Current awareness has been on my mind recently as I begin the New Year. Most people pick up a free newspaper on the train or bus, or listen to the radio, and it's apparent than many rely on Facebook. Not the highest quality or most reliable sources.
High quality current awareness services are only available to professionals. It’s normally provided by in-house information specialists to scholars, lawyers, doctors and others. But in my view, everyone is entitled to quality low cost alerts from a trustworthy curator.
A blog to explore the interests of an original renaissance woman; arts, sciences, poetry, librarianship and everything in between.
Saturday 14 January 2017
Wednesday 11 January 2017
Constellation London
Even the methodically moving moon takes on a deceptive speed
As seen from the small windows of this metal and plastic conveyance.
As its crisp flashing harasses the dark lakes below, the benevolent moonlight
Competes with earthy sodium glow and wins in its startling blinding whiteness.
Moonlit clouds quickly obscure the city and in cruel stargazing reversal
Eyes search the ground below for familiar constellations of motorway.
In this topsy-turvey corruption of the heavens, glowing grey gaps appear
Forming a jigsaw of the universe below, Becoming more complete as we climb.
Normality returns. Moon recovers its extreme speed, needing no illusion
To impress our flight's feeble flash. Indiscernible against the street stars.
But for that split second between land and cloud, our disinterested
Satellight overshadowed our city's artificial Big Bang of travelling light.
Friday 28 October 2016
Dark and terrible: Beyond Caravaggio
Many high profile reviews of Beyond Caravaggio have criticised it because it only contains six works by the master himself. However as the exhibition title makes perfectly plain, it is looking beyond Caravaggio. The stress is clearly on the word 'beyond'. It aims to examine his legacy, critique his followers, and put him into a wider context. Given his mastery over story telling, he deserves to have his own place in the art history story, as the quality of those incredible six pieces demonstrate.
Monday 8 August 2016
Waiting with Magda Mozarka
Waiting. We sit on the island content to wait. Waiting weeks for the moon to be in the right quarter so we can fish. Waiting months for the fruits to ripen so we can start the harvest. Waiting hours for the heat to pass so we can work. Waiting for the time we can leave this island for provisions...the inevitable slow but steady natural clockwork marking time. An hour hand of ferries offering a smaller human scale to the wait. Just waiting. When waiting is part of a culture, patience and acceptance almost to the point of madness is inevitable.
Wednesday 3 August 2016
The Boat Road
How do you view the world when you're five years old? How much of that youthful joie de vivre do you - and can you - retain as you hit middle age? Having rarely spent so much time with a young gentleman it's been an interesting couple of weeks, and in some crazy irresponsible ways, it seems I have more in common with my young nephew than my younger brother.
This is not meant as any kind of criticism of my brother. Indeed I adore him and he is an inspiration to me; he's a parent, a carer, a survivor of a very different and difficult upbringing in comparison to mine. Those six years between us might as well as be sixty. But as my exhausted adult friend and family nodded off on the final stretch of their journey, the inevitable result of an early flight, me and my nephew bonded on the ferry ride back to mine.
Friday 29 July 2016
Hospitality: Or, what makes a room a home
This is hopefully part of a longer piece generally, but I thought it would be a positive way to embark on this Friday blog challenge. Since I've been heavily reliant on short term accommodation during my time abroad, excellence in hospitality has been on my mind for a while.
My journey began in February. So I could start my year in Croatia in style, my friend and I took a road trip through France and Italy for a week. As we headed south to Ancona, we purposefully stayed in a wide variety of places; from a family owned medieval Italian palazzo, a 1920s spa town grand hotel of faded grandeur, as well as a hysterically 1980s orange hotel room somewhere near Montpellier. Most of these were memorable because of the freedom and fun of travelling, and excitement of not knowing what to expect from our temporary residences.
Sunday 12 June 2016
Sunday Sounds
The bustle of bells pronounce Sunday magic;
Full peal across the bright pastel space,
Where pale sea meets busy harbour,
Hazy sky meets jewelled balloons
And conversations murmur and burble.
Sounds rising and falling,
Interlacing in an endless swirl of persistent rhythmic clouds,
Echoing the multitude of percussive noon bells across the city.
Appealing to each other like friends in friendly greeting.
Saturday 4 June 2016
The Croatian Literary Baroque
Bartol Kašić (1575-1650) |
Thursday 19 May 2016
Klapa: The Rhythmic Heart of Dalmatia
Klapa singers on Vis 2016 |
Monday 16 May 2016
The Tradition of Bosnian Catholic Tattoos
There was a spell in the not so distant past where I did a module on exhibiting the body as part of my MA in History of Art. It was one of the more challenging subjects because of the sheer newness of the subject to me; basically I was pinging around like an over enthusiastic firework because every lecture we had presented a new idea which I wanted to pursue. Did I want to stay in the renaissance where the body was emerging as a machine, or head into enlightenment with wax modelling, Victorian health and death, or be in the present with bodies and taboos? This also coincided with some interesting events at London's RAI, where I wrote up a film about bodily suspension. Body modification and using the body as a canvas still really intrigues me, which is why a talk given by one of my fellow students in the Croatian Civilisation and Culture class today made me dash here and blog about it. The research is all hers but where I was unsure, I've added, clarified, and interjected because I'm annoying like that.
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