Excuses, Excuses

There is a reason why I was hesitant in accepting the co-blogger post, and that is because I am notoriously inconsistent.

I do a lot of prioritizing of energy and time, and as much as I’d like to say this blog is higher on that list, the top 3 spots go to family, work and health – and sometimes, there is nothing left over. My friendships suffer neglect, my roses remain uncut, and I realize that, although I have the material, I don’t have the motivation to put together a post of any kind. For that, I apologize.

I am currently on antibiotics for a sinus infection and the early signs of strep throat, but alongside that I have some nasty bronchitis that seems to be enjoying April far more than I am. Doctor’s orders are to literally stay in bed and sleep until Saturday, but there is emails to answer and projects to sort out and my candidate-in-training is writing her thesis, which must be submitted on Monday (when I have to be in Sweden) – and of course, there’s the children and their shenanigans.

However, I have not forgotten: I still have photos from Canyon Matka, I still have photos from the coin museum (yes, it’s just lots of old, shiny coins!), I still have photos from the aqueduct, plus various random items that show signs of spring arriving. So as slow as I take it, please take it with the best of intentions.

April is for sure this year the cruellest month. And to think it’s only just begun…

Tree Tuesday

The spring arrival of cherry blossom season is cause for celebration across Japan. There are published charts that track the progress of the blossoms from south to north and every region has festivals to bring people outside to enjoy the splendid views. I’ll never get to Japan to see the spectacle in person, but thanks to the internet I can still see the splendid views and live a bit vicariously. I’ve gathered a few of my favourite photos of cherry blossoms in Japan for you to see as well. Enjoy.  [Read more…]

Brexit means Brexit means ….????

Oh my, I have stumbled onto the twitter account of that bumbling nationalist buffoon Nigel Farage and my blood began to boil.

What really gets up my nose about this posturing pustule is that not only has he not done any meaningful work to clean up the mess he helped to make – he only stands on the sidelines, making potshots adding to it even more – but that he still pretends that the daft referendum has represented democratically the will of the people.

It has not.

The ever so vapid Theresa May likes to repeat “Brexit means Brexit”,  as if it were some meaningful statement saying something.

It is not.

A popular theme among the Brexiters is “people have spoken” as if people were actualy asked what they want.

The were not.

There is one important point ignored by Brexiters over and over again – the referendum did not ask people what they want. It does not represent the will of the people as they say it. It cannot.

The question posed was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” as if it were a binary vote. But it is not, as recent shenanigans in British government shows, it is a very complex issue which cannot be reduced to a simple binary. There is only one way  to stay in the EU – but there is a multitude of ways to leave. There never was a majority to leave – there was a majority to remain and multiple minorities with mutually exclusive ideas about what leave means to them which were lumped together under one umbrella because some idiot did not think things through (or perhaps did? nah I think that gives these bozos too much credit). And now those mutually exclusive ideas about what Brexit actually, really, means bear fruit in the inevitable inability to decide on a deal and stick with it, as the different brexiter fractions keep posturing and demanding and not willing to compromise on anything, which is actualy necessary in any functioning democracy.

The only democratic way forward is to put to people a second referendum, this time with a list of multiple viable options, just like in the indicative votes last week. I do not think it will happen. I think the destructive self-centered assholes and those dupes that voted for them are going to get their no-deal, because that is the default option if they manage to disrupt and obstruct long enough – and they are determined to do exactly that.

And thus the whole country is piloted by these people towards a crash in one huge and completely unnecessary Brexikaze, a fanatical and futile act of self-destruction almost inevitably bound to make more damage to UK than to that which they seek to destroy.

Jack’s Walk

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By the end of last week I was beginning to see a few early signs of spring and I was sure the weather would continue to improve. It has not. Instead, the weather has chosen to regress by several weeks and return to the deep of winter. The weather provided us a steady snow on Saturday and by Sunday morning there was 5 cm. of the stuff on the ground and the temp was hanging well below zero. Well, Damn! It’s very pretty and it might actually be nicer to look at than the gray grass and mud of last week, but I don’t care. I’m gonna stamp my feet and mutter curses and shake my fist at the sky and tell winter to go home. Do you hear that, old man winter? Go on, now. I think I hear your mother calling.

Monday Mercurial: Bee happy!

Apparently, one side of our garden has been overtaken by common sand bees/ mining bees, andrena flavipes.

