Saturday 31 August 2013

Someday.



                                                 Someday, we'll forget the hurt.
                                                 The reason we cried and who caused us pain.
                                                 We will finally realize that the secret of being free is not
                                                 revenge but letting things unfold in
                                                 their own way and own time.

                                                 After all, what matters is, not the first, but the last
                                                 chapter of our life which shows how well we ran the race.

                                                 So smile, laugh, forgive.
                                                 Believe and love all over again.


So true




Young




Friends




More Bull Terriers


Bull Terrier commandments
















1. My life is likely to last 10 to 15 years; any separation from you will be painful for me. Remember that before you adopt me.

2. Give me time to understand what you want from me; don't be impatient, short-tempered, or irritable.

3. Place your trust in me and I will always trust you back. Respect is earned not given as an inalienable right.

4. Don't be angry with me for long and don't lock me up as punishment; I am not capable of understanding why. I only know I have been rejected. You have your work, entertainment, and friends, but I only have you.

5. Talk to me. Even if I don't understand your words, I do understand your voice and your tone. You only have to look at my tail.

6. Be aware that however you treat me, I'll never forget it, and if it's cruel, it may affect me forever.

7. Please don't hit me. I can't hit back, but I can bite and scratch, and I really don't ever want to do that

8. Before you scold me for being uncooperative, obstinate, or lazy, ask yourself if something might be bothering me. Perhaps I'm not getting the right foods or I've been out in the sun too long, or my heart is getting old and weak. It may be I am just dog-tired.

9. Take care of me when I get old. You too will grow old and may also need love, care, comfort, and attention.

10. Go with me on difficult journeys. Never say, "I can't bear to watch" or "Let it happen in my absence." Everything is easier for me if you are there. Remember, regardless of what you do, I will always love you.

Author Stan Rawlinson
1993



Friday 30 August 2013

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney, who has died aged 74, won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, created a bestseller from a translation of Beowulf (1998) and sold more books in Britain than any other living poet; the common charge that he was too easy — “far from unfathomable”, as one critic put it — was a backhanded compliment to his democratic lyrical powers.

