Wales' new national poet is named A professor of Welsh from Bangor University has been named as the man to follow in the footsteps of Wales's first national poet.
Gwyn Thomas will take over from Gwyneth Lewis, who wrote the inscription on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
The poet, writer and academic said he would use the role to draw attention to the work of Welsh poets.
He said: "It's an enormous privilege, but it will also mean a lot of work."
The national poet holds the role for one year, with their works in English or Welsh read at ceremonial and official occasions.
Gwyneth Lewis became the first national poet in 2005.
Her successor, Prof Thomas, was born in 1936 at Tanygrisiau, Blaenau Ffestiniog, and is now the Emeritus Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, Bangor.
The first term under Gwyneth Lewis was extremely successful and it helped to raise the status of poetry in Wales Peter Finch, Academi chief executive
Prof Thomas has published 16 volumes of poetry, several volumes of work as a literary and cultural critic and has also translated the Mabinogion into English.
Prof Thomas is also involved with the film industry in Wales, and has helped pioneer techniques to combine poetry and film.
He said: "I would like to see the media give only five minutes a week on the radio, or television for poets to read their work.
"Listening to the one who has written the words reading them is more worthwhile than an actor or recitor saying them," he added.
Prof Thomas said he hopes to "draw attention to the poets of Wales and their work, and try to show that poetry is a unique medium to respond to the world in which we live".
The national poet role is administered by Academi, the Welsh writing body.
Peter Finch, Academi's Chief Executive, said: "The first term under Gwyneth Lewis was extremely successful and it helped to raise the status of poetry in Wales.
"I would like to congratulate Gwyn Thomas for the appointment and we look forward another successful year."
As national poet, Prof Thomas will be reading and discussing his work in public, as well as writing poems for significant national events and occasions.
He will be "in conversation" with his predecessor Gwyneth Lewis at the Lloyd George Museum in Llanystumdwy on 27 July.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/5161364.stmPublished: 2006/07/08 15:43:27 GMT© BBC MMVII
Monday 31 December 2007
National Poet for Wales
Sorry I'm a little late in catching up with this. I heard on Radio 4 today a poem from the National poet of Wales. Didn't know there was one!!
She was so good I thought I'd find some information out . Please see the following:
Wales Appoints Its First National Poet Press Release Academi, 30 April, 2005
The United Kingdom has a Poet Laureate. Scotland has its Maker. Most states in the US have state poets. Canada has a Poet Laureate. In the USA there’s a Poet Laureate Consultant.
Now, after a six year campaign, Wales appoints its first National Poet.
Gwyneth Lewis, author of the world’s biggest poem (the Wales Millennium Centre bi-lingual inscription), NESTA fellow (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), author of six books of poems in two languages, a Book of the Year winner, librettist, sailor, and probably Wales’ best known poet since R S Thomas will be inaugurated as our first National Poet at a special 2.30 pm event at the Hay Literature Festival on May 30th this year.
The appointment of the first National Poet of Wales is made possible by direct funding from the Arts Council of Wales. The appointment is for one year with an option to renew for a second and will be administered by Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society of Writers.
Gwyneth Lewis was the unanimous choice for National Poet made by a group advising the Academi at a meeting in Cardiff recently. Members of this group include the National Eisteddfod, the National Library, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Culture committee, the Arts Council of Wales, Yr Gymdeithas Gerdd Dafod, Ty Newydd, the Dylan Thomas Centre, the University of Glamorgan and the Association for the Study of Welsh Writing in English.
Wales has a long tradition of valuing highly its poets with the creation of a Bardd Plant Cymru (a Welsh Children’s Poet) each year and the chairing and crowning of poets at the annual National Eisteddfod. The National Poet, however, will be the first post which will serve Wales on a national basis and do this through both languages.
The National Poet will act as a cultural ambassador for Wales - marking and celebrating our lives through verse. She will take poetry into places it may not normally go in both the public and private area. Unlike England’s Poet Laureate Wales’s national Poet will not be required to write verse for specific formal occasions but will, instead, follow her inspiration. Gwyneth Lewis has already written a poem on Wales’ Grand Slam Victory and an elegy for Gwynfor Evans.
Gwyneth Lewis said: "It's a huge privilege to be representing poetry in Wales, where we have a poetic tradition stretching back to the sixth century and fully present in the twenty-first." Academi Chief Executive Peter Finch, who has long campaigned for the creation of a National Poet said: "I am delighted that poetry in Wales at last has a national champion. Gwyneth Lewis is the perfect choice." Gwyneth Lewis’s inauguration at the Hay festival will be followed by a series of high profile appearances at public events throughout Wales.
website designed & created by
She was so good I thought I'd find some information out . Please see the following:
Wales Appoints Its First National Poet Press Release Academi, 30 April, 2005
The United Kingdom has a Poet Laureate. Scotland has its Maker. Most states in the US have state poets. Canada has a Poet Laureate. In the USA there’s a Poet Laureate Consultant.
Now, after a six year campaign, Wales appoints its first National Poet.
Gwyneth Lewis, author of the world’s biggest poem (the Wales Millennium Centre bi-lingual inscription), NESTA fellow (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), author of six books of poems in two languages, a Book of the Year winner, librettist, sailor, and probably Wales’ best known poet since R S Thomas will be inaugurated as our first National Poet at a special 2.30 pm event at the Hay Literature Festival on May 30th this year.
The appointment of the first National Poet of Wales is made possible by direct funding from the Arts Council of Wales. The appointment is for one year with an option to renew for a second and will be administered by Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society of Writers.
Gwyneth Lewis was the unanimous choice for National Poet made by a group advising the Academi at a meeting in Cardiff recently. Members of this group include the National Eisteddfod, the National Library, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Culture committee, the Arts Council of Wales, Yr Gymdeithas Gerdd Dafod, Ty Newydd, the Dylan Thomas Centre, the University of Glamorgan and the Association for the Study of Welsh Writing in English.
Wales has a long tradition of valuing highly its poets with the creation of a Bardd Plant Cymru (a Welsh Children’s Poet) each year and the chairing and crowning of poets at the annual National Eisteddfod. The National Poet, however, will be the first post which will serve Wales on a national basis and do this through both languages.
The National Poet will act as a cultural ambassador for Wales - marking and celebrating our lives through verse. She will take poetry into places it may not normally go in both the public and private area. Unlike England’s Poet Laureate Wales’s national Poet will not be required to write verse for specific formal occasions but will, instead, follow her inspiration. Gwyneth Lewis has already written a poem on Wales’ Grand Slam Victory and an elegy for Gwynfor Evans.
Gwyneth Lewis said: "It's a huge privilege to be representing poetry in Wales, where we have a poetic tradition stretching back to the sixth century and fully present in the twenty-first." Academi Chief Executive Peter Finch, who has long campaigned for the creation of a National Poet said: "I am delighted that poetry in Wales at last has a national champion. Gwyneth Lewis is the perfect choice." Gwyneth Lewis’s inauguration at the Hay festival will be followed by a series of high profile appearances at public events throughout Wales.
website designed & created by
Sunday 30 December 2007
My intentions for 2008 ~ Scary or What?????
Big, Scary & Hairy Intentions for 2008 ~ 1st January 2008 ~ 1st Draft………
Re-work the novel “One death etc” and have in a shape ready for publishing by September 2008.
Take part in "Script Frenzy" in April ~ sign up now ~ 1st Jan. Intention is to produce a stage play on a subject not yet chosen ~ and complete the project aim ie 200 pages of script by end of April 2008.
Work on “The Mangle” ~ an outline of a novel on my mother and father and based around an art exhibition.Possible entry for NaNOWriMo 2008.
Work on Blog sites with more regularity this year. Drop first experimental site and regroup around “Blogger”. Discuss with Jules. Discuss before end of January with Will/Wendy the prospect of a blog through French Entree.
Work up the poetry I have and produce a Book ready to give to members of the family & friends. Based on places I’ve lived and persons I’ve known.~ “Personal Places”.
Goddard/Smallman/Taylor/Dudley/Meredith Family Tree ~ get others involved eg Peter, David, Adrian, etc in developing and sharpening what I already have on line in “Find my Past”.Complete research by December 2008.
I have slimmed down from 15 stone 4 pounds to 14 stone 7 pounds. I aim to lose another 1 stone by end of February 2008 through diet and exrcise ie walking & garden work.
Aim to sell house in France by September 2008. Decide on next location prior to this ~ but I would support Carol’s idea of a trip to USA/Canada and then our final move to a location that is ideal for us both in the UK with something small in France.......or the other way round?????
Bear in mind if we return to UK the need to secure a place on a degree copurse in Art. Eg University College of Wales, Carmarthen.
For this year only ~ Better start taking seriously the learning of French ~ incremental improvements each month. Produce a schedule [ See elsewhere] to support this. Aim for an “intermediary” level by the Summer.
Work on my sketchbooks ~ in readiness for Art School. Produce 5 new sketchbooks based on our experiences in France ~ called “The French Interlude” by August, 2008.
Support all the children & grandchildren as needs arise.
Be particularly supportive of Catherine & Angharad in their pregnancies.
Return to UK to see baby in March, 2008.
Check all our cameras to see what is working by mid January and use as part of sketchbook work after that.
Keep my beard well into the Spring 2008
Simplify our lives by selling/giving to charity those items which clutter our house and our lives.
Maintain & develop our friendships in France & UK..
Finish “Desrt Island Disc” Choices And record the programme.
Work for a successful launch of Connect FF and step down in April 2008.
Work for the success of the St Yrieix Book Club and read at least 12 books this yeat ~ 2008.
Support Carol's aims for 2008.
Vernon Goddard
Re-work the novel “One death etc” and have in a shape ready for publishing by September 2008.
Take part in "Script Frenzy" in April ~ sign up now ~ 1st Jan. Intention is to produce a stage play on a subject not yet chosen ~ and complete the project aim ie 200 pages of script by end of April 2008.
Work on “The Mangle” ~ an outline of a novel on my mother and father and based around an art exhibition.Possible entry for NaNOWriMo 2008.
Work on Blog sites with more regularity this year. Drop first experimental site and regroup around “Blogger”. Discuss with Jules. Discuss before end of January with Will/Wendy the prospect of a blog through French Entree.
Work up the poetry I have and produce a Book ready to give to members of the family & friends. Based on places I’ve lived and persons I’ve known.~ “Personal Places”.
Goddard/Smallman/Taylor/Dudley/Meredith Family Tree ~ get others involved eg Peter, David, Adrian, etc in developing and sharpening what I already have on line in “Find my Past”.Complete research by December 2008.
I have slimmed down from 15 stone 4 pounds to 14 stone 7 pounds. I aim to lose another 1 stone by end of February 2008 through diet and exrcise ie walking & garden work.
Aim to sell house in France by September 2008. Decide on next location prior to this ~ but I would support Carol’s idea of a trip to USA/Canada and then our final move to a location that is ideal for us both in the UK with something small in France.......or the other way round?????
Bear in mind if we return to UK the need to secure a place on a degree copurse in Art. Eg University College of Wales, Carmarthen.
For this year only ~ Better start taking seriously the learning of French ~ incremental improvements each month. Produce a schedule [ See elsewhere] to support this. Aim for an “intermediary” level by the Summer.
Work on my sketchbooks ~ in readiness for Art School. Produce 5 new sketchbooks based on our experiences in France ~ called “The French Interlude” by August, 2008.
Support all the children & grandchildren as needs arise.
Be particularly supportive of Catherine & Angharad in their pregnancies.
Return to UK to see baby in March, 2008.
Check all our cameras to see what is working by mid January and use as part of sketchbook work after that.
Keep my beard well into the Spring 2008
Simplify our lives by selling/giving to charity those items which clutter our house and our lives.
Maintain & develop our friendships in France & UK..
Finish “Desrt Island Disc” Choices And record the programme.
Work for a successful launch of Connect FF and step down in April 2008.
Work for the success of the St Yrieix Book Club and read at least 12 books this yeat ~ 2008.
Support Carol's aims for 2008.
Vernon Goddard
Monday 24 December 2007
Saturday 24 November 2007
Thursday 22 November 2007
Word Count Widgets | National Novel Writing Month
Word Count Widgets National Novel Writing Month: "
"
Well I've got this far. Now at 48,000 words and counting. Novel now has some shape to it and a little characterisation, but is mostly outline and story only.
"Well I've got this far. Now at 48,000 words and counting. Novel now has some shape to it and a little characterisation, but is mostly outline and story only.
Monday 19 November 2007
NanNoWriMo 2007
Well I've passed the half way mark and I'm doing well on the word count.
I now have coming up to 40000 words in the bank.
HOOOOOORAYYYYYYY
I now have coming up to 40000 words in the bank.
HOOOOOORAYYYYYYY
Sunday 4 November 2007
Garda Parker ~ Help along the way
Write Your Novel in 30 Days
—A 10-Step Guide
by Garda Parker
Copyright 2001-2007 Garda Parker. All rights reserved in all media.
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission provided it is used for not-for-profit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For all other purposes, contact Beth Mende Beth@WriteDirections.com.
If you've always wanted to write a novel but didn't know where to start or how long it would take to finish (if, indeed, you did finish!), this article is for you. It gives you the tips you need to finish a draft in 30 days. How can you do this? One page at time, and it's easier than you think.
1) Know the kind of book you want to write
You probably do already; after all, you've been thinking about it for what seems like forever. Is it a historical or contemporary literary novel? Does it fall into genre category: western, mystery, science fiction, romance, horror, true crime, suspense, etc.?
2) Know your lead character(s)
Again, you probably have thought through at least one or two characters already. If you have more, all the better. Your opening scene should contain your lead character(s), so your readers know who is central to the story.
3) Keep a project notebook
Designate this notebook for your novel work alone. Pick one you are drawn to (e.g., one with a bright cover, one from high school or college that meant something special to you). Carry it with you whenever and wherever you can. (If you can't, carry a reporter's notebook or pad, so you can jot down thoughts to transfer to your notebook later.)
