Australia: New South Wales and Victoria Fires

From Sydney Morning Herald - NSW fires LIVE: Two dead, multiple emergency warnings issued by RFS as blazes burn across state on New Years Eve


From BBC- Australia fires: Thousands flee to the sea as fires race to coast

Erimitis, Corfu: the threat of development

Dispatch, Daily Telegraph:

Developers threaten to tear up Durrell’s Greek paradise

Roland Oliphant, Senior Foreign Correspondent, in Corfu

Bank branch and ATM closures: the Swedish experience

Bank and ATM closures: what the UK can learn from Sweden, from Which?

Portland Bill, Christmas Eve

Spray on lens!

The Song Writer

This is a touching country song by Billy Lee Riley about a song writer's ambitions and aspirations.
It captures the feelings of all kinds of writers who are trying to make it.

I have posted it before, maybe because I've been an aspiring song writer myself, on occasion, although I've never dreamed of heading to Nashville! Memphis was far enough.

Dmitri Kessel, Photographer (1902–1995).

See Google images

Henri Cartier Bresson by Dmitri Kessel:

During the Greek Civil War, January, 1948

December 1944:

You ain't going nowhere!

Beijing: 

indoor cats, refusing to let their devoted keepers catch their flight to London.
Never fear, Wang is here!

Photo, DR.

You ain't going nowhere

Goldenhair

‘Lean out of the window,

Goldenhair,

I hear you singing

A merry air'

James Joyce.

Photo of a granddaughter in Poundbury.

My other granddaughter, in La Rochelle, today:

Czech and Slovak Literature in Translation

Czech & Slovak Resources, Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages, University of Oxford

Czech and Slovak Literature in Translation

https://czech.mml.ox.ac.uk/czech-and-slovak-literature-translation

Celebrating Erotokritos Year 2019

From Neos Kosmos

C.20 - an international journal, issue no.2. The Writer as Expatriate. Beverley Farmer, Maria Strani-Potts and other writers on Greece.

Issue 2 contents

Read here, my essay: "Insiders and outsiders: Beverley Farmer, Maria Strani-Potts and other expatriate or “displaced” writers".

How did diverse writers about Greece approach interpersonal relationships, the tensions of family and community life, whilst preserving their individual sense of identity and belonging? What were the joys and resentments which preoccupied these very different women, two of them Australian, one American, one British and one Greek?

Works discussed:

Gillian Bouras, Aphrodite and the Others, 2010.

Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas, The Nifi, A True Story, 2015.

Beverley Farmer, A Body of Water, A Year’s Notebook, 1990.

Beverley Farmer, Collected Stories, 1996.

Beverley Farmer, The Bone House, Essays, 2005.

Beverley Farmer, The House in the Light, 1995.

Theresa Nicholas, Suntouched, A Dark Comedy on a Greek Island, 2011.

Maria Strani-Potts, The Cat of Portovecchio: Corfu Tales, 2007.

Maria Strani-Potts, When the Sun Goes Down, Island Stories, 2013.

Maria Strani-Potts, To Poulima tis Panoraias,2007.

Anna Weale, Passage to Paxos, 1981.


A version of this essay/paper was given at the Writers, Dreamers, Drifters and the Aegean conference on Hydra, 25-26 September, 2018.
.

Portrait of Humanity, Photography Competition

I was thinking of entering an image for Portrait of Humanity, but I couldn't decide which single image to submit, so I have put some here instead.

Rave On!

                                                      Lyme Regis (Story Sequence, 1-7)

West Bay (Single Image, 8)

Greek Government to subsidize newspapers (€6.7 million)? Ανακαλείται το πρόγραμμα

Gov’t subsidize newspapers with €6.7million, from Keep Talking Greece


UPDATE from KTG: "After the outcry on social media, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said late on Saturday that the ministerial decision is being withdrawn and called on political parties for a meeting next week to submit their ideas for improvement".

