Wildlife Special

Masked Trogon, San Isidro, Eastern Equador.

 

America First?

I was made well aware when I was grwing up
that there were long histories of boom and bust
behind me. Whilst my parents lived in the hope,
against hope, that they, and by extension I, would see,
and recognise the next downward cycle long before it hit,
so we would reposition outselves to get the right side of it. 

It was not to be. I needed to live through several economic troughs
before recognising that I was born in an eonomic trough and I did not
recognise it until I'd seen many. I don't partucularly rue the folly
of the family I was raised by, but remembering them, as the times
prompt me, make me anxious and watchful. I now see present day America
from my own particular vantage  point and ask 'When will America realise
that the time is coming faster than it realises, when as an empire it will it will reap
the fruits of puttting the rest of the wolrd last, after putting itself first so often?'    

Some Humour From The Russian Press (2)

The jokes from the Russian press
that Steve Rosenberg shares with the world
on his youtbe channel are now part
of my daily my daily social media diet.

Here are three more of them....

Q: Which tongue [language] has the greatest potential
in the future?

A:The one you keep behind your teeth.

Q:What is the most effective way to spread panic
in the population?

A:For the authorities to declare that the situation 
is under control.

      

Q:Is it true that the country's reserves of optimism

are growing?

A:Yes.

Q:How come?

A:Because there is nowhere left to spend them.

 

 

Chasing Ghosts - The Art And Life Of Bill Traylor

   Who was the first African American ex-slave and ex share cropper who choose to draw what he  saw around him that the modern world knows of, thanks to his mentor Charles Shannon who collected his work to preserve it. With the help of Charales Shannon Bill Traylor held two exhibitions in America, the second in New York in 1942, before his death in 1949. Nearly thirty years later Traylor's time came and his primitive drawings on scraps of paper that nobody cared about at the time found their own audience and adherents as recollections of a vibrant black culture that it seems could only be fleetingly captured if it was going to be captured atall.

  Nowadays anyone looking at the images would be tempted to take the ghosts of shapes he commited to paper, and animate them. To give the images the imitation of life. I would suggest that there are better ways of representing the times and spaces he lived through.....     

'Our Whole Life Is A Secret.... '

All I have to offer to mark five years
of the renewed rule of the Taliban is this,
a thirty mins audio diary that the BBC
gave to the world in November 2024. 

It is one woman's observations of the effects
of the Taliban redoubling their efforts to remove
the presence of women from all of public life,
so that all the women can say to themselves
is 'Our whole life is a secret.....   '. 

And if for whatever technological reason
you cannot hear the report, you can believe
that their lives are now even more secret.....   

An Appeal For Us To Be More Humane

Anyone in the first world, the over-developed world,
who hears the phrase 'dog meat' or 'cat meat'
understands it be something to feed to their pet,
or the stuff of hyperbole in the adverts that pay for
their youtube videos that while away the hours.

But in poorer parts of the world where civilisation
is redder in tooth and claw, and the idea of 'the pet',
the-animal-as-companion has not been invented,
nature, including dogs and cats is fair game
for leaving to live wild, before rounding up and eating. 

Not everyone there sees this as right, The Soi Dog Foundation
does powerful work in Hanoi to end cats and dogs living on the streets,
before the meet a grzzly fate. I admire The Soi Dog Foundation for what they do.
I have given money to them too, and I ask that you will concider doing the same.

The New More-Is-Less

I used to be astonished at how little
the popular music stars of the day
I admired, but not like, contributed
to their latest hits, as I saw what sold a song
was the padding/star power packaging.

But lately I find myself coming up with
my own paucity. My offerings here are thinner
than I used to write. I seem to be unable to grasp
the direction of travel of the new media,
as it heads in the direction of the false trails
laid down by and for the newAI kletpocracy,
which  always exonerates the latest dear leader.

My stake in the new media game cannot count for much.
The best of my old blogs will find other lives though whoever
steals the ideas in them. Nowadays I am old enough to look back
and recognise that I was left behind before I could see it happening
in the first wave of de-industrialisation, in the 1970's,

I have been looking for the present through the past since those times..... .    .