I sometimes wonder if the internet was made for people to share their 101’s with others first came porn, stimulating the medium just as it had with home cine film then the cat lovers started sharing cats doing the strangest things long before AI allowed you to craft such behaviours to order
Companies got in on the act and no firm was complete without its website schilling its wares in better or worse fashion after all, you get what you pay for with advertising and websites
Steadily, though, in the background the democracy of individuals shared their passions in ever more sophisticated 101’s. How to make kombucha, kimchi, and sauerkraut How to do Tunisian Crochet and Why You Should 4 Ingredient Low-Carb Bread seedy crackers, cottage-cheese cheesecake recipes from every culinary tradition and country liberally seasoned with adverts As 101’ers try to monetize their craft
But where is Break-up 101: 50 Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is On the Point of Collapse – is this too negative for jaunty bloggers will it fail to garner followers and accrue comments old-timey newspapers and women’s mags had Agony Aunts who responded to readers’ letters “Dear Joyce how will I know If he loves me so…?” And songs dispense wisdom “There must be 50 ways to leave your lover” “Should I stay or should I go now If I go there will be trouble And if I stay it will be double”
Did the meme of inevitable collapse fail to make the grade on the World Wide Web or am I just stuck in the wrong silos…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, paeansunplugged in OpenLinkNight, Uncategorized, invites us to submit a poem of our choice… I wrote this in my writing group in the shadow of “My Mother’s Love” by James Allen Hall to the prompt, “Write about a time when collapse was inevitable…”
Something old, something new Something borrowed, something blue And a sixpence in her shoe.
Something blue blue notes? Blue Moon full twice in a month Singing the Blues but not today – getting married in the morning! this morning no more Harvest Moon fear and fumbling stripping off something borrowed – for the hope of fertility Making Whoopee though we know how that ended up will you still love me When I’m Sixty-four? – there may be trouble ahead Stormy Weather Life is an ocean Love is a boat put a sixpence in my shoe here goes nothing…
I started writing and preparing for my chosen subject of “Fabrics and Fibres We Wear” months in advance of the Theme Reveal, so by the time of the launch, i had done a lot of work and I also knew that I had bitten off more than I had ever done before for the A to Z!
The choice of subject came from my own curiosity about fabrics – especially those with strange names you only come across in historical novels and as well, I dabble in fibre crafts such as knitting and Tunisian crochet. In this respect, I more than satisfied my itch, uncovering all sorts of nuggets of knowledge that gratified me, but the question is, as always, will it hold the interest of readers of the A to Z? Well the pages received 300 views over the course of April, a good few regulars came, read and commented and showed as much delight as I did at the various topics – which is all that one can hope for! I expect that the posts may gather an organic growth of readers in the future as I feel it is quite the resource in the end – anyway, i shall keep an eye on the stats…
I didn’t finish all the posts ahead of time so there was a good week of pantsing it at the end and once that starts, there is no time to anything other than answer comments, so I did not achieve as much visiting as I would have liked but heigh ho – the posts are still there to be visited! Blogs I did manage to read and enjoy up to the point of pantsing, include The Multicoloured Diary, with her wonderful collection of Hungarian Folktales, Uniquely maladjusted but fun, where Jamie ran a scavenger/crossword hunt, Li gave us Artwork and Poetry Forms at The Versesmith, whilst Tamara of Part-time Working Hockey Mom transported us back to the 80’s! The A to Z would not be the same without Anne M Bray’s Pattern Recognition in which she celebrates the shoe designs of the Canadian firm Fluevog by first sketching one of the shoes and then turning it into a fabric repeat print. Another printmaker is Anne E.G. Nydam – a lino/rubber print maker who this year gave us extracts of her new self-illustrated book of reworked fairytales over at Black and White (Words and Pictures) and lastly Josna Rege of Tell Me Another.
In answer to the team’s questions
1. I am in favour of the Theme Reveal – it gets the ball rolling…
2. Its good to focus on the experience for a moment and review the other people who have contributed to your experience
3. The graphics this year have been great as always!
4. I did largely meet my goals but I am definitely going to choose something a little more modest next year so I can spend more time bloghopping…
5. See above for favourites…
6. I did have comments from co-hosts thank you
7. Favourite comment:- “So much great information! It makes me want to return to sewing – Ronel at Ronel the Mythmaker” (My job is done!)