Once you start your novel, you'll quickly learn that you'll be thinking about your story all the time. Ideas and scenes will come to you. So, too, will traits about your character(s)—things like eye color, hair length, quirky clothing, tone of voice, etc. You may like to think you'll remember them all later, but you might not.
The best thing, then, is to write these "flashes" down when they come to you or as soon thereafter. When you're not writing, you can organize your notes into sections.
4) Plunge in!
To give yourself momentum, open the book with a strong scene that grabs your readers and brings them directly into the actions and thoughts of the protagonist. Write a great first sentence that catapults your hero or heroine in a new direction, and which sets the tone and pace for your book. This sentence will get your creative juices flowing. Example: "His bed was in the street!" Those few words set up several story questions: Whose bed? Why is it in the street? Who did it? How did it get there? What's he going to do about it?
5) Write a set number of pages daily
Understand this: You will have nothing to expand on, edit, polish or turn into a salable manuscript if you don't first get your story on paper. So aim to write a set number of pages daily. Exceed that number whenever you can, but try not to write less, no matter how difficult the writing is.
As a point of reference: If you write one page a day for 30 days, you'll have a 30-page draft. If you write five pages a day, you'll have a 150-page draft. If you write 10 pages a day, you'll have a 300-page draft.
No matter what works for you, you will have a story at the end of the period—if you meet your quota.
6) Write a quick-and-dirty draft
Step #5 above will be of great help here, as you give yourself permission to just write, to simply tell the story. Don't judge yourself or your writing here. Resist self-editing! For example, don't be concerned with chapter length. Let chapter breaks occur naturally. Just write and write until you have followed your novel to the end.
Later, in the revision stage, you will develop and flesh out scenes—or discard some altogether. Don't be concerned with or afraid of any of that. At this stage you are in full control ... until, that is, your characters take over and start surprising and guiding you!
7) Keep your novel to yourself to maintain your excitement and momentum
Resist the urge to tell others you're writing a novel. They'll ask you what it's about, you'll tell them, and then they'll tell you that the idea won't work, or that they've already read a book just like it, or any number of things that will deflate your ego and dissipate the energy you and your project require.
If you must tell someone what you're doing in order to protect your writing time (e.g., a significant other), then do it in as cursory a way as possible.
Further, resist showing what you've written to anyone else. This stage of your writing is for you and you alone.
8) Identify your best time to write
If you can manage it, do your writing at this time. This will ensure the Muse knows where to find you, for contrary to popular opinion, writers don't wait for the Muse to tap them on the shoulder and say: "I'm ready now."
If you're in the same place at the same time every day, with your hands on the keyboard or your pencil and yellow pad poised, your Muse will be grateful for the place to perch!
Taking down notes and thoughts can happen at any time throughout the day, which is why you carry a notebook. Writing your daily pages cannot, which is why you need to create your own schedule.
9) Don't stop to research
Research can be one of the most enjoyable elements of writing a novel. Downright fun, even. But researching is not writing!
Don't let a lack of information stop your writing flow. Example: You may need to know what gauges are spread in front of your pilot protagonist if he or she is in an unfamiliar aircraft. Maybe you have a vague idea but need to know the exact placement of the airspeed indicator. As you're writing, just insert a phrase enclosed by brackets, such as [need detail here]. Later, during your "off-writing time," when you have finished researching what you need, you can go back to flesh out the details.
10) Understand—and use—manuscript format, even at the draft stage
Know that manuscript format means you use:
an 8-1/2 X 11 page
1-inch margins all around
double spacing
a clear type font in 10 or 12 pitch
opening chapter paragraphs that start halfway down the page
25 lines to a full page (could be a line or two less. Generally, a 25-line page equals 250 words. This is important information to have when, later, an editor asks you for a word count.)
a header at the top left of every page that includes your last name and a slash mark followed by your title (in this down-and-dirty stage you can replace a working title with "Best-selling Novel" for motivation, if you wish)
page number on the right.
Using proper formatting—along with writing a set number of pages at a set time—helps you develop the good habits that will carry over to all other aspects of your writing. Further, it will help you see your progress in a professional form, so you'll more deeply appreciate the incredible work you're doing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Garda Parker is the author of nine contemporary and historical novels, and two novellas. She's a member of Novelists, Inc., Women Writing the West and Romance Writers of America. Garda has taught elements of fiction writing and given workshops at various national and regional conferences, and coaches aspiring and established romance writers. She can be contacted via Beth@WriteDirections.com.
Copyright 2001-2007 Garda Parker. All rights reserved in all media.
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission provided it is used for not-for-profit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For all other purposes, contact Beth Mende Beth@WriteDirections.com.
—A 10-Step Guide
by Garda Parker
Copyright 2001-2007 Garda Parker. All rights reserved in all media.
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission provided it is used for not-for-profit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For all other purposes, contact Beth Mende Beth@WriteDirections.com.
If you've always wanted to write a novel but didn't know where to start or how long it would take to finish (if, indeed, you did finish!), this article is for you. It gives you the tips you need to finish a draft in 30 days. How can you do this? One page at time, and it's easier than you think.
1) Know the kind of book you want to write
You probably do already; after all, you've been thinking about it for what seems like forever. Is it a historical or contemporary literary novel? Does it fall into genre category: western, mystery, science fiction, romance, horror, true crime, suspense, etc.?
2) Know your lead character(s)
Again, you probably have thought through at least one or two characters already. If you have more, all the better. Your opening scene should contain your lead character(s), so your readers know who is central to the story.
3) Keep a project notebook
Designate this notebook for your novel work alone. Pick one you are drawn to (e.g., one with a bright cover, one from high school or college that meant something special to you). Carry it with you whenever and wherever you can. (If you can't, carry a reporter's notebook or pad, so you can jot down thoughts to transfer to your notebook later.)
Once you start your novel, you'll quickly learn that you'll be thinking about your story all the time. Ideas and scenes will come to you. So, too, will traits about your character(s)—things like eye color, hair length, quirky clothing, tone of voice, etc. You may like to think you'll remember them all later, but you might not.
The best thing, then, is to write these "flashes" down when they come to you or as soon thereafter. When you're not writing, you can organize your notes into sections.
4) Plunge in!
To give yourself momentum, open the book with a strong scene that grabs your readers and brings them directly into the actions and thoughts of the protagonist. Write a great first sentence that catapults your hero or heroine in a new direction, and which sets the tone and pace for your book. This sentence will get your creative juices flowing. Example: "His bed was in the street!" Those few words set up several story questions: Whose bed? Why is it in the street? Who did it? How did it get there? What's he going to do about it?
5) Write a set number of pages daily
Understand this: You will have nothing to expand on, edit, polish or turn into a salable manuscript if you don't first get your story on paper. So aim to write a set number of pages daily. Exceed that number whenever you can, but try not to write less, no matter how difficult the writing is.
As a point of reference: If you write one page a day for 30 days, you'll have a 30-page draft. If you write five pages a day, you'll have a 150-page draft. If you write 10 pages a day, you'll have a 300-page draft.
No matter what works for you, you will have a story at the end of the period—if you meet your quota.
6) Write a quick-and-dirty draft
Step #5 above will be of great help here, as you give yourself permission to just write, to simply tell the story. Don't judge yourself or your writing here. Resist self-editing! For example, don't be concerned with chapter length. Let chapter breaks occur naturally. Just write and write until you have followed your novel to the end.
Later, in the revision stage, you will develop and flesh out scenes—or discard some altogether. Don't be concerned with or afraid of any of that. At this stage you are in full control ... until, that is, your characters take over and start surprising and guiding you!
7) Keep your novel to yourself to maintain your excitement and momentum
Resist the urge to tell others you're writing a novel. They'll ask you what it's about, you'll tell them, and then they'll tell you that the idea won't work, or that they've already read a book just like it, or any number of things that will deflate your ego and dissipate the energy you and your project require.
If you must tell someone what you're doing in order to protect your writing time (e.g., a significant other), then do it in as cursory a way as possible.
Further, resist showing what you've written to anyone else. This stage of your writing is for you and you alone.
8) Identify your best time to write
If you can manage it, do your writing at this time. This will ensure the Muse knows where to find you, for contrary to popular opinion, writers don't wait for the Muse to tap them on the shoulder and say: "I'm ready now."
If you're in the same place at the same time every day, with your hands on the keyboard or your pencil and yellow pad poised, your Muse will be grateful for the place to perch!
Taking down notes and thoughts can happen at any time throughout the day, which is why you carry a notebook. Writing your daily pages cannot, which is why you need to create your own schedule.
9) Don't stop to research
Research can be one of the most enjoyable elements of writing a novel. Downright fun, even. But researching is not writing!
Don't let a lack of information stop your writing flow. Example: You may need to know what gauges are spread in front of your pilot protagonist if he or she is in an unfamiliar aircraft. Maybe you have a vague idea but need to know the exact placement of the airspeed indicator. As you're writing, just insert a phrase enclosed by brackets, such as [need detail here]. Later, during your "off-writing time," when you have finished researching what you need, you can go back to flesh out the details.
10) Understand—and use—manuscript format, even at the draft stage
Know that manuscript format means you use:
an 8-1/2 X 11 page
1-inch margins all around
double spacing
a clear type font in 10 or 12 pitch
opening chapter paragraphs that start halfway down the page
25 lines to a full page (could be a line or two less. Generally, a 25-line page equals 250 words. This is important information to have when, later, an editor asks you for a word count.)
a header at the top left of every page that includes your last name and a slash mark followed by your title (in this down-and-dirty stage you can replace a working title with "Best-selling Novel" for motivation, if you wish)
page number on the right.
Using proper formatting—along with writing a set number of pages at a set time—helps you develop the good habits that will carry over to all other aspects of your writing. Further, it will help you see your progress in a professional form, so you'll more deeply appreciate the incredible work you're doing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Garda Parker is the author of nine contemporary and historical novels, and two novellas. She's a member of Novelists, Inc., Women Writing the West and Romance Writers of America. Garda has taught elements of fiction writing and given workshops at various national and regional conferences, and coaches aspiring and established romance writers. She can be contacted via Beth@WriteDirections.com.
Copyright 2001-2007 Garda Parker. All rights reserved in all media.
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission provided it is used for not-for-profit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For all other purposes, contact Beth Mende Beth@WriteDirections.com.
A taster ....................
Chapter 2 ~ The scene is set ~ 16th August, 1985
Vernon Goddard raised himself on one elbow, snatched at the ringing alarm clock that was to his left and shut it down quickly. Pity he couldn’t shut down the alarm bells ringing in his head. In the tiny bedroom at 38 Woodhall Road, Darfield, Barnsley he was entirely on his own. For this was to be his wedding day, and, of course, it would have been a serious breach of the ethical code of future mother-in-laws for him to have enjoyed the luxury of a sexual encounter with Carol the night before it was legalized. Except that for at least the past months rehearsals of various kinds had been progressing and they were in the process of delivering a very mature and fully rounded orgasm to match anything on earth.
But not for the 15th August. On the 15th he was to sleep alone and in mother-in-law’s house. It was 7 am for God’s sake. Who on earth would have set the time of the alarm for this god-forsaken time?
He knew the answer but couldn’t mouth her name.
He got up not having much choice and after showering and partially dressing made his way downstairs. It was 7.24 am ~ bit early to be going to a wedding.
Gladys and Colin were already having breakfast and were, already, fully dressed for the forthcoming event. This was to be as much Gladys’ day as Carol’s. A serious looking blue hat sat idly on the table. It had some fluffy feathers at its side. It kind of leaned over. It was dangerously near the marmalade. Ah, if he only had the courage.
Vernon Goddard raised himself on one elbow, snatched at the ringing alarm clock that was to his left and shut it down quickly. Pity he couldn’t shut down the alarm bells ringing in his head. In the tiny bedroom at 38 Woodhall Road, Darfield, Barnsley he was entirely on his own. For this was to be his wedding day, and, of course, it would have been a serious breach of the ethical code of future mother-in-laws for him to have enjoyed the luxury of a sexual encounter with Carol the night before it was legalized. Except that for at least the past months rehearsals of various kinds had been progressing and they were in the process of delivering a very mature and fully rounded orgasm to match anything on earth.
But not for the 15th August. On the 15th he was to sleep alone and in mother-in-law’s house. It was 7 am for God’s sake. Who on earth would have set the time of the alarm for this god-forsaken time?
He knew the answer but couldn’t mouth her name.
He got up not having much choice and after showering and partially dressing made his way downstairs. It was 7.24 am ~ bit early to be going to a wedding.
Gladys and Colin were already having breakfast and were, already, fully dressed for the forthcoming event. This was to be as much Gladys’ day as Carol’s. A serious looking blue hat sat idly on the table. It had some fluffy feathers at its side. It kind of leaned over. It was dangerously near the marmalade. Ah, if he only had the courage.
NaNoWriMo 2007
I've changed the title of the book to:
One death, three weddings, some christenings and a time-piece.
One death, three weddings, some christenings and a time-piece.
Thursday 1 November 2007
J.H.Smith....Thanks for your poem
This poem is about the time I spent in the early 1960's working on a conventional, undercut, "pick and shovel face" 8 yard long stent, 4'6" to the back of the cut, 3'3" maximum height, wooden props and flats.
My Working Day.
Ten past five and the bedside clock rings out its dreadful din,
I stumble wearily down the stairs; my day is about to begin.
A quick cold swill and a hurried cup of tea, no time for any fuss,
Then off I go with my "Tommy box" to catch the workmen's bus.
Six o'clock at the pithead baths, my clean clothes all are shed,
Now there's heavy boots on my feet and a hard hat on my head.
I take my lamp it's been fully charged, in the lamp-room over night,
The battery hangs down from my belt; on my hat I fix the light.
Half past six and I'm on the bond, descending at great speed,
Crammed in tight with all the rest, to hold on there's no need.
We hit pit bottom with a bump and set off for the face,
The walk is long and arduous to reach our working place.
Seven o'clock I'm at the face, the conveyor belt is filling,
Blast-picks hammer at the coal, the dust they make is killing.
