Archive for June, 2009
Nora Roberts profile- the best bits (Artist Tips)
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009broccoli- ugh (see below)
Once of the most enjoyable articles I came across lately was a profile of romantic novelist Nora Roberts in the New Yorker (abstract here, 11 minute podcast here). Roberts is to literature as Michelle and Jim-Bob Duggar are to parenting, having produced a spectacular 182 books and counting, during her career; this [...]
But is it really worth the sacrifices?
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009Van Gogh- as inward-looking as the rest of us.
As we all know, artists tend to have more fragile egos than your average burly coal-miner; they are notorious for destroying all their early work in a hissy fit, or for disappearing into depression and insanity, or just for sitting indoors feeling sorry about their lack of [...]
things that are inspiring me lately
Monday, June 22nd, 20091. Nails
Not fingernails: the kind of nails that come in boxes in DIY stores, for banging into pieces of wood with a hammer. This is an immensely satisfying activity, and I don’t know why more people don’t try it. (Not as a computer game, the whole point is the real force required).
2. All-American Poem [...]
things I learned from Star Trek (the new movie)
Monday, June 15th, 2009Uhura was beginning to wonder what she’d gotten herself into…
(CONTAINS SPOILERS! for you non-trekkies who haven’t seen it already).
1. The unreconstructed male is now back. Three of them, in fact- a grumpy doctor (“House”- no need to eat your heart out just yet), a wild Celt and a bar-brawling victim of stepfather-abuse, but the greatest [...]
my kids went to Scotland…
Friday, June 5th, 2009… and all they brought me back were these magnificent photos! (click on them to see larger)
If I could have travelled by Tardis all the way to the camping site (too busy for a 5000-mile journey across 6 time-zones right now, not to mention the 8 hour car drive along British roads and motorways- nowhere [...]
separated at birth?
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009On the left- impoverished late C18th poet Thomas Chatterton depicted in suicide by Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis.
On the right- my cat, Rambow, sleeping in a suicidally unsafe position that reveals his lack of experience at surviving in the wild. Or possibly his hero-worship of slightly effete Romantic poets who live in pathetically inadequate hovels depending [...]
fermenting
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009I hate saying so, due to fear-of-jinxing, but you can practically smell the brewing of my new project/s round here right now! (And I mean that in a charming French winery kind of a way, not at all reminiscent of compost heaps.) To honour this, and to practice my newborn glasnost attitude, here is the [...]