Kathimerini, 14.12.2019, Ανακαλείται το πρόγραμμα ενίσχυσης κυκλοφορίας των εφημερίδων πανελλήνιας κυκλοφορίας

"The Joint Ministerial Decision on the granting of beneficiaries to the relevant program for the support of companies issuing Greek national newspapers, as announced by government spokesman Stelios Petsas, is revoked on 12.12.2019...Representatives of the political parties on press issues are called on Monday, December 16, 2019 at 11:30 am. to the General Secretariat for Communication and Information, in order to express their proposals, if they so wish." - Google Translation.


Kathimerini,  14.12.2019- ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: Κριτική στην κυβέρνηση για τον τρόπο ενίσχυσης των πανελλαδικών εφημερίδων

(Criticisms of changes to the original Joint Ministerial Decision on the Pan-Hellenic Newspaper Support Programme - Κοινή Υπουργική Απόφαση για το Πρόγραμμα ενίσχυσης των εφημερίδων πανελλαδικής κυκλοφορίας).


See also (ResearchGate), abstract, Greece: Press Subsidies in Turmoil*, 2013, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Full Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens:

"In this chapter, I will critically analyze the Greek subsidy scheme for newspapers. I will argue that state aid for the press has been heavily influenced by the troubled Greek patronage politics. I will organize this chapter in two parts. The first part deals with the structure of the Greek media system, which has been heavily affected by the interplay between the political elite and the press. Second, I will point out that press subsidies have not been governed by a clear legal frame-work. Instead, I argue that press subsidies in Greece have been used as state instruments of appeasement and silencing the print media. I build on the suggestion that state–media relations in Greece are an asymmetric relationship and could best be described through the concept of clientelism, as I attempt to explain in the next section of this chapter. Finally, I will conclude that press subsidies in Greece are in a state of continuous turmoil. This is due to the financial crisis and the austerity package put in place which exerts huge pressure on the existing practices of the press support provisions".

* “Greece: Press Subsidies in Turmoil” in P.C. Murschetz (ed.), State Aid for Newspapers, Media Business and Innovation; Theories, Cases, Actions, New York: Springer, 2013, p. 237-521

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642356902.

See also, draft of Media Policy and Independent Journalism in Greece P. Iosifidis and D. Boucas

 

How the Greek cartoonist Makris sees Brexit, eKathimerini

Greta Thunberg apologizes for comment. Sätt dem mot väggen (Put them against the wall) - lost in translation, Swedish to English

Sätt dem mot väggen! Ställa dem mot väggen! Put them against the wall!

Swedish saying, different meaning and sense from the English translation.


From Euronews

"Thunberg told the crowd in Turin that world leaders were running away from their responsibilities to fight climate change."We have to make sure that they cannot do that," she said. "We will make sure they, that we put them against the wall, and that they will have to do their job and to protect our futures."The expression "putting someone against the wall" in Swedish describes a situation when someone is forced to address difficult questions or a difficult situation".

From The Independent

“World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities but we have to make sure they cannot do that... We will make sure that we put them against the wall and they will have to do their job to protect our futures”.

May, by Karel Hynek Mácha (llustrations Jan Zrzavý, translation Edith Pargeter)

Čechové jsou národ dobrý!

One of the most famous Czech poems, in English translation by Edith Pargeter

William Harkins' translation

James Naughton's translation


An extract from the translation by Hugh Hamilton McGoverne (May. Rendered in English verse by Hugh Hamilton McGoverne. Together with selected prose, letters, occasional pieces and a portrait, 1949)

Corfu, 1862 and 1852 (4 Photographs by Francis Bedford)

An exceptional photograph posted on Facebook: Corfu, 1862:

Corfu from the Citadel, 1852 (Francis Bedford):

Francis Bedford, View of Corfu, 1852

Francis Bedford, English Church and Obelisk to Sir Howard Douglas, 1852

Francis Bedford. Memorial to Sir Thomas Maitland, 1852

Salisbury Cathedral and the Moon: "La lune, comme un point sur un i"

An atmospheric photo by Nick Bull, Stonehenge Dronescapes (Facebook, UK Through the Lenses)

C'était, dans la nuit brune,

Sur le clocher jauni,

La lune

Comme un point sur un i.