Pick and shovel I use in turns, until my arms are tired and ache,
And bending over in the low, my back feels like it will break.
Ten o'clock it's time for our food, with hands all sweaty and black,
But the cheese and onion goes down a treat, a miner's favourite snack.
All too soon our short break is done and it's back to work we must,
Once more into the breach dear friends and the ever present dust.
One o'clock the days last coal's all shifted, I'm sat here blacker than tar,
The roof is made safe and supported and the tools are back on the bar.
I stretch as I get in the heading; it's nice to stand straight for a change,
Though tired I'm feeling light-hearted, for the end of the shift is in range.
Two o'clock in the pithead baths, I'm washing away the grime,
Now clean and refreshed I head for home, the bus it arrives on time,
On the table my dinner is waiting and it's devoured without delay,
With heavy eyes I slump in my chair, at the end of my working day.
J. H. Smith.
My Working Day.
Ten past five and the bedside clock rings out its dreadful din,
I stumble wearily down the stairs; my day is about to begin.
A quick cold swill and a hurried cup of tea, no time for any fuss,
Then off I go with my "Tommy box" to catch the workmen's bus.
Six o'clock at the pithead baths, my clean clothes all are shed,
Now there's heavy boots on my feet and a hard hat on my head.
I take my lamp it's been fully charged, in the lamp-room over night,
The battery hangs down from my belt; on my hat I fix the light.
Half past six and I'm on the bond, descending at great speed,
Crammed in tight with all the rest, to hold on there's no need.
We hit pit bottom with a bump and set off for the face,
The walk is long and arduous to reach our working place.
Seven o'clock I'm at the face, the conveyor belt is filling,
Blast-picks hammer at the coal, the dust they make is killing.
Pick and shovel I use in turns, until my arms are tired and ache,
And bending over in the low, my back feels like it will break.
Ten o'clock it's time for our food, with hands all sweaty and black,
But the cheese and onion goes down a treat, a miner's favourite snack.
All too soon our short break is done and it's back to work we must,
Once more into the breach dear friends and the ever present dust.
One o'clock the days last coal's all shifted, I'm sat here blacker than tar,
The roof is made safe and supported and the tools are back on the bar.
I stretch as I get in the heading; it's nice to stand straight for a change,
Though tired I'm feeling light-hearted, for the end of the shift is in range.
Two o'clock in the pithead baths, I'm washing away the grime,
Now clean and refreshed I head for home, the bus it arrives on time,
On the table my dinner is waiting and it's devoured without delay,
With heavy eyes I slump in my chair, at the end of my working day.
J. H. Smith.
First writings for NanNoWriMo
One Death, two weddings and some christenings
A novel
By David Vernon Goddard
First Draft starting on 1st November 2007
Version 1.0
©
DVG
Index for the novel
Section One
A death and the consequences
Section Two
Weddings are forever
Section Three
Christenings and all things bright
Section One
A death and its consequences
“And death shall have no dominion”
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
“Great is thy Faithfulness”
Chapter 1 ~ A Rising and a falling
Chapter 2 ~ Bad News travels fast
Chapter 3 ~ The funeral
Chapter 4 ~ Aftermath
Chapter 1 ~ A rising and a Falling
At 5 a.m.Will raised himself on one arm, looked in the direction of Mary, saw she was still sleeping, and so slipped away from his side of the bed. He tip-toed out of the bedroom picking up his work clothes from the back of a chair. The lino floor was cold and unforgiving on his bare feet. He had placed his boots and long socks downstairs the night before in readiness for the early morning shift. He whistled because of the cold and just because it gave him some comfort. It was his favourite hymn.
Downstairs he was soon at work on the fire coaxing it into some kind of combustion. At last it burst into life ~ he was a dab hand at lighting a good fire. Now for the tea. As he finished dressing, the kettle boiled and finally it too whistled against the cold, only more loudly than Will had done. He reached for the sooted kettle and took it into the scullery before its song could wake any one else. Better to leave them all sleep for a little while longer. It was only a little after 5.10.a.m on an early November day dawning with a touch of frost on the trees and ground. “Better to let hem sleep,” he whispered to himself. He knew how hard they all worked, even the young ones.
The tea tasted good and the cup was hot in his hands and made them tingle. With his boots now on and the laces tied tight he was able to go outside. He slipped on his coat jacket and took a scarf out of its pocket.
He made for the small orchard at the side of the house and looked forward to picking some of the last of the apples still on a branch. It had been a clear bright and starry night. The black was turning a dark blue and there were some streaks of lightness on the horizons. The apples were ripe. It had been a good crop; they had taken many of them to the Harvest festival at the Church in Penllegaer. Will stood in the orchard vaguely happy at the mingled thoughts of apple, the tea in the kitchen and the smell of early morning out of doors. But then the cold crept alongside his thoughts and reminded him of the day before him. Don’t get too comfortable it said. You’ve got to get the boys up, sort out the dogs, take some tea to Mary and get yourself off to No 3. The last thought jolted him. It was not a comfortable or comforting thought.
Back in the scullery he finished off his tea and fought to get a little more life into the fire in the main room, which was dying on him. That done, he took some tea to Mary. She was still asleep so he woke her gently. “Time to get up,” he said. This ritual had been established early in their marriage so they were both so used to this encounter that nothing special was expected of either of them. For him, merely to bring the cup; for her merely to drink from it. There were no other expectations. After years of being together and after the birth of seven children and after years of struggling to make ends meet and after some heartbreak and after the growing demands of work and some tears there were only the rituals left. But they both adhered to them as if any loss of their place in their lives would disturb something deep down. Disturb something irrevocably. He left Mary to the task of getting up and went to the nearest bedroom. It was now 5.23 am and the new day was edging in.
“Time to get up,” he said to whoever was awake. Possibly Ewart or Cyril or Ronnie, or Elvet since all shared this room. He heard one of them stirring. “Tea downstairs,” he heard himself say. There was no answer from the greyness of the bedroom but he knew they’d all be downstairs within ten minutes, half-dressed for work and wanting more than the cup of tea he’d prepared. But then that was Mary’s job. Cooking and serving breakfast. As it was her job to wake up Mansel, Brenda and Archie long after he’d gone. He glanced up to a small pocket watch which hung on a nail above the fire. It was a fine silver watch which he had hung there after buying it in Swansea.It had just turned 5.30 am.
He made his way outside and through the allotment to the fenced area containing the dogs ~ two greyhounds bought from hard-earned wages in the hope of further winnings and glory. Neither had been forthcoming over the last 2 years but they had at least given him good company on his walks through Penllegaer woods and when he’d done the occasional poaching on Sir John Llewellyn’s land. And did they love him both wanting his attention as he went into the compound to feed them, both vying for the food and the new water. He’d take them for a long walk later this afternoon, when the morning shift was over. He’d go down to the common with Archie and Brenda and give everyone a run ~ it would be good for them all. Perhaps Mary would come.
But then he corrected himself because Mary never came with him and the dogs. She’d said they were a waste of money when they were bought. She’d chastised Will and Ewart for clubbing together to buy them.
She’d said, “At least with chickens , they lay eggs and you get to eat them. But these animals are stupid and they eat too much.” After that they were never allowed in the house and having never won a race she was proved right time after time.
Will stirred himself from these thoughts and repeated perhaps with a little gusto, “ Yes, girls, we’ll go for a little walk to the common this afternoon.” They licked him with affection.
It was 5.45 am when he reappeared in the scullery. Each of the boys greeted him with quiet respect and Mary, who was now busying herself with breakfast, asked what he wanted by way of food for his tin. When the tin had been filled with bread and cheese and he had poured some cold tea into his bottle he was ready to get off. Coat on and scarf around his neck he was off. “See you all later ,” he shouted as he closed the back door. He didn’t catch any reply but he did hear the dogs barking fondly at him as he made for the gate.
It was a short walk to No 3 which was the main Penllegaer colliery on the common .He walked briskly knowing he was just a little late from feeding the dogs. As he approached he could see other men gathering, clones of himself in different hues of grey or black clutching their snap-tins and having a last smoke. Dawn was now fulsome and he could clearly make out the outline of the colliery against the sky, could hear the sounds of workmen, the clanking of the small train and the trams.
And then suddenly the hooter calling them all together for a last search before the descent and another hard day at the face. Will talked to his friends as they took their turns in handing in the matches, cigarettes and other paraphernalia.
And too soon they were at the cage.
Will had never been totally comfortable in a cage ~ he walked forward, was carried forward until they were all in. Perhaps he was the only one with fears ~ the others never showed anything and he had never mentioned anything to them. But as they descended his apprehension grew until the relief of reaching the bottom and h comfort of stillness, a complete blackness and then the turning on of the individual lamps.
Will was noted and respected for his strength. If anyone wanted extra help, something moved, perhaps some brute force,, they called on William Goddard or as they called him when down the pit, Will “OneTon”. Will was ideally built for working down a mine: not tall, but very broad with a strong physique and muscled arms. It was reputed that when he really got going he could outpace all the other shift workers in cutting and gathering coal.
Today they would be opening a new seam and he would need all his strength in getting the coal shifted into the drams.
From the base of the cage they moved forward to the edge of what looked like an entrance to a cave but smaller. Lights flickered on surfaces or caught an eye or a nose. It was black and light, black on light, light reflecting black, light reflecting back.
From the base of the cage they moved forward to the edge of what looked like an entrance to a cave but smaller. Lights flickered on surfaces or caught an eye or a nose. It was black and light, black on light, light reflecting black, liht reflecting back.And in the blacllightnightday as they set off down the tunneled cave someone started to sing.
At first just on his own but then others joined in. They were singing “Great is thy faithfulness”, Will’s favourite hymn ~ the one he’d been whistling earlier..
They sang and echoed down the narrowing cave.:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my father!
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not:
As thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth.
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
They reached the end of the tunnel and were ready for the day’s work. The blasters had come ahead of them and were preparing to open a new seam, which, it was promised by the Pit manager, to be rich in the best anthracite and easy to pick.This was a good day and all the men were happy.
A novel
By David Vernon Goddard
First Draft starting on 1st November 2007
Version 1.0
©
DVG
Index for the novel
Section One
A death and the consequences
Section Two
Weddings are forever
Section Three
Christenings and all things bright
Section One
A death and its consequences
“And death shall have no dominion”
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
“Great is thy Faithfulness”
Chapter 1 ~ A Rising and a falling
Chapter 2 ~ Bad News travels fast
Chapter 3 ~ The funeral
Chapter 4 ~ Aftermath
Chapter 1 ~ A rising and a Falling
At 5 a.m.Will raised himself on one arm, looked in the direction of Mary, saw she was still sleeping, and so slipped away from his side of the bed. He tip-toed out of the bedroom picking up his work clothes from the back of a chair. The lino floor was cold and unforgiving on his bare feet. He had placed his boots and long socks downstairs the night before in readiness for the early morning shift. He whistled because of the cold and just because it gave him some comfort. It was his favourite hymn.
Downstairs he was soon at work on the fire coaxing it into some kind of combustion. At last it burst into life ~ he was a dab hand at lighting a good fire. Now for the tea. As he finished dressing, the kettle boiled and finally it too whistled against the cold, only more loudly than Will had done. He reached for the sooted kettle and took it into the scullery before its song could wake any one else. Better to leave them all sleep for a little while longer. It was only a little after 5.10.a.m on an early November day dawning with a touch of frost on the trees and ground. “Better to let hem sleep,” he whispered to himself. He knew how hard they all worked, even the young ones.
The tea tasted good and the cup was hot in his hands and made them tingle. With his boots now on and the laces tied tight he was able to go outside. He slipped on his coat jacket and took a scarf out of its pocket.
He made for the small orchard at the side of the house and looked forward to picking some of the last of the apples still on a branch. It had been a clear bright and starry night. The black was turning a dark blue and there were some streaks of lightness on the horizons. The apples were ripe. It had been a good crop; they had taken many of them to the Harvest festival at the Church in Penllegaer. Will stood in the orchard vaguely happy at the mingled thoughts of apple, the tea in the kitchen and the smell of early morning out of doors. But then the cold crept alongside his thoughts and reminded him of the day before him. Don’t get too comfortable it said. You’ve got to get the boys up, sort out the dogs, take some tea to Mary and get yourself off to No 3. The last thought jolted him. It was not a comfortable or comforting thought.
Back in the scullery he finished off his tea and fought to get a little more life into the fire in the main room, which was dying on him. That done, he took some tea to Mary. She was still asleep so he woke her gently. “Time to get up,” he said. This ritual had been established early in their marriage so they were both so used to this encounter that nothing special was expected of either of them. For him, merely to bring the cup; for her merely to drink from it. There were no other expectations. After years of being together and after the birth of seven children and after years of struggling to make ends meet and after some heartbreak and after the growing demands of work and some tears there were only the rituals left. But they both adhered to them as if any loss of their place in their lives would disturb something deep down. Disturb something irrevocably. He left Mary to the task of getting up and went to the nearest bedroom. It was now 5.23 am and the new day was edging in.
“Time to get up,” he said to whoever was awake. Possibly Ewart or Cyril or Ronnie, or Elvet since all shared this room. He heard one of them stirring. “Tea downstairs,” he heard himself say. There was no answer from the greyness of the bedroom but he knew they’d all be downstairs within ten minutes, half-dressed for work and wanting more than the cup of tea he’d prepared. But then that was Mary’s job. Cooking and serving breakfast. As it was her job to wake up Mansel, Brenda and Archie long after he’d gone. He glanced up to a small pocket watch which hung on a nail above the fire. It was a fine silver watch which he had hung there after buying it in Swansea.It had just turned 5.30 am.
He made his way outside and through the allotment to the fenced area containing the dogs ~ two greyhounds bought from hard-earned wages in the hope of further winnings and glory. Neither had been forthcoming over the last 2 years but they had at least given him good company on his walks through Penllegaer woods and when he’d done the occasional poaching on Sir John Llewellyn’s land. And did they love him both wanting his attention as he went into the compound to feed them, both vying for the food and the new water. He’d take them for a long walk later this afternoon, when the morning shift was over. He’d go down to the common with Archie and Brenda and give everyone a run ~ it would be good for them all. Perhaps Mary would come.