8. Cai crossed over from my Ten Things of Thankful postings and visited regularly and obviously enjoyed the whole challenge even though she was not participating.
We managed to get out on two of my non-working days this last week! Barbara’s COPD caused us to buy a “boot-scooter” before our holiday in Holland as without it, she would be too breathless to go anywhere and we were determined to keep up the momentum of days out. So on Friday, we went to Knaresborough, about 45 minutes’ drive and I duly unloaded the scooter (it separates into a number of components without which it would take two people to lift it out) and we set off for the round of favourite spots. After the Crystal shop, we went to the square for a coffee (see below). all was well until we were ready to move on whereupon we simply could not find the ignition key to the scooter – searched high and low – gone – complete mystery! I had to push the scooter back to the car… Where’s the grat in that you may ask? Well, it turns out that for this make of scooter, all units have the same key, so I was able to purchase a new one the next day, from the local supplier. I said to Gavin – “Doesn’t that mean that anyone could take it easily?”, “Well,” he said, “the incidence of crime amongst the disability scooter community is very low -in the 20 years I have been dealing with them, I have known of only two thefts – one of our forecourt and one in which the purchaser of the stolen scooter came in to buy a charger and we were able to reunite the scooter with the owner!”
In Knaresborough with the scooter…
On my way to purchase the spare key, I drove the scenic route over the top as it was a lovely day and stopped to take this picture of our village, Silsden, more or less in its entirety… As you can see, we are in Buttercup season!
Then on Sunday, we went to Hebden Bridge, which I have shown you something of before, but there is always something new to notice there…
These bands bearing spheres slowly rotate on a vertical axis, rather like electrons in an atom so that the clock never looks quite the same…
These Alliums are a favourite in municipal gardens and they look so good in a massed display at this time of year…
This lady is always in the square in Hebden Bridge – all weekend! She has advocated for the Palestinian cause for many years prior to the current genocide and given the current Labour government’s disgusting attempt to repress support for Palestinians in favour of the zionist occupiers, this lady risks arrest for waving the flag. Mind you, if the police tried to arrest her, they would instigate a flash-protest-mob and so probably know to leave well alone…
Hebden Bridge is nestled into a valley so steep that it is fit only for trees and you wouldn’t want to live there if you couldn’t master the steep streets…
Before the industrial revolution and the advent of large mills, weaving was a cottage industry and weavers’ workshops were on the first floors with long rows of windows to give the maximum light to work by. This one is now a café but you can see the rough-hewn stone work of the windows…
A magnificent climbing rose on the Hebden Bridge Arts Centre…
Lastly, we are having a heatwave and I took the redundant heating controller outside to record this temperature in the shade! The grat is that we don’t have a hosepipe ban as yet, this year…
I hope you are all having whatever weather it is that you need or desire and that you are all having your most gratifying week possible…
Early travels were a few streets abroad, playmate in the next street baptismal church next one over holidays added Swanage, Scotland the Lakes, the Scillies but sailing to Australia (flying was too expensive then) added a swathe London – Tilbury Rotterdam and Lisbon, Dakar Cape Town, Durban destination Perth – W. A. Epic train rides Kalgoorlie to Port Pirie on to Adelaide and Melbourne, Sydney driving up to Brisbane, Gladstone back to Melbourne and sailing home Wellington and Rarotonga Tahiti and two weeks empty Pacific – as long as many holidays now Acapulco on Christmas Day then Panama Caracas fuel then Port-of-Spain Southampton and back home again. School trip – Vichy Uni field trips Aix-en-Provence Isle of Arran illicit love to Paris and Malta via France, Italy and Sicily, Tenerife standing above the clouds atop smould’ring Teide holidays to Santorini Naxos and Crete almost living for six months Covid lockdown new home Ireland then relocate to West Yorkshire – songs in Iceland, drive Morocco, the Green Heart of the Netherlands… Now a few streets are become an expedition I vacation still, the very world in my mind’s eye…
It has been almost two weeks since my last gratitudes – for the first half of this week, I had a dreadful cold which kept me in bed for a couple of days – colds never used to be like this but I was knocked out, however I am recovering now and went to work yesterday morning.
