https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-poetry

Photographs that you can paint from

https://www.pmp-art.com/

If you need painting ideas, why not head over to paintmyphoto, which is a site I started a few years ago where photographers share their photos for artists to paint from, it is free. At the time of writing there are over 50,000 members

Mary was reading a very interesting blog called London postcode by postcode They had reached London N9 and she had got rather bogged down there even though she had not fallen into the Marshes around the River Lea where once the Danes had sailed as Invaders. They would find it very hard to invade us now as the River Lea seems to have shrunk
So lyrical, there are parks and green space,s dirt and mud. Wright’s flour Mill in Ponders End and possibly a lot of illegal immigrants eating Canada geese according to folk myth and racist’ ideas.Canada geese do tend to breed rather excessively and anyway, why are they here in Britain without visas

Mary discovered that her favourite poets John Keats had been apprenticed to a doctor in Edmonton and here is the house where he stayed.There is also a house where Charles and Mary Lamb lived for many years; they are buried in the church graveyard nearby.The church is 15th century and is rather beautiful. there was a hero from World War II who lives in one of these quiet streets in a white painted suburban house.
His name was Charles Coward and he managed to rescue 400 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz ;his name is on a memorial in Israel. there’s even a film about him with Dirk Bogarde it is called “The password is courage”
in this quiet little Street he lived for many years until he died at the age of 71
We never know who might have been living in our street or the next street. people who had done a very courageous things but had never boasted about them
Mary was so busy trying to read this blog and put away the groceries from Morrisons not to mention other household tasks that the day seemed to go by very quickly
How alluring Mary was looking in her pale turquoise and grey wool skirt topped by a turquoise roll neck top from Lands End and with that a rather shrunken jumper in cream with brown dots on it whether it was an accident or deliberate we will never know.On her elegant slim legs she wore some warm black tights and cream shoes
Mary was dressed up like this at home yet went out on Saturday evening wearing an old motheaten jumpe to meet some of the wealthy and members of our parish ;what’s the total mystery is this:did Mary want to look poor and downtrodden or was she was trying to signal her unavailability to be the wife of any men at the meeting only Mary knows. As a matter of fact even Mary doesn’t know. this is why life is so hard because we don’t know how our own motivations
Mary has spent several hours looking for a SIM card for a mobile phone which she never used and did not need and yet could not stop looking for it; however during this process she found that her gnt spray for Atypical Angina was 6 months out of date. so she had to ring the surgery and speak to the doctor Who quickly emailed the note to the pharmacist telling them that this was an emergency that Mary must have the spray as soon as possible or she might have a heart attack .Why Mary might even die like Jesus Christ, not for the same reasons as Jesus Christ and he was probably too young to have got this migraine of the heart as the most poetic language might name it
Mary herself had never known that she had it until one morning she had a terrible pain in her chest and was unable to speak.then she was whizzed off to the hospital to have all sorts of tests and her heart was totally alright except for this symptom which stops the blood from flowing into the heart
Mary went into the kitchen and took some things out of the washing machine wondering where God meant us to dry our washing in winter
When human beings were first created they did not need to wear clothes because they lived in the Garden of Eden surrounded by fruit trees and flowers. it was only after they fell into sin by eating a tomato that they became aware that they were naked and decided to knit themselves jumpers and trousers
Did you know it can be a long time before we learn to knit or, as needles had not yet been invented [come to that neither had wool]. Of course they did not have polyester or nylon or plastic. they did not have gas central heating. yes they were very happy bearing their beautiful family and eventually killing each other when they were not busy procreating .So the world has continued right up till now .We still knit jumpers and sometimes we kill other people because they do not worship the same God that we worship nor do they have as much money as we do. and whatever they have so others will try to take it away.Just like our own Empire of the Done
Mary concluded there has never been any peaceful time in human history and those who try to be too humble or too good or too kind will be the first ones to be slaughtered. Virtue may not always be its own reward .
if only we were descended from the apes, not the chimpanzees everything could be totally different but what is the point of that kind of thinking?
Mary brooded philosophically while washing the kitchen floor where she has spilt single cream. Mary very rarely eats cream and already she has wasted half of the Carton.
Emile came in: Mother why did you not let me lick the cream from the floor?
You might get food poisoning she cried happily you can have some of the cream from the carton on a saucer for your tea. is that good ?
Well said Emile I suppose there’s nothing else now since you have washed the floor but you know that we prefer to eat things from the floor .Cats don’t have China and cutlery
Neither did Adam and Eve Mary screamed softly
Mother ,control yourself anybody would think that you were a chimpanzee, Emile winked at her!
And they’d be right Mary thought to herself I am a chimpanzee

and so are all of us humans beings

I apologise for the errors in this document I am using speech to typing on Google Documents I have tried to edit it but I may have missed some mistakes.It reads as if I need lessons for people whose first language is no tEnglish

