do the work

 'if you want something you've never had before you have to do something you've never done before'. lots of good stuff in this.

woodworking

i can't lie, watching this is akin to a magic show for me. true my lack of woodworking skills is routed deep in childhood shenanigans but i can offset that anxiety by just admiring the craftmanship on view here! 

jembaa groove

 

julia margaret cameron

 

i particularly like julia margaret cameron's picture of sir john herschel (and it's as good a place as any to start getting an insight into that particular milieu) so i was really interested to read this essay in the public domain review. it's no surprise that the doings of a wealthy englishwoman in the 19th century were funded by, to our eyes, some pretty exploitative business practices but the writer manages to let the reader amke up their own mind about that, rather than the leaden, uninspiring virtual signalling that characterises so much of this type of writing these days.

do the writer's somehow imagine that their posturing somehow removes them from the fact that the very things they're complaining about were part of the process that got them where they are? so yes, julia margaret cameron's pictures are great to look at. but before we start judging we should consider ourselves, who sit with our phones, our computers, our blogs, the most privileged, wealthy generation ever to walk the planet, and what we're doing with that privilege

tenses

this is a great watch not just for the tense dense language that is spanish but for a lark around with grammar generally (there's subtitles!). also, for my generation onwards, a chance to see just how hamstrung we are without a proper grammar education. bad teaching? definitely an element? the ideology of 'making learning fun'? almost certainly. it's almost like a succession of governments, in their commitment to cutting language, arts and music were attacking the population - compare and contrast the educational priorities in private education!

i've long been an advocate of music and activity for children. my young relatives were all functionally bilingual by age 11. if your kids (or you) can't do simple grammar, like identifying a verb, subject or object, it's time to get that grammar book out! lol

akalé wubé

 

more on notebooks

clearly i love a notebook. i love a notebook in direct inverse proportion to finding myself living in an anglophone country full of monolingual anglophones. but all is not lost. i'm not a massive fan of social media (despite this blog!) but i do like the proliferation of non anglophone material all over the internet. happy days then to be able to listen to not-english any time i choose. unfortunately, due to the parlous state of my languages, it's not always easy hence back to the notebook. 

it's nice to tune your ear and, in the beginning, listen along with english subtitles. but it's not really helpful. better to listen while you have your target language subtitles on. but don't skip over that vocabulary you don't recognise. jot it down in your notebook and come back to it later.

and don't make it hard for yourself. for me it's the televisual equivalent of teletubbies in the likes of dutch or italian but i get to combine watching cycling content with language learning with the likes of gcn - in spanish, french or german if i so choose. super handy 

the longest night

 having done large chunks of this route when i was younger there's no chance i'd do it now. and especially in winter! i have serious workshop envy at the beginning. 

and this also, because only women cyclists can really talk about the issues regarding women's cycling. obvs weight is an issue across the whole world of cycling but having just seen emma norsgaard describe herself as a 'chubby little sprinter' in the new movistar doco (when she weighs about as much as my finger nail) it was an interesting coincidence to come across this

shinobu hashimoto

 ...makes a pot. one can only imagine the horrors were i to try this! but a beautifully serene capture of a piece of making. 

the hudson river school - thomas cole and frederic church

 

i hope it's apparent i do like a podcast and the bowery boys history podcast, as much as i've listened to it so far, has all the qualities i like. this episode deals with the early days of the hudson river school, specifically in the form of thomas cole and frederic church. it's great on the detaila and there's a wealth of information on the webpage. absolutely check it out.