I had to go into work early for a Teams meeting between my boss, an energy company and myself. My boss and his brother were in Guangzhou, China where, amongst other things, they were making a deal with a Chinese “whole house customising manufactuer” the multi-millionaire 82 year-old CEO of which was right beside my boss who not only introduced us, but showed us around the vast showroom of everything you could want to kit out a house or apartment fron cladding to furniture to accessories. We then began our meeting with a company which is nearly operational with a building-sized air pump heat exchanger which will supply district-heating all over Bradford, including, we hope, some of my bosses’ apartment developments. They will also take the cooling heat from a Data Centre which is being built next door and add it into the mix. I am glad to see that joined-up planning is finally coming of age…
Every year I am pleasantly surprised by the fruiting berries of the Winter Jasmine (remember I showed it in flower) – I always expect the flowers and always forget about the berries…
On the Saturday before going down with the cold, we drove south to Barbara’s ex’s 80th birthday party – a round trip of 8 hours motorway driving and saw some people we haven’t seen for many years. On the way back, I suggested we listen to an audio-book and chose John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday”. It is a sequel to “Cannery Row” and like that book, paints a picture of the extraordinary warmth of community in the real suburb of Cannery Row, site of redundant canning plants after all the sardines were fished out during the war. (An early lesson in environmental abuse consequences) I don’t know how many of the characters are based on real people, but for sure, ‘Doc’ – the central character, was a real friend of Steinbeck’s with whom he later wrote “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”. The affectionate portrait of this marginal community is a tonic in these times of divisive politics and I urge anyone who is not familiar with them, to read these two books. I think many children may have been put off by having to study “Of Mice and Men”, and “The Grapes of Wrath” is a heavy book to read, even though there are many equally or more inequitable things happening in the world today, so it is that these two slim volumes of pure delight have been overlooked…
Two things I read in tabloid pop-psychology articles. Firstly, that women, when asked what they have read, will quote recent reads, whilst men will cite books they read as teenagers, even if they have continued to read novels since. I confess I worked my way through Steinbeck as a teenager… Secondly, research apparently suggested that (back in the days when young people read rather than watched screen dramas) everyone would have unconsciously picked a character on which they subsequently modelled themselves – intrigued, I searched my soul and eventually it clicked – it was ‘Doc’ from Cannery Row, for me! A man of science and phiolosophical questioning, at home talking with anyone from a hobo to a President, who everybody in his community loved and respected – whether I have fulfilled this role-model it is not for me to say… What about y’all – do you think you embody unconscious role models from your early reading?
I am glad that the tulips I planted in the Autumn have bloomed at different times and show such different forms…
And in the office, the three container gardens I took in are not only thriving (we don’t have enough windowsill space here at home) but in one of them, a succulent which I did not even know to be flowering has sent forth pretty little pink flowers…
The tequila bottle came from a plant setting from my late sister – it is genuine tequila and I created a suitable desert setting for it…
I am not sure how many grats there are here but that’s what I got for this week and have your best week everybody…
Merril D. Smith – a dVerse Poets Pub aficionado and I have made a collaborative project over on Collaborature, run by another dVerse luminary and friend, Melissa Lemay!
Rousseau Exchange #1
by Merril D. Smith and Andrew Wilson
Dear Merril,
I confess I am quite envious of your recent visit to the Henri Rousseau Exhibition since I have never seen his work in the flesh and I suspect it is even more vibrant than the many reproductions suggest. I wonder if the painting The Representatives of Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of Peace was one of the paintings you saw?
For a celebration symbolic of Peace why are there so many military uniforms in evidence?
Why is the celebration of the Republic by citizens dancing more convincing than Rousseau’s imaginary “photo-op”?
How did the delegates who only merited small flags wave their Olive branches with greater vigour to compensate?
