What Is On TV Tonight?

Whatever it is, a book* will be better. 
Because the measure of a life
is how much more live books are
than adaptions of them for visual media
can be. And only print can do this.
I prefer my print on paper but if some.
folk prefer e-readers okay, but let it have
nothing to do with me. 

*excludes texts where no hand, eye,
  or mind has shaped what is written,
I.e. 'A.I. texts in which machines learn
badly how ordinary people write
       and can't sense what the text is missing.        

 

Live Lightly Whilst You Can

You never know how close to a lack of 
support you might be in future....

 

My First New Year Card of 2023

A rather jolly image of hope for the year to come,
in all the ways it combines hope
with the allowance for mistaken outcomes.

 

A Warning From The Present

Now, where is the warning
about reliving the past?

 

This is The Warning Sign

I would like to see used to illustrate
the lapses from democracy that I see
in the politics of my country. People 
need to smile when they have to be alarmed,
and made angry by how their country's
standards are lapsing from what citizens
ordinarily thought they were entitled to.
Though we will see more of these signs
than we expect when we come to use them.

 

This Is What Progress Looks Like

Whether what happens next lives up to that intent
or whether the next generation slides back
into casually cruel and abusive behaviour
remains to be observed.   

 

Beauty And Nothingness

...and the nothingness is all the more perfect
when it is more transparently imperfect.... 

 

Mahler Symphonies-A Guide

Because the memory of the music we enjoy
can be as easily lost as it is gained.    

 

Some Rubbish Humour

And the wonder is that it is multi-lingual humour too.

 

On Mothering Sunday

I present a picture of my mother when she was single
and socially mobile. She had the life she always wanted,
which included travel broadening the mind through enriching
friendships. When she was in Paris August 1956 she was free.

I was barely an abstract idea in some unimagined future for her.

For me there remains a distinct tension between
the selflessness required of a mother to get a child
as near to being the mature self reliant adult,
able to navigate the world to have their needs met,
that the child need to be, and the hardships
 of navigating a marriage where women are barred
from defining themselves on their own terms
    because men believed that to be men it was better
for them to not listen and around everyone,  
life moved too fast to be apprehended.

 

How Long Will This Item Take To Sell Out?

Given the message it should be a slow but steady seller
as the self confessed procrastinator puts off
making the purchase until the last minute
in the hope that the item getting cheaper
the longer it remains for sale. 

 

The Winter Sales Are Upon Us

Do think carefully before accepting all the packaging.
What looks cheap and at the right price now may be
sold at the wrong price for the sustainability
of the land mass we live on in future.

 

A Safe Prediction For 2023

And temptation will say is somebody else
whilst it goes about it's business
of deceiving you by other means
for what it thinks is worth more to it
then it should be worth to you. 

 

My First Christmas Present To Myself

Because it takes courage to first recognise
and then accept it when you discover
that you are disliked, particularly when 
the people who dislike you are dishonest
and cowards when the matter reaches
admitting how low you are in their esteem. 
  

 

How To Talk 'Dog'

In different languages across Europe
from here where the mao is much larger
and ther is much more information
about the different languages described.. 

 

Read It Again

Because when any law presents itself
as so totalitarian and dystopian as to be
written only for the ease of the rulers,
and dis-ease of the ruled, who have to live by it,
the ruled will resist the new discomfort
which is for the comfort for the rulers.

 Those most in need of what the law refuses
them will be at their most secretive
and their least controllable, given half a chance.
Here is some advice about internet security
for those who are contemplating abortion
in police states where computers run everything
and abortion is circumscribed to the point of being illegal.  

 

Reverse Your Own Way Into The Future

Because the past never really goes away, anyway....

 

Picture Set Of The Month - April - The Art Of Maria Primachenko

'Black Beast' painted in 1936 by 'primitive'
Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko (1909-97). 

'Blue Ox' painted in 1936 by Ukrainian artist
Maria Prymachenko, who survived Stalin's purges
by avoiding being labelled as an intellectual.

'Lion' painted in 1947 by Maria Prymachenko
(1909-97) whose work is now literally under fire
from the Russian tanks and missiles that rain down
in the National Folk Decorative Art Museum in Kyviv.

'Pea Beast' as painted in 1971 by Maria Prymachenko
(1909-97)-this is one of her lighter paintings
after the strange and savage beasts she painted
in the 1930's represented the many cruelties
that Ukraine endured   

'A Cow Like That Gives 5000 litres a day', as painted
in 1978 by Ukrainian 'primitive' painter,
Maria Prymachenko, for more about this serious
artist who competed against Picasso, the year 
he showed 'Guernica', and who praised her
for her simplicity and talent, click here.  

 

And Now The Good News

It could only be better if you did not have
a job to go to that between the multiple chances 
of the end of the world as we know it
you knew was not going to last.

 

Picture set of The Month - March - Belfast In Bloom

 

Keeping Belfast in permanent bloom

is far easier than you might think

with so many art students with the skills
to be imitation gardeners

at the city's disposal who have
too much time on their hands. 

And besides they make a good distraction
from the cameras that watch, and 'keep the peace'.