that more than a third of children in England already receive free school meals. A third! That might sound generous, as if reaching quite far up the earnings scale. But no. To be eligible, a family must be on universal credit, earning less than £7,400 a year. This is an astonishingly low threshold, showing how many children are living in very poor families. Next
A
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/15/health-expert-jeremy-hunt-fix-social-care
It’s not just beds: many sitting in hospitals needlessly await care packages at home, but domiciliary care services are collapsing. Many wait for NHS services in the community, but the number of district nurses halved in the last decade. The IFS this week produced an alarming report on declining productivity in the NHS. One key reason, it said, was the failure to “discharge patients into the community or social care, which further clogs up the system and acts as a drain on staff resources”. Far from integration, there’s a tug of war, or tug of blame, between the NHS and councils.
I remember everything you said
As we lay together in our bed
The light of joy lit up my heart and soul
I remember everything we did
On the happy night that we were wed
Fulfilment in our very bones is bred
And from our minds the devils have all fled
As we’re taken back into the fold.
For one small hour in Eden we were glad.
The hatred and the pain for now are shed
With love and hope our lives can be more bold.
Even now when you have gone from sight
“Originating in France, a mainly octosyllabic poem consisting of between 10 and 15 lines and three stanzas. It has only two rhymes, with the opening words used twice as an unrhyming refrain at the end of the second and third stanzas.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/rondeau#:~:text=Originating%20in%20France%2C%20a%20mainly,the%20second%20and%20third%20stanzas.
I miss the cat that slept upon my bed.
I miss my husbands presence in the night
I miss the words of Love from him who’s dead.
I miss the cat that slept upon my bed
For God is dead unless I find new light
The lonely darkness fills my soul with dread.
I missed the man that slept with me in bed
I miss his presence in the dead of night
https://poets.org/glossary/triolet
The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines.
History of the Triolet Form
French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. Brit
Some people can get lost in movies, reading or baking — a task that gets your mind to another place,” Woolgar says. “When you stop [that activity], your problems may not have gone away, but you’ve given your mind a break — and the opportunity to reset and have a fresher perspective. Be proud of that little bit of change
My nephew’s appendix has burst so he has now got drones in. Thank God for the NHS as we cannot thank man.
My sister can’t speak. She’s got long cancer. Well you heard of long COVID. Use your imagination.
So far they are not using nuclear weapons. Let’s hope chemotherapy might be better. If only we could give it to the Russian army. Or at least to Putin.
The trouble with cancer is you can’t always remove the organ. Especially if it’s in your brain.
My nephew was in pain all the weekend but did not want to disappoint his children. Remember your children will be more disappointed if you die than if they miss you dressing up as Father Christmas
This is a case of being too good and not wanting to upset other people and his wife is a vet so I can’t help wondering why she didn’t know what was happening. Unfortunately she works mainly with horses.
In my family 3 of my siblings had burst appendixes. The 4th one is dead. He had pneumonia. Can I draw any conclusion from this? That we will all die in the end and it’s not always the people you expect to die whi8 go first
Families are a good idea because we all need somebody to hate.
According to some modern theologians there is no hell. It’s either heaven on earth or extinction. If Ian Paisley is in heaven it will be a miracle.
I keep forgetting that we Catholics are meant to worship statues. Most of us seem to worship cars, expensive clothing, le creuset pots and sex
Can you worship sex without another person being involved ?
They say my husband worshipped the ground I walked on. That’s why I bought a bicycle.
Before I rode to work I used to pray to st. Christopher although there where no cars when he was alive.
I wonder why Jesus actually walked on the water. After all they did have boats. Maybe he could not row.
I sure in the newspaper that some doctors were suggesting that we should assess our elderly relatives for dementia over Christmas dinner. The problem is that I am the elderly relative. Anyway they forgot to do it and I didn’t mention it so I should be alright for another 12 months I don’t know what they can actually do for you.
Christmas comes but once a year. Really that is so unfair.
The sun makes autumn leaves look like gold flowers
Vibrant, energetic in the wind
Waving to small children with love’s power
As Jesus looked out from his wooden tower
Was he severed from all humankind?
The sun makes autumn leaves look like gold flowers
Forsaken by his Father, thunder lowered
The screen was cracked and shattered, by us blind
A menace to small children and love’s power
From the Christmas tree, gold coins had showered
Are these gifts from Judas or demands?
The sun makes leaves look like real golden flowers
Can God be that old vanished point that lures
To infinity what shall remain
A solitude for worms, a love that cures?
Every figment has its own domain
From imagination, truth to human shame
The sun makes autumn leaves look like love’s flowers
Attention must be paid while demons howl
I am a kettle made of stainless steel
I am a saint, for tea is brewed to heal
And, unlike kettles on an old coal fire,
I am not dirty nor do I perspire.
My mirrored sides reflect you as you cook.
Look at me and read me like a book
I’m full of love and hotter than a man
Oh, dear lady, love me while you can.
Superior mother, yet inhuman I;
Even electric kettles sometimes lie.
I shall never punish you, my dear
For perfect love like mine shall wield no fear.
All I ask is that you polish me.
For, in between your hands, I yearn to be.
I wish we were in Kent in cliff top sun
Butterflies float gently overhead.
With loving thoughts my mind is overrun
I wish you were at home and in my bed.
I wish we were on Portland Bill today.
The violent sea the rocks the seabirds near.
Yet we loved the peace of Studland Bay.
Silence with small sounds that few can hear.
The music of the sea the tides don’t lie
Sucking shingle runs back to the sea.
In between the low tide and and the high
Children play forever, always free.
In Old Hunstanton we walked on the beach.