But then he corrected himself because Mary never came with him and the dogs. She’d said they were a waste of money when they were bought. She’d chastised Will and Ewart for clubbing together to buy them.
She’d said, “At least with chickens , they lay eggs and you get to eat them. But these animals are stupid and they eat too much.” After that they were never allowed in the house and having never won a race she was proved right time after time.
Will stirred himself from these thoughts and repeated perhaps with a little gusto, “ Yes, girls, we’ll go for a little walk to the common this afternoon.” They licked him with affection.
It was 5.45 am when he reappeared in the scullery. Each of the boys greeted him with quiet respect and Mary, who was now busying herself with breakfast, asked what he wanted by way of food for his tin. When the tin had been filled with bread and cheese and he had poured some cold tea into his bottle he was ready to get off. Coat on and scarf around his neck he was off. “See you all later ,” he shouted as he closed the back door. He didn’t catch any reply but he did hear the dogs barking fondly at him as he made for the gate.
It was a short walk to No 3 which was the main Penllegaer colliery on the common .He walked briskly knowing he was just a little late from feeding the dogs. As he approached he could see other men gathering, clones of himself in different hues of grey or black clutching their snap-tins and having a last smoke. Dawn was now fulsome and he could clearly make out the outline of the colliery against the sky, could hear the sounds of workmen, the clanking of the small train and the trams.
And then suddenly the hooter calling them all together for a last search before the descent and another hard day at the face. Will talked to his friends as they took their turns in handing in the matches, cigarettes and other paraphernalia.
And too soon they were at the cage.
Will had never been totally comfortable in a cage ~ he walked forward, was carried forward until they were all in. Perhaps he was the only one with fears ~ the others never showed anything and he had never mentioned anything to them. But as they descended his apprehension grew until the relief of reaching the bottom and h comfort of stillness, a complete blackness and then the turning on of the individual lamps.
Will was noted and respected for his strength. If anyone wanted extra help, something moved, perhaps some brute force,, they called on William Goddard or as they called him when down the pit, Will “OneTon”. Will was ideally built for working down a mine: not tall, but very broad with a strong physique and muscled arms. It was reputed that when he really got going he could outpace all the other shift workers in cutting and gathering coal.
Today they would be opening a new seam and he would need all his strength in getting the coal shifted into the drams.
From the base of the cage they moved forward to the edge of what looked like an entrance to a cave but smaller. Lights flickered on surfaces or caught an eye or a nose. It was black and light, black on light, light reflecting black, light reflecting back.
From the base of the cage they moved forward to the edge of what looked like an entrance to a cave but smaller. Lights flickered on surfaces or caught an eye or a nose. It was black and light, black on light, light reflecting black, liht reflecting back.And in the blacllightnightday as they set off down the tunneled cave someone started to sing.
At first just on his own but then others joined in. They were singing “Great is thy faithfulness”, Will’s favourite hymn ~ the one he’d been whistling earlier..
They sang and echoed down the narrowing cave.:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my father!
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not:
As thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth.
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
They reached the end of the tunnel and were ready for the day’s work. The blasters had come ahead of them and were preparing to open a new seam, which, it was promised by the Pit manager, to be rich in the best anthracite and easy to pick.This was a good day and all the men were happy.
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Details of NaNoWriMo 2007
You too can join this merry band of crazy people.
Just click on my banner on the right hand of my blog site.
This will take you through to the official home of:
National Novel Writing Month ~ which takes place in November.
Starts on 1st November ......so hurry on dowm!!
Just click on my banner on the right hand of my blog site.
This will take you through to the official home of:
National Novel Writing Month ~ which takes place in November.
Starts on 1st November ......so hurry on dowm!!
Why don't you try.......
Interested in writing? Shy of trying? Want to pick up a pen but too scared??
GO ON TRY ................details to follow!!
GO ON TRY ................details to follow!!
There's novel isn't it!!
Students try novel idea: Writing book in 30 days
Kristin Park
Special for The Republic
Nov. 25, 2006 12:00 AM
After reading a newspaper article about a person with amnesia and then letting his imagination wander, Lanis Johnson felt he had the makings of a novel. It was only 10 days later when Johnson typed the last page of his 180-page manuscript.
Johnson and 20 other students, is taking a unique creative-writing class at Phoenix College called 30 Days = Novel. The online course has spanned the month of November to coincide with National Novel Writing Month. With the goal of completing 50,000 words, the length of a short novel, students are drafting a creative work by following daily writing goals and regularly checking in with each other online.
Instructor Trina Belanger encourages the students to focus on meeting a daily word quota by writing every day. She also discourages editing or reworking the words being laid to paper, which is a foreign concept to many writers. advertisement
"If we edit during the process, we will not get anywhere. The inner critic takes over and censors the work and the process," Belanger said.
Johnson, 34, of Buckeye, said he has felt comfortable with the course's writing process and calls himself a "forward writer."
"I don't develop a plot. I really like to write things and let them fall into place without going back over what I've already written. Rewriting makes it more sterile. You strip the emotion and lose that rawness," Johnson said.
A stay-at-home dad and full-time college student, Johnson was not at all intimidated by the feat of drafting a novel. "I find writing fun. It's not work - it was just like getting three free credits. I never dreamed I'd finish in 10 days, though. I also didn't realize how sore my hands and shoulders would be," Johnson said.
Annette Pye is another 30 Days = Novel student juggling responsibilities while aspiring to become a writer. The Tolleson resident has three kids, a full-time job and manages to carry a full-time course load at Phoenix College, where she focuses on business management.
Although Pye, 38, did not complete her novel in record time like Johnson, she is nearing the home stretch and continues to make her daily goals. Hers is a murder/mystery /time travel novel and takes place in 1730 and 2004.
Pye squeezes in her writing time between midnight and 4 a.m. and said that sleeping is a luxury within her hectic lifestyle. "My writing takes me out of the everyday stress."
She refers to Belanger as her cheerleader and appreciates the instructor's daily posts of encouragement and writing tips.
Belanger has no doubt her students will finish. "I don't think the students will allow anyone not to succeed. They bolster each other up all the time. Although writing is a solo sport, taking on something like this has a team mentality. It's working," Belanger said.
Kristin Park
Special for The Republic
Nov. 25, 2006 12:00 AM
After reading a newspaper article about a person with amnesia and then letting his imagination wander, Lanis Johnson felt he had the makings of a novel. It was only 10 days later when Johnson typed the last page of his 180-page manuscript.
Johnson and 20 other students, is taking a unique creative-writing class at Phoenix College called 30 Days = Novel. The online course has spanned the month of November to coincide with National Novel Writing Month. With the goal of completing 50,000 words, the length of a short novel, students are drafting a creative work by following daily writing goals and regularly checking in with each other online.
Instructor Trina Belanger encourages the students to focus on meeting a daily word quota by writing every day. She also discourages editing or reworking the words being laid to paper, which is a foreign concept to many writers. advertisement
"If we edit during the process, we will not get anywhere. The inner critic takes over and censors the work and the process," Belanger said.
Johnson, 34, of Buckeye, said he has felt comfortable with the course's writing process and calls himself a "forward writer."
"I don't develop a plot. I really like to write things and let them fall into place without going back over what I've already written. Rewriting makes it more sterile. You strip the emotion and lose that rawness," Johnson said.
A stay-at-home dad and full-time college student, Johnson was not at all intimidated by the feat of drafting a novel. "I find writing fun. It's not work - it was just like getting three free credits. I never dreamed I'd finish in 10 days, though. I also didn't realize how sore my hands and shoulders would be," Johnson said.
Annette Pye is another 30 Days = Novel student juggling responsibilities while aspiring to become a writer. The Tolleson resident has three kids, a full-time job and manages to carry a full-time course load at Phoenix College, where she focuses on business management.
Although Pye, 38, did not complete her novel in record time like Johnson, she is nearing the home stretch and continues to make her daily goals. Hers is a murder/mystery /time travel novel and takes place in 1730 and 2004.
Pye squeezes in her writing time between midnight and 4 a.m. and said that sleeping is a luxury within her hectic lifestyle. "My writing takes me out of the everyday stress."
She refers to Belanger as her cheerleader and appreciates the instructor's daily posts of encouragement and writing tips.
Belanger has no doubt her students will finish. "I don't think the students will allow anyone not to succeed. They bolster each other up all the time. Although writing is a solo sport, taking on something like this has a team mentality. It's working," Belanger said.
Monday 20 August 2007
Downing Street memo - Wikisource
Downing Street memo - Wikisource
Bibliographic details for "Downing Street memo"
Page name: Downing Street memo
Author: Wikisource contributors
Publisher: Wikisource, The Free Library.
Date of last revision: 24 June 2007 18:09 UTC
Date retrieved: 20 August 2007 16:12 UTC
Permanent link: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Downing_Street_memo&oldid=398183
Page Version ID: 398183
Please remember to check your manual of style, standards guide or instructor's guidelines for the exact syntax to suit your needs.
Bibliographic details for "Downing Street memo"
Page name: Downing Street memo
Author: Wikisource contributors
Publisher: Wikisource, The Free Library.
Date of last revision: 24 June 2007 18:09 UTC
Date retrieved: 20 August 2007 16:12 UTC
Permanent link: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Downing_Street_memo&oldid=398183
Page Version ID: 398183
Please remember to check your manual of style, standards guide or instructor's guidelines for the exact syntax to suit your needs.
Feel Good Story
Brothers astonish in Wales A levels
20/8/2007
Two Afghan brothers who could not even speak English two and a half years ago have had astonishing successes in Wales A level exams.
17-year-old Obaid and 14 year-old Zubaidullah Kousha arrived in Swansea from Afghanistan 2 and a half years ago, without even being able to speak English.
Now Obaid has 6 Grade As at A-Level, even though he still has one year to go before going on to fulfil his dream of studying Medicine, while his younger brother Zubaidullah has achieved 3 grade As at AS Level, even though he is only 15.
Both attended Pentrehafod School before Obaid went on to Swansea College last year. Although there is no Sixth Form at Pentrehafod, it wasn't long before teachers spotted their abilities and capacity for hard graft and arranged extra tuition along with lessons at Swansea College.
Zubaidullah, who has As in Physics, Chemistry and Maths at AS level said, "It wasn't easy, it was hard work, but our teachers motivated us to do our exams early because we work hard and there was no point waiting around. I had one hour a week with Mr Jones, Mr Toogood in Physics and Chemistry and the Maths I did myself."
Obaid swept the board with straight As in Biology, Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Persian. He achieved over 90% in most subjects with 99% Physics.
"When we got to Swansea my English was really bad so I decided to do the sciences first to give me a chance to concentrate on my English later. I want to apply for Uni to do Medicine but I'm going to do a couple more A-Levels next year. Not Science though, that's done."
The brothers' achievement is astonishing, but for now they are taking a well-earned chance to relax.
Zubaidullah said, "Yeah, we're really happy. Especially Mum and Dad."
20/8/2007
Two Afghan brothers who could not even speak English two and a half years ago have had astonishing successes in Wales A level exams.
17-year-old Obaid and 14 year-old Zubaidullah Kousha arrived in Swansea from Afghanistan 2 and a half years ago, without even being able to speak English.
Now Obaid has 6 Grade As at A-Level, even though he still has one year to go before going on to fulfil his dream of studying Medicine, while his younger brother Zubaidullah has achieved 3 grade As at AS Level, even though he is only 15.
Both attended Pentrehafod School before Obaid went on to Swansea College last year. Although there is no Sixth Form at Pentrehafod, it wasn't long before teachers spotted their abilities and capacity for hard graft and arranged extra tuition along with lessons at Swansea College.
Zubaidullah, who has As in Physics, Chemistry and Maths at AS level said, "It wasn't easy, it was hard work, but our teachers motivated us to do our exams early because we work hard and there was no point waiting around. I had one hour a week with Mr Jones, Mr Toogood in Physics and Chemistry and the Maths I did myself."
Obaid swept the board with straight As in Biology, Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Persian. He achieved over 90% in most subjects with 99% Physics.
"When we got to Swansea my English was really bad so I decided to do the sciences first to give me a chance to concentrate on my English later. I want to apply for Uni to do Medicine but I'm going to do a couple more A-Levels next year. Not Science though, that's done."
The brothers' achievement is astonishing, but for now they are taking a well-earned chance to relax.
Zubaidullah said, "Yeah, we're really happy. Especially Mum and Dad."
Sunday 19 August 2007
alt="Click here to join aworldofmaturefolks">Friday 10 August 2007
Angelina Who??????
Angelina something or other
I have it on good authority ~ Well Arthur told Patrick who mentioned it to Diane who didn't believe it but passed it onto me anyway that there was a conversation in the pub opposite the Chateau at Montbrun the other night or was it 2 weeks ago that the owner is thinking of selling up.I told Brian but he denied it all.
Having restored the castle to its former glory the owner's moving on & the Chateau is for sale.
I'm told by Gloria who heard it from Peter, her husband ~ so it must be true ~ that the Dutch owner, an entrepreneur, who may have earned his fortune by dubious but interesting means......... Allegedly Involving film noir, rounded ladies, well-endowed French men and some whips......and horses. Peter denied having anything to do with the whips & horses.
Also according to Arthur who also heard it from Gloria ~ so it must be true ~ the new owners flew in by helicopter the other day to visit the Chateau & said Dutchman.I think the report of a helicopter is probably a bit of an exaggeration!
I think they're called Brad Pitt or something like that & Angelina Something, I think.
Anyway a nice couple just trying to get away from it all & settle into the quiet rhythms of France.
Just like the rest of us really. They'll fit in nicely with all of us and I'm sure Angelina will enjoy the Coffee morning group.