His absence left an empty open cut
Where was my blood that should have made a crust?
The weeping wound must heal from bottom up
The healing force is life and others’ love
Those who touch us gently without lust
His absence still an empty open cut
Slowly cells harmonious in this rut
Do their work and live as all things must
The weeping wound can heal from bottom up
Meanwhile my immunity has guts
Keeping off bacteria and dust
In his absence. now a hollow slit
Tears fly horizontal,eyes are shut
Time goes slow and heavy weights oppress
The weeping wound shall heal if I have grit
Bring me wild flowers from the Clevelands plucked
Give me nectar where the wild bees suck
His presence was a comfort,laughter-lit
The wound heals, oh, the love will never stop

I wrote this after I had an operation on my arm.After the stitches were removed I went to bed.When I awoke there was a big open slit in my arm.It did heal after several weeks

Y

The world we see is like a film of play
I saw them turn the handle by the screen
This may cause us laughter or dismay

Before important thinkings I shall pray
That what I see is real and not my dream
The world that we inhabit is a play

For erroneous sightings we will pay
For egocentric thoughts create crazed scenes
This may cause us laughter or dismay

I was hurled from bicycle to sky
Time went very slowly with no screams
I felt no fear, it was a role to play

Then I hit the pavement, hard and grey
I saw the stars of gold, the moon, her themes
I was back on earth with quiet dismay

I was young and flexible and green
The bicycle was rusty, what’s your scheme?
The world I saw was like a film or play
This knowledge may cause folly or dismay

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/25/populism-and-the-internet-a-toxic-mix-shaping-the-age-of-conspiracy-theories?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Britons who supported Brexit were considerably more likely to give credence to conspiracy theories than those who opposed it. Most worrying of all, though, is that 31% of Leave voters believed that Muslim immigration is part of a wider plot to make Muslims the majority in Britain, a conspiracy theory that originated in French far-right circles and is known as the “great replacement”. The comparable figure for Remain voters was 6%.

How has the internet affected all this? Our research showed that conspiracy theorists were early adopters, in that they perceived the unique usefulness of the early (pre-social media) web for people who believed propositions that would never get past the editorial gatekeepers of mainstream media. So part of the blogosphere was occupied by conspiracy theorists and what one might call conspiracist

Where do tears come from,wet our eyes?

Where do griefs come from,where our sighs?

Will we have mourned enough one  new day?

Where does love come from, what does love say?

Does even God weep, where are his eyes?

Does even God weep as more children die?

Where is the saviour, where is the Cross?

Knock down the churches, they are no loss.

Weep with the grieving weep with the lost

Weep tears of blood for we all know the cost.

See vultures circling, eating the dead.

Can you love Western culture when you see where it’s led?

See the poor children hungry in school.

The scientists have proved they themselves are the fools.

Economics and warfare developed our brains

We are the victims by new mathematics chained.

Bring me the music bring me the song

The rhythm of the future beats like a gong

Our Unknown,dwelling in Heaven,

Helloed and helloed be Thy Name.

In Kingdom come, may Your Will be done

As it was not at 9/11

Give us this day,no more Dread.

Forgive us our Christmases,

As we forgive those who Christmas with us.

And lead us not into Devastation

But deliver us great acceptance and kindness

For Thine is the Wisdom,the Love and the Spirit,

As ever was, and shall be.Amen

Virtuosity,,….being very charitable.

Precocity,,,going mad before most of us do

Animosity,,,. ,…kindness to animals

Ferocity,,.,,having iron teeth and using them.

Democracy,,…. demons running a country.

Humorisity,,,….getting a degree in Yankee jokes

Criminology,,,, understanding criminals

Religiosity,,,.misinterpreting love.

Tasmania,,…going mad in the sunshine.