Did the French people, whose fields hosted the First World War appreciate the true irony of this painting…?
Best – Andrew
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your letter. I send you good wishes on the autumn winds blowing here, but who knows what destruction they will bring.
I did not see The Representatives of the Foreign Powers Coming to Salute the Republic as a Gesture of Peace at the exhibition. Did you know Picasso once owned it? And that he threw a party for the artist, nicknamed “douanier,” the customs officer—though he called Rousseau a joke.
Perhaps, it’s not irony, but innocence, a painting painted before either world wars,
perhaps it’s optimism or hope. Mostly, I wonder about the lion. Rousseau seemed very fond of lions.
I think about his earlier work, La Guerre painted in 1894, with its avenging-revenging goddess, an otherworldly horse, a nightmare scene of broken bodies and devouring crows, no attempt to make it heroic, this is visceral, brutal–
yet when I look at it again, the white torsos of the fallen men seem almost angelic.
What do you think, Andrew?
Rousseau Exchange #2
by Merril D. Smith and Andrew Wilson
Dear Merril
Thank you for your good wishes, borne on the wind, sooner or later, every breath of America wends Eastward you may have to wait a little longer for mine to reach you West-about…
I agree that the lion is fascinating, not just because, it is suggested, it represents French power, and as such, looks remarkably docile; but also, the lion is very strange looking. Rousseau was considered a Naïve or Primitive artist, but that doesn’t mean he can’t draw well but he had never been outside France, his animals are taken from illustrations in children’s books, and tableaux of taxidermy wild animals.
why did Rousseau choose to make the figure of War female why is the French word for war, La Guerre feminine
dressed in blinding, angelic white as she leaps from her jet black horse brandishing a sword and Death’s scythe to alight on the field of the fallen
is it for modesty that the one fallen person on the battlefield whose front we see is fully-dressed – all others naked…
even before the big guns of the First World War cannons could lay waste to trees as well as people
Here is another Rousseau painting of a lion “The repast of the Lion” – this time its head is quite lion-like…
if artists only painted what they had seen with their own eyes and writers wrote only what they had experienced though passed by the sensitivity readers would we survive the dullness of reading or looking…
if the jungle was so plentifully provident of bananas would we have ever left the trees and evolved
did the lion get indigestion from wolfing down the crocodile headfirst and how well hidden are the elephants in Rousseau’s hothouse jungle
What are your thoughts, Merril?
Dear Andrew,
Thank you once again for your letter and good wishes. With climate change, who knows when and where the winds might blow? Or where they might blow us.
As for war and lions—it’s impossible to know what Rousseau was thinking.
Perhaps the lion was symbolic— lying down with peace?
Perhaps it was merely fantasy or exoticism.
War, “la guerre,” must be female, I suppose. But this one is striking, a savage, feral child.
Not that era’s ideal image of childhood or womanhood, for that matter. No sugar and spice there. Only blood.
Nightmarish.
A curator said Rousseau was a story-giver, not a storyteller—the pieces there, for us to weave together.
Perhaps it’s better then, not to wonder what he intended, but simply to see where the images take us.
Did you know his lawyer got him acquitted— in a trial for passing bad checks—
he told the judge Rousseau was too naïve to commit the crime, just look at this painting, he said, where an American Indian wrestles with a gorilla.
Rousseau probably knew what the lawyer was going to say,
maybe even wrapped that persona around himself, wearing It proudly, the naif, the self-taught genius, he was extremely self-confident, it seems.
I can see how his work with its dream-like quality
appealed to the surrealists,
But in fact, I’m still not certain if I like it.
No, I take that back, I like some of it,
I do have a fondness for dreams.
You mentioned the odd-looking lion, but Andrew have you seen the children Rousseau painted?
Look at the daughter in the carriage here— how tiny she is! How large the father driving! And the dogs. I think Rousseau must have liked dogs.
There is a third and final post to come and I will append it here when it “drops”!