Poetry, Heaney remarked, “begins in delight, and ends in self-consciousness” — a very different conception from that school of poetry which begins in misery and ends in existential doubt. The truth of Heaney’s poetry was to be found in finely-observed details — the “mass and majesty of the world” encapsulated in “the small compass of a cast-iron stove-lid”. In its Nobel citation, the Swedish Academy noted the “ethical depth” of works “which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”.
Heaney wrote, of course, in English and in the rooted English poetic tradition of Milton, Wordsworth and Hopkins. His exploration of the language was relentless not only in his own poetry, but also in translations into English of such works as an old Irish version of the Sweeney legend or the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson. His acclaimed translation of Beowulf took a treasure trove of Anglo-Saxon out of the academic lecture halls and introduced it to a wider audience.
Heaney was taken to British hearts as the country’s leading poet, and his poems became a staple of the school curriculum: poems of childhood from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966) at GCSE, and his more complex Bog poems from Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975) at A-level. Yet he confessed that, when he lectured at Harvard or Oxford, he was tempted to call his lectures “doing English” — almost as though he were a detached spectator and English a foreign tongue.
And so in a sense, it was. Heaney was a poet of Irish Catholic, nationalist experience, a farm boy from Derry; and English, in the mythology of Irish nationalism, is the language of imperialist oppression. It was from the tension between worlds — past and present, Irish and English, farm and academia — that he twisted his poetry. In negotiating what he called the “double reality” of Ireland and England he found an impish delight in subverting cultural nostrums and expectations. In Sweeney Astray, Gaelic pre-Plantation place names are translated into what sound like Protestant Ascendancy place names. His Beowulf has a northern accent.
There was never much doubt about where Heaney’s patriotic sympathies lay. What he called his “off-centre” cultural allegiance led him to rebuff the Laureateship, and in 1982 he objected to his inclusion in a book of British poets with the warning lines: “Be advised, my passport’s green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast the Queen”, and the emphatic ending “British, no, the name’s not right./ Yours truly, Seamus.”
Yet his political position was, perhaps, more accurately conveyed in the pseudonym “Incertus” (“uncertain”) under which he published his earliest poems. For him the crude certainties of the Republican nationalist narrative were always subverted by the personal and his deep sense of a common humanity.
The eldest of nine children, Seamus Heaney was born on a farm at Mossbawn, Co Derry, Northern Ireland, on April 13 1939 — a time when Roman Catholics were conscious of being politically marginalised in a Unionist state. As his lifelong friend Seamus Deane observed in a profile in 2000, the very act of bestowing the Celticised Christian name on a boy in Northern Ireland was “a signal” that a family “was loyal to the Gaelic, and not the British, account of things”.
Heaney grew up on the family farm, where what counted was skill with a spade or a plough. Poetry came to him through his ears, not from the family’s paltry collection of books — sing-songs and recitations on St Patrick’s Day, the BBC Shipping Forecast, the “enforced poetry” of the Catholic litany, his mother singing Scottish ballads.
It was a life he evoked affectionately in poems such as Sunlight (a vision of his Aunt Mary baking bread), or Clearances, written after his mother Margaret’s death, in which he tenderly remembered “When all the others were away at Mass/ I was all hers as we peeled potatoes”.
Heaney went to the local school, which was attended by both Protestants and Catholics, and while there the 1947 Northern Ireland Education Act was passed, giving increased access to higher education for children of poorer families. He won a scholarship to board at St Columb’s College, a clerical-run school in Derry city, where he became head prefect and where contemporaries included the politician and fellow Nobel Prize winner John Hume, the writer Seamus Deane and the playwright Brian Friel.
At Queen’s University, Belfast, Heaney read English Literature, wrote “a little bit of poetry” and was a star student. When he gained a First he was offered the opportunity to go to Oxford. At the time it seemed a step too far for a country boy from Derry, so he took a job teaching while taking a postgraduate course at Queen’s. But the thought of Oxford had lifted his eyes to a world of new possibilities, and he began writing poetry in earnest, drawing on his own childhood experiences. The deeply moving Mid-Term Break, about the time he was called home from St Columb’s after his four-year-old brother Christopher had been killed by a car, was written at this time.
In the early 1960s his poems began to be published in the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish Times, and Heaney became a member of a set of young Belfast poets called The Group, assembled by Philip Hobsbaum, a lecturer at Queen’s who had been taught by Leavis and was an admirer of Ted Hughes. In 1964 he published a slim volume called Eleven Poems; and in 1965 he married Marie Devlin, a fellow-teacher.
Acclamation came almost instantly. His first collection, Death of a Naturalist, published by Faber and Faber in 1966, attracted astonishing reviews for a first collection and inspired the New Review to coin the term “Heaneyesque” to describe the sort of mud-caked verse that Heaney described as “stuff out of Co Derry from childhood”. Digging, the poem that opened the collection, became one of his best-known works and was a remarkable statement of his ambition. In it he celebrated his father’s and grandfather’s expertise with a spade before observing that “I’ve no spade to follow men like them./ Between my finger and thumb/ The squat pen rests./ I’ll dig with that.”
The years following the publication of Death of a Naturalist saw the outbreak of the Troubles and Heaney, who was “necessarily” involved in some of the civil rights marches, found himself in the unwelcome position of being pressurised to take up cudgels for the Republican cause. He avoided the pressure, and detractors accused him of sitting on the fence. Yet not all his poems lacked strong opinions. On the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising he had published Requiem for the Croppies — a romanticised portrait of the Irish rebels of 1798 (“shaking scythes at cannon”).
Revealingly, though, Heaney chose to read the poem (before the Troubles) to an Ulster Protestant audience — to “break the silence”, as he put it (they remained tight-lipped). After the Troubles started he never read it in public, knowing that it would be taken as IRA propaganda. The role of the poet, he argued, was that of a “dutiful contemplative, pivoting his understanding in an attempt to bear his portion of the weight of the world, knowing himself incapable of heroic virtue or redemptive effect”.
His best poetry on the issues surrounding the Troubles is imbued with a deep humanity and understanding and communicated through the particular and personal. In The Other Side, he describes a Protestant neighbour gently tapping out a tune with his stick as he waits outside for the Heaney family to finish their rosary before knocking on their door.
Regarded as suspect at best by extreme Republicans and as a “Papist propagandist” by the Ulster Protestant press, in 1972 Heaney decided to move across the border to a cottage in Co Wicklow, where it was, perhaps, easier to remain true to a kind of nationalism which was not corrupted by sectarian bitterness and be “completely at eye-level with life”. His next two collections, Wintering Out and North, inevitably tackled the troubled history of Northern Ireland — North especially (“Men die at hand. In blasted street and home/The gelignite’s a common sound effect”). But he clearly felt oppressed by the weight of expectations on him.
Predictably, perhaps, North was attacked both as an apology for primitive tribalism and as an evasion of the requirement to “take sides”, criticisms which ignored the skilful way in which Heaney had turned shrill public confrontation into a private, internal debate about the conflicting claims of nation and art. It was not poetry’s task to solve contemporary problems, he argued, but to clear a sufficient space to think about them.
Heaney’s acceptance of a teaching post at Harvard in 1982 helped him make the move from parochial to international poet. At Harvard he found himself in the company of poets such as Brodsky and Derek Walcott and in an environment in which language was regarded as a worldwide republic without borders. He taught for 14 years at Harvard and for five at Oxford, where he held the Chair of Poetry from 1989 to 1994.
It was his time in America that led to the Beowulf project, and when he won the Nobel Prize in 1995 (this “Stockholm business”, he called it) he feared it might interrupt progress. The triumphant publication of his translation in 1999 confirmed the wisdom of the Swedish Academy’s choice, and the fact that an Irish farm boy had succeeded brilliantly in refashioning one of the jealously-guarded crown jewels of English literature stirred up all sorts of interesting issues of cultural identity and ownership.
With his crown of untidy white hair, wide face and slightly slanting eyes (he was once described by a fellow poet as resembling “a pissed Eskimo”), Heaney was an easily recognisable figure. Despite his stellar status — in addition to the Nobel, he won, among other awards, the Whitbread Prize (three times), the David Cohen prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature, and the Forward Poetry Prize (for his final collection, Human Chain) — he retained a bluff, farmer’s son homeliness and a talent for likeable self-mockery.
In all, he published 13 collections of poetry, several volumes of essays, and (with Ted Hughes) edited The Rattle Bag and The School Bag, anthologies dedicated to poetry as carnival.
Seamus Heaney and his wife, Marie (née Devlin), had two sons and a daughter.
Seamus Heaney, born April 13 1939, died August 30 2013



