Background

This is in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background

I thought that in i-Photo and Photostream there are hundreds of photos which bounce around in some electronic ether waiting to be noticed or deleted – there must be something that applies, even though it was quite unintentional. In about two seconds, I found two, so hope you like them. Maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up about organizing them properly after all.

The first, from Block Island in April, was meant to be a photo of a balanced rock on another rock. I like the clouds in the sky, which I was not looking at when I took it.

The second was taken in Edinburgh last winter when the photo prompt was ‘choose something from your neighbourhood, and I took a picture of the stone wall directly outside the door that I walk past every time I go in or out. Then I didn’t post it at the time. A closer look at something so much ‘just background’ the stone is utterly beautiful, marked by lichen, light and shadow.

Great topic – There are so many things in the background of our daily living.

Thanks for the reminder.

Related articles

• Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background (sasieology.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background (Reflections) (skpfoto.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background (ohmsweetohmdotme.wordpress.com)

The World’s End

Trust Sidey to get me off the beach and thinking about something else.

Her theme this week is The End of the World, arriving at it from a series of depressing, even despairing, pieces of information which have landed in her world/our world. It seems to me that one of things we keep having to do, an endless life struggle if you like, is the one about getting out from under the down stuff, whatever it is, and whatever way you choose to do it. [I know there are both good ways and bad ways and even worse ways in which people choose.]

But, here is my immediate response to the theme, back in Edinburgh, away from the outdoors and beaches:

Maybe this is what we need to know: The internet and news media opens all of the world to our gaze. We need walls and gates – through which we might go – and hospitality inside within which we can rest awhile.

Then we can go back out, through the gate, past the end of the world.

Those 16th century folk maybe knew that when they gave their hostelry its name. The Worlds End website has three banners running across its page (the 21st century folk know something too):

in a world of its own

where new experiences begin

find out what’s inside

Here’s to you Sidey, from a different hemisphere where spring is on its way. May you find hospitality wherever you go, whether or not it feels like the end of something.This is the view to the north from my deck this morning with the sun on my back.

 

Do we learn from history?

Part of saying goodbye to Edinburgh again – as I leave on Friday to return to Block Island – is a belated rush to try to see all the stuff I meant to get round to. This morning I was at the Portrait Gallery and found myself stunned by an exhibition of photography by Edith Tudor-Hart, a person I had never previously heard about. Why Not? Well who knows the answer to that, but if anyone should get the chance to view her work, mainly from 1930′s, it is both beautiful and thought-provoking.

She was interested in inequality, poverty and the lives of children. She was political, a communist and/or socialist. She clearly cared deeply about others. She worked to try to bring thoughts about unemployment and poverty to others.

This picture is taken from the Portrait gallery website. There are lots more to be found via google if you are nowhere near Edinburgh. But, if you are near enough, the exhibition does a great job of conveying her interests and her photo-journalism, as well as giving us a chance to see the photos, and wonder what they tell us about that time.
I found myself asking the simple question: Do we ever learn anything from history? Sidey’s weekly challenge this week was “the question”.

Related articles

• Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny (jayclappphotography.wordpress.com)
• Edith Tudor-Hart: In the shadow of tyranny (aoboca.wordpress.com)

Local wonderful Edinburgh

Daily Prompt: Local Flavor

I don’t usually do the Daily Prompt from WordPress, but today I did a typically Edinburgh thing – went out to see what is on.

Science Festival has begun – in the Magnificent setting of the National Museum a troupe of dancers from Scotland and China based their piece on the study of mathematical patterns. Whatever, quite beautiful. And very typical of Edinburgh’s free offerings, nearly always there is something something unexpected.

Janis Claxton Dance: Chaos and Contingency

Afterwards I went to a lecture on brains and scanning – quite different and also absorbing. [Thanks consultant neurologist Rustam Al-Shahi Salman and the Medical Research Council.]