Curiosity,,,.a desire to heal the sick

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/well/pandemic-loneliness-isolation-coronavirus.html

It’s a subjective feeling, but researchers have begun to find signals in the brain that put the need for social interaction on par with the need to eat. In a study published in November, scientists deprived participants of contact with other people and then scanned their brains. After just 10 hours of isolation in a lab — where they could read or draw but had no access to their phones or computers — people reported feeling lonely and craving social contact.

More ……

Research suggests you don’t even need to know the people you’re helping. Just donating money to a good cause might help, Dr. Uchino said. In a series of experiments, researchers found that people who gave money to others were happier than if they spent it on themselves.

But if you’re overwhelmed by giving, it can become detrimental. Instead, try hobbies like cooking, gardening, writing in a journal or even listening to music. Creative arts can reduce loneliness, too, and while singing in person in a choir might not be possible right now, singing from balconies or through virtual groups can be powerful.

This might also be a good time to help out your neighbors. Using the neighborhood social app NextDoor to randomly assign people to perform small acts of kindness — like delivering groceries, chatting over a fence or participating in a neighborhood cleanup event — Dr. Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues found that loneliness rates dropped from 10 percent of people to 5 percent in people who did the kind acts.

I went into a coffee bar and asked for a black coffee.They said I was a racist
They said I was stupid for wanting an irrational number of cakes.
I went to Burnt Oak to register my husband’s death.Then they had the nerve to ask if I wanted him buried or cremated.
I went to the hospital for an X-ray.They said I didn’t look as if I was 18,I should bring my mother.So I said, with or without the coffin
I wanted a Burning Bush at the funeral but God said he don’t come here anymore.
I offered a lamb chop up as a sacrifice.God said, I may be dead but I’ve not shrunk.
I asked for a toasted beef sandwich but they said it takes too long to toast beef.
We went into a car park but it had very few amusements and no grass.No cars either.
We opened the car door with a coat hanger once when we lost the keys.Now with this electronic system, what could we use instead?
I rang my own doorbell last night as I felt so lonesome.Then it fell off the door.So I told myself it was lucky I had come by as I knew how to fix it.It’s just glued on like ethics are on politicians.
I saw a spider in the bath so I told it, it can only have 2 baths a week.
My neighbour gave me a blank look.So I filled it with laughter,

Katherine

ethics, poetry, reflections, Thinkings and poems  December 13, 2019 

Boris Johnson  thrown out by his wife
Now he has a different tole in life
He has a  girlfriend will he have more kids?
Lucian Freud was  surely up for this
They say he might have had perhaps  thirty   two
With all that sperm what is a man to do?
He could take Precautions as they say
I  prefer icecream  but let’s go  stray
Lucian Freud  was not a man to  rule
They say he once burned down his own Art School
He married once, he married twice but no
He would not be captured  in Soho
Beautiful and strange he made his mark
Boris Johnson   has a  nuclear heart
Winter will come down upon us all
Europe we are sad, almost appalled
Sadness for the surgeon who cured me
The cancer  grew  like rampant lush ivy
He is Greek and no-one else was skilled
To leave me looking   better  than God willed
Will he  go back   to where  his grandad  came?
Say a little prayer for my dear face
I don’t want  to suffer but  all will
We’ll die sooner,  sadly Boris kills
The NHS is  going slowly  to its grave
Watched by men who  look  without a face

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/magazine/secret-wronged-resentment-ethics.html

From… The Cambridge Handbook of irony

The nineteenth-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once famously wrote, “no genuinely human life is possible without irony” (Kierkegaard, 1992: 326). Irony may automatically arise in our thoughts and language for many personal and social reasons. As the philosopher Jonathan Lear also observed, irony “opens up opportunities to pierce illusions.”1 One of the main benefits of ironic thinking and expression in both verbal and nonverbal contexts is its capacity to “shake things up,” or to open people to disruption

We are great fools. ‘He has passed over his life in idleness,’ say we: ‘I have done nothing to-day.’ What? Have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of all your occupations. ‘Had I been put to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what I could do.’ Have you known how to meditate and manage your life, you have performed the greatest work on all. For a man to show and set out himself, nature has no need of fortune; she equally manifests herself in all stages, and behind a curtain as well as without one. Have you known how to regulate your conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who has composed books. Have you known how to take repose, you have done more than he who has taken cities and empires. Montaign

https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/02/28/the-other-significant-others/?mc_cid=4c7f9cee68&mc_eid=d32e4171d3