Thursday 29 August 2013


How I See My Dog vs How My Dog Sees Me


This is HILARIOUS!!! And so accurate.
(if you like it, check out the book)
(source: theoatmeal)

A very big read: Europe's largest public library set to open in Birmingham

  • Library of Birmingham is due to officially open on September 3 after taking more than three years to build
  • Construction work started on the building in January 2010 and it has cost a total of £189 million
  • It has been designed by architect Francine Houben; the exterior's interlacing rings reflect city's canals and tunnels
It has taken more than three years and cost £189 million to build, but Europe's biggest library is due to open in a matter of days in Birmingham.
The new Library of Birmingham, which was designed to replace the Birmingham Central Library, will officially open on September 3.
It was designed by architect Francine Houben who has described the building as a 'people's palace'. Construction on the building started in January 2010 and was completed in April this year.
Impressive: The new Library of Birmingham, which has taken more than three years to build and cost £198m, is set to open on September 3
Impressive: The new Library of Birmingham, which has taken more than three years to build and cost £198m, is set to open on September 3
Inside: Along with the lending library, the building's ten floors will house the city's internationally important collections of archives, photography and rare books
Inside: Along with the lending library, the building's ten floors will house the city's internationally important collections of archives, photography and rare books
Imminent opening: The new library has been designed to replace Birmingham Central Library and is due to open in a matter of days
Imminent opening: The new library has been designed to replace Birmingham Central Library and is due to open in a matter of days
Futuristic: The library was designed by architect Francine Houben who has described the building as a 'people's palace'
Futuristic: The library was designed by architect Francine Houben who has described the building as a 'people's palace'
The library's futuristic exterior of interlacing rings aims to reflect the city's canals and tunnels.
Along with the lending library, the building's ten floors will house the city's internationally important collections of archives, photography and rare books.
 
