Monday, March 28, 2011

Ross & McDonald Wedding Newburgh North Fife

Ross & McDonald Wedding Newburgh North Fife, the ceremony was conducted by The Rev Lynn Brady in Abdie Parish Church.
The name of this parish, Abdie or Ebtie, is supposed to be the Gaelic word abtaob signifying waterside. The ancient name of the parish was Lindores, which is still the name of the principal village in it, a place of great antiquity. The church of Abdie was always reckoned to have belonged to the abbey of Lindores. In 1633, the whole of the parish of Newburgh was disjoined from Abdie. The old church, which is now in ruins, may be traced to the beginning of the fifteenth century. There are also the ruins of old Lindores castle. The present church was built in 1827.

Nearly getting to the church on time.

Clip clop arrival.

Singing Lord of the Dance.

Nearly done and dusted.

Married.


Happy Ross's

Bride-maids and Best-man.

Onlooker, seen it all before.



Ross & McDonald Wedding Abdie Church by Newburgh North Fife

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Tayview 27th March Newburgh North Fife

Well, what a difference a few degrees warmer makes. Inside/outside tasks became a relative pleasure, I even had time to stop and take in the views between long awaited household tasks.

Tayview from Banklands, Newburgh North Fife today 27th March 2010.

Eye burning reflection off the River Tay.

# Wind farm in Perthshire about 10 miles West from Newburgh.

Clear air today 20% humidity, the Perthshire peaks are more evident.

Cresting the hill at Black Earnside this smoke came apparent, a hot air balloon approaching from the top right of the picture, maybe wondering too.

A closer look and the fact the smoke was white confirmed it must be vegetation and not a house.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Tayview 25th March North Fife

Today 25th March Tayview from Flisk North Fife.



Tayview last night 24th March.

What a Sunset, in the lower middle foreground can be seen the navigation posts which mark the deep channel of The River Tay, this follows The South Tay fault line.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Krill Oil

Krill Oil, in my search for a diet supplement to enhance my flagging mental falculties I purchased some online from America. Already I am experiencing gognitive benefits. If you live anywhere outside USA then buy from a more local supplier. I suffered the imposition of added postal charges in America plus the UK and import duties which added another 30% on the purchase price, none of which were expected, so I wont be going there again. The only way to know how this product benefits is to taste it and see. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I have no financial gain if you click on the link below but I am happy if others gain benefit and a brighter life.


Image from SUNY Stonybrook's Marine Science Research Center

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Toads North Fife

Toads at Flisk North Fife, another warm night and the toads were out croaking to each other, this plump female in search of a mate.

Memory-Boosting Effect of Bacopa Monnieri: A Clinical Study

Increasingly I experience those senior moments where memory recall is not what it used to be. In researching possible antidotes I came across this publication. Bacopa Monnieri can be grown at home and can surely benefit ones mental health.


Memory-Boosting Effect of Bacopa Monnieri: A Clinical Study.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Tayview 23rd March North Fife

Tayview 23rd March, at last there is warmth in the air and the occasional burst of sunlight, Sunbeams for some.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Yang Lian Lee Valley Poems



I first came across Yang Lian at Stanza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival where he reminisced about his relationship with Harvey Holton, a mutual friend, Poet in Scots who died early last year. His energy and exuberance is evident in the video of the occasion.

Yang Lian Lee Valley Poems.
A review.
Yang Lian is one of the most astonishing poets I've read for years. He has a westernist, modernist sensibility allied with an ancient Chinese, almost shamanistic one. He can both excite and frighten you - like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn! --W.N. Herbert, Scotsman

Yang Lian distinguishes himself in representing the pain of life caught in between historic eras - a new version of an old issue for world literature as well as Chinese literature is proposed: how to continue writing, relying on individual rather than enforced communal inspiration. --Allen Ginsberg

It wouldn't surprise me if he became a future Nobel Laureate. His style is one of extraordinary grandeur and ambition - a monumental drive, a sensuous strength and intellectual clarity. --David Morley, Stand

