Rhythm song

As Britain (finally) after several centuries appoints a woman (and a Scot) for the first time to the post of Poet Laureate (which has until now been unremittingly the preserve of white, English males, despite being supposedly a post for the whole of the UK) the BBC is embracing verse, with a special poetry season across its various networks, with, as is now almost the standard practise, a good web site to support the programming. I know, I've banged on about poetry before and realistically I'm probably wasting my breath (or typing) as people mostly polarise into those who embrace poetry and those who say they can't stand it.

Now I say they can't stand it, but for most of them what they actually mean is they've never really tried and have written off one of our oldest art forms, a magical form of writing, which has spaned millennia of human development. Perhaps they were put off by a bad English teacher at school, perhaps they simply assume that its not for them without trying, but either way it shuts them off from a huge swathe of human culture. Bards have been a vital part of our cultural heritage literally for thousands of years; long before the written word and the novel and the play were commonly available using verse as a method to memorise tales was the method that was used, its probably how huge epics like the Iliad would have been transmitted across the centuries before it was written down.

I love the written word; its a magical power, to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas and feelings across time and space; it links people. And in the realms of metaphor and literary structure and notional worlds that the written word embraces, poetry is a special case all its own, a unique way of talking to the world and to the heart and to the soul in a way few others can. Writing was once seen literally as magic - Egyptian priests casting spells to protect the dead pharoah in the afterlife through the use of words, pictograms drawn on cave walls of Lascaux to drawn on the power of what they represent, the use of the exact, written form of a person's name to give power over them. We're so surrounded by communication media today we've forgotten how remarkable the act of being able to articulate thoughts and feelings in the written word, in a way that can go beyond ourselves to many others and even outlast us, actually is. Poetry is a direct link to that time when few could read and write, to magical incantations, but not to cast spells or summon angels or demons, but to draw and share emotions directly. And to hear poetry read aloud, by the light of candles and fire as it was for millennia is to partake in a ceremony of magic.

Fry's English Delight

I missed this first time around but BBC Radio 4 is repeating a series on the way the English language and they way people use it changes; it's typically Fry being clever, informative and highly amusing all at the same time.

Pictures on the Beeb

Rather than end my last post of 2008 before I go out with such a downer as the previous one (I wanted to write something more positive but it just ain't there inside me right now), here's one very little piece of nicer news - the BBC News site has used another of my photographs (that's three now, I think) in their weekly In Pictures feature in the Scottish section, it's the eighth one in on the slideshow, taken during the German market just before Christmas on the Mound. In fact its the very one I posted on here just a few days ago (I'd repost it here but Blogger, as is often the case, is refusing to upload images again like it does several times a week, grrr, but you can see it full size on my Flickr).

Brunel in pictures

Photojournalist David White set out to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Howlett. You may not recognise his name, but you will have seen at least one of his photographs, of the legendary engineer isambard Kingdom Bruenel, in dusty coat and top hat, cigar between his lips, posed in front of massive chains, ever inch the great Victorian pioneer and engineer.

Howlett was dead within a couple of years of taking that photograph at the age of only 27 (the toxic chemicals in the photography process most likely killed him), but he created one of the iconic images of the 19th century. All the more remarkable, as White points out, because photography, itself a 19th century creation of that great age of innovation and exploration, was barely twenty years old when he fashioned this image, not content to do a simple portrait but to frame, pose and light a scene which capture the essence of the man so well. White had a re-created camera similar to the one Howlett would have had in the 1850s and took it around Britain to photograph some of Brunel's surviving structures in as close a manner as would have been available to Howlett (although wisely he used non toxic chemicals); the BBC has an audio visual slideshow of the result which is both asethetically pleasing and historically fascinating, drawing on the early days of photography and that period when there seemed a great romance about the new world engineers and inventors were shaping in our little islands.