 

Looking forward

My mum used to say “Don’t wish your life away”. I can’t remember now, but I expect that was when I, or my sisters, were not attending much to what we were supposed to be doing, and instead imagining bright and wonderful things were just around the corner. The future, better than just slogging through the present, ever hopeful “it will be all right on the night”.

Oops I am doing it again. It is less than three weeks until I return to Block Island and anticipation of being there in April, forever balmy springtime, is filling my mind.

Reality – what’s that?

We have just had a rather wet miserable cold March week here in Edinburgh. I feel I am fighting a cold, it is cold, I am learning to know my new lodgers – who are very nice indeed – so if I manage to be present I feel I am indeed slogging.

Don’t wish my life away. Here is OK.

But a little anticipation is very nice indeed,

daydreamers of the bloggy world, how are you all?

Block Island. April 2012

There are of course other kinds of anticipation and many are to be found in the responses here as this weekend “anticipation” was Sidey’s theme.

Weekly photo challenge: Forward

This is a really apt photo challenge as I am just in from a day ‘out and about’ where one decision I made was to “Go Forward“. For those who know Edinburgh (and maybe more so for those who do not) I was starting out from the Dean Bridge area to walk up to the Modern  Art Gallery. This is Edinburgh, where “up” does indeed mean UP. And, as it was a beautiful springlike morning, and there is an alternative route, I decided to go DOWN first into Bell’s Brae, then stroll up to the gallery via the Leith Walkway, an off-road footpath by the river. Having gone down [which does mean DOWN] the entrance to the footpath by the water had a little notice:

FOOT PATH CLOSED

but the barrier and tape was pushed aside and the path looked fine. So, not wanting to walk back up Bell’s Brae, I decided

FORWARD

Here are my photos taken along the path which was indeed fine – until I got to the far end below the Belford Road bridge and found the barrier not pushed aside but instead locked and chained. Hence one photo is the

look backwards after I climbed over it

Snowdrops growing by the water

The weir – not too much flooding at the moment

Above the weir, the water is utterly still

Reflections at every turn of the way

There is no-one here but me in this stillness

OOPs – the path was indeed closed – looking back

the Belford Road above

I think my walk was more interesting than if I had just gone by the road. Definitely… Forward… usually a good thing.

Snow on the Pentlands

Edinburgh is cold.

Oh well, not unexpected.

It is also damp.

You would think I would have remembered that.

From Morningside Road – Wednesday morning

So far I am doing more talking than walking. My throat is indicating that I have been talking too much though I have also had such a good time listening to what my friends have been up to while I have been away. [new kitchen, painting rooms, also being away, grandchildren, ...]

Friendship.

I am so grateful for friends.

The weather can be just as cold as it likes.

 

 

Last Year was a good one

The wordpress photo challenge suggested showing last year in photos, and I tried hard but it became an excuse for browsing through the thousands now deep inside the amazing tiny volume of 0.00125 cu.m. [a pretty good 4GB volume in computer terms but it sounds really really tiny in cubic metres - it must be the kind of size which matters]. A lovely way to waste spend several hours.

Last year was a good one – on January 1st 2012 I was on holiday in sunny Sanya, Hainan Island, China, before returning to freezing Shanghai (son no.1 and twin grandsons, then 4, now 5). Then time in Edinburgh (son no. 3 who succeeded in getting a studentship for his research) time in Manchester, England, to celebrate big sister’s 70th birthday, time in Cornwall with the friend I have known more or less continuously for 50 years, more time in Edinburgh and that was all in the first 5 months of the year. The rest, in Block Island (son no.2, family with my 3 grand-daughters live near). Wonderful. I got the photos down to 30, and even then have not managed to cover all nor can I rate what is in against what I left out.

