Teaching Secondary English, History, and TESOL. CompTIA A+/Aviation/Paleoanthropology. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” O.W.
State of Conn-sternation, USA
Joined July 2009
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If I may …
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
“The circumstances that could send the works of Keats and Baudelaire to join the works of Menander are no longer inconceivable; they are in the newspapers.”
Absolutely stunning essay by @DouglasKMurray about the crisis in France. It includes this quote.
thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-f…
This is interesting. I have been thinking about planting a Mountain Ash tree, for I like the contrast of the red berries against the greenery, and for the benefit of providing a food source for birds. It seems the Rowan tree and Mountain Ash are the same species, Sorbus aucuparia, so I’ll get the added benefit of shooing away pesky witches, too! 😉
In Highland folklore, the rowan tree was a sacred protector. With blood-red berries and star-shaped scars, it stood by gates and doorways to guard against witchcraft. No harm would come where rowan grew, a belief so strong it was taboo to cut one without cause. #FairyTaleTuesday
ALT Four-panel collage illustrating the rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) and its association with the pentagram. On the left, a leafy rowan laden with clusters of bright orange-red berries. Top right, a close-up of the berries among green leaves composed of finely serrated leaflets. Below, a black five-pointed pentagram against an orange background, beside a close-up of a single rowan berry showing the natural, star-shaped mark at its base.
That is indeed beautiful. Although one of my very first jobs was with a jewelry company, I would never claim to be an authority in the field, but I don’t think a ‘modern’ jeweler could improve on the craftsmanship of this lovely piece.
I continue to be impressed with ancient #Roman jewelry.
A beautiful #Roman gold necklace, with large oval amethysts & square emerald chips set into the links. An absolutely lovely piece of ancient jewellery which is more than 1700 years old
#Archaeology #RomanArchaeology
Rev. Emerson was actually not far off from a truth regarding genetics. The ‘rungs’ of the DNA Double Helix ‘ladder’ are a combination of cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A], and thymine [T] in a AT or TA and CG or GC combination.
“Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), “History”, from “Essays: First Series” (1842).
ALT A collage of nine close-up photographs exploring natural patterns and textures. Images include spiralling rosettes of colourful succulents, intricately veined and patterned green leaves, an agave with white-edged leaves, knobbly mottled vegetable surfaces and deeply cracked tree bark. Repeating shapes, curves, symmetry and contrasting colours reveal the intricate beauty of nature.
Interesting. Apart from the marvelous contrast of light and dark and the composition, I’m thinking that there must have been a great spirit of cooperation between neighbors. You wouldn’t want this view every day, but for one day? Fine.
This, and the BBC production of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, are amongst the best adaptations of a novel of any genre.
The dialogue is sublime, and there isn’t a single extraneous scene in the entire series.
Whenever I feel the need for an escape from the mundane, I retrieve these two collections from the vault. 😏
Of course, these are adaptations of novels of the same name written by John le Carré, the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell.
Mr. Cornwell created the iconic character, George Smiley, a Cold War warrior of the British secret services. The ‘Karla Trilogy,’ perhaps his most famous series of novels, includes Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), and Smiley’s People (1979) which feature the epic struggle of Smiley with his nemesis, ‘Karla,’ master spy of the Soviet Union, portrayed in the production of ‘Tinker, Tailor’ by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart.
Other notable examples of le Carré’s work includes The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama, and The Constant Gardener.
Aboriginal Landscape
Louise Glück
(Poetry Magazine, December, 2013)
You’re stepping on your father, my mother said,
and indeed I was standing exactly in the center
of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been
my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so.
You’re stepping on your father, she repeated,
louder this time, which began to be strange to me,
since she was dead herself; even the doctor had admitted it.
I moved slightly to the side, to where
my father ended and my mother began.
The cemetery was silent. Wind blew through the trees;
I could hear, very faintly, sounds of weeping several rows away,
and beyond that, a dog wailing.
At length these sounds abated. It crossed my mind
I had no memory of being driven here,
to what now seemed a cemetery, though it could have been
a cemetery in my mind only; perhaps it was a park, or if not a park,
a garden or bower, perfumed, I now realized, with the scent of roses —
douceur de vivre filling the air, the sweetness of living,
as the saying goes. At some point,
it occurred to me I was alone.
Where had the others gone,
my cousins and sister, Caitlin and Abigail?
By now the light was fading. Where was the car
waiting to take us home?
I then began seeking for some alternative. I felt
an impatience growing in me, approaching, I would say, anxiety.
Finally, in the distance, I made out a small train,
stopped, it seemed, behind some foliage, the conductor
lingering against a doorframe, smoking a cigarette.
Do not forget me, I cried, running now
over many plots, many mothers and fathers —
Do not forget me, I cried, when at last I reached him.
Madam, he said, pointing to the tracks,
surely you realize this is the end, the tracks do not go further.
His words were harsh, and yet his eyes were kind;
this encouraged me to press my case harder.
But they go back, I said, and I remarked
their sturdiness, as though they had many such returns ahead of them.
You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confront
much sorrow and disappointment.
He gazed at me with increasing frankness.
I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence.
Now I spoke as to an old friend:
What of you, I said, since he was free to leave,
have you no wish to go home,
to see the city again?
This is my home, he said.
The city — the city is where I disappear.
And you think you had it bad? 😂
Good morning, classic comedy from @JohnCleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor & Marty Feldman (with Barry Cryer) in The Four Yorkshiremen sketch from At Last The 1948 Show (1967)
Have a brilliant Sunday
Sunrise and a placid sea.
Sunrise just beginning to touch the tops of the Sliabh Liag cliffs.
County Donegal, Ireland.
Cormacscoast.com walking tours
<Sigh> Black cats just can’t win. 😉
It is said that a black cat wearing a “locket”, a small white patch on its chest, was lucky, having been “touched by God” or “kissed by an angel”. Yet in Scottish lore, the Cat Sìth, a black fairy cat with a white patch, was feared by some as a witch in disguise. #FolkloreSunday
ALT A fluffy black cat with golden eyes and a small white patch on its chest sits in a large wicker basket. A pair of pale gloves lies on the ground in front of the basket. The image is from a vintage postcard in the “Catland, Series IV” collection, published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, c.1918.