I noticed a lot of activity last week and right now it’s all buzz and swarming. I was at first confused since wild bees are usually solitary and it took me all of my google -fu to find out that the most likely explanation is that it’s a nesting aggregation and the huge traffic we’re seeing right now is the drones hanging around to have a lot of sex before they die, so in a few days the whole thing will be over.

This is a relief because in about two weeks the workpeople will start rebuilding our garden stairs and stuff and I was worried that the bees would get in their way or would have their home destroyed. As far as I’m concerned, having those bees here is like a knighting for my garden as an insect friendly space.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

At work!

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A different kind of wild bee.

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That fruit tree is currently BUZZING.

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The Art of Book Design: My Garden in Spring

E. A. Bowles. My Garden in Spring. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1914 — Source. Cover design by Katherine Cameron

I love books. Real books with real paper are a treat for the senses. I love the way they feel in my hand, the way they smell and the way they catch my eye. That last bit, the eye-catching, is what this new series is all about; the art of designing striking books that make you stop and take a closer look. My original interest in starting this series came from The Public Domain Review and I’ll be pulling from their collections and lots of other sources. Every day you’ll get a beautiful book to admire. Many will be old, but not all. There will be a lot of art nouveau because I like art nouveau, but I’ll try to change it up and keep it interesting. I’m also willing to feature any book you might want to share as long as it’s beautiful and eyecatching. Send any of your suggestions to me at [email protected]. The address is always in the sidebar.

Our Book today is in celebration of Spring. The art nouveau design is by Katherine Cameron and together with E.A. Bowles they created a series of garden books. If you click on the link below you can also find the covers for My garden in Autumn and Winter and My garden in Summer. Together they make a beautiful set.

From: My Beautiful Book Finds

 

 

New Drawer

It all started with a reasonably small box arriving from the USA. It grew into chaos.

I must say, we are not tidy people. There are folks who are tidy by nature, or who work hard on being tidy, but we are neither. Our time is scarce and we both agree that it can be spent on much better things than cleaning, so we usually put things into the big plastic boxes we use for shopping and every other week I empty them cussing like a sailor. Every once in a while I try out a new system to make being tidier easier, to various degrees of success.

With the resin supplies, I tried different ideas. The last one was putting the stuff into those decorative cardboard boxes you get at Ikea and storing those in an old book chest, but it was too much and also came with lots of searching, so I made another attempt with an Ikea Malm drawer:

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©Giliell, all rights reserved

Everything nice and clean, at least for now.

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Resin, tools, cups. The small scrollsaw that I use for cutting resin is right next to the drawer. Yes, it is full. Much has happened since that first small box.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 29 – Crime

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

Today, if I want to see the official crime rate in my country, I can just go to google and look it up. There are even handy pre-made comparisons with USA to be found. When I was a child, this was not the case, and essentially nobody knew what crime rate the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic actually has.

But it was not due to the nonexistence of internet as some might think. It was due to state’s secrecy about matters that might speak unfavourably about the regime.

Part of our education were occasional visits of schools by party dignitaries, local law-enforcement officers or border patrol officers etcetera. On several such occasions the talks veered into the territory of law trespassers and sometimes some kid has asked “how much crime X happens”? Invariably, the answer to this was “that is a state secret”. So nobody, except a few officials, had a chance to know pretty much anything specific.

But I do not want to talk about some generic crime rates today, I want to concentrate on one specific crime and how it was used to control people – unemployment, or, as it was officially called, “the crime of parasitism”. Under the regime, everyone had a right to a job, but that came with the duty to have a job. Every able person had a duty to work and it was literally against the law to not fulfill this duty.

And whilst it is reasonable to have measures to discourage or perhaps even punish slackers and hangers-on in a social state, that was not the only purpose and the only use of the law. Because since jobs were to great extent assigned centrally, the state had a huge control over what kind of job one can get, or whether one can get a job at all. And therefore political dissidents were sometimes pushed to jobs where it was clear that they are at odds with their qualifications and needs, so they could eventually be pushed towards joblessness – and thus criminalized. It was also a way to completely criminalize any form of sex work, which officialy did not exist so any sex worker was automatically a parasite without the regime having to acknowledge even the existence of sex workers publicly.