Now you are gone far out of my love’s reach
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 wonder why why we were made to spend hours solving quadratic equations using the formula so it was not in any way using thought let alone creative thought.
There was no discussion about what quadratic equations are useful for and for people leaving school at 16 in those days they never would discover any possible use of these equations.
I don’t think the learning that we returns will be transferable to any other subject.
But we learnt to obey the teacher and do things which seemed meaningless. And not just once but for 45 minutes we were ordered to keep on doing more and more of these equations.
In that way school is like a prison where you do tasks the other people have decided are necessary. And if you can’t see any meaning in them you are not allowed to say so.
I have often wondered why obedience is considered to be such a wonderful thing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/04/margaret-atwood-hitchens-prize-speech/629443/
The moderate center is a preferable place to live. There’s more respect for the individual, or that is the idea. There’s at least some desire for human rights for everyone, or that, too, is the idea. There’s less fear, and that is the idea as well. But the moderate center is also the hardest position to defend. It lacks a Big Slogan. It lacks hordes of robotic followers. It’s untidy. It resists the homogeneous. And it’s under constant attack from both extremes, those on the so-called right and the so-called left.
It is this dream of a moderate democratic center that Ukraine has been defending, and that defense has had a broad effect. Suddenly, the recent detractors of democracy are concluding—or some of them are—that maybe democracy is a system worth fighting for, because the alternatives are so much worse
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/opinion/suffering-trauma-wisdom.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/smarter-living/how-to-be-a-more-patient-person.html
Patience, the ability to keep calm in the face of disappointment, distress or suffering, is worth cultivating. The virtue is associated with a variety of positive health outcomes, such as reducing depression and other negative emotions. Researchers have also concluded that patient people exhibit more prosocial behaviors like empathy, and were more likely to display generosity and compassion.
A 2012 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology identified three distinct expressions of patience: 1. Interpersonal, which is maintaining calm when dealing with someone who is upset, angry or being a pest. 2. Life hardships, or finding the silver lining after a serious setback. And 3. Daily hassles, which is suppressing annoyance at delays or anything irritating that would inspire a snarky tweet.
The good news is that same study found that patience as a personality trait is modifiable. Even if you’re not a particularly patient person today, there’s still hope you can be a more patient person tomorrow. So if you find yourself getting exasperated more than you’d like, here are ways to keep those testy impulses in check.
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I dreamed I was in church the other night
I prayed along with others and the priest
I still believe that I will see the light
The-depths of love the breadth and then the height
I thought that prayer might act on earth like yeast
I dreamed I was in church the other night.
God enjoys the humble without might
In the stable Jesus slept with beasts
Do you believe that we shall see the light
The Jews of Europe burnt with Christian spite.
Jesus was a Jew I do believe
I dreamed I was in church the other night.
Hitler took communion, was this fate!1
Satan’s not the proudest at the feast
One day someone else will see the light
Dreams are strange with messages that bite
Dreams put conscious fantasies to flight
I dreamed about the synagogue that night
I saw the broken glass smelled gelignite.
La résponse est le Malheur de la question” is translated as, “The answer is the misfortune of the question.”
W Bion
https://nesslabs.com/negative-capability
D
Despite its name, negative capability is not harmful. It is only negative because it exists counter to false dichotomies, fixed mindsets, and complete confidence in your thoughts. It is about resisting quick explanations, sitting with our doubts, and questioning our assumptions. Not only can it lead to better creativity, but negative capability can also help us become more curious and more humble.
You can think of negative capability as the negative pole of an electric current. Passive and receptive, the negative pole receives current from the positive pole. In the same way, we can train ourselves to receive impulses from a world — inspiration which cannot be fully understood, but can be channeled into creativity
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/195955/amichai-israels-national-poet
Yet Amichai found ways of keeping those pressures at arm’s length. Take, for instance, the remarkable sequence of poems he wrote after the Six Day War, “Jerusalem, 1967.” These were exalted, intoxicating days, when the conquest of Jerusalem brought the Jews’ holy city under Jewish sovereignty for the first time in 2,000 years. The country was singing Naomi Shemer’s song “Jerusalem of Gold,” with its triumphant verse: “The wells are filled again with water,/ The square with joyous crowd,/ On the Temple Mount within the City, / The shofar rings out loud.” But here is how Amichai writes about the city where he lived most of his life:
Jerusalem stone is the only stone that can
feel pain. It has a network of nerves.
From time to time Jerusalem crowds into
mass protests like the tower of Babel.
But with huge clubs God-the-Police beats her
down: houses are razed, walls flattened,
and afterward the city disperses, muttering
prayers of complaint and sporadic screams from churches
and synagogues and loud-moaning mosques.
Each to his own place.
This section of “Jerusalem, 1967” demonstrates that Amichai evaded the claims of the national by viewing Israeli history in a perspective at once smaller and larger than the nation. On the one hand, he is less a poet of the state than a poet of the city, of Jerusalem. He writes about Jerusalem with the intimacy of a disillusioned lover, a friend who remains faithful despite repeated trials and impositions; he empathizes with the very stones. And Jerusalem, while it is a Jewish city, is also a Christian and Muslim city, irreducibly multicultural. “The city plays hide-and-seek among her names: Yerushalayim, Al-Quds, Salem, Jeru, Yeru,” Amichai writes.
What unites these cultures is the ardor of faith, the belief that in Jerusalem you are closer to God than elsewhere. “In my land, called holy, / they won’t let eternity be: / they’ve divided it into little religions, / zoned it for God-zones,” Amichai writes in “North of San Francisco.” This is the other half of Amichai’s double vision—his wary, wry intimacy with God, which is to say, his Judaism. Like the city of Jerusalem, the faith of the Jews is much older than the State of Israel and offers a release from contemporary political obsessions.
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