your own country then moving to a remote

village but who are we to judge?

Her death what a great loss to literature and also a personal lost to her friends and family

Cost of living crisis: Stop the Squeeze calls for wealthiest to ‘pay proper share’ of tax

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/cost-of-living-crisis-stop-the-squeeze-calls-for-wealthiest-to-pay-proper-share-of-tax?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The stress of work

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-the-stress-of-work-is-killing-you-and-what-to-do-about-it-wbxzdqbzl

That there’s an upside to pushing ourselves to the limit in our professional life is a fallacy, says Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. “Pressure is good for you. Pressure is stimulating and motivating, but when it exceeds your ability to cope, we’re in the stress arena.”

He says that 20 years ago the leading cause of absence at work was backache — now it’s stress, anxiety and depression, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s report the year before the pandemic. “It was 57 per cent of all long-term sickness absence. During the pandemic it rose to 63 per cent, but it’s not just the pandemic — we have a problem.”

That problem, says Dr Mithu Storoni, a neuroscience researcher and the author of Stress Proof, the Scientific Solution to Protect Your Brain and Body — and Be More Resilient Every Day, is that the way we work creates “an environment almost curated to trigger stress, but most importantly to not recover once that acute stress happens”.

63 per cent of long-term sickness absences during the pandemic were the result of stress, anxiety and depression

63 per cent of long-term sickness absences during the pandemic were the result of stress, anxiety and depression

GETTY IMAGES

Bar-tailed godwit sets world record with 13,560km continuous flight from Alaska to southern Australia

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/bar-tailed-godwit-sets-world-record-with-13560km-continuous-flight-from-alaska-to-southern-australia?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Unspeakable Conversations – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html

Harriet mcbryde Johnson I was born with muscular dystrophy but she lived much longer than was expected. This is about a conversation with the philosopher Peter Singer he believes that parents should have the right to euthanize a baby born with such conditions

I strongly recommend you to read this article which is beautifully written and very enlightening about what it is like to be disabled. And that a disabled person is just as likely to be happy as someone without disabilities. You have to admire someone who will take on Peter Singer although he is a very good person but he has his own particular reasons for believing that parents of disabled babies should be able to end the life of their child. In a society which allows abortion till quite a late date if it’s hard to know where to draw the line but birth is one place where you could draw it

Writers’ rooms: Frances Spalding

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/27/writers-rooms-frances-spalding?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

But what I gained with this house was an enormous desk. It is an artist’s working bench, with slots on one side where canvases can be stored. In Vellacott’s day it was thick with oil paint and the grime of charcoal. Without my asking, the builders, while renovating the house, one day sanded the surface of the desk, to great effect. As a biographer and art historian, I often work with images and text. Recently, while coping with the last stages of my new book – John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art – the entire desk was covered with page proofs, making it possible to check illustrations against lists, sources and textual references.

With light coming in on all sides, the room absorbs the mood outside. Grey days here remind me of Stevie Smith and her “loamish landscapes”. Despite having written her life, only now do I understand why an empty park, in the winter rain, had, for her, a “staunch and inviolate melancholy that is refreshing”. Then, too, on sunny days, this room fills with light that quivers and slowly slides round the walls, sometimes forming diamond shapes.

Eating in the rain

You sat outside despite the chilly rain

why do I often criticise your actions?

The clocks have changed we can’t do that again

I can if I put on my duvet coat

I took my plate inside, but you remained

Maybe you didn’t want me to be with you

Now the. memory brings me love and pain

That seems rather pointless now

My salty tears will not leave any stain.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that

Yet they make a valley in my brain

I don’t think your family will fish inside your head

What a stupid and mysterious claim

I want to buy a candle with a flame.

Is life important.No it is a game.

Very often I feel deep,deep shame

Look at yourself: you are just a garden gnome

I think I’ll get baptised again in Rome.

Forgot to say why don’t you just get home?

I will stay out if you will stop your moans

An interview with Wendy Cope

Photo0316.jpghttps://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/wendy-cope-interview

 

“What do you see as the role of humour in poetry?

I don’t set out to write humorous poems it’s just sometimes my sense of humour gets into them – well quite often. As a reader I suppose I laugh when I recognise something – I think laughter often is when you recognise something is true but you’d never actually allowed yourself to think that or you’d never heard it put quite so well. I think it’s possible for a poem to be funny and serious at the same time and I get very annoyed with the assumption that if a poem is funny then it can’t be saying anything important and deeply felt. Some of my poems are just playful and could accurately be described as ‘light verse’ but I think in a lot of my poems, although there’s humour in them, they are saying something that matters and something that’s deeply felt and I don’t think…I think those things can co-exist in the same poem.”

Cancel culture?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/opinion/generation-cancel-culture.html

A few weeks ago Anne Applebaum published a piece in The Atlantic titled “The New Puritans,” about people who have “lost everything” after breaking, or being accused of breaking “social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behavior or even acceptable humor, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five months ago.” Around the same time, The Economist published a cover package about the illiberal left, warning that as graduates of elite American universities have moved into the workplace, they have “brought along tactics