In TV there was a regular broadcast “Federal Criminal Headquarters Searches, Advises, Informats” where names and faces of searched criminals were shown so that general populace can help in finding them. I did not give it too much thought at the time – it was just one adult thing in the background – but I do remember hearing the phrase “is searched for the crime of parasitism” quite often. In retrospect today I wonder how many of those people actually were real moochers and how many were slowly and deliberately pushed out of society for being inconvenient to the reigning powers.

Slavic Saturday

My oral graduation exam in highschool* was not looked forward to by my Czech language and literature teacher.  All the others (Biology, Chemistry, German language) have expected me to do reasonably well or even excel, but he had some reservations. I already had a 1 for my essay writing, but the oral exam was essentially going to be about history of Czech literature, and I had great dislike towards learning that history.

The reasons for this were multiple. Firstly history was taught as a sequence of dates  and names to memorize, and I have always had very, very poor memory for numbers and names, despite having excellent memory in general. It is extremely difficult for me to remember birth dates, even of the closest people I know. Secondly I was never convinced by the argument that learning history is important in order to avoid repeating mistakes, because I saw very early on that the whole of history actualy consists of repeating said mistakes by people who knew about them. And thirdly I did not go on well with that teacher on personal level.

So my knowledge of Czech literary history and theory was very, very sketchy. I have honestly tried my best to memorize all the dull and unpalatable shit that I was supposed to know for the exam, but it just did not hold. About the only thing I had a really detailed knowledge about was Karel Čapek, because I liked his books and I have read everything he wrote that I could get my hands on. The teacher knew this and later on I learned that he actually expressly said that he is apprehensive of my exam because “Čapek is all (Charly) knows”.

I was lucky during my exam. I have drawn a question where the main component was some poetry shit I knew nearly nothing about, and secondary question was something vaguely connected to Karel Čapek. I took my chance when preparing my notes and during talking I managed to drift to Čapeks works just after a few sentences and I stayed there talking in minute detail for the whole 15 minutes the exam took. The teacher, relieved, has let me. The observing teacher (an independent assessor from another school) did not intervene either, for whatever reason. And so I got lucky and passed.

Actually, to say that I liked Čapek is an understatement, I admired him greatly. Čapek is in my opinion unsurpassed in Czech literature. Very progressive for his time, and, above all, a fervent pacifist. In today’s world he would probably be left of Bernie Sanders, but he would not be radical leftist in a real sense of the word “radical” not how it is viewed in Anglophone world today, where anyone arguing that not everything should be privatized is labeled as radical leftie. He might even be accused of centrism by true radicals.

Čapek was very outspoken critic of Nazi Germany and its policies, so much so that his personal safety was threatened by local Nazi sympathisers. Allegedly some friends recommended to him to carry a weapon for self-defense after he received death threats, but his commitment to pacifism was such that all he could manage to do was to carry a small starter pistol and when confronted about it he replied “I know that I won’t hurt anyone this way”. Many of his works center around criticizing authoritarian regimes, social injustices and war horrors, and there is absolutely no uncertainty about where he stood on social issues.

But he did not like Marx and communism. And neither do I. And to this day I think his essay “Why I am not a communist” bears weight. Some parts are of course not well aged after nearly a hundred years (the casual sexism f.e.), some parts can be seen as predictive of the massive social and scientific failure that was Russia under Stalin. If we are to learn from the mistakes of the past, I would everyone recommend to go, read that essay and think about it.

*the closest translation I can get to anglophone equivalents)

 

Jack’s Walk

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Jack had so much fun swimming yesterday that we went back to the civic center pond today. The water here is clean and clear and Jack doesn’t mind that bit of ice at all. This is the place where Jack caught his fish and he wants to catch another one. A bigger one and he even had a strategy. First he swam in a slow zig-zag skirting the edge of the ice, then he meandered near the shore until he found the right spot and planted himself like a post and just stood still……for about 5 minutes. I found a bench, drank my coffee, got up and took a few photos, sat down again and still Jack didn’t move. The spell was finally broken by the rattling sound of his cookie box when I put my hand in my pocket. After that we walked down to the soccer fields and back and Jack took one last dip before heading home where the boy is happily napping in a sunbeam.

Friday Feathers: The Birds of Spring

First, a solemn fellow or two. Or proof that life is fucking disappointing, because whenever in  a fantasy novel a crow or raven lands in front of you they have a message from some overlord or lady that sends you off on an interesting quest. All I got was being croaked at.

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©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved