https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/kieran-setiya-philosopher-self-help-life-is-hard

She got out of bed at the wrong station today

Very moving

I ate one chicken before it was snatched

She always keeps affairs underhand.

Many tans make doctors work

She kept a SIM card in her vest
It kept warm against her chest
But if she put her smart phone there
Its ringing sound would curl men’s hair
Every body stares

How much does a SIM card know
As the numbers go by slow?
Is it proof you are a thief
If you hide it in your briefs?
Noone even cares

What a peaceful world it was
Just the radio and God
No landline phone,no TV set
Wilfred Pickles, what no net?
Never cared to dare

Playing rounders in the road
Helping mother with her load
Learning how to stitch a hem
Buttons came off now and then
Just another year

Now it’s USB cords fine
Sign yourself up , wi fi time
Get connected to someone
From Palestine to Wellington
Photos are the lure

Time has shrunk, our posts impinge
Messages and twenty rings
I have three phones in my bag
One for mother, one for dad
They are dead but I ain’t sad
It’s much worse,I’m going mad.
Oh,everybody shares📷

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/11/guardianobituaries.highereducation

She gives the famous illustration of the contents of a basket which a shopper fills according to a list, and which a detective compiles a list of. If the shopper finds any discrepancy between his list and what is actually in the basket, he rectifies this not by altering the list (practical thought) but by altering what’s in the basket (the action performed). If the detective wants to rectify discrepancies between his list (observational thought) and what’s in the basket (the other’s action observed), then he can indeed do so merely by altering the list. But our actions are intentional only under a description, said Anscombe, so that under one description (“I wanted to help”) an action may be intentional, under others (“I interfered”, “I stopped play”) unintentional.https://c2b229b81d012e82bb22a0e0ee2315fe.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-39/html/container.html?n=0

Anscombe thought that modern philosophy had also misunderstood ethics. In her seminal paper Modern Moral Philosophy (1958), she argued that notions like “moral obligation”, “moral duty”, “morally right”, and “morally wrong”, are now vacuous hangovers from the Judaeo-Christian idea of a law-giving God. Anscombe, of course, firmly believed in God herself, but she was examining the way language was actually used, and ethics done. She argued that “ought” has become “a word of mere mesmeric force”, since it no longer has the corollary “because we are commanded by God”.

Philosophers, however, have tried to find content in the deracinated ethical concepts, and failing to, have been induced to supply “an alternative (very fishy) content”, such as that the right action is the one that produces the best possible consequences. However purportedly different, in fact, all contemporary moral philosophies lead to this sort of “consequentialism” (it was Anscombe who coined that now-indispensable term), which blithely countenances the execution of an innocent person as a potentially right action. Anscombe famously asserted of someone who thought in this way, “I do not want to argue with him: he shows a corrupt mind.” She urged the abandonment of “the law conception of ethics” and a return to the avowedly secular Aristotelian concepts of practical reasoning and virtue. And she insisted that it was no longer possible to do moral philosophy without doing philosophy of mind, thoroughly investigating concepts such as “action”, “intention”, and “pleasure” in their non-moral sense.

Two years earlier, in 1956, she had demonstrated in a very practical way her opposition to consequentialism. When it was proposed that Oxford should give President Truman an honorary degree, she and two others opposed this because of his responsibility for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although overruled, they forced a vote, instead of the customary automatic rubber-stamping of the proposal. “For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder,” declared Anscombe’s pamphlet, Mr Truman’s Degree. It sarcastically condoled with the Censor of St Catherine’s for having to make a speech “which should pretend to show that a couple of massacres to a man’s credit are not exactly a reason for not showing him honour”.

Anscombe was never afraid to voice unpopular views, scandalising liberal colleagues such as Bernard Williams with her paper against contraception (later published in revised form by the Catholic Truth Society) and condemnation of homosexuality.

Outspoken, often rude, she was sometimes dubbed “Dragon Lady”. For a time she sported a monocle, and had a trick of raising her eyebrows and letting it fall on her ample bosom, which somehow made her yet more daunting. But, while giving short shrift to pretension and pomposity, she took endless pains with those students she considered serious. Her exhilarating tutorials went on for hours, leaving everyone exhausted; students could drop into her house at any time to discuss philosophy among the dirty nappies. Married to Peter Geach, a fellow-philosopher and Catholic, she was always called “Miss Anscombe”, which caused some consternation at the Radcliffe Infirmary whenever she turned up to give birth (she had seven children).