Brad is going to join Bernadette's class for French lessons and the words got around ~ can't understand it but Bernadette's class is already full for September!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by David Vernon Goddard at 16:34 0 comments
Labels: Brad and Jollie
I have it on good authority ~ Well Arthur told Patrick who mentioned it to Diane who didn't believe it but passed it onto me anyway that there was a conversation in the pub opposite the Chateau at Montbrun the other night or was it 2 weeks ago that the owner is thinking of selling up.I told Brian but he denied it all.
Having restored the castle to its former glory the owner's moving on & the Chateau is for sale.
I'm told by Gloria who heard it from Peter, her husband ~ so it must be true ~ that the Dutch owner, an entrepreneur, who may have earned his fortune by dubious but interesting means......... Allegedly Involving film noir, rounded ladies, well-endowed French men and some whips......and horses. Peter denied having anything to do with the whips & horses.
Also according to Arthur who also heard it from Gloria ~ so it must be true ~ the new owners flew in by helicopter the other day to visit the Chateau & said Dutchman.I think the report of a helicopter is probably a bit of an exaggeration!
I think they're called Brad Pitt or something like that & Angelina Something, I think.
Anyway a nice couple just trying to get away from it all & settle into the quiet rhythms of France.
Just like the rest of us really. They'll fit in nicely with all of us and I'm sure Angelina will enjoy the Coffee morning group.
Brad is going to join Bernadette's class for French lessons and the words got around ~ can't understand it but Bernadette's class is already full for September!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by David Vernon Goddard at 16:34 0 comments
Labels: Brad and Jollie
Wednesday 8 August 2007
Monday 30 July 2007
Why I write ~ George Orwell
George Orwell
Why I Write
[d]
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
1946
THE END
Why I Write
[d]
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
1946
THE END
Sunday 29 July 2007
Milton.......
On May Morning
Now the bright morning Star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
Hail bounteous May that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
Now the bright morning Star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
Hail bounteous May that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
Emily Dickinson
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
A poem by Ibn Arabi
Wonder
Wonder,
A garden among the flames!
My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.
My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.
- Ibn Arabi
Wonder,
A garden among the flames!
My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.
My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.
- Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi (1165-1240)
Ibn Arabi poems
Mystic, philosopher, poet, sage, Muhammad Ibn 'Arabi is one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Known as Muhyiddin (the Revivifier of Religion) and the Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Master), he was born in 1165 AD into the Moorish culture of Andalusian Spain, the center of an extraordinary flourishing and cross-fertilization of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, through which the major scientific and philosophical works of antiquity were transmitted to Northern Europe. Ibn 'Arabi's spiritual attainments were evident from an early age, and he was renowned for his great visionary capacity as well as being a superlative teacher. He travelled extensively in the Islamic world and died in Damascus in 1240 AD.
He wrote over 350 works including the Fusûs al-Hikam , an exposition of the inner meaning of the wisdom of the prophets in the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic line, and the Futûhât al-Makkiyya, a vast encyclopaedia of spiritual knowledge which unites and distinguishes the three strands of tradition, reason and mystical insight. In his Diwân and Tarjumân al-Ashwâq he also wrote some of the finest poetry in the Arabic language. These extensive writings provide a beautiful exposition of the Unity of Being, the single and indivisible reality which simultaneously transcends and is manifested in all the images of the world. Ibn 'Arabi shows how Man, in perfection, is the complete image of this reality and how those who truly know their essential self, know God.
Firmly rooted in the Quran, his work is universal, accepting that each person has a unique path to the truth, which unites all paths in itself. He has profoundly influenced the development of Islam since his time, as well as significant aspects of the philosophy and literature of the West. His wisdom has much to offer us in the modern world in terms of understanding what it means to be human.
Ibn Arabi believed in the unity of all religions and taught different prophets all came with the same essential truth.
"There is no knowledge except that taken from God, for He alone is the Knower... the prophets, in spite of their great number and the long periods of time which separate them, had no disagreement in knowledge of God, since they took it from God."
- Ibn Arabi
From Ibn Arabi society
Ibn Arabi (1165-1240)
Ibn Arabi poems
Mystic, philosopher, poet, sage, Muhammad Ibn 'Arabi is one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Known as Muhyiddin (the Revivifier of Religion) and the Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Master), he was born in 1165 AD into the Moorish culture of Andalusian Spain, the center of an extraordinary flourishing and cross-fertilization of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, through which the major scientific and philosophical works of antiquity were transmitted to Northern Europe. Ibn 'Arabi's spiritual attainments were evident from an early age, and he was renowned for his great visionary capacity as well as being a superlative teacher. He travelled extensively in the Islamic world and died in Damascus in 1240 AD.
He wrote over 350 works including the Fusûs al-Hikam , an exposition of the inner meaning of the wisdom of the prophets in the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic line, and the Futûhât al-Makkiyya, a vast encyclopaedia of spiritual knowledge which unites and distinguishes the three strands of tradition, reason and mystical insight. In his Diwân and Tarjumân al-Ashwâq he also wrote some of the finest poetry in the Arabic language. These extensive writings provide a beautiful exposition of the Unity of Being, the single and indivisible reality which simultaneously transcends and is manifested in all the images of the world. Ibn 'Arabi shows how Man, in perfection, is the complete image of this reality and how those who truly know their essential self, know God.
Firmly rooted in the Quran, his work is universal, accepting that each person has a unique path to the truth, which unites all paths in itself. He has profoundly influenced the development of Islam since his time, as well as significant aspects of the philosophy and literature of the West. His wisdom has much to offer us in the modern world in terms of understanding what it means to be human.
Ibn Arabi believed in the unity of all religions and taught different prophets all came with the same essential truth.
"There is no knowledge except that taken from God, for He alone is the Knower... the prophets, in spite of their great number and the long periods of time which separate them, had no disagreement in knowledge of God, since they took it from God."
- Ibn Arabi
From Ibn Arabi society
We are more alike.....
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
Passing Time
Passing Time
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
- Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
- Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Phenomenal Woman
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
More of TH
A Woman Unconscious
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;
That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.
And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come
Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head.
Ted Hughes
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;
That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.
And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come
Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head.
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes ~ one of my favourits
Old Age Gets Up
Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks
An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention
The light at the window, so square and so same
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on
Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia
Something tries to save itself-searches
For defenses-but words evade
Like flies with their own notions
Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death's night
Sits on the bed's edge
Pulls its pieces together
Loosely tucks in its shirt
-- Ted Hughes
Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks
An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention
The light at the window, so square and so same
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on
Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia
Something tries to save itself-searches
For defenses-but words evade
Like flies with their own notions
Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death's night
Sits on the bed's edge
Pulls its pieces together
Loosely tucks in its shirt
-- Ted Hughes
An exercise to get you writing.......Kate Seitz
Meditation Walks for Writing
Objectives: Students will be able to...
1. use visualization to stimulate writing
2. write descriptively
3. use listening skills
4. relax for 20 mins.
Materials:
1. composition paper
2. pen/pencil
3. tape of relaxing instrumental music (can be used, but not necessary)
Preliminary Activity:
1. Ask students to move the desks into a circle and to get into a
comfortable position (head on the desk, lying on the floor, etc.) and to
refrain from making any noises, talking, or giggling. In order for this to
work, students must be quiet. Limit all distractions as much as possible.
2. Turn off the lights.
Activity:
1. Have students concentrate on breathing, taking a deep breath in, holding
(for about a second), and then exhaling. "Deep breath in, hold it, and
release"
Repeat 3 times.
2. Say to students in a calm and quiet tone: While still breathing ("deep
breath in, hold it, release") concentrate on your muscles.
First focus on your toes and your feet. Without moving a muscle, try to
tense your toes as you breathe in and relaxing as you exhale. Deep breath and
tense, hold it, and release. Next, focus on your legs, deep breath in and
tense, hold it and release. Move on to your back and stomach: deep breath
in, hold it and release. Move on to your shoulders and neck: deep breath in
and tense, hold it and release. Your head: deep breath in, hold it and
release. Finally your arms, hands, and fingers: deep breath in, hold it and
release. You have just squeezed all the frustration, anxiety, sadness, and
other negative feelings out of your body. You feel very calm, relaxed, and
comfortable.
3. While still breathing, deep breath in, hold it, and release, imagine
yourself getting up out of your chair and walking towards the door. You
reach your hand out and can feel the coolness of the doorknob. You open the
door, and walk out into the hall
At this point lead the students (in their minds) to the nearest exit door and
outside onto school grounds.
4. You open the exit door with its bright red neon exit sign and step
outside. Now this morning when you stepped outside it was [insert weather
description here]. This time when you step outside you feel very
comfortable, and it is springtime (warm sunny, plants blooming, etc.). You
can feel the warm sunlight on your face and shoulders. Also, as you walk
across the school grounds, you notice that you are barefoot. You can feel the
cool green grass beneath your feet. [Have students walk towards the woods]
5. As you walk on the trail in the woods you notice the ground beneath your
feet, how wide the trail is, if there are any plants growing along the trail,
the types of trees on either side, color of the leaves, etc. {Give students
various sensory descriptions as they "walk" and continually repeat the
descriptions at various intervals}
6. The trail can lead to a number of different places and beyond. This is a
quick gist of the trip my students take. Feel free to improvise and include
various descriptions or sensory prompts. For this part I'm going to write
using 3rd person instead of second. When speaking to the students use 2nd
person.
a. a stream with bright tropical fish and stepping stones to get across
to the rest of the trail. (Usually I tell my students that one of their feet
slips and enters the water, whereby a fish will take a quick nibble on one of
their toes)
b. a field with tall grass and a GIANT tree in the middle (so tall that
the top is lost in the clouds)-- the trail picks up on the other side of the
field.
c. back on the trail and the scenery begins to change and they find
themselves in their own "special place" (somewhere where they feel
comfortable and safe-- it can be a room, the beach, a clearing in the woods,
a house, etc.)
Ask the students:
-what objects do you see?
-Colors?
-What sounds do you hear?
-What are you doing?
-What time of day is it? What time of year is it?
(Questions which use their senses)
d. a person joins them in their special place--someone who makes them
feel calm and happy. It could be a person they saw yesterday, last week,
today, or someone they haven't seen in years.
Ask students:
-Who is this person?
-What are you doing with this person? Talking? Fishing?
Watching a sunset?
e. the special person leaves, but the students feel happy because they
were able to spend time with this person. And they know that this person
will always be here waiting for them.
f. students take one last sweeping glance around their special place
noticing all details. Have the students turn around and the trail will be
right behind them.
g. take the students back the way they came.. repeating various sensory
cues ("you see the sunlight filtering through the branches, you can hear the
birds in the trees, and you feel the warm earth beneath your feet")
7. When students have "returned" to their seats, tell them to slowly cover
their eyes with their hands (this is always a great way to tell who fell
asleep). As you count back from 5, slowly have them open their eyes into
their hands, and as you reach the number one, slowly take their hands away
from their eyes.
8. Say to students: "Now without talking, turn to your sheet of paper and
beginning writing about the experience. Describe the trail, your special
place, or special person, or for those of you who fell asleep, what you
dreamed about. But don't talk; you don't want to break the spell." You will
be amazed how quickly and quietly they write!
9. For the last 5 minutes of class debrief:
Discuss: How easy or hard it was to write.
What images they saw.
****I never grade the meditation writings. I just read them and make
supportive comments about the content. This is a great prelim. activity for
creative writing. I use the meditation writes as pre-writes for poetry
writing sessions.
Have fun!
-Kate Seitz
9th grade English
Southern Regional High School
Manahawkin, NJ
Objectives: Students will be able to...
1. use visualization to stimulate writing
2. write descriptively
3. use listening skills
4. relax for 20 mins.
Materials:
1. composition paper
2. pen/pencil
3. tape of relaxing instrumental music (can be used, but not necessary)
Preliminary Activity:
1. Ask students to move the desks into a circle and to get into a
comfortable position (head on the desk, lying on the floor, etc.) and to
refrain from making any noises, talking, or giggling. In order for this to
work, students must be quiet. Limit all distractions as much as possible.
2. Turn off the lights.
Activity:
1. Have students concentrate on breathing, taking a deep breath in, holding
(for about a second), and then exhaling. "Deep breath in, hold it, and
release"
Repeat 3 times.
2. Say to students in a calm and quiet tone: While still breathing ("deep
breath in, hold it, release") concentrate on your muscles.
First focus on your toes and your feet. Without moving a muscle, try to
tense your toes as you breathe in and relaxing as you exhale. Deep breath and
tense, hold it, and release. Next, focus on your legs, deep breath in and
tense, hold it and release. Move on to your back and stomach: deep breath
in, hold it and release. Move on to your shoulders and neck: deep breath in
and tense, hold it and release. Your head: deep breath in, hold it and
release. Finally your arms, hands, and fingers: deep breath in, hold it and
release. You have just squeezed all the frustration, anxiety, sadness, and
other negative feelings out of your body. You feel very calm, relaxed, and
comfortable.
3. While still breathing, deep breath in, hold it, and release, imagine
yourself getting up out of your chair and walking towards the door. You
reach your hand out and can feel the coolness of the doorknob. You open the
door, and walk out into the hall
At this point lead the students (in their minds) to the nearest exit door and
outside onto school grounds.
4. You open the exit door with its bright red neon exit sign and step
outside. Now this morning when you stepped outside it was [insert weather
description here]. This time when you step outside you feel very
comfortable, and it is springtime (warm sunny, plants blooming, etc.). You
can feel the warm sunlight on your face and shoulders. Also, as you walk
across the school grounds, you notice that you are barefoot. You can feel the
cool green grass beneath your feet. [Have students walk towards the woods]
5. As you walk on the trail in the woods you notice the ground beneath your
feet, how wide the trail is, if there are any plants growing along the trail,
the types of trees on either side, color of the leaves, etc. {Give students
various sensory descriptions as they "walk" and continually repeat the
descriptions at various intervals}
6. The trail can lead to a number of different places and beyond. This is a
quick gist of the trip my students take. Feel free to improvise and include
various descriptions or sensory prompts. For this part I'm going to write
using 3rd person instead of second. When speaking to the students use 2nd
person.
a. a stream with bright tropical fish and stepping stones to get across
to the rest of the trail. (Usually I tell my students that one of their feet
slips and enters the water, whereby a fish will take a quick nibble on one of
their toes)
b. a field with tall grass and a GIANT tree in the middle (so tall that
the top is lost in the clouds)-- the trail picks up on the other side of the
field.
c. back on the trail and the scenery begins to change and they find
themselves in their own "special place" (somewhere where they feel
comfortable and safe-- it can be a room, the beach, a clearing in the woods,
a house, etc.)
