Ian Kenway @iankenway@social.cleverlibre.org

Welsh scientists explain best ways to stop spread of coronavirus in cars - Wales Online https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-scientists-explain-best-ways-21315375

The Eisteddfod is the opposite of elitist - it's a festival made and remade by those who take part in it. https://nation.cymru/opinion/the-eisteddfod-is-the-opposite-of-elitist-its-a-festival-made-and-remade-by-those-who-take-part-in-it/

Wool is warm, is not made from oil, and does not break down into microplastics. This news is appalling. How do we restart wool as the sensible material for warm clothing? I've tried to find woolen cycling kit - remarkably rare! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-58162610

we’re entering crimes against humanity territory here

A thought occurred to me. Why don’t characters in American films like being called Virgil? Evidence: I know of three characters who appear in the following films: The Right Stuff (Virgil I. Grissom, “They call me Gus.”), The Great Escape (Captain Virigil Hilts, “Just make it Hilts.”) and The Abyss (Virgil Brigman, “`Virgil’?”). OK, only Grissom was a real person but why do writers do that? Is there some connotation in the name that I’m unaware of? I think The Aeneid is a great poem.

Lambing is going really well this year on our farmlet. So far we have had ten sets of twin lambs and three singles with no losses. With six ewes left to lamb we could make it up to 35 lambs.

It is such a relief to be having a good lambing season after difficult times the previous two years.

The enjoyment of the new lambs is tempered by the knowledge that most of them will be killed and eaten before they are a year old.

Meanwhile it is time to enjoy these delightful little creatures.

Another #poem from about 8 years ago...

http://jeffreyfreeman.me/brambled-velvet-bloody-thorns/

= Brambled velvet, bloody thorns. =

The sweetest warmth on my tongue.
A distant memory of a soft touch that never was.
The thorns are a poison, and the fruit its cure.
The sweet fruit that turns the ash in my mouth to wine,
the peaceful ignorance of my intoxication.
Numb to the destruction as I tear away the velvet fruit,
leaving a mutilated husk, its life blood dripping.
The desolate brambles now rotting in the sun.
Its life for mine, a life I never wished to take,
as if there was some other end, some perfect end.
But it was all a dream.
A haunting dream.
An eternal dream.
A dream more real than life.
A dream…

#poems #poetry

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

--Pablo Neruda

#poem #poetry

My favorite line from one of my favorite books as well as my favorite Epic Poem. Dante's Inferno, Canto 1, written in Italian in 1321, this uses my favorite translation's English text (Hollander Translation). Written in copperplate for practice.

#quote #quotes #calligraphy #handwriting #writing #copperplate #qotd #quoteoftheday

> Stone walls do not a prison make,
> Nor iron bars a cage:
> Minds innocent and quiet take
> That for an hermitage.
> If I have freedom in my love,
> And in my soul am free,
> Angels alone, that soar above,
> Enjoy such liberty.

-- Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Althea,_from_Prison

#Lovelace #RichardLovelace #Poem #poetry #writing #literature @General

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-- The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot

These are the last few stanza's of the poem from which the famous phrase comes. I love these stanzas! Good poem overall, worth a full read: http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/poem-text.html

#poem #poetry

@freemo
A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise !
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ;
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way ;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise !

> Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
> Enwrought with golden and silver light,
> The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
> Of night and light and the half light,
> I would spread the cloths under your feet:
> But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
> I have spread my dreams under your feet;
> Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-- W.B. Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

https://poets.org/poem/aedh-wishes-cloths-heaven

#Poem #Poetry #writing #literature #WBYeats #Yeats

> What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an Angel!
>
> In apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
>
> Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither; though by your smiling you seeme to say so

-- Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet (Act II, Scene II)

#Shakespear #Literature #English #Quote #Quotes #Poetry #Poem #writing@General@groups.qoto.org

The Song of the Wondering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-- W.B. Yeats

This poem really resonated with me. I think its because as a kid I would constantly dream of this magical woman who lived in my basement and when I woke up I could never find her.

#poetry #poem #literature #english

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under...

I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.

"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" thus asks the last man, and blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.

"We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...

One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

"Formerly, all the world was mad," say the most refined, and they blink...

One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.

"We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they blink.

-- Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche

#Nietzscche #poetry #poem #philosophy #quote #Quotes

Quick press review: a massive majority of the Western mainstream media, including the tabloids, put the #IPCC report on the front page, including the top 30 European media outlets on the https://www.4imn.com/topEurope list and the US mainstream media as well.
Would this finally be enough to produce significant policy change?
#climate

Finally, here’s a #blackbird that was sitting on a wall. I couldn’t get too close to it.

#MyWork #MyPhoto #CCBYSA #DSLR #Nikon #D7000 #Nature #Wildlife #Birds