Perhaps Anscombe’s best work was done in the 50s, but her three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers (1981) contain trenchant papers on epistemology, metaphysics, history of philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Causality and Determination, her inaugural lecture on becoming professor of Cambridge in 1970, presented an extraordinarily original and controversial view of causation.

An affectionate tribute on her retirement in 1986 called her “a modern Daniel in the lions’ den”, but, although doggedly Catholic, Anscombe could also be radical and was never straitlaced. She was notorious for a forthright foulmouthedness which was only enhanced by the beauty of her voice. When presenting a paper on pleasure, she distinguished extrinsic pleasures – things we enjoy because of the description they fall under – and intrinsic pleasures – things we enjoy regardless of how they are described; and she cited, as an example of the latter, “shitting”, strongly pronouncing the double “t”, and with such sternness that her academic audience were too daunted to laugh. (Unfortunately this was probably one of the many papers she threw away as insufficiently good.)

Once, threatened by a mugger in Chicago, she told him that that was no way to treat a visitor. They soon fell into conversation and he accompanied her, admonishing her for being in such a dangerous neighbourhood. She chain-smoked for some years, but bargained with God, when her second son was seriously ill, that she would give up smoking cigarettes if he recovered. Feeling the strain of this the following year, she decided that her bargain had not mentioned cigars or pipes, and took to smoking these.

Except when pregnant, she wore trousers, often under a tunic, which, in the 50s and 60s, was often disapproved of. Once, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She simply took them off. When she threatened one of her children, “If you do that again, I’ll put you on the train to Bicester”, and he did, she felt obliged, given her views on fulfilling promises, actually to put him on the train. Bluff, courageous, determined, loyal, she argued that the word “I” does not refer to anything, but she certainly believed in the soul.

She is survived by her husband and their four daughters and three sons.https://c2b229b81d012e82bb22a0e0ee2315fe.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-39/html/container.html?n=0

• Gertrude Elizabeth Mary Anscombe, philosopher, born March 18 1919; died January 5 2001

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I

Aspiring to eternal life by will

The cells divide and rule until they kill.

If you love then do not overpower.

But neither will you love if prone to cower

It’s here again the wild beast with dagger claws

Trying to steal our lives

Using our flesh and bones to feed itself.

A child’s lungs damaged by pollution make a handy home

The beast might sleep for 20 years.

Then may will go on a rampage.

Psychopathic cells take over

They acknowledge no boundaries

Golden rules are not their way of life.

They are crazy blinded mad

They cannot think

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-09-09/new-to-poetry-these-poets-will-help-you-get-started

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/books/review/understanding-poetry-is-more-straightforward-than-you-think.html

As much as we might have enjoyed reading (and writing) poetry when we were children, in school we are taught that poetry is inherently “difficult,” and that by its very nature it somehow makes meaning by hiding meaning. So our efforts at reading poetry begin to reflect this. But it turns out that the portal to the strange is the literal.

https://launchcenters.com/what-are-feelings/

I painted this picture in my art class and then I put it on the computer and I think I have done something to the colours so that the moment which is at the front looks really really like one that we bought a few years ago. Please don’t copy my photograph. my husband has still got a very hot temper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shattered_assumptions_theory

The final fundamental assumption evaluates one’s self as a positive, moral, and decent–and thus deserving of good outcomes in life. Individuals’ assessment of their self-worth contributes to their success in life.^[3] A person’s positive self-worth encourages them to be effective in their tasks at hand. Generally, this assumption enables an individual to maintain a belief that s/he has the ability to control positive or negative outcomes.