Ask the students:
-what objects do you see?
-Colors?
-What sounds do you hear?
-What are you doing?
-What time of day is it? What time of year is it?
(Questions which use their senses)
d. a person joins them in their special place--someone who makes them
feel calm and happy. It could be a person they saw yesterday, last week,
today, or someone they haven't seen in years.
Ask students:
-Who is this person?
-What are you doing with this person? Talking? Fishing?
Watching a sunset?
e. the special person leaves, but the students feel happy because they
were able to spend time with this person. And they know that this person
will always be here waiting for them.
f. students take one last sweeping glance around their special place
noticing all details. Have the students turn around and the trail will be
right behind them.
g. take the students back the way they came.. repeating various sensory
cues ("you see the sunlight filtering through the branches, you can hear the
birds in the trees, and you feel the warm earth beneath your feet")
7. When students have "returned" to their seats, tell them to slowly cover
their eyes with their hands (this is always a great way to tell who fell
asleep). As you count back from 5, slowly have them open their eyes into
their hands, and as you reach the number one, slowly take their hands away
from their eyes.
8. Say to students: "Now without talking, turn to your sheet of paper and
beginning writing about the experience. Describe the trail, your special
place, or special person, or for those of you who fell asleep, what you
dreamed about. But don't talk; you don't want to break the spell." You will
be amazed how quickly and quietly they write!
9. For the last 5 minutes of class debrief:
Discuss: How easy or hard it was to write.
What images they saw.
****I never grade the meditation writings. I just read them and make
supportive comments about the content. This is a great prelim. activity for
creative writing. I use the meditation writes as pre-writes for poetry
writing sessions.
Have fun!
-Kate Seitz
9th grade English
Southern Regional High School
Manahawkin, NJ
GB Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950
Playwright, born in Dublin into a loveless and genteely poor household overshadowed by his father's tippling, but filled with music and musicians by his mother. Shaw was educated both at Wesley Connexional School, in the National Gallery of Ireland, and by his own wide reading. In 1876 he joined his mother who had moved to London as a music teacher.
From 1878 to 1883 Shaw wrote but failed to publish five novels, but in subsequent years made remarkable intellectual progress, acheived conquest over his shyness, and made many important friendships. In 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society, and over the next decade wrote as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette, an art critic for the World, a music critic for the Star under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, and dramatic critic for the Saturday Review.
By 1925, Shaw's work earned him the Nobel Prize. He established the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation and left residue of an estate to institute a British alphabet of at least forty letters (12).
1856-1950
Playwright, born in Dublin into a loveless and genteely poor household overshadowed by his father's tippling, but filled with music and musicians by his mother. Shaw was educated both at Wesley Connexional School, in the National Gallery of Ireland, and by his own wide reading. In 1876 he joined his mother who had moved to London as a music teacher.
From 1878 to 1883 Shaw wrote but failed to publish five novels, but in subsequent years made remarkable intellectual progress, acheived conquest over his shyness, and made many important friendships. In 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society, and over the next decade wrote as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette, an art critic for the World, a music critic for the Star under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, and dramatic critic for the Saturday Review.
By 1925, Shaw's work earned him the Nobel Prize. He established the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation and left residue of an estate to institute a British alphabet of at least forty letters (12).
The Rossettis................
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), poet.
Christina Rossetti's first productions were printed privately, 1842 and 1847. She contributed to the Germ under the pseudonym "Ellen Alleyne" in 1850. She also published Goblin Market (1862), Commonplace (1870), Sing Song (1872), and subsequently composed mainly devotional literature.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), painter and poet.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti studied at the Royal Academy 1846, and later under Ford Madox Brown. He met Woolner, Holman Hunt and Millais, and founded the Pre-Raphaelite school of Painting. After the death of his wife in 1862, D.G. Rossetti lived with his brother William, Mr. Swinburne, and George Meredith.
William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), writer and critic.
A pre-Raphaelite writer and art critic, William Rossetti also edited the works of his brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He edited four editions of D.G. Rossetti's collected works, Memoir (1895), and Christina Rossetti's New and Collected Poems (1904).
Rossetti, Christina Georgina.
The Prince's Progress and Other Poems.
Macmillan, 1866.
Contents Introduction Publishers Writers Periodicals Notes Next Page
UBC Library Special Collections & University Archives
Select image to view
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.
The House of Life ... Being Now for the First Time Given in Its Full Text.
Boston: Copeland & Day, 1894.
Select image to view
Rossetti, William Michael.
Swineburne's Poems and Ballads: A Criticism.
J.C. Hotten, 1866.
Christina Rossetti's first productions were printed privately, 1842 and 1847. She contributed to the Germ under the pseudonym "Ellen Alleyne" in 1850. She also published Goblin Market (1862), Commonplace (1870), Sing Song (1872), and subsequently composed mainly devotional literature.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), painter and poet.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti studied at the Royal Academy 1846, and later under Ford Madox Brown. He met Woolner, Holman Hunt and Millais, and founded the Pre-Raphaelite school of Painting. After the death of his wife in 1862, D.G. Rossetti lived with his brother William, Mr. Swinburne, and George Meredith.
William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), writer and critic.
A pre-Raphaelite writer and art critic, William Rossetti also edited the works of his brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He edited four editions of D.G. Rossetti's collected works, Memoir (1895), and Christina Rossetti's New and Collected Poems (1904).
Rossetti, Christina Georgina.
The Prince's Progress and Other Poems.
Macmillan, 1866.
Contents Introduction Publishers Writers Periodicals Notes Next Page
UBC Library Special Collections & University Archives
Select image to view
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.
The House of Life ... Being Now for the First Time Given in Its Full Text.
Boston: Copeland & Day, 1894.
Select image to view
Rossetti, William Michael.
Swineburne's Poems and Ballads: A Criticism.
J.C. Hotten, 1866.
Arthur Symons ~ Things you need to know
Arthur Symons
1865-1945
Arthur Symons was a poet, translator, critic and editor who captured Colbeck's attention like no other writer. Educated in Devonshire, Symons befriended many artists and writers of the nineties in England and France. He published several volumes of verse and criticism, notably "Symbolist Movement in Literature" (1899), contributed regularly to Athenaeum, Saturday, and Fortnightly reviews, wrote plays, edited, and translated from six languages (7).
Colbeck proclaimed: "Arthur Symon's prose writings fascinated me, an uncritical youth, more than sixty years ago. When I first read that remarkable essay 'Fact in Literature,' I realized I was in communion with a mind I would venerate and love always. Perhaps we could recapture the first paragraph of that work:
The invention of printing helped to destroy literature. Scribes, and memories not yet spoilt by over-cramming, preserved all the literature that was worth preserving. Books that had to be remembered by heart, or copied with slow, elaborate penmanship, were not thrown away on people who did not want them. They remained in the hands of people of taste. The first book pointed the way to the first newspaper, and a newspaper is a thing meant to be not only forgotten but destroyed. With the deliberate destruction of print, the respect for printed literature vanished, and a single term came to be used for the poem and the "news item." What had once been an art for the few became a trade for the many.
"Symons was a great deal more than a writer of the Nineties, and is completely mis-classified with poets of the Decadence. He had his brief moment with the Rhymer's Club, and, as editor of The Savoy appeared to dominate the scene for those few months of 1896, but he lived aside from any movement.
Contents Introduction Publishers Writers Periodicals Notes Next Page
UBC Library Special Collections & University Archives
"Symons was straightway in a distinguished company, and one can imagine the astonishment of his fellow editors, had they learned the age of the newcomer. Time passed, and Symons became a familiar of nearly all the writers of his time, accepted equally in Paris as in London, and found a ready market for his prose in the Quarterlies and Monthlys: but Editors, more often than not, returned his verse submissions with polite thanks, declining to publish. Days and Nights, 1889, his first book of poems, had a limited success, but Macmillans never had any call for a reprint; and his next three volumes of verse might not have seen the light of day but for the enterprise of a young, almost unknown, Leonard Smithers. Silhouettes and London Nights survived into second editions, each with a new preface which renders it permanently valuable, but it is true to say that the poet had no assured market for his work until the turn of the century, when a newly arrived publisher - William Heinemann - took him up (8).
1865-1945
Arthur Symons was a poet, translator, critic and editor who captured Colbeck's attention like no other writer. Educated in Devonshire, Symons befriended many artists and writers of the nineties in England and France. He published several volumes of verse and criticism, notably "Symbolist Movement in Literature" (1899), contributed regularly to Athenaeum, Saturday, and Fortnightly reviews, wrote plays, edited, and translated from six languages (7).
Colbeck proclaimed: "Arthur Symon's prose writings fascinated me, an uncritical youth, more than sixty years ago. When I first read that remarkable essay 'Fact in Literature,' I realized I was in communion with a mind I would venerate and love always. Perhaps we could recapture the first paragraph of that work:
The invention of printing helped to destroy literature. Scribes, and memories not yet spoilt by over-cramming, preserved all the literature that was worth preserving. Books that had to be remembered by heart, or copied with slow, elaborate penmanship, were not thrown away on people who did not want them. They remained in the hands of people of taste. The first book pointed the way to the first newspaper, and a newspaper is a thing meant to be not only forgotten but destroyed. With the deliberate destruction of print, the respect for printed literature vanished, and a single term came to be used for the poem and the "news item." What had once been an art for the few became a trade for the many.
"Symons was a great deal more than a writer of the Nineties, and is completely mis-classified with poets of the Decadence. He had his brief moment with the Rhymer's Club, and, as editor of The Savoy appeared to dominate the scene for those few months of 1896, but he lived aside from any movement.
Contents Introduction Publishers Writers Periodicals Notes Next Page
UBC Library Special Collections & University Archives
"Symons was straightway in a distinguished company, and one can imagine the astonishment of his fellow editors, had they learned the age of the newcomer. Time passed, and Symons became a familiar of nearly all the writers of his time, accepted equally in Paris as in London, and found a ready market for his prose in the Quarterlies and Monthlys: but Editors, more often than not, returned his verse submissions with polite thanks, declining to publish. Days and Nights, 1889, his first book of poems, had a limited success, but Macmillans never had any call for a reprint; and his next three volumes of verse might not have seen the light of day but for the enterprise of a young, almost unknown, Leonard Smithers. Silhouettes and London Nights survived into second editions, each with a new preface which renders it permanently valuable, but it is true to say that the poet had no assured market for his work until the turn of the century, when a newly arrived publisher - William Heinemann - took him up (8).
Poetry by Barbara Helfgott Hyett
The Inlet
Here again, the rough-cut jetty, the ridge
worn flat by men trolling bass and bluefish
and boys with plastic buckets full of porgies.
The hooks are taut in their mouths.
I comb the crevices for mussels, find
a baby flounder, stiff and gray, a shell.
Right side down a huge crab bakes on a rock.
Behind me, vacant, boarded up, the tenements
where I was born. Beige bricks, three or four stories
crammed with families, fathers who delivered milk
or sold potato chips from tall tin cans -
I scooped them into brown bags, watched the oil seep through.
In summer, mothers gave up unemployment
to work in tourist places hawking beach chairs,
vegematics, tickets to Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Mothers didn't swim. They sent us to stay
at the lifeguard stand with a quarter for lunch.
We'd swim past the jetty to the rotted pilings, then back
to the shallows and the puckered seaweed. I'd open my eyes
underwater, watch the silversides skimming my cheek.
When my towel underneath the boardwalk was all in shadow
and the sand had turned quartz cold, I went home.
At Zwiebacks, after dinner, I'd read comic books
or else I'd buy one used. Later, at Altman Field
the boys from Philly who stayed at the guest house
would start to shoot some baskets.
Sometimes I'd just sit on the bleachers
licking salt from the back of my hand.
Everything was like that then: crisp, expectable,
a silent movie, the ocean and the hoop disappearing
gradually from the end of the playground
until I couldn't see the ball anymore.
In my bed, I'd watch the sway of the clotheslines
on the rooftop outside my window and listen
to the men playing pinochle at the dining-room table,
the stogie smoke gray and small-winged down the hall.
The women swept the floors, laid roach traps,
ate chocolate at the mahjongg game downstairs.
They'd laugh, and clack the bone faced tiles,
a sound of summer when summer wasn't time
but place, ordinary as the low cry of a loon
diving at night, the voice of a beach block,
its muggy rhythm, the click of the tide
just before it turns.
Barbara Helfgott Hyett
Here again, the rough-cut jetty, the ridge
worn flat by men trolling bass and bluefish
and boys with plastic buckets full of porgies.
The hooks are taut in their mouths.
I comb the crevices for mussels, find
a baby flounder, stiff and gray, a shell.
Right side down a huge crab bakes on a rock.
Behind me, vacant, boarded up, the tenements
where I was born. Beige bricks, three or four stories
crammed with families, fathers who delivered milk
or sold potato chips from tall tin cans -
I scooped them into brown bags, watched the oil seep through.
In summer, mothers gave up unemployment
to work in tourist places hawking beach chairs,
vegematics, tickets to Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Mothers didn't swim. They sent us to stay
at the lifeguard stand with a quarter for lunch.
We'd swim past the jetty to the rotted pilings, then back
to the shallows and the puckered seaweed. I'd open my eyes
underwater, watch the silversides skimming my cheek.
When my towel underneath the boardwalk was all in shadow
and the sand had turned quartz cold, I went home.