Branded Woss

I'm not going to go into the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross thing much - they acted like a pair of drunk teen tubes (made to look worse by the fact Andrew Sachs has acted like a gentleman); joking on the air is one thing, regardless of taste, but phoning up an old man and leaving lewd messages on his answering machine on air is pretty poor (and obscene phone calls are illegal as far as I know so they are lucky he never asked for charges to be pressed). I think they should be punished but with style - hold Brand down and tell him his rat's nest hair is going to be forcibly combed. That will scare the hell out of him. And tell Woss he is welcome back on the air but must attend elocution lessons to lose the speech impediment and also learn enough manners to be passed off as a Duchess. Meantime here's a great take on it from B3TA made by Beau Bo D'or which nicely catches the ridiculous tabloid frenzy that unscrupulous editors have been stoking (come on, there are far more important news stories going on, why is this taking so many columns and so much airspace?):

Strips

I heard at work from the BBC this week - comedian and sometime cartoonist Phill Jupitus had a very good programme on cartoonists and cartooning a few moths back, which was very well received so Radio 4 have come up with four more. They are in fifteen minute segments, with the first one in which Jupitus meets the legendary Gary Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury (which has been a satirical thorn in the side of many a politician, bless 'im) was last week - it can still be heard via Listen Again and there is also a permanent link for this one. I'm told that hopefully the other three in the series will also get perma links and not just the usual 7-days only Listen Again. This coming Tuesday sees a chat with some up and coming New York cartoonists, the next week Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, creators of Alex (which has become very topical at the moment with the financial meltdown) and then finally Bill Griffiths, creator of (among others) Zippy the Pinhead. Full details are over on the FPI blog.

Fry in America

Seems to be something of an American media theme this last few days, no doubt prompted by the presidential circus, but as it means we get the national treasure that is Stephen Fry with a new show, "Stephen Fry in America", as he crosses the United States in a London taxi cab (not his own one which he so famously drives around here in Blighty though). I had no idea he was almost born in the US when his father was offered a job at Princeton but he turned it down. Hard to think of Fry as American, he seems to quintessentially British - I mean Twinnings got him to advertise their tea, he cooks on an Aga and gives a wedding present to Prince Charles. All of which might have made him annoying except he seems such a lovely bloke, fiercely intelligent and very funny and self depreacting with it. America's loss was our gain.

American dreaming

BBC Radio 4 has been running a fascinating series entitled "America, Empire of Liberty", presented by historian David Reynolds, which I've been listening to over the last weeks. The actual history, leading up to, through and just after the War of Independence and the actual establishment of a country out of a disparate groups of revolutionaries and often competing and arguing states is interesting enough, but the series has also done what any good history should do - present the links between the Then and the Now. History is not a static, dry study but something dynamic, events from decades and centuries before constantly bleeding into the present the the future yet to be born, which makes it a shame so many people tend to ignore it (and that escalates to tragedy when we see what our so called leaders do in ignorance of historical precedent).

Take for example on of last week's episodes - some parts of the series have touched on US history I was familiar with, but this part I didn't know: the Aliens and Seditions Act, passed by Alexaner Hamilton's Federalist Party in the 1790s as debate raged over the newly independent US's stance on the growing global conflict between France and the British Empire. This largely forgotten act delivered unheard of powers to central government (and at a time when US central government was very weak, by design, most power designed by Jefferson et al to be held more locally at state and county levels, not like today where the executive has steadily accumulated powers to itself). Basically a 1790s War on Terror (WOT?) it allowed the president to deport aliens without right of appeal and to silence criticism in the interests of the country. The parallels between the 18th century and the draconian changes to civil liberties in the laws of the US, UK and other countries in the post 9-11 world are disturbingly familiar.

Likewise debates over a newly minted land of so-called liberty happily ignoring the rights of women (even when President Adams wife implored him to remember that a land of democratic liberty which ignored one entire gender was pure hypocricy. She was, of course, ignored by the male leaders, many of whom, truth be told, for all their fine rhetoric, were not overly mad on giving all men the vote, let alone women, unless they were the right kind of men (well bred, well off, basically the New World's aristocracy), thus again repeating old mistakes even back then. And then there was the odious issue of slavery, not to mention the way the native American Indians would be treated...

