Watch This Vast Distance

A classic vintnage Iranian rug
as might ber available today
  if you live in the right country.  

  As Iran and the USA both threaten each other, and in their statements seek to avoid being the one to start an open conflict, whilst each applies public pressure on the other. I can't help but think that the USA is going to look like the loser here. However much both sides pressure their presumed allies to fall in line behind them in new trade arrangements it can only extend the present new world disorder, as it has evolved since the end of the cold war, as it ended thirty five years ago with the end of the Soviet Union.

   Where any of this goes next is hard to say. But I cannot help but think that the USA is on a hiding to nothing as it makes its public statememts. Iran was part of an empire so many millenia before American independence it makes the USA seem like it is barely out of nappies and into short trousers by comparison. 

 Not that I admire the modern human rights record of Muslim Iran, which I see as in a continued stalled revolutionary state, like Communism in the USSR. In both if it was not for export it was not  going to going anywhere, not even internally.

All I can say is 'watch this space' as two empires with stalled values who are based in differnt continents confront each other at so great a distance with such differnr language that words from one leader to the other will take far longer to reach their target than any arms they have to lob.    

Wildlife Special

Masked Trogon, San Isidro, Eastern Equador.

 

Creatively Unwaged

I am glad for all who read these blogs
that I naver have to say to any of them
'like, subscribe, or follow me',
though the latter is a choice for whoever
feels led that way. Whoever reads these blogs,
no money rides on what they read. No money
is directed towards me, though the shareholders
of Alhpabet Inc who own all this, and much besides,
would get their fair share of profit from what I write.

Whether you are reader, or like me, a writer
- I give thanks to all the creatively unwaged,
as a close friend described the unemployed
who employers would not touch with a bargepole.

We are all looking for the words that describe
the world we rely on, as we live out our days and being.

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.
I have to 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, whilst 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.....