New facilities, meanwhile, such as a state-of-the-art gallery will allow the public to access the collections for the first time.
The library will also feature a new flexible studio theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre and a recording studio.
Intricate: The library's futuristic exterior of interlacing rings aims to reflect the city's canals and tunnels
Intricate: The library's futuristic exterior of interlacing rings aims to reflect the city's canals and tunnels
Collections: The city's internationally-important archives and collections will be housed in a climatically controlled 'golden box' of secure archive storages
Collections: The city's internationally-important archives and collections will be housed in a climatically controlled 'golden box' of secure archive storages
Design: The library has been designed by architect Francine Houben who described the building as a 'people's palace'
Design: The library has been designed by architect Francine Houben who described the building as a 'people's palace'
Extensive: The library will also feature a new flexible studio theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre and a recording studio
Extensive: The library will also feature a new flexible studio theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre and a recording studio
Green: The library will also feature an outdoor roof terrace garden
Green: The library will also feature an outdoor roof terrace garden
Amazing views: The observation area at the top of the new Library of Birmingham, at Centenary Square
Amazing views: The observation area at the top of the new Library of Birmingham, at Centenary Square
In April, JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit became the first book to be placed on the shelves of the library to mark its handover from construction partner Carillion to Birmingham City Council.
In the months leading up to the event, staff at Birmingham's Central Library had been working to prepare the city’s millions of books, music, archive and heritage resources, photographic images and rare books for the move. 
The city’s internationally-important archives and collections will be housed in a climatically controlled 'golden box' of secure archive storages. 
Stylish: New facilities such as a state-of-the-art gallery will allow the public to access some of the internationally-important collections for the first time
Stylish: New facilities such as a state-of-the-art gallery will allow the public to access some of the internationally-important collections for the first time
The architecture of the new Library of Birmingham in Centenary Square contrasts with the classical design of neighbouring Baskeville House
A view of the new Library of Birmingham at Centenary Square
Contrast: The architecture of the new Library of Birmingham in Centenary Square contrasts with the classical design of neighbouring Baskeville House (left)
An interior view of the new Library of Birmingham
More than three million visitors are expected at the library each year, along with millions more online
Comfortable: More than three million visitors are expected at the library each year, along with millions more online
Interior: The library features an array of interesting design features, both inside and out
Interior: The library features an array of interesting design features, both inside and out
Books: In April, JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit became the first book to be placed on the shelves of the library to mark its handover from construction partner Carillion to Birmingham City Council
Books: In April, JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit became the first book to be placed on the shelves of the library to mark its handover from construction partner Carillion to Birmingham City Council
These include one of the world’s largest Shakespeare collections, the Parker Collection of Children’s Books and Games, the Early and Fine Printing Collection, the Boulton & Watt archive and the Photography Collection - one of only nine national collections and the only to be housed within a public library.
The library will also be home to a BFI Mediatheque, providing free access to the National Film Archive.  
More than three million visitors are expected at the library each year, along with millions more online.
Comprehensive: The library will also be home to a BFI Mediatheque, providing free access to the National Film Archive
Comprehensive: The library will also be home to a BFI Mediatheque, providing free access to the National Film Archive
Interlacing: Among the important collections are the world's largest Shakespeare collections, the Parker Collection of Children's Books and Games and the Early and Fine Printing Collection
Interlacing: Among the important collections are the world's largest Shakespeare collections, the Parker Collection of Children's Books and Games and the Early and Fine Printing Collection
Facilities: A view of the outdoor amphitheatre of the new Library of Birmingham at Centenary Square
Facilities: A view of the outdoor amphitheatre of the new Library of Birmingham at Centenary Square
Collaboration: The library will work alongside the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, along with other partners, to provide services
Collaboration: The library will work alongside the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, along with other partners, to provide services
Important: Other important collections kept at the library will include the Boulton & Watt archive and the Photography Collection
Important: Other important collections kept at the library will include the Boulton & Watt archive and the Photography Collection
Move: Staff at Birmingham's Central Library worked for months to prepare the city's millions of books, music, archive and heritage resources, photographic images and rare books for the move
Move: Staff at Birmingham's Central Library worked for months to prepare the city's millions of books, music, archive and heritage resources, photographic images and rare books for the move
Exclusive viewing: Some residents have already had the opportunity to view the library before its official opening
Exclusive viewing: Some residents have already had the opportunity to view the library before its official opening
New and old: A small section of the library's vast collection is illuminated by the futuristic lighting
New and old: A small section of the library's vast collection is illuminated by the futuristic lighting
Relaxation: A visitor relaxes on the grounds of the new Library of Birmingham, which is due to open next week
Relaxation: A visitor relaxes on the grounds of the new Library of Birmingham, which is due to open next week


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2404834/Library-Birmingham-Europes-largest-public-library-set-open-matter-days.html#ixzz2dOBN52g8
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook




Monday 26 August 2013

Six Things to Make You Happier Instantly.