*i'd also highly recommend their episode on the black ton explosion. it's a mark of their respect for their audience that they leave you to make some obvious conclusions but it's a fascinating look at a niche but significant piece of new yourk histroy

cook!

 it's a cooking day for me. i'm going to be making a variant on this garbanzo stew. i don't eat meat products so no egg thickener for me! (that bread looks unpleasant also - make your own!) 

i'm also going to be making some goodness from will yeung. likely starting with this! some of yeung's videos have pretty specific imgredients but you can always switch in from something else you've got lingering in the fridge. failing that just choose something simpler! and definitely make some of the basics he does, like chili oil, it's just good for your state of mind. and tasty! 

ludovico einaudi

 i'm packing up my visual arts gear now that autumn's arrived and getting back into music (and, god help me, writing!) which, this year, means i'll be practicing a lot of einaudi. he makes it look easy but if you're a rubbish piano player like me, it really isn't (and doing it on guitar is even worse! lol). but lovely, soothing and just what i feel like doing of an autumnal afternoon. 

arvo part

 work music..... 

diego luna

 

diego luna - lad! this is a great wee list of things. the fact that it includes pens, pencils and notebooks will always be a winner for me. plus, and kudos to gq, it's great to hear him getting to speak spanish. not because he can't speak english but, as mexican and puerto rican spanish was the spanish i started learning with it's great to listen to someone i can actually comprehend!

and the knife thing....

hand talk

 

this is interesting. esp as i have an interest in sign language, particularly as its been used to support chomsky's notions of universal grammar, and yet this is all new to me. just another example of how something that's interesting and useful is erased from common knowledge. but, on a mkore positive note, how the internet can counteract such things

kit sebastian

when i worked in the kitchen the music of choice was the worst imaginable playlist of popular summer hits, repeated endlessly, without let up. i would respond with this sort of thing to which my beloved chef lady would respond - istvan (my kitchen name), stop please.... 

and then we'd be back to the likes of this. i'm not going to lie, i know all the words, can sing along and have an enduring soft spot for it.... 

gabor mate

when i'm working, esp on a long, repetitive project like these days, some sort of long podcast is a good way to keep my mind ticking over. in my paid work one of my big drivers at the moment is manifesting kindness (i'm not going to lie, it's a struggle!) so having a listen to gabor mate is handy

the queen's suite

i could say lots but i shan't. so this.... 

wu chi tsung

 

cyanotype is something i haven't really done but wu chi tsung has taken the paper and run with it. i'd love to see what these looked like irl. he does more tha  these tho as you can see on his website

america's first panda

 

quite how the first panda arrived in america is a quirky and complex tale. i recommend the kettle is put on and you settle with a cup of tea...

the memory palace do a good podcast, accompanied by a good range of links but for a full fat read, as well as an insight to the long ago world of pre ww2 china this full fat read is ideal

tony sarg

 

i love me a good hoax story from back in the day and the nantucket sea serpent hoax fits the bill on a number of levels. this article from the public domain review is worth it for that alone, but also for the backstory about tony sarg who feels like one of those figures, not unlike kay nielson, whose influence is instantly recognisable when you're aware of it, but who should be far better known. 

victoria ford

 

i do a lot of my daily looking at art on instagram and in doing so came across the work of victoria ford. she doesn't have a website, doesn't have images splashed across the net but does have an instagram page via which you can access her etsy shop. i'm not a stranger to linocut but this is breathtaking stuff, despite my normal aversion to representational art, and the care and love that's gone into them, for me, radiates out of all the images.

as, at last, some of the looted stuff we have in out museums, makes its way back to where it came from (a ppost for another day) i wonder again why it is we'd rather look at the work of dead artists, hoarded by those with more money than we can imagine, than look at the work of people actually working today.

medieval hospitals

 

came across this gem from medievalists the other day. as care systems lurch into crisis in the uk it's worth a read and considering where the notions of hospitals and what they were for, came from

african philosophy

 

there's a bunch of people from all over africa at my work at the moment so i'm having a delightful, if slightly bewildering time, dipping my toe in to the world of african linguistics. which is great but almost impossible to do so and not realise there's a dearth of information about any of it (step up the usual culprits!)

by happy coincidence then, step up zera yacob et al and the world of african philosophy. i'd read some african literary criticism and that was relatively recent, but that's about all, but this was all new information for me. as ever, to live in a polarised world robs us all!