Before and since his enforced exile, Yang Lian has been one of the most innovative and influential poets in China. Widely hailed in America and Europe as a highly individual voice in world literature, he has been translated into many languages. "Lee Valley Poems" is his first book to be wholly conceived and written in London, once his place of exile and now his permanent home. It includes an extended sequence, "What Water Confirms", translated by Brian Holton and Agnes Hung-Chong Chan, and a suite of shorter poems translated by several poets, most of these working with Yang Lian: Polly Clark, Antony Dunn, Jacob Edmond, W.N. Herbert, Pascale Petit, Fiona Sampson and Arthur Sze. The book's preface, A Wild Goose Speaks to me, takes as its springboard Yang Lian's comment 'There is no international, only different locals'. With this perspective, the Lee Valley of his first London poems becomes the international inside the local: the poet may travel far but never really leaves the ground of his own inner self, and the value and joy of poetry is seen as fishing in the deep sea of existence. This title is available in a bilingual Chinese-English edition.

A must.Lee Valley Poems

Monday, March 21, 2011

In Memory of Harvey Holton Scots Poet.

On Sunday, The Vernal Equinox, a tree planting ceremony took place in the grounds of Birkhill, North Fife in memory of Harvey Holton, poet in Scots, a fitting memorial given the Celtic significance of The Hazel Tree, as described below.

A demonstration of what to do.

Work in progress.

Anne and Brian holton planting one of the Hazel trees.

One look at the hazel tree and it's easy to see why the Celtic meaning of the hazel tree deals with creativity, and why the druids held it in such high regard amongst the Ogham ranks.

The hazel's unusual branch formations make it a delight to ponder, and was often used for inspiration in art, as well as poetry.

The bards, ovates and druids of the Celtic day would intently observe its crazy curly-Q branches. Doing this would lead them into other worlds of delightful fantasy. Much the same way our modern imaginations can be captured by a good movie, the creative Celts were artistically motivated by the seemingly random and wild contortions of the hazel.

A more commonly known fact is that the hazel is considered a container of ancient knowledge. Ingestion of the hazel nuts is proposed to induce visions, heightened awareness and lead to epiphanies. Indeed, the legend of Fionn Mac Cumhail tells of his gaining the wisdom of the universe by simply coming in contact with the essence of the hazel nut.

He did this through the salmon, which was known to eat the hazel nuts that dropped around a sacred pond encircled by nine hazel trees. It was fabled that from their diet of the nuts, the salmon too were keys to infinite knowledge. Fionn burned his finger while preparing a soup of these very salmon. Instinctively, Fionn thrust is finger in his mouth to soothe the burn and by this slight contact he became enlightened.

Interestingly, in modern times the hazel nut has proven itself to be a brain food. Pound for pound the hazel nut have double the protein, and good fats than eggs, making them natural nourishment for brain function.

When you are creatively stuck, or your intellectual growth seems stagnate, call upon the energy of the hazel tree. Better yet, eat a few hazelnuts, or make a necklace from the nuts. Often such necklaces were worn for protection as well as to illicit visions. Likewise, hazelnuts were (still are) eaten just before engaging in divinatory, foretelling or meditative practices.

Post script: Pick your hazelnuts after they have fallen from the tree. It is considered bad form to pick them unripe off the branches.


In Memory of Harvey Holton Scots Poet.
Harvey's view from Corbbie Hill.

Harvey's view from the glade and Hazel trees.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Georgina Parkins at The Steeple Newburgh North Fife

This weekend Georgina Parkins, fine artist exhibited some of her recent works in the project space in The Steeple Arts Newburgh North Fife
Georgina Parkins.