At Zwiebacks, after dinner, I'd read comic books
or else I'd buy one used. Later, at Altman Field
the boys from Philly who stayed at the guest house
would start to shoot some baskets.
Sometimes I'd just sit on the bleachers
licking salt from the back of my hand.
Everything was like that then: crisp, expectable,
a silent movie, the ocean and the hoop disappearing
gradually from the end of the playground
until I couldn't see the ball anymore.
In my bed, I'd watch the sway of the clotheslines
on the rooftop outside my window and listen
to the men playing pinochle at the dining-room table,
the stogie smoke gray and small-winged down the hall.
The women swept the floors, laid roach traps,
ate chocolate at the mahjongg game downstairs.
They'd laugh, and clack the bone faced tiles,
a sound of summer when summer wasn't time
but place, ordinary as the low cry of a loon
diving at night, the voice of a beach block,
its muggy rhythm, the click of the tide
just before it turns.
Barbara Helfgott Hyett
Monday 23 July 2007
Harry Potter ~ The end???
Epilogue
In the story's epilogue, set nineteen years later, Ginny Weasley and Harry have three children named James, Albus Severus, and Lily. Ron and Hermione have two children named Rose and Hugo. The two families meet at King's Cross Station when they are taking their children to Platform Nine and Three Quarters for their departure to Hogwarts. Lily is too young to attend Hogwarts just yet, Albus is entering his first year at the school, and James is already an experienced Gryffindor. James finds Teddy Lupin, the son of Lupin and Tonks, kissing a girl named Victoire, who James says is his cousin and so can be assumed to be the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. Neville Longbottom is now the Herbology professor at the school and is close friends with Harry. At the station, Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione spot Draco Malfoy across the platform with his unnamed wife and their son Scorpius; it is suggested that the former rivals have reconciled their differences. The book ends with the line: "The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well."
In the story's epilogue, set nineteen years later, Ginny Weasley and Harry have three children named James, Albus Severus, and Lily. Ron and Hermione have two children named Rose and Hugo. The two families meet at King's Cross Station when they are taking their children to Platform Nine and Three Quarters for their departure to Hogwarts. Lily is too young to attend Hogwarts just yet, Albus is entering his first year at the school, and James is already an experienced Gryffindor. James finds Teddy Lupin, the son of Lupin and Tonks, kissing a girl named Victoire, who James says is his cousin and so can be assumed to be the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. Neville Longbottom is now the Herbology professor at the school and is close friends with Harry. At the station, Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione spot Draco Malfoy across the platform with his unnamed wife and their son Scorpius; it is suggested that the former rivals have reconciled their differences. The book ends with the line: "The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well."
Tuesday 3 July 2007
Are you interested in Global Warming?
Sun to Blame for Global Warming
by John Carlisle
Those looking for the culprit responsible for global warming have missed the obvious choice - the sun. While it may come as a newsflash to some, scientific evidence conclusively shows that the sun plays a far more important role in causing global warming and global cooling than any other factor, natural or man-made. In fact, what may very well be the ultimate ironic twist in the global warming controversy is that the same solar forces that caused 150 years of warming are on the verge of producing a prolonged period of cooling.
The evidence for future cooling is supported by considerable scientific research that has only recently begun to come to light. It wasn't until 1980, with the aid of NASA satellites, that scientists definitively proved that the sun's brightness - or radiance - varies in intensity, and that these variations occur in predictable cyclical patterns. This was a crucial discovery because the climate models used by greenhouse theory proponents always assumed that the sun's radiance was constant. With that assumption in hand, they could ignore solar influences and focus on other influences, including human.
That turned out to be a reckless assumption. Further investigation revealed that there is a strong correlation between the variations in solar irradiance and fluctuations in the Earth's temperature. When the sun gets dimmer, the Earth gets cooler; when the sun gets brighter, the Earth gets hotter. So important is the sun in climate change that half of the 1.5° F temperature increase since 1850 is directly attributable to changes in the sun. According to NASA scientists David Lind and Judith Lean, only one-quarter of a degree can be ascribed to other causes, such as greenhouse gases, through which human activities can theoretically exert some influence.
The correlation between major changes in the Earth's temperature and changes in solar radiance is quite compelling. A perfect example is the Little Ice Age that lasted from 1650 to 1850. Temperatures in this era fell to as much as 2° F below today's temperature, causing the glaciers to advance, the canals in Venice to freeze and major crop failures. Interestingly, this dramatic cooling happened in a period when the sun's radiance had fallen to exceptionally low levels. Between 1645 and 1715, the sun was in a stage that scientists refer to as the Maunder Minimum. In this minimum, the sun has few sunspots and low magnetism which automatically indicates a lower radiance level. When the sun began to emerge from the minimum, radiance increased and by 1850 the temperature had warmed up enough for the Little Ice Age to end.
The Maunder Minimum is not an isolated event: it is a cyclical phenomenon that typically appears for 70 years following 200-300 years of warming. With only a few exceptions, whenever there is a solar minimum, the Earth gets colder. For example, Europe in the 13th and 15th Centuries experienced significantly lower temperatures and in both cases the cold spells coincided with a minimum. Similar correlations were found in the 9th Century and again in the 7th Century. Since 8700 B.C., there have been at least ten major cold periods similar to the Little Ice Age. Nine of those ten cold spells coincided with Maunder Minima.
There is no reason to believe that this 10,000-year-old cycle of solar-induced warming and cooling will change. Dr. Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and one of the nation's leading experts on global climate change, believes that we may be nearing the end of a solar warming cycle. Since the last minimum ended in 1715, Baliunas says there is a strong possibility that the Earth will start cooling off in the early part of the 21st Century.
Indeed, it could already be happening. Of the 1.5° F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase, or one degree, occurred between 1850 and 1940. In the last 50 years, the planetary temperature increased at a significantly slower rate of 0.5° F - precisely when dramatically increasing amounts of man-made carbon dioxide emissions should have been accelerating warming. Further buttressing the arguments for future cooling is the evidence from NASA satellites that the global temperature has actually fallen 0.04° F since 1979.
Of course, it is impossible to precisely predict when solar radiance will drop and global temperatures will begin falling. But one thing is certain: There is little evidence that mankind is responsible for global warming. There is considerable evidence that the sun causes warming and will most likely stimulate cooling in the not so distant future.
# # #
John K. Carlisle is the Director of The National Center for Public Policy Research's Environmental Policy Task Force. Comments may be sent to JCarlisle@nationalcenter.org.
by John Carlisle
Those looking for the culprit responsible for global warming have missed the obvious choice - the sun. While it may come as a newsflash to some, scientific evidence conclusively shows that the sun plays a far more important role in causing global warming and global cooling than any other factor, natural or man-made. In fact, what may very well be the ultimate ironic twist in the global warming controversy is that the same solar forces that caused 150 years of warming are on the verge of producing a prolonged period of cooling.
The evidence for future cooling is supported by considerable scientific research that has only recently begun to come to light. It wasn't until 1980, with the aid of NASA satellites, that scientists definitively proved that the sun's brightness - or radiance - varies in intensity, and that these variations occur in predictable cyclical patterns. This was a crucial discovery because the climate models used by greenhouse theory proponents always assumed that the sun's radiance was constant. With that assumption in hand, they could ignore solar influences and focus on other influences, including human.
That turned out to be a reckless assumption. Further investigation revealed that there is a strong correlation between the variations in solar irradiance and fluctuations in the Earth's temperature. When the sun gets dimmer, the Earth gets cooler; when the sun gets brighter, the Earth gets hotter. So important is the sun in climate change that half of the 1.5° F temperature increase since 1850 is directly attributable to changes in the sun. According to NASA scientists David Lind and Judith Lean, only one-quarter of a degree can be ascribed to other causes, such as greenhouse gases, through which human activities can theoretically exert some influence.
The correlation between major changes in the Earth's temperature and changes in solar radiance is quite compelling. A perfect example is the Little Ice Age that lasted from 1650 to 1850. Temperatures in this era fell to as much as 2° F below today's temperature, causing the glaciers to advance, the canals in Venice to freeze and major crop failures. Interestingly, this dramatic cooling happened in a period when the sun's radiance had fallen to exceptionally low levels. Between 1645 and 1715, the sun was in a stage that scientists refer to as the Maunder Minimum. In this minimum, the sun has few sunspots and low magnetism which automatically indicates a lower radiance level. When the sun began to emerge from the minimum, radiance increased and by 1850 the temperature had warmed up enough for the Little Ice Age to end.
The Maunder Minimum is not an isolated event: it is a cyclical phenomenon that typically appears for 70 years following 200-300 years of warming. With only a few exceptions, whenever there is a solar minimum, the Earth gets colder. For example, Europe in the 13th and 15th Centuries experienced significantly lower temperatures and in both cases the cold spells coincided with a minimum. Similar correlations were found in the 9th Century and again in the 7th Century. Since 8700 B.C., there have been at least ten major cold periods similar to the Little Ice Age. Nine of those ten cold spells coincided with Maunder Minima.
There is no reason to believe that this 10,000-year-old cycle of solar-induced warming and cooling will change. Dr. Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and one of the nation's leading experts on global climate change, believes that we may be nearing the end of a solar warming cycle. Since the last minimum ended in 1715, Baliunas says there is a strong possibility that the Earth will start cooling off in the early part of the 21st Century.
Indeed, it could already be happening. Of the 1.5° F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase, or one degree, occurred between 1850 and 1940. In the last 50 years, the planetary temperature increased at a significantly slower rate of 0.5° F - precisely when dramatically increasing amounts of man-made carbon dioxide emissions should have been accelerating warming. Further buttressing the arguments for future cooling is the evidence from NASA satellites that the global temperature has actually fallen 0.04° F since 1979.
Of course, it is impossible to precisely predict when solar radiance will drop and global temperatures will begin falling. But one thing is certain: There is little evidence that mankind is responsible for global warming. There is considerable evidence that the sun causes warming and will most likely stimulate cooling in the not so distant future.
# # #
John K. Carlisle is the Director of The National Center for Public Policy Research's Environmental Policy Task Force. Comments may be sent to JCarlisle@nationalcenter.org.
Monday 2 July 2007
Martin Bell
Martin Bell, in his trademark white suit, stood out from the crowd at a recent party for independent publishers and booksellers. His new book, The Truth That Sticks - about the loss of trust between the government and the electorate and how it can be re-established - will be published by Icon Books in September.
Mr Bell is soon to return to a danger zone of a different sort in Iraq. One hopes, when he does, that he will wear something a little less conspicuous.
Mr Bell is soon to return to a danger zone of a different sort in Iraq. One hopes, when he does, that he will wear something a little less conspicuous.
Monday 4 June 2007
Stalin & Cupid
The Red Tsar and poetry
The Guardian
As a teenager, Stalin had a surprising talent for romantic poetry. Simon Sebag Montefiore wonders how the youthful scribbler became such a ruthless tyrant.
Young Stalin Simon Sebag MontefioreWeidenfeld and Nicolson, pp 432, £25Before he was a revolutionary, Stalin was known as a poet. In 1895, aged 17 and studying for the priesthood in Georgia, a province of the tsarist empire, he took a selection of his poems to show to the country’s most famous editor and national hero, Prince Ilya Chavchavadze. The prince was deeply impressed with both the poems and the poet, whom he called that “young man with the burning eyes”. After looking through the verses, he chose five to publish in Iveria (an archaic name for Georgia), Russia’s most fashionable and prestigious literary journal. It took someone of the young Stalin’s ambition and colossal self-confidence to walk into the prince’s office and offer his poems for publication.When printed, they were widely read and much admired. They became minor Georgian classics, to be published in anthologies and memorised by schoolchildren until the 1970s (and not as part of Stalin’s cult; they were usually published as ‘Anonymous’).Stalin was no Georgian Pushkin. The poems’ romantic imagery is derivative, but their beauty lies in the rhythm and language. Poetry remained a part of Stalin’s life right up to and even during his three decades as tyrant, leading him to protect some poets and destroy others.Chavchavadze, Stalin’s patron, was a Georgian aristocrat, literary aesthete and respected writer, a romantic believer in an independent Georgia ruled by an enlightened nobility. The teenage student of the priesthood, then known as Josef ‘Soso’ Djugashvili, was a cobbler’s son from a notoriously violent provincial town who had overcome paternal beatings, street fights, several almost fatal accidents and illnesses to enter the Tiflis seminary, one of the finest educational establishments south of Moscow. It was an oppressive boarding school offering a classical and Orthodox education, not unlike an English Victorian public school. Intellectually precocious, the 10-year-old Stalin wrote verses instead of letters to his friends.‘Noble’ verseHe was raised, like all Georgians, on the national epic, “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, which he knew by heart. As a child, Stalin immersed himself in all the popular poems, especially those by two other aristocrats and national heroes, Prince Rafael Eristavi (his favourite poet) and Akaki Tsereteli. At the seminary, the would-be priest worked on his romantic poems until he was confident enough to show them to Chavchavadze. The chosen five soon appeared in Iveria, published under his nickname ‘Soselo’. Soselo was admired as a poet before anyone had ever heard of ‘Stalin’, the name he did not coin until 1912. Deda Ena— the popular children’s anthology of Georgian verse— included Stalin’s first published poem, ‘Morning’, in its 1916 edition, where it remained (sometimes ascribed to Stalin, sometimes not) up to the days of Brezhnev. The scans and rhymes of ‘Morning’ work perfectly, but it was Soselo’s fusion of Persian, Byzantine and Georgian imagery that won plaudits.His next poem, a crazed ode called ‘To the Moon’, reveals more of the poet: a violent, tragically depressed outcast, in a world of glaciers and divine providence, is drawn to the sacred moonlight. In the third work, he explores— as Rayfield puts it— the “contrast between violence in man and nature and the gentleness of birds, music and singers”.The fourth is the most revealing of all: Stalin imagines a prophet not honoured in his own country, a wandering poet poisoned by his own people. Now 17, Stalin already envisions a ‘paranoic’ world where “great prophets could only expect conspiracy and murder”. If any of Stalin’s poems “contained an avis au lecteur”, argues Rayfield, “it is this one”.Dedicated to Eristavi— if any of Stalin’s colleagues had dedicated a youthful poem to a prince, it would have been used against them in the terror— Stalin’s fifth poem was, with ‘Morning’, his most admired, and appeared in the Socialist weekly Kvali (The Plough). Entitled ‘Old Ninika’, its heroic sage requires both the harp to inspire and the sickle to kill. When, 10 years after these works were published, he was a top Bolshevik, a political god-father running a gang of hitmen and bank robbers to fund Lenin’s faction, he was still proud of his poetry. An unpublished memoir from the 1905 revolution recalls a pistol-toting Bolshevik boss leading packhorses bearing guns and stolen banknotes over the mountains, cheerfully declaiming his own poems to his companions.The ex-romantic poet despised and destroyed modernism, but promoted socialist realism, his distorted version of romanticism. He knew Nekrasov and Pushkin by heart, read Goethe and Shakespeare in translation, and could recite Walt Whitman. He mused about the Georgian poets of his childhood. During the terror, he released a famous Georgian intellectual from prison in order to translate Rustaveli’s “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” into Russian. He then edited it himself and delicately translated some of the couplets, asking modestly: “Will they do?” His translations were surprisingly fine, but he refused to be given credit for them.Revolutionary politics Stalin never publicly acknowledged his own poems. Why did he stop writing them? One answer is that, gifted as he was at poetry, he was superbly qualified for revolutionary politics in every way: Marxism was to be his religion and his poetry. As importantly, he would be a Russian statesman as well as a world revolutionary, while his poetry belonged in a small imperial province, Georgia, a parochial backwater, in a minor language. As he later told a friend: “I lost interest in writing poetry because it requires one’s entire attention— a hell of a lot of patience. And in those days I was like quicksilver.”In 1949, for Stalin’s official 70th birthday, the Politburo magnate and notorious chief of the secret police, Lavrenti Beria— a fellow Georgian, secretly commissioned the best translators of poetry, including Pasternak and Andrei Tarkovsky, to create a Russian edition of the five poems. They were not told who the author was, but one of the poets thought “this work is worthy of the Stalin Prize first rank”— though probably he had guessed the identity of the young versifier. In the midst of the project, they received the stern order, clearly from Stalin himself, to stop work. Stalin wished to be remembered by history as the supreme leader of world Marxist revolution and the ruthless Red Tsar of the Russian imperium, not as a teenage poet from Georgia.