January 1st 2012 – Ali, waiting for lunch in Sanya

January – Shanghai XinTian Di

Return to Edinburgh – delights of the city – this is St Cecilia’s Hall

February – snowdrops

February in Edinburgh – glorious weather – a view from the canal-side walk

March, Cornwall beaches

March, in Plymouth, Devon

April – The quick treat myself jaunt to Block Island – leaving Point Judith

April – getting the boat fit for summer

April – birthday girl3 lights her cake

May – back in Edinburgh, the Meadows blossom outside my home

May – somewhere in Scotland – bluebells

Early June, Edinburgh Modern Art Gallery – reflections

June – birthday girl 2 – beach party

July – bird-banding at the Ocean View conservation

July 4th

August – beach time

August – when the beach is too hot, find a dock to jump off

September – a sunflower on my deck – the basil, parsley and tomatoes have been a great success too

Finn, 2 months old, exploring his new home

Late September beach and dunes to sit watching the surf

October – broke the Granny mug

October 3rd, birthday girl1. The first year I have been to all three girls’ birthdays

Mid-October – quiet dock area, no boats no swimmers jumping in

30th October – after Hurricane Sandy – from roughly the same place as the surf-watching – picture above – never the same again

Hallowe’en

November a quiet day at Fresh Pond

November – Thanksgiving Welcome

December walk – the same dog!

December, Christmas piano student recital

Weekly photo challenge: Renewal

This week’s WordPress weekly photo challenge is Renewal. Two responses are immediate, simultaneous:

renewal of hope

urban renewal

maybe the last is just an expression of the first.

All over the world, cities are adapting to change, older areas are re-modelled for tourists, once working waterfronts now house gourmet restaurants and trendy cafes overlooking the water, and through towns and countryside the tracks of railway or canal, once for heavy goods, are now walkways and cycle paths for a more leisured lifestyle.

Click below to get bigger photos.

Alleyway, expensive shops, tourists, Xin Tian Di, Shanghai

An old archway and stair, Xin Tian Di, Shanghai

Tourist cafes, Xin Tian Di, Shanghai

Union Canal Edinburgh, under Viewforth Bridge (I think)

Union Canal, Edinburgh, near Harrison Park

The Innocent Railway path, Edinburgh

Boston South waterfront, with seagull

Boston south waterfront, restaurant on right with views over the harbor

Rainbows over Dunluce Castle, Co Antrim, N. Ireland

- three photos from Shanghai – this is the trendy tourist area, XinTianDi, where an old style area was refashioned without destroying the old brick walls and alleyways

- three from Edinburgh, the Union canal and the Innocent railway paths, commuter cycling, jogging, family walks

- two from Boston south waterfront, so many of the world’s city ports are now looking something like this, with a bit of their own character still there under the new boardwalks [New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Leith, Belfast, Glasgow, Bristol, London ... ]

and one photo just for hope – where I do not think the castle walls will ever be renewed [Dunluce, Co. Antrim]

I think I have some photos of each kind of place in each of these three cities I have been in during the past year  – hope you like them.

Coincidence, Synchronicity, Serendipity

It is a small world.

I know.

What is it about coincidence?

Does it mean something important, like synchronicity?

Or just, pleasure, serendipity, it’s just concidence! I met my friend Mei Mei eight years ago when she was my student and then she became my teacher. She taught me chinese for coincidence: tai qiao le 太巧了。Since then we have spent lots of good times together in Edinburgh, then in Beijing and Madrid, where she now lives with her spanish husband (met when he was in Beijing) and their twin sons.

Yesterday morning I talked with her on Skype, talked to the little boys, and to Eduardo, whom I have not actually spoken to for five years! We talked about our visit to Merida five years ago. And after that I had a look at some of my favourite blogs, particularly Kate Shrewsday and Andra Watkins who are giving us a great series on the Seven Wonders of the Worlds Architecture. They have chosen the National Museum of Roman Art at Merida!

I looked up some photos to remind myself. Tai qiao le!

(Andra’s photos look better, but I have to confess mine mean more to me, and even though mine have somehow become mirror imaged, I will just leave them that way.)

From andrawatkins.com
The National Museum of Roman Art in Merida, Spain

Mei Mei and Elspeth, June 2007, in Merida, Spain

from andrawatkins.com
interior of the National Museum of Roman Art, Merida, Spain

Mei Mei and me, inside the museum in Merida

I wuz there!

太巧了