Georgina states:
My work mostly draws inspiration from architecture, in particular older buildings in decaying areas of the city. The combination of flaky surfaces and clean, hard lines intrigues me, and it is this combination of textures and mark making I enjoy the most. I also take inspiration from horizon lines, especially the horizon at Leith Docks, as it is constantly interrupted by tall towers. These breaks in the horizon often map out my composition, as if I find a particularly pleasing horizon line to look at, I will take that horizontal and any corresponding verticals as my intitial composition before editing.
I do try and recreate lines and surfaces I have seen,however it is not so that I'm able to imitate that object or space, but rather so that I can apply it to my own composition to improve the aesthetic. Things that inspire me become links, and I order these links so that I am happy with the arrangement, in most cases this includes a lot of editing. Any information I consider unnecessary I will not include, as I do not feel the need to over complicate my work. I reduce my chosen subject to the bare essentials, and manipulate it for my own aesthetic pleasure. In doing this, I believe I make my original subject irrelevant to the piece, as it has been so heavily edited by myself. I would like the viewer to see my work as an object itself, rather than a representation of something else.
I hope the viewer to take in the initial experience as if taking a breath, then to allow their eye to consider the details. If a composition is too complex, or has too much information, then I find myself trying to take in all the information, rather then just enjoying the moment of first seeing it.
The history behind the sufaces I create is fundamental to my paintings. I am constantly clearing my paintings, by covering them in a layer of paint, or wiping away what I have worked on with lemsolve. By constantly clearing, then once again building up the piece, I give my painting a past, a sort of time line of paint. A completed painting in the colour blue at some stage might have been yellow, green, black, etc, and all these different stages with have an effect on the finished work.




More on Georgina.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

In Celebration of Harvey Holton Scots Poet

In Celebration of Harvey Holton Scots Poet
I first met Harvey when I moved to North Fife in 1979, we became good friends and enjoyed many convivial, sometimes merry, sometimes deeply conversational times over the years. Latterly we were to collaborate in creative projects, Harvey's poetry, my pictures, alas this was not to be. Not everything in life turns out. Like many creative people his skills and production will be only now fully recognised, albeit posthumously.


Harvey Holton at home a few years past.


Twin brother Brian Holton and Yang Lian Chinese Poet remember Harvey at Stanza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival, St Andrews. Entitled "Past and Present"


More on Harvey.


The empty chair. I am sad.

Knit a Poem Stanza St Andrews

Poetry in motion
There it was waiting to swaddle.
Left to right measurement: 13 metres (43 ft) at its widest point
Top to bottom measurement: 8.7 metres (28 ft) at its widest point
Number of squares: 1200+

The poem is the work of more than one thousand knitters and crocheters worldwide, who furiously clicked needles and hooks throughout September, to turn the individual letters of Thomas’s poem into colourful 12-inch squares.

Judith Palmer, Director of the Poetry Society, commented:

“We wanted to celebrate the Society’s centenary with a fun, grand-scale project in which many people could participate, that was about ‘poetry’ but also summoned up the idea of ‘society’, to reflect all the thousands of people who’ve kept the Society going since 1909. The time, commitment and creative skills that people have given to this enterprise has been overwhelming.”

Knitted poem strewn upon the floor in the town hall St Andrews.
Dylan Thomas
In My Craft or Sullen Art
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Copyright Dylan Thomas. Used by Permission of David Higham Associates.

Ten Poems of Hafez: Jila Peacock Scotland's International Poetry Festival

I was delighted to come across this exhibition at Stanza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival. Ten poems of Hafez: Jila Peacock.
Iranian-born painter and printmaker Jila Peacock has created Persian calligraphic shape poems using words from Hafez of Shiraz. In my ignorance I thought Shiraz was a wine grape variety but this work is equally intoxicating.

Jila Peacock

Calligraphic Poem by Jila Peacock.

Hafez horse poem.

Ten Poems from Hafez.
Hafez (d. 1390) is Iran s premier and most quoted lyric poet. His status in his own country, and his universal appeal, can be compared with that of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world. The painter and printmaker Jila Peacock has chosen ten love poems from Hafez and following the footsteps of the great Islamic calligraphers, has produced ten shape-poems that sit by her own translations from the Persian. Accompanied by Robert Hillenbrand's erudite introduction and a foreword by Parvin Loloi, this book is an exceptional achievement, a celebration of the marriage between word and image.
From the Publisher
The original limited handprint edition of this book forms part of the collection of many important institutions, among which are the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Library of Scotland.
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Tayview 18th March and Garlic

Tayview 18th March.

Wild garlic pushing its way up, always a welcome early culinary delight. We make a pesto sauce with it instead of garlic cloves. Good in salads too.