Mary came in with a bag of shopping and went into her bijou turquoise and teal kitchen with magenta door knobs; she decided to make herself a cup of tea before opening  up the shopping bag.
As she put the kettle on ,she saw her door neighbour Annie in her garden bending over Emile. Mary’s cat. Mary opened the back door and called,
 What’s wrong with the cat?
Annie looks backwards over her red velvet coat towards the house which was rather foolish as her centre of gravity was unstable and she fell over onto the wet lawn. Mary ran out and helped Annie to get up; meanwhile , the cat Emile had run back into the house

Well, I never knew  Emile was pretending to be unconscious .I thought that he might be dead. I realise  I’m too old to bend over a dead cat and simultaneously talk to someone who is inside the house as it is a more complicated manoeuvre than anything that we do in the yoga class.
I’m terribly sorry I said Mary.I wasn’t thinking
That makes a change,  shared Annie, because you think too much;I see that you have a book here called,  what is thinking by Martin Heidegger.
I haven’t read  it, said Mary,in fact I don’t believe I ever will read it because he was  somewhat  of  a supporter of the Nazis and also seduced  a student call Hannah Arendt  who as it happens was Jewish ,so he obviously was rather mixed up in his mind  about Jews in a bad and wicked way and also  I don’t want to think about what thinking is, if you see what I mean .Do you get words coming into your mind?
I don’t think so. they only come into my mind when I’m talking to somebody. I just open my mouth and the words come. I thought it was the same for everybody but clearly it’s not.
Do you ever hear voices she asked Mary.
Yes ,I heard a voice and it said, go to the doctor immediately.
And did you go?   asked Annie petulantly.
Yes, I  did and he took some blood from me which he finds quite difficult. Anyway, he’d sent it for testing I think you know he found my thyroid was so underactive that I would have been in a coma in another couple of weeks, so I think that the voice was a good one.I don’t know who it was but it was not frightening at all Goodness me, said Annie. I have never heard of people hearing kind voices. I wonder if some people have a positive type of Paranoia and believe at the entire world is a conspiracy designed for  their pleasure and amusement.
I expect there are some people like that , Mary,cried , but they probably think we’re all the same so they don’t  tell us.
It might be very interesting if we had a gathering of women who were all prepared to reveal something strange about themselves; I’m not referring to the part of the body, I am referring to something in their mind or something that happened to them in their mind, if you see what I mean..
Yes certainly that will be very interesting see you but not for me because nothing strange like that has ever happened to me
How  do you  know, said Mary. it might not seem strange to you but it might seem a surprise to me. It would seem strange to me if you told me that you enjoyed Euclidean geometry or learning Russian.
Mary made  tea in the big teapot and they went into the lounge and sat down on the couch which was covered in orange velvet fabric
My goodness ,said Anna, I don’t think I like this orange velvet.What a shame, whispered Mary. I can’t afford to have it recovered again for 45 years.
In 45 years we wouldn’t be here Annie pointed out in her timely manner.
I wouldn’t know—– the second Ice Age might come and we could be frozen into these seats for the next hundred years and we will then turn into fossilised bones I suppose and people might write doctoral theses about us. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Not really said Mary, because we wouldn’t know anything about it.We would be dead.
Wel,l think about the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. No work of his was published while he was alive and it was only by chance that a famous literary person Robert Bridges in England, he was friendly with him, and had copies of his poetry  This is why it was eventually published. He is one of the best poets who ever wrote in English.
I found him very difficult to read, Annie said cautiously. it’s those slant and half rhymes and the rather strange musical quality of his work which can be quite beguiling; on the other hand, it is sometimes over top  to my brain. I prefer John Betjeman.
Really, said  Mary , that is absolutely ridiculous; you cannot compare two poets who are so completely different that they could be  writing for you in different languages altogether.
It will make more sense to compare him with  T S Eliot or W B Yeats the Irish poet. but no , for  comparison is odious and so he must under fall  or rise on his own merits.
Personally, I like the poem which begins ” as kingfishers catch fire”
That’s a metaphor, kingfishers don’t normally catch fire…. Mary hinted
Yes, I know I did a  course in modern poetry at the Polytechnic it was either that or yoga and I am sick of doing yoga.
Alright don’t lose your temper, unless you want to go to a course about anger management which is on in the hospital on Monday afternoon’s between 5 and 6.
That’s a stupid time  because it’s men who  tend to be more angry and most of them will still be at work.Do you think that the boss would let them come out of work early  to resume to a class at the hospital without telling them what the class was called

That’s a difficult question to answer because such a man being very impulsive and prone to anger somewhat like Donald Trump l  if  he refused to let him go to the  class he would hit the manager and lose his job and then he would apply for compensation on the  grounds  that he wouldn’t  have hit the manager and lost his job. if the manager had allowed him to go to  anger management class on a Monday afternoon at the hospital; if you don’t  know, it gets a bit convoluted sometimes, doesn’t it?
Do you know I did an IQ test and it says that  I am  in the lowest 5% of the entire population; don’t you think that’s wonderful I don’t know how I did it?
You  must do it again to see if it was correct it would be  frightening if you repeated it and you came out in the top 5% because that would mean either you’ve got schizophrenia or that the concept of the IQ is totally meaningless.

IQ is meant to measure something which is independent of Culture or social class yet if you  tests of verbal intelligence it is using words such as a fire, conservatory, sitting room, Harrow,Oxford, Wittgenstein, chambermaid, Maps, physics  .water planet, ambivalent, pentagon crisis, Conservative Party, Europe and bulldoze, and you must admit that those are class related words.

it also uses expression ;like Barclaycard, Marks and Spencer’s credit card , Visa card and PayPal; these are unlikely to be known by the poorer members of society when they are still children, When they reach the age of 16 they will be offered credit cards by unnameable  banks which put letters through the door trying to whip up some  custom but if you are living on benefits it would not seem very wise to accept the offer

With Barclaycard myou have to pay by direct debit and I don’t think the social security office pays out by direct debit to anybody even those going to get benefits from them don’t get it by direct debit from the government
.l say that’s   quite funny ;why doesn’t the government pay our pensions by direct debit?
No direct debit is only used to take money off you, like for example, charities like you to pay by direct debit so does the British Gas Company ,and BT telephones they say that it stops you worrying about whether you have paid the bill or not but my brother found that he was £2,000 in credit with the electricity company and  they were  still taking more money from  the account by direct debit because he is very rich and he never looks at bank statements or very rarely looks at the bank statement and so he did not notice.
That’s rather puzzling to me as I look at the bills to see you when I am in credit or debit but then as  my brother said, I  am quite poor financially although I am very rich another ways

What are the other ways?

I’d rather not say at the moment.

Nor would any of us!

Gone with the sinned
How dreamed was my valley?
Wander, the greenwoods free
Come live with me and find my glove.
Round yonder themed palais
On Richmond’s pill and other matters
Oliver Missed again
King Seer.See here.
Joan’s Ark kit
Badbreath
Jamset
A midsummer night’s reverie
The golden throat look.
How to find your F spot.
How to curse in verse
Where is the great O?
The book of sewed
Heidegger on blindness
In denial? Freud on Trial.Buy one get ten free.
Try Ram’s Horns on

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00184br

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/about-teach/znhhbdm#:~:text=What%20is%20Teach%3F,to%20GCSE%2FNationals%20and%20Highers.

O

about computing.

Barefoot Computing – Developed by practising teachers through Computing at School and managed by BT, Barefoot exists to boost teachers’ subject knowledge, save time and help bring computational thinking to life in cross-curricular lessons.

Big Ideas – Find projects and resources designed to bring communities and countries together. Fun, educational resources for independent home learning, focusing on STEM, citizenship and Holocaust remembrance.

blutick – Watch videos, view worked examples and try problems to improve your maths confidence and understanding.

Centenary News – A range of news about the First World War centenary.

codeSpark – A computer science resource that combines learning with creative play and community.

Dekko Comics – Educational comic stories providing an entertaining alternative to conventional

http://www.griefincommon.com/blog/grievinginthesecondyearafteraloss/

”

But expectations are a big part of our mindset, even when we’re not in the stages of grief. How much more do we enjoy the movie or party that we thought was going to be terrible? How disappointed are we when a long planned vacation-of-a-lifetime turns out to be not all what we would have hoped?

If ever there was a time when we need to be setting realistic expectations for ourselves, then certainly our time of grieving is one of them.

Throw away the timelines.

Don’t compare yourself with those whom you know have had a loss. The coworker who was back to work smiling only a few days after her Dad died? She was crying every day on the way to and from work. The family member who thinks that 18 months after your husband died you should be dating again? She has no idea what this loss feels like, what your love felt like, or what is right for you.

Be patient with yourself. Be patient with those who don’t understand. Don’t expect today to be hard and tomorrow to be easy. Honor wherever you are right in this moment and know that even if it feels uncomfortable, unsettling and uneasy, that it’s probably exactly where you need to be.

Stay open to the idea of hope and optimism “