A rose called Afternoon Delight Recalls love, perhaps a person But the good Baroness Rothschild And her erstwhile husband, Baron With roses, we commemorate Their wealth and rank of State With both hybrid and heritage Bush Rose’s names and image But who was the Beautiful Girl Who FloribundaBetty Cuthbert Perhaps a veryBlushing Knockout Or a Brilliant Pink Iceberg Be we infamous or famous Will a rose one day recall us…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to celebrate the names of roses, a long list of which you can find here (from which the photos are taken).
I am glad to have finally finished the A to Z 2026 Challenge at last, for whilst I enjoyed learning everything I hoped and more, and have had comments of similar enlightenment from readers, I did set myself a mighty task this year, and if I do it again, I will give myself someting simpler which will also allow me more time to keep up with other participants…
Normally, I shower, but on Sunday mornings, I have breakfast in the bath, with a book! I am grateful for having allowed myself this small decadence and I sometimes read non-fiction long-form which I otherwise have little space for, however, I have been reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and even if I manage 20 pages, at 433 pages in total, it has taken a long time. The title, is eventually revealed as the flag of the short-lived Biafran republic and the novel is, in the author’s own words, about Love and War. For who would want to read a novel purely about war without being fleshed out with real characters. I have been writing a similar novel in a desultory way for about the last 20 years. Similar in that the Rwandan genocide lies at the heart of the story and similar in that it concerns fictional characters caught up in a history which is ultimately the result of colonialism and equally awful post-colonialism. Writing and reading such books is hard, because the material is dark, however it is not all dark and there is a sub-plot (with a little humour) which is finished and can be read alone if anyone is interested… I hope that now the A to Z is over, I might return to the novel and nudge it toward completion…
Barbara and I have made an agreement to go out somewhere each weekend, use her boot scooter to get around and so far we have stuck to it…
Filey, last weekend…
The weather has been sunny all week, saving the rain for the Bank Holiday Weekend – still, it saves me watering the garden – since everything is in containers, that needs keeping an eye on all the time in Summer…
Finishing the A to Z has let me get back to writing poetry and the first offering at dVerse Poets Pub, was a Golden Shovel for which I chose a quotation from Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. This is my favourite piece of poetry (even if it was a radio play) and if you have never heard the Richard Burton original version you can find it here.
We had some awful news last weekend, Barbara’s niece went outside to find her husband dead having stuck hi head on a stone wall – at under fifty, the only gratitude is that it seems to have been instantaneous. His widow and two almost-grown-up children live in Geneva – a long way from the support of her sisters and parents… Our hearts go out to them…
The big early flowers – daffodils and most of the Tulips are gone over and this week has been about small flowers (and Dandelions)…
I found this shrub growing in a pot and brought it on – I have no idea what it is but enjoy its small white flower having their moment…
The first Alliums have flowered…
And here is the next one starting to open…
Future Blackberries…
The clematis Montana also coming into flower – they are smaller than this picture makes them look…
I saw an article about “Rebel Botanists”. Inspired by French botanist Sophie Leguil, they label wildflowers at the edge of pavements – I could o with that as I often wonder what the plants are called…
In retirement hush the noise of the babies whom in the long ago years are soundly sleeping, grown by the farmers, brought up on shore by the fishers, might become the tradesmen, – themselves the future and one day pensioners, could apprentice to a cobbler, learn to garden children as a schoolteacher, tread the rounds of streets as a postman, feed the masses as a restaurateur and pull pints as a publican, evade as long as possible the undertaker sire their own babies with a wife and perhaps even tangle with the fancy woman, lose their way as a drunkard, stitch dreams as a dressmaker, espouse piety as a preacher, guard the peace as a policeman vainly trying to contain the webfoot raucously vibrant, cocklewomen in glorious opposition and contrast to the tidy wives…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in FormForAll, Poetry Forms, invites us to write a Golden Shovel in which you: Choose a line from a poem that resonates with you. *Build your poem so each line ends with a word from that line. *Keep the words in order, forming the original line down the right margin. *Let your poem move in its own direction. Surprise us! *Include attribution (after [poet])
Strictly speaking, the Golden Shovel should use just one word from the original poem at the end of each line, but since both the original text and the new poem are lists, it didn’t seem right to separate Thomas’s original adjectives in some instances, or have a surfeit of definite articles…