Alfred de Musset, Ballade à la lune

Nick's comments on the photo:

"December's 'Cold Moon' over Salisbury Cathedral. Well, I climbed up the hill and into the chalk pit, a spot I have shot the Cathedral from before and got setup and then it rained. Lots of clouds rolled in and I thought my chance had gone. I stood there muttering under my breath with the brolly up and I said to myself I'm going as soon as there is a break in the rain and 15 minutes later a break in the cloud appeared and there was a 5 minute window of opportunity so I shot a few double exposures back to back and crossed my fingers. Unfortunately with so much cloud around the twilight period was very dark and getting it in a single shot was out the window".

Elli Alexiou of Vitsa, Zagori; Έλλη Αλεξίου, Βίτσα

Elli was one of the kindest and most wonderful women I have ever known. 

RIP.

(Photo above from Facebook)

Some of my photos, below:

Spyridon, Patron Saint of Potters; Saint Spyridon's Day, Corfu

I've only just discovered that Saint Spyridon is also known as the Patron Saint of Potters.

Νικόλαος Κουτούζης. Ο Άγιος Σπυρίδων

Happy Name Day to all friends called Σπύρος (Spyros/Spiro)

Χρόνια Πολλά!

David Bellamy, RIP

TV naturalist David Bellamy dies aged 86, The Guardian

A photo I took in Corfu Town, by the statue of Lord Guilford.

Naturalist and presenter David Bellamy dies at 86, BBC

David Bellamy, who has died at 86, was frozen out of the BBC for his maverick climate change views, MailOnline

Vijay (This Is Your Country Now, Too); BBC Radio 4

Avin Shah's comedy celebrates his East African heritage, BBC Radio 4, listen

"Today's story salutes the enterprise and grit of a generation of British Asian citizens, who were forced to remake their lives in the UK in the 1960s. Fifteen year-old Vijay was born in Kenya, but now the country has won its independence from the British Empire, a new programme of Africanisation means his parents are denied work, and his school has closed down. But when he arrives at Heathrow with his British passport, he's put on a plane back to Kenya. Then in Nairobi, Kenyan Immigration say he's not Kenyan either, and put him back on another plane. So where does Vijay belong? What can he say about who he is, that will get him off a plane and back to school? Luckily, Vijay's new travelling companion, Mr Ramesh Ramji, is about to help him find the answers".

 

UNDP Human Development Index Ranking, 2019

Country Ranking

UK ranks fifteenth, with an HDI score of 0.920 (maximum 1) and average life expectancy 81.2 yrs

Full report

Edwin Muir's "The Labyrinth". 1949; Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1945-1948

One of the greatest post-war collections of poetry, The Labyrinth (1949), "written in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948, when Edwin Muir was Director of the British Institute in Prague".

Edwin Muir's "The Labyrinth": A Study of Symbol and Structure, Christopher Wiseman

Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 10 | Issue 2,, 10-1-1972 (12 pages)

Art in Dorset County Hospital, George Wright, Vanishing Dorset, Photographs

Wonderful black and white photographs by George Wright along the corridor between the Abbotsbury and Lulworth wards in DCH.

See George Wright Photography, Vanishing Dorset

About George Wright


The curative value of art...


Arts in Hospital, DCH

Another impressive series of black and white photographs at DCH:

Jean Macalpine, Dorset Land and Sea

Dorchester (Dorset): Happiest Town to live in the South West. Ranked No. 8, nationwide, Rightmove Survey

Rightmove Survey

MailOnline Graphic, Article