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/jul/10/weekend7.weekend5

The despised are the black, the mad and the Jew
The  crippled, the blind and the child of such   ones
Worse,  even  more, if you’re female too

When the race started  no whistle blew
The  rich whites were already far,far along
In front of  the black, the mad and the Jew

The rewards are controlled by those of pale hue
When the poor get there the money has gone
Definitely will if you’re female too

Jesus was God but that  was no use
He hung on his Cross and so could not run
With  the black, the mad , the crippled  the Jew

What do we see when we look at the News
Genocide,torture and battles still on
You will be raped if you’re  a female too

Here are the weapons, the rockets that stun
Inventing all these gives the rich men   their fun
The despised are the black, the mad and the Jew
Worse,  even  more, if you’re female too

Like a broken shell, our world  has cracked
Whose the foot  that  heavily did tread?
Now we wander  in  this City sacked

Once worlds break  how can we bring them back?
Must we  mourn  until our hearts are fed?
Like a pretty shell, our world  has cracked

Where once stood towers  the buildings lie down  flat
A jagged silence taunts from overhead
 As we wander  in  this City sacked

What New Messiah can  find  and love the gap?
Who will give the wine and whose the bread?
Like a cockleshell, our world  has cracked

The death of  God in Auschwitz  on the Rack
The torture of  the Arabs, children  bleed
We cry out , the slouching beast is back

Did we ever think of those in need?
The children of the genocide still plead
Like a broken shell, the world   has cracked
Now we stumble,blind to what we lack

Air,bitter they call it,whispers to the sweet planes of my face,
Shrieks shrill to my cavities,ears,mouth and nose;penetrates all that’s open;
Probing like a surgeon’s knife,to see what healing damage it might do.
A frozen finger touches my heart;
Seems like the ice is inside me sending urgent warnings.

The fields in flames, the stubble set alight
The earth herself was burning in our sight
The ancient lands of Essex still grew grain
As hares ran into hedgerows fearing pain

The empty road, the smoke, the land on fire
The ashes left a newer crop would sire
The land to Epping vast and flat was bright
Yet covered in its smoke there was no light

Our little human world is but a skin
Destruction easy with a word or bomb
Dependent on the government, those liars
Weak as watered gruel, they must be fired

Caught inside the symbols of the Earth
From destruction comes a brave new birth

Coniston Owl-Man
Langdale Trick
Coniston Old Pan
Passing Water
Vast Water.
Herd Rot Pass
Amble Sideways.
Glass Mere
Sidle Water
Dare when Water?
Gulls Water.
Bow Less on Windermere.Thank you
Range over Sands
Marrow in Furnace.
Gullivers Stone.
Feet Path
Gentle Home.
Welcome Bay
The Kent Actuary.
Burntside Knot Hair Stylist
Golden Dale
Far Point.
Starry Knight
Date Vale Motel and Best Room for Sin only

People are most susceptible to conspiracy theories when they don’t feel they have any agency or influence over their lives

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

Note: the author says it’s better for us to believe in free will.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires.

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-virtue-of-aristotle-s-ethics/

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, comprising chapters 1-5, Gottlieb presents her own account of how Aristotle’s virtues of character should be understood. She singles out the doctrine of the mean as the key to that understanding. A virtue of character is an action-guiding disposition to hit the mean between two extreme emotions within a certain field. Courage, for instance, is the disposition to hit the mean between cowardice and rashness in the field of danger. The mean is determined not by the extremes alone, but by these in relation to the demands of the particular situation, including facts about the agent herself. She also defends Aristotle against misgivings about the virtues of character …….

I miss you though I’ve never met you yet.

I miss you though we’ve had no tete a tete

I dream of you at night when I’m in bed

I wonder what it is we haven’t said.

imagine I could love you should we meet

I invented you and think you look quite neat.

You must have feelings for what is the good.

Aristotle Plato said we should.

Ethics and the principles of love

Guide us like the stars do from above.

Those who cannot read stars fall to sin.

Sometimes Satan and his forces win.

If I got to see you I would know

The eternal Life is now for those who’re low.

From above I saw the TV set

Our life is just a moment on the net