Via on Jun 14, 2012
Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain

All of us want to be happy, but sometimes we get caught up in negative emotions.

The Dali Lama says, “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
Happiness is an emotion that has to be trained on a daily basis. It’s similar to building a muscle; we have to work on it.
Here are six things that can make us happier instantly.

1. Laugh

I always find myself trying to find some type of opportunity to laugh. Try to incorporate laughter into your day. Go online and watch a video that make’s you laugh. Call up a friend or family member that you find hilarious. I have a close friend, I call up whenever I need to laugh and we start reciting lines from our favorite movies.

2. Smile

Try to find as many opportunities as you can to smile. I’ve never met someone I didn’t like who smiled all the time. There’s tons of scientific research on how beneficial it is to smile; a simple smile can immediately brighten your day.

3. Talk to someone who’s happy

Emotions are contagious and they spread like wildfire. Scientists call this Emotional contagion“— meaning that you literally catch the feeling of the person your interacting with.

4. Interact with people

The Sufi poet Rumi said, “Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.”
Go out and interact with as many people as you can. If you’re an introvert, just try to take small strides interacting with people. Neuroscience has proven that the brain can re-wire itself. If we’re introverted, we can teach ourselves to become more extroverted through daily training.

5. Talk to a person who’s much older than you

I always find myself in a gas station or at some other event talking to people who are in their 70s or 80s. They always have a great to deal of wisdom to share and they are generally happy.

6. Do meditation

There’s tons of scientific research that shows how effective meditation is for producing positive emotional states. Try to incorporate a daily practice into your life.



Saturday 24 August 2013

17th Century Bottom-Crusted Peach Pie.

Via on Aug 24, 2013

peach pie

The lull of late summer hangs in the air like ripe fruit.

The atmosphere is thick and still, perfect for the crickets’ hum. Without the heavy heat, they don’t sing. It’s a sign of ripeness, the balsamic time of summer in its fullness, that brings us juicy tomatoes, watermelons, peaches and plums.
I recently visited my friend Elizabeth to teach her how to make a pie. In return, she taught me how to have a big view. It was Carl Sagan who said, “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Which is to say: a pie is more than flour, water and fruit. You must consider the farmer, the soil… it is a cosmic collaboration.
What does it mean to make something from scratch? It is an invitation to look deeper into your world.  
As we roll out the dough and slice the fruit, we are left with an opportunity to enjoy a peach pie at its sweetest. Remember, the best pie is the one you are eating right now.
The apples will have to wait.
Here’s a recipe that many of you have seen, but many of you are still asking for.
Go ahead! Make a pie and discover your place in the family of things.

17th Century Bottom-Crusted Peach Pie

Crust:
  • 2 cups of unbleached white flour
  • 1 and a half sticks of butter
  • A few T’s of cold water
  • Pinch of salt
  • Cream 
Filling:
  • 6 organic peaches, skins left on, sliced
  • 1/2 c sugar
  • 1 lemon, sliced in half
  • Cream to whip and put on top is optional
  • Tart pan or wide edged ceramic bowl.
Put together your pie dough by cutting butter into your flour with two knives (or use a Cuisinart, pulsing the blade to cut the butter into flour). Add a pinch of salt. Add cold water a tablespoon at the time to bind the dough together. Form into a ball. It should feel like a “babies behind.” Put it in the fridge for 1/2 hour.
Meanwhile, slice peaches into a bowl. Add sugar to taste and 1/2 of a lemon, juiced with your hand. Set aside.
Take out the dough and flatten it with your hand on a floured surface. Roll out the dough, starting from the center and rolling out in all directions until you have a thin round. It will be large. The point is to have enough to drape over the fruit. Center it over your tart, pie plate or open ceramic bowl.
Preheat oven to 400F. Fill the dough with your peaches. Add a sprinkle of flour and 4 or 5 pats of butter. Fold the excess dough over the fruit like you were covering bread in a cloth. Brush the dough with a beaten egg.
Put in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 45minutes to an hour. Check when you smell the fruit cooking. The crust should be golden. Let cool.
Final step: Enjoy.
This recipe has been adapted from the original, which you can find here.



Dolly

Still miss you so much