Monday, December 12, 2011
CBS 60 Minutes: Families Living in Cars
16 million children living in poverty.
Hard Times Generation: Families Living In Cars
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Three Frasier Episodes
The Good Son (pilot)
Miracle on Third or Fourth Street
Frazier Gotta Have It
More at:
http://www.frasieronline.co.uk/index.htm
The Mold Cape
The Mold Cape is a solid sheet-gold object dating from about 1900-1600 BC in the European Bronze Age. It was found at Mold in Flintshire, Wales, in 1833.
The cape is thought to have formed part of a ceremonial dress, perhaps with religious connections. It is currently housed at the British Museum in London.
more at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/sites/flintshire/pages/cape2.shtml?2
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_prb/t/the_mold_gold_cape.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold_cape
Quotes on Poverty and the Poor
If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.
King Solomon
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
Plato
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Aristotle
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
Plutarch
If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
Jesus Christ
But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.
Alexander Pope
Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mohandas Gandhi
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Charles Darwin
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
Jane Austen
I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
Victor Hugo
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank
The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
John Steinbeck
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
Jean-Paul Sartre
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
Henry Ward Beecher
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.
Adrienne Rich
International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.
Joseph Stiglitz
We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.
Jane Goodall
King Solomon
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
Plato
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Aristotle
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
Plutarch
If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
Jesus Christ
But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.
Alexander Pope
Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mohandas Gandhi
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Charles Darwin
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
Jane Austen
I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
Victor Hugo
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank
The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
John Steinbeck
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
Jean-Paul Sartre
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
Henry Ward Beecher
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.
Adrienne Rich
International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.
Joseph Stiglitz
We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.
Jane Goodall
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski - Four Videos
 |
| Katarzyna Kijek (KK) & Przemyslaw Adamski |
Your Money Creates the World
Fleisch
Ethical Consumption
Be Safe - Recycle
More at:
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Man Ray - L'Étoile de Mer (The Starfish)
 |
| Man Ray |
 |
| Alice Prin - Kiki |
 |
| Robert Desmos |
L'Étoile de Mer (The Starfish) is a 1928 film directed by Man Ray staring Alice Prin (Kiki). The film is based on a script by Robert Desnos and depicts a couple (Alice Prin and André de la Rivière) acting through scenes that are shot out of focus.
Almost all of the scenes in this film are shot either off a mirror like the final shot, or through diffused and textured glass.
After opening to the couple walking along a road, the scene cuts to a caption
Les dents des femmes sont des objets si charmants... (Women's teeth are such charming objects...)
A short scene where the female alters her stocking.
... qu' on ne devrait les voir qu' en rêve ou à l'instant de l'amour. (... that one ought to see them only in a dream or in the instant of love.)
From this point the couple retire to the upper bedroom of a house and the female undresses and retires, at which point the male bids her farewell.
Si belle! Cybèle? (So beautiful! Cybèle?)
The male leaves the house.
Nous sommes à jamais perdus dans le désert de l'éternèbre. (We are forever lost in the desert of eternal darkness.)
The film cuts to a female selling newspapers in the street, this is André de la Rivière in drag.
Qu'elle est belle (How beautiful she is)
A man is shown purchasing a sea star in a jar, returning it home to examine further.
"Après tout" ("After all")
The film then changes focus, following newspapers being blown in the wind while a man attempts to pick them up. Scenes from a railway journey appear briefly, tugboats docking at a wharfside followed by a panning city scape.
Si les fleurs étaient en verre (If the flowers were in glass)
Followed by a montage of various rotating objects, including the sea star in a jar. A few still lifes appear, again featuring the sea star.
Belle, belle comme une fleur de verre (Beautiful, beautiful like a flower of glass)
Belle comme une fleur de chair (Beautiful like a flower of flesh)
Il faut battre les morts quand ils sont froids. (One must beat the dead while they are cold.)
We rejoin the man as he ascends the staircase to the upper bedroom in the house, leaving the sea star at the foot of the stairs. The film cuts to the woman brandishing a large knife superimposed with the sea star.
Les murs de la Santé (The walls of the Santé)
Et si tu trouves sur cette terre une femme à l'amour sincère... (And if you find on this earth a woman of sincere love...)
Belle comme une fleur de feu (Beautiful like a flower of fire)
Le soleil, un pied à l'étrier, niche un rossignol dans un voile de crêpe. (The sun, one foot in the stirrup, nestles a nightingale in a veil of crepe.)
We return to the female reclining in the bedroom.
Vous ne rêvez pas (You are not dreaming)
The film then reveals a short end to the characters love triangle.
Qu'elle était belle (How beautiful she was)
Qu'elle est belle (How beautiful she is)
The female appears in a mirror with the word 'belle', which shatters. The affair is over, and the film brings to a close.
More at:
Monday, December 5, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
ETHEL String Quartet
 |
| ETHEL |
"To Whom It May Concern: Thank You", by Mark Stewart
The National Anthem of The United States, by F.S. Key, Arr. Ralph Farris
More at:
Friday, December 2, 2011
Three Poems by Mary Oliver
 |
| Mary Oliver |
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Morning Poem
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
More at:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-oliver
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
WaterAid - Charity for clean, safe water and sanitation
Vision and mission
WaterAid works towards achieving its vision of a world where everyone has access to safe water and sanitation.
We are WaterAid video
More at:
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
 |
| Wallace Stevens |
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
More at:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/wallace-stevens
http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v03n01/stevens.htm
Edouard Manet - A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère) 1882
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère)
by
Edouard Manet
Painting detail:
More at:
Monday, November 28, 2011
An Interview with Sylvia Beach - Bookseller/Publisher at Shakespeare and Company
 |
| Sylvia Beach with James Joyce |
Interview with Sylvia Beach, founder of the Paris book store Shakespeare and Company
Music by The XX and Phantogram
The XX
Night Time
Islands
Night Time
Islands
Phantogram
Let Me Go
Mouthful of DiamondsMore at:
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Five Poems by Stevie Smith
 |
| Stevie Smith |
Not Waving But Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Alone in the Woods
Alone in the woods I felt
The bitter hostility of the sky and the treesNature has taught her creatures to hate
Man that fusses and fumes
Unquiet man
As the sap rises in the trees
As the sap paints the trees a violent green
So rises the wrath of Nature's creatures
At man
So paints the face of Nature a violent green.
Nature is sick at man
Sick at his fuss and fume
Sick at his agonies
Sick at his gaudy mind
That drives his body
Ever more quickly
More and more
In the wrong direction.
Thoughts About the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell
Is it not interesting to see
How the Christians continually
Try to separate themselves in vain
From the doctrine of eternal pain?
They cannot do it,
They are vowed to it,
The Lord said it,
They must believe it.
So the vulnerable body is stretched without pity
On flames forever. Is this not pretty?
The religion of Christianity
Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty.
Reject this Sweetness for she wears
A smoky dress out of hell fires.
Who makes a god, who pains him thus?
It is the Christian religion does.
Oh oh have none of it,
Blow it away, have done with it.
Autumn
He told his life story to Mrs. Courtly
Who was a widow. 'Let us get married shortly',
He said. 'I am no longer passionate,
But we can have some conversation before it is too late.'
In the Night
I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people I should like to bite.
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