Meanwhile on the TV the BBC has just started a new series by Simon Schama, "The American Future: a History". The first episode also linked the Then and Now, exploring the seemingly insatiable consumerism of the US and its almost unshakable belief that it can endlessly exploit natural resources throughout its history, noting how this belief is slowly (and perhaps a little too late) being shaken as drought in the West means constantly shriking water for more and more people, to say nothing of the over-dependence on oil driven not only by car culture but an over-sized (and extremely inefficent) car culture.

Schama brings us right up to date with both Obama and McCain's campaign comments on climate change and resource management and comparing to a century or so before with one man telling the good and great of Westward Expansion that there simply was not enough water in the land for all the cities and the farms they planned (he was booed of stage, but he was right) and in more recent history replaying what Jimmy Carter told America during his presidency (but more Americans preferred to listen to a B movie actor at that election than a man who had been a farmer and actually knew what he was talking about in terms of managing the land).

On the BBC

The photograph I posted here last weekend of the new moon hanging over a twilight street of Victorian tenements has been put up by the BBC on their website in their weekly 'your pictures' section of the Scottish news part of the BBC site (it's the fourth one in). I was quite surprised this shot came out at all, actually, it was my usual gonzo photography, spur of the moment, see a scene, try and snap it - no kit, just my small compact digital that lives in my bag, a tiny 3-inch mini tripod meant for table top use that I sometimes have in the bag and a handy gatepost to sit it on - and a lot of luck. I'm pretty chuffed that it worked and even more chuffed that the Beeb picked it for this week's crop of images from round Scotland, especially given how good some of the pictures in that feature are each week (click to see the larger image on my Flickr).



Since I started posting digital photos I've had some borrowed for articles, for teaching guides and other uses (and that's not counting ones I've taken at comics conventions for the work blog) - doesn't pay anything but it does give a damned big feel-good factor. And being an old web-hand I still have that old-fashioned belief that the web is meant to allow us to share a bit ( a lot of us who started online in the early 90s still feel that, I think), so I kind of like the fact that a number of different folks have asked to use some of my pics on occasion.

Hypocritical bastard

George Bush asked in a BBC interview if America still held the moral high ground after scandals of violated civil liberties, civilian deaths, tortures and Abu Ghraib: "Absolutely. We believe in human rights and human dignity. We believe in the human condition. We believe in freedom." This from a man who is trying to veto a bill from the US Senate (how very democratic of him) which makes the use of water boarding illegal for the purposes of interrogation. In other words he is trying to make the use of torture legal. How this fits in with his previous statement is beyond me. How this retarded monkey can say things like this then apparently believe he is on the side of Good is beyond me. And just how so many fucking idiots can go along with it, vote for it and support it is utterly beyond me.

The fact that the Senate had to even pass a law declaring this process illegal to begin with speaks volumes - most civilised countries would consider such torture utterly illegal to begin with and not need to pass extra laws. This is how the self proclaimed good guys fight the good fight. No wonder the world is such a bloody mess. Neitzche's cautionary passages on fighting monsters and becoming a monster in the process was obviously not on the reading curriculum for Bush or his supporters. Although since the brain-dead numpty seems to have difficulties with the fairly simple task of putting words together for coherent speech it shouldn't be a surprise that he isn't well educated or well read.

Bitesize

The BBC asked if they could borrow one of my photographs from my Flickr stream recently, to use as part of their Bitesize revision guides, in this case to be part of a audio-visual slideshow to accompany a reading of "The Field Mouse" by Gillian Clarke - my pic of a harvest-time field, taken just outside North Berwick near Tantallon Castle is the first one in the presentation. No money, sadly, but the feel-good factor is quite rewarding, especially since I'm so fond of poetry.

BBC on YouTube

The Beeb has been posting material to YouTube, higher quality than usual, although it isn't that great a mix so far to be honest - a lot of it is very short clips that were trailers for programmes shown on TV or the BBC websites before and I'm damned annoyed they blocked the embedding function which rather undermines the notion of YouTube and people sharing videos by embedding them on their sites and blogs. Still, they did have this clip from Mock The Week which is worth a look where the comedians compete to come up with unlikely lines for given situations.