Senses working overtime #347

1 Top photos from 2021

Finally, these last two kind of sum things up well

2 The joy of reclaiming long lost positive words

Some of our happiest words are such because they make us smile, and often involve a bit of fun at our own expense. Who can resist such nicknames as “cacklefarts” for eggs, or “bags of mystery” for sausages (because you never quite know what’s in them)? Even the prudish Victorians knew hankies as “snottingers”, and umbrellas as “bumbershoots”.

3 Omicrom variant - 2022's hero or villain?

A woman draws on the National Covid Memorial Wall on the embankment in London.

4 Poetry corner (for new year's day 2022)

from What I Want Yes, that's what I want right now, Just that sensation Of my mind's gradual Deceleration, as if I Took my foot off the gas And the Buick rolled to a stop. Alicia Ostriker (1992)

5 RIP painter Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced T-Bow) aged 101

Overtime:  Austin Kleon's quotes.

Senses working overtime #346

1 That prince of food - the donut

2 The power of the CD

Tagline - 'If vinyl is for hipsters and streaming is for everyone else, maybe the forgotten format is for you'.

3 RIP Joan Didion

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

 

4 Water

Margaret Atwood on being like water:

"Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does."

5 How Christmas has evolved over the centuries

Overtime: More Joan

“…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage.”

― Joan Didion

Senses working overtime #345

1 Keanu Reeves knows the secrets of the universe

2 Unmarked Keys - Seth Godin

3 Jennifer Lawrence

4 Gratitude - Henry David Thoreau

Source - Austin Kleon's zine

5 Too much culture?

Overtime: 

The neurologist Oliver Sacks published a handful of essays before his death that were collected in Gratitude. He wrote:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Source -  Austin Kleon

Senses working overtime #344

1 Ghost Signs

They are still to be found in London.

2  The sublime spectacle of Yoko in Get Back

John, Paul, George and Ringo, and Yoko.

 

3 The year in vibes - Kyle Chayka  

"Maybe we used the word (vibe) so much because 2021 itself has offered an unplaceable vibe. It is a year that feels as though it does and does not exist, a hangover from the depths of terror in 2020 that provides a significant improvement and yet remains vacuous and unstable".

4 The 50 best albums of 2021 

#1 according to Pitchfork

I own none of these albums, nor I have heard any of them - even Adele's. And I call myself a music fan. 

In a year when I bought a huge number of records, this tells me I am completely out of touch with popular music in 2021 (but that's not news - I have been for the last twenty years).

I will make an effort to listen to some of these in the next few weeks.

5 Mel Brookes

 

Overtime: How we became weekly

This one is apposite as Jewels For The Thirsty is my own artificial weekly contruction - this one is my 344th edition. 

It neatly marks my end of a week. and the start of a new round for my other blogs. 

Senses working overtime #343

1 Andrew Moore

2 Multi-tasking and our greatest fear

By Lawrence Yeo

3 Poetry corner

A Young Man, a Stranger, Smiled at Me            Maybe I reminded him of his grandfather or his favorite teacher in grade school,            the one who lied to him about his painting of the goldfish bowl,            who looked hard at it and said, Beautiful. Jim Moore (2021)

4 Pardon? (Why movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand)

"There are a number of root causes," says Mark Mangini, the Academy Award-winning sound designer behind films like Mad Max: Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049. "It's really a gumbo, an accumulation of problems that have been exacerbated over the last 10 years ... that's kind of this time span where all of us in the filmmaking community are noticing that dialogue is harder and harder to understand." 

5 Twenty-four reasons we'll keep watchin The Beatles' Get Back forever

Great picture from Linda McCartney

Overtime: 

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

– Elizabeth Kubler-Ross