Senses working overtime #329

This week I've been outside our property once (Friday afternoon for a 30 minute walk to buy some groceries at the local 4 Square) so my senses have been stimulated by rural things or else by things happening in my music lounge where I've set up an office, or elsewhere inside Maple Grove

With that in mind - here are this week's jewels:

1 Frosty mornings from a window 

 

Most days this week started with a lovely frost and then were followed by days full of brilliant sunshine. Spectacular late winter scenes ensued!

2 Equaliser 2

Post Olympics' TV has been pretty barren of thrills and spills. Stallone's Rambo Last Blood was unrelenting graphic violence and pretty yucky. But Denzil's second go around as The Equaliser was on the money - stylish, violent yes - but not OTT, with interesting characters and storylines. Worth our time!

3 Iron Butterfly

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was the standout song on my songtrack this week - just the right amount of heavy/spaced out dumbness required for Lockdown. The live version on the pictured album is particularly spaced out. Jacinda would like it!

4 How Do You Live?

Finished this one and moved on to finishing off Mark Manson's counterintuitive approach to living a good life and my copy of The Arabian Nights.

5 Sunset - Effie Lee Newsome 

Since Poets have told of sunset,  What is left for me to tell? I can only say that I saw the day Press crimson lips to the horizon gray,  And kiss the earth farewell.

Overtime:  RIP Don and Charlie

Not a great week for rock fans. First Don Everly and then Charlie Watts left Planet Earth behind.

First album I reached for was Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out. Not only is Charlie the cover model but Mick's classic throwaway line is on it - Charlie's good tonight, inne!

Senses working overtime #328

1 Tokyo Olympics - every sport!

2 Questions for technology - Austin Kleon

3 Time dilation - Seth Godin

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

4 Jimmy Connors

How Jimmy Connors won a point by launching his racket in the air in 1996. What a freak that guy was - certainly miss his OTT celebrations (courtesy of Swiss Miss).

5 Delta - how the pandemic now ends

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

In simple terms, many people who caught the original virus didn’t pass it to anyone, but most people who catch Delta create clusters of infection. That partly explains why cases have risen so explosively. It also means that the virus will almost certainly be a permanent part of our lives, even as vaccines blunt its ability to cause death and severe disease.

Overtime: 

Author and journalist Mitch Albom on time:

"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out."

(Courtesy of James Clear)

Senses working overtime #327

1 Jack Kirby 101

Nice little primer on the king of comics.

2 The male gaze theory

Photo by Nate Johnston on Unsplash

Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at - John Berger (1972)

3 Welcome 2 Prince's America

4 How to gain more from your reading

5 Megan Fox is no longer hiding

Overtime:  

Mary Oliver - Instructions for living a life (courtesy of Austin Kleon via Swiss Miss)

Senses working overtime #326

1 Tittenhurst Park

I am quietly obsessed with the Beatles' photos from John's country pile - Tittenhurst Park. New shots keep cropping up all the time.

I love this one for John's cheeky laugh.

2 The Rock in Jungle Cruise

3 The end of the office - Seth Godin

4 Steven Gardiner

5 Less - Andrew Sean Greer

Julie lent me this book and it's taken me a while to embrace it. This quote (courtesy of James Clear) helped me with that:

Writer Jeanette Winterson on the connection between art and an open mind:

"Most of us spend a lot of time censoring everything that we see and hear. Does it fit with our world picture? And if it doesn't, how can we shut it out, how can we ignore it, how can we challenge it? We are continually threatened in life, it's true. But once you are alone with a book, and it's also true with a picture or with music, all those defenses drop and you can enter into a quite different space where you will learn to think differently about yourself."

Overtime: Positive News!