A Quilt for All Seasons

Maria finished this radiant quilt today. I love it!  

Christopher King: An Evangelist for Greek Demotic Music

 

From Athens Insider:

https://www.athensinsider.com/christopher-king-an-evangelist-for-greek-demotic-music/

AA Survey, Email

 

The AA*, Survey Questionnaire email,

20 November 2020

  

Thanks, AA, but what did you say?

“We know you’re no longer with us,

 but your opinion still means a lot”.

 

 *The Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous

The Ethiopian Crisis. Tigray Conflict.

Inside the conflict bringing Ethiopia to crisis, PBS News Hour


Ethiopia Crisis: High stakes for Africa - Could the battle for Tigray end up destabilising the entire Horn of Africa? BBC World Service, The Real Story

Explaining Tigray, BBC World Service, The Fifth Floor - What is behind the conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region?

Sappho's Leap

 

I write at some length about Sappho's supposed (apocryphal) suicide leap in my book, The Ionian Islands and Epirus, A Cultural History (pages 3-10). I discuss a number of poems on the subject and this 'landscape of the imagination'.

At the time of writing the book, I had not discovered the poem by Edwin Muir:

Czech Books You Must Read

 

From Radio Prague International:

https://english.radio.cz/czech-books-you-must-read-8506310

Czech Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution

 

Was it really 31 years ago?

https://english.radio.cz/czechs-remember-31st-anniversary-velvet-revolution-8700380

https://english.radio.cz/apart-united-festival-freedom-finds-novel-ways-czechs-celebrate-velvet-8700330

Cornwall with Simon Reeve, BBC TV

 

Episode 1 - an important programme to see, relevant to the whole of the UK . BBC iPlayer

Tragic in places.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pb6s/cornwall-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-1

 

Adam Morse, Seeing Differently, BBC Radio 4

"Adam Morse, who is registered blind, explains how he directed an award winning film by seeing differently. When he was diagnosed at the age of nineteen with a rare eye condition, he feared at first that his ambitions to act and direct might be thwarted. A decade later, his dreams are being fulfilled and he hopes to blaze a trail for other artists with disabilities", BBC programme information.

Listen to this inspiring programme from Four Thought:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p0vh

Reading Preferences: On Novels and Non-Fiction

 

These days I rarely turn to a novel, out of choice. For many years (with very exceptional cases) I have found the essays, letters, non-fiction and autobiographical writings of novelists more interesting and absorbing than their fictional works.

Just for starters, here are some of my most-read works by noted novelists:

Alan Sillitoe:

Mountains and Caverns, selected essays by Alan Sillitoe

Life Without Armour, An Autobiography

Kingsley Amis:

The Amis Collection, Selected Non-Fiction 1954-1990

John Fowles:

Wormholes, Essays and Occasional Writings

The Journals, Volume 1 and 2

Lawrence Durrell:

Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence

Prospero's Cell

William Golding:

The Hot Gates

A Moving Target

Anthony Burgess:

Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

 

Songs of the Seal

 

Thinking of Sammy the Seal, where is he now?

Two haunting songs:

Òran an Ròin / The Song of the Seal, Julie Fowlis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DbEDIKh0hI

'An Ròn' and 'Ann an Caolas Od Odrum' lyric video //Julie Fowlis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pmeyFOZSfQ