The Guardian
As a teenager, Stalin had a surprising talent for romantic poetry. Simon Sebag Montefiore wonders how the youthful scribbler became such a ruthless tyrant.
Young Stalin Simon Sebag MontefioreWeidenfeld and Nicolson, pp 432, £25Before he was a revolutionary, Stalin was known as a poet. In 1895, aged 17 and studying for the priesthood in Georgia, a province of the tsarist empire, he took a selection of his poems to show to the country’s most famous editor and national hero, Prince Ilya Chavchavadze. The prince was deeply impressed with both the poems and the poet, whom he called that “young man with the burning eyes”. After looking through the verses, he chose five to publish in Iveria (an archaic name for Georgia), Russia’s most fashionable and prestigious literary journal. It took someone of the young Stalin’s ambition and colossal self-confidence to walk into the prince’s office and offer his poems for publication.When printed, they were widely read and much admired. They became minor Georgian classics, to be published in anthologies and memorised by schoolchildren until the 1970s (and not as part of Stalin’s cult; they were usually published as ‘Anonymous’).Stalin was no Georgian Pushkin. The poems’ romantic imagery is derivative, but their beauty lies in the rhythm and language. Poetry remained a part of Stalin’s life right up to and even during his three decades as tyrant, leading him to protect some poets and destroy others.Chavchavadze, Stalin’s patron, was a Georgian aristocrat, literary aesthete and respected writer, a romantic believer in an independent Georgia ruled by an enlightened nobility. The teenage student of the priesthood, then known as Josef ‘Soso’ Djugashvili, was a cobbler’s son from a notoriously violent provincial town who had overcome paternal beatings, street fights, several almost fatal accidents and illnesses to enter the Tiflis seminary, one of the finest educational establishments south of Moscow. It was an oppressive boarding school offering a classical and Orthodox education, not unlike an English Victorian public school. Intellectually precocious, the 10-year-old Stalin wrote verses instead of letters to his friends.‘Noble’ verseHe was raised, like all Georgians, on the national epic, “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, which he knew by heart. As a child, Stalin immersed himself in all the popular poems, especially those by two other aristocrats and national heroes, Prince Rafael Eristavi (his favourite poet) and Akaki Tsereteli. At the seminary, the would-be priest worked on his romantic poems until he was confident enough to show them to Chavchavadze. The chosen five soon appeared in Iveria, published under his nickname ‘Soselo’. Soselo was admired as a poet before anyone had ever heard of ‘Stalin’, the name he did not coin until 1912. Deda Ena— the popular children’s anthology of Georgian verse— included Stalin’s first published poem, ‘Morning’, in its 1916 edition, where it remained (sometimes ascribed to Stalin, sometimes not) up to the days of Brezhnev. The scans and rhymes of ‘Morning’ work perfectly, but it was Soselo’s fusion of Persian, Byzantine and Georgian imagery that won plaudits.His next poem, a crazed ode called ‘To the Moon’, reveals more of the poet: a violent, tragically depressed outcast, in a world of glaciers and divine providence, is drawn to the sacred moonlight. In the third work, he explores— as Rayfield puts it— the “contrast between violence in man and nature and the gentleness of birds, music and singers”.The fourth is the most revealing of all: Stalin imagines a prophet not honoured in his own country, a wandering poet poisoned by his own people. Now 17, Stalin already envisions a ‘paranoic’ world where “great prophets could only expect conspiracy and murder”. If any of Stalin’s poems “contained an avis au lecteur”, argues Rayfield, “it is this one”.Dedicated to Eristavi— if any of Stalin’s colleagues had dedicated a youthful poem to a prince, it would have been used against them in the terror— Stalin’s fifth poem was, with ‘Morning’, his most admired, and appeared in the Socialist weekly Kvali (The Plough). Entitled ‘Old Ninika’, its heroic sage requires both the harp to inspire and the sickle to kill. When, 10 years after these works were published, he was a top Bolshevik, a political god-father running a gang of hitmen and bank robbers to fund Lenin’s faction, he was still proud of his poetry. An unpublished memoir from the 1905 revolution recalls a pistol-toting Bolshevik boss leading packhorses bearing guns and stolen banknotes over the mountains, cheerfully declaiming his own poems to his companions.The ex-romantic poet despised and destroyed modernism, but promoted socialist realism, his distorted version of romanticism. He knew Nekrasov and Pushkin by heart, read Goethe and Shakespeare in translation, and could recite Walt Whitman. He mused about the Georgian poets of his childhood. During the terror, he released a famous Georgian intellectual from prison in order to translate Rustaveli’s “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” into Russian. He then edited it himself and delicately translated some of the couplets, asking modestly: “Will they do?” His translations were surprisingly fine, but he refused to be given credit for them.Revolutionary politics Stalin never publicly acknowledged his own poems. Why did he stop writing them? One answer is that, gifted as he was at poetry, he was superbly qualified for revolutionary politics in every way: Marxism was to be his religion and his poetry. As importantly, he would be a Russian statesman as well as a world revolutionary, while his poetry belonged in a small imperial province, Georgia, a parochial backwater, in a minor language. As he later told a friend: “I lost interest in writing poetry because it requires one’s entire attention— a hell of a lot of patience. And in those days I was like quicksilver.”In 1949, for Stalin’s official 70th birthday, the Politburo magnate and notorious chief of the secret police, Lavrenti Beria— a fellow Georgian, secretly commissioned the best translators of poetry, including Pasternak and Andrei Tarkovsky, to create a Russian edition of the five poems. They were not told who the author was, but one of the poets thought “this work is worthy of the Stalin Prize first rank”— though probably he had guessed the identity of the young versifier. In the midst of the project, they received the stern order, clearly from Stalin himself, to stop work. Stalin wished to be remembered by history as the supreme leader of world Marxist revolution and the ruthless Red Tsar of the Russian imperium, not as a teenage poet from Georgia.
Stuck ~ Here's something I'm working on right now
Stuck ~ Stuck in a bar ~ First Draft
Smokey bar few people all men excepting one woman smoke so fulsome the sun glinting through the window is blue. Only movement is the smoke music R Newman gotta roll with the punches
First conversation………
Have you ever thought how stuck we are?
No. I’ll speak only of myself.
I’m stuck ~ not you.
Head bowed this man seems to speak to himself……….no one else sits near him…he has some whiskey on the bar in front of him. He lifts his head and singles out someone…..
Now you ~ you’ll be one of those fresh fine
And dandy, good-looking, cool
And fresh-faced men.
Not like me.
No one moves or smiles or engages. He continues……
Yes I’m talking to you ~ about you.
Why don’t you come over here
Where I can see you for what
You are.
Backs stiffen blue smoke shifts disturbed by the bulging air
A young man willing to placate, moves in his direction…………..
That’s better ~ let me just adjust
My glasses.
There.
Want a drink fella?.......
Don’t want to drink with me?
Got a drink already?
Well , I’m empty.
The barman acquainted with these kinds of circumstances fills his glass.
Thanks
That’s just great. Now what could be better
Two buddies drinking, thinking,
Conversationalists ~ all friendly like.
The blue smoke swirls and gathers like a storm
Don’t talk too much do you.
Where you going now? I’ve just got started.
Girl to see, famly to visit?
Oh well. Good to see you.
Thanks for the drink fella
Bye………
Smokey bar few people all men excepting one woman smoke so fulsome the sun glinting through the window is blue. Only movement is the smoke music R Newman America
Second Conversation
Have you ever thought how stuck we are?
No. I’ll speak only of myself.
I’m stuck ~ not you.
Head bowed this man seems to speak to himself…….no one else sits near him…he has some whiskey on the bar in front of him. He lifts his head and singles out someone…..
Now you ~ you’ll be one of those fresh fine
And dandy, good-looking, cool
And fresh-faced men.
Not like me.
The barman can be seen in the back of the bar taking the top off a bourbon bottle in preparation ………………………for the next conversation.
Vernon Goddard ~ Copyright 2007 © May Limoges
Smokey bar few people all men excepting one woman smoke so fulsome the sun glinting through the window is blue. Only movement is the smoke music R Newman gotta roll with the punches
First conversation………
Have you ever thought how stuck we are?
No. I’ll speak only of myself.
I’m stuck ~ not you.
Head bowed this man seems to speak to himself……….no one else sits near him…he has some whiskey on the bar in front of him. He lifts his head and singles out someone…..
Now you ~ you’ll be one of those fresh fine
And dandy, good-looking, cool
And fresh-faced men.
Not like me.
No one moves or smiles or engages. He continues……
Yes I’m talking to you ~ about you.
Why don’t you come over here
Where I can see you for what
You are.
Backs stiffen blue smoke shifts disturbed by the bulging air
A young man willing to placate, moves in his direction…………..
That’s better ~ let me just adjust
My glasses.
There.
Want a drink fella?.......
Don’t want to drink with me?
Got a drink already?
Well , I’m empty.
The barman acquainted with these kinds of circumstances fills his glass.
Thanks
That’s just great. Now what could be better
Two buddies drinking, thinking,
Conversationalists ~ all friendly like.
The blue smoke swirls and gathers like a storm
Don’t talk too much do you.
Where you going now? I’ve just got started.
Girl to see, famly to visit?
Oh well. Good to see you.
Thanks for the drink fella
Bye………
Smokey bar few people all men excepting one woman smoke so fulsome the sun glinting through the window is blue. Only movement is the smoke music R Newman America
Second Conversation
Have you ever thought how stuck we are?
No. I’ll speak only of myself.
I’m stuck ~ not you.
Head bowed this man seems to speak to himself…….no one else sits near him…he has some whiskey on the bar in front of him. He lifts his head and singles out someone…..
Now you ~ you’ll be one of those fresh fine
And dandy, good-looking, cool
And fresh-faced men.
Not like me.
The barman can be seen in the back of the bar taking the top off a bourbon bottle in preparation ………………………for the next conversation.
Vernon Goddard ~ Copyright 2007 © May Limoges
Sunday 27 May 2007
EMILY
In the midst of the 60's
She found herself confused
She was challenged to come see and do her part
So instead of becoming a part of the problem
So instead of becoming a part of the problem
She became part of the solution instead
She came to make a difference
The odd thing about the Vietnam war
The odd thing about the Vietnam war
It makes no differenece if you are male or female
Soldier or civilian the war impacts your soul
She bore the risks of combat
She bore the risks of combat
Same as you and me
She served us all with fidelity
Some will say she didn't serve
Some will say she didn't serve
I will tell them that they are wrong
She is as much a Veteran -as us all
Emily raised in Atlanta
Emily raised in Atlanta
With her charm and her grace
Became a Donut Dollie in a far away place
She became a beacon of light...she brought us hope
She became a beacon of light...she brought us hope
With her smile and round-eyes
She took us to another time and place--away from the war
She didn't carry a weapon
She didn't carry a weapon
She came with fun and games--she did her part
More importantly she became a part of the soldiers heart
As I look back on memories of the pastI recall with a certain fondness
As I look back on memories of the pastI recall with a certain fondness
Her beauty with a southern voice
Thanks for doing your part
Thanks for doing your part
You are not forgotYou became part of our heart
The gal from Georgia-our Donut Dolly
The gal from Georgia-our Donut Dolly
A soldier's friend indeed
WELCOME HOME EMILY-my sister...
WELCOME HOME indeed
BY: Doc Kerry Pardue November 2, 2003www.kerrypardue247.com/Index.html Vietnam 1968-1969755th Medical Detachment--Plieku8th Medical Detachment--Ban Me ThoutScouts, 2/47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division--Bihn Phouc
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