playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon again

My tiger and spotted striped cat Diego talks to my neighbour Murdo (as Mrs Murdo is now pregnant he is banished outside to smoke) and he used to be in a band Cateran, who tourned the uk with this band.

things that make me happy

My best friend's film being called the 'best black british film' by Black filmmaker magazine.

Spring!

Finally stopping working for the 'fat controller' at the 10th largest employer in the world.

My friend K's daughter R telling me how she and her friends deliberately visit the physics tea room at her uni to see all the nerdy physicists try and discretely whip off their glasses when they go in.

Meeting an acquainance of a friend who is quite elderly and has dedicated her life to putting up plaques and memorials to things she feels ought to be remembered. 'I've got a brass plaque to Fletcher of Saltoun under the dining room table and I can't move it becuase its too heavy.' Somehow the picture of this little old lady trotting to the foundary to commission another plaque cheers me. The passions of people in play is cheering.

A reminder of the importance of being lovely.

How to be a miserable artist/person

Little makes much sense at the moment. That's the way it's supposed to be. None of us came to planet earth in order to reach a complete, satisfactory understanding of any subject or situation. We may all aspire to such an experience - and we may occasionally kid ourselves that we have attained it. Deep down inside, though, we are all confused about something! The eclipse won't help you reach a state of total clarity today, but it will at least shed some light on one important matter.

Jonathan Cainer on life for Virgos

RIP Ian Hamilton Finlay

He died yesterday. I've written before about visiting Little Sparta the living artwork he created at Stonypath outside Edinburgh.

In the 1990's I worked at Chapman - argueably Scotland's leading literary magazine. While I was there we produced a double issue on IHF. This one of the first times that he got recognition from within Scotland. I can remember being deluged by contributions from around the world and of course how we got caught in the cross fire between one of his famous ongoing battles with an adversary from France faxing us libel suit on the day of our Christmas lunch! However alongside the Women's Issue - the double Ian Hamilton Finlay issue is the one I'm most proud to have worked on.

red lines around London?

odd appearances

Great interview with Jeffrey Yamaguchi

about 54 Projects book

We all should have taken it as a warning

when Humphry got booted out of No 10 that the Blairs were a bad lot... the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet has died.

create your own holidays

scolidays

People being creative with their cats

.... stuff on your cat

Muse to Muse

has a great quote about friendship. I hope the link works.

I just spoke to a friend who I've not been able to speak to for a few weeks. A hurried conversation before her battery ran out as she went home late at night on London's underground. It was hurried but I had to speak to her and hear her voice and joke and connect and allude to 'the momobrow' an email or even a bit of mail is not the same as a proper conversation.

Did you know

that there was a British Big Cats Society... only in this country. And no these aren't cats destined to go on Celeb feline fit club... most disappointed to read that sightings in Scotland have declined. What are they doing? Joining book groups? Any self respecting Big Cat should be causing alarm on a wide scale.

The Saint of Bleeker Street

Its a huge achievement - my friend's amateur opera group Edinburgh Grand Opera is celebrating 50 years of existence this year. To mark the occasion they are putting on Carol Menotti's 'The Saint of Bleeker Street' at the Festival Theatre - it opens this week. Its great to see that their impressive achievement is being noted.

Almond Blossom

I searched on this after an email exchange with a friend about the south of France and found this blog.... Meanwhile, Here in France.

extraordinary photos

Al Magus via moleskine

fund your own revolution

An unsigned band has got its fans to invest their savings in their first album. A film company did something similar a few months ago preselling 10,000 DVD's to fans in order to fund their next feature film - but can't remember who they are. I really like examples of people thinking their way out of generally accepted ways of doing things.

Good Grief

unknown 6th Rolling Stone was from Fife and used as model for Ian Rankin's 'Rebus'. Anyone want to write a play about him?

Snow Snow Snow

Woke up to find it snowing this morning. Its still coming down. I had to rush out and get some cat food this morning as we had run out. Now I've got a cat sleeping on bed and snoring another with back turned towards me. Being on the computer is not popular with them.

I'm trying to work up the energy to do some serious housework which is over due. In the meanwhile read this account of visiting NY.

Hey there

Jonathan Ross on the radio, cats curled up in the intray. Piles of books, papers, clothes everywhere. Condensation on the window. Dampish Saturday. Waiting for a telephone consult with my herbalist. At one I'm going to pick up my photos from NY - I'm so excited! Called a friend this morning she's off on maternity leave and spent the whole week in bed with a cold, another friend was rushed to hospital for x-ray. Its been a long long winter and almost everyone I know has been ill. I get a cold, get over it and get another. I'm now on horsepills from the doctor, pray they work soon.

I had a job interview yesterday - which I got - now I have a one day a week job starting in April. The plan is to move towards a multiple job situation in the autumn.

Time for breakfast.

Freighter travel - was pleased to come across this article last night as I was discussing this with a friend. Another good alternative to flights site is Seat 61. I'd been thinking of offsetting my flight to NY and had found a company that does it. But does kind of smack of 'buying your way out of the problem'.

The Cloud Appreciation Society - I was most puzzled to get a membership yesterday and badge! Then I got an email from a friend saying she'd given me membership. It looks great, fun and eccentric. I love looking at skies.

Happy International Women's Day!

I've been off line with a cold/cough. I'm back at work but obviously still tired managed to spill a cup of water over my keyboard this morning. Lots of sopping tissues chucked in the bin.

How to process film using kitchen staples.

Hopefully will have my NY photos processed this weekend.

"There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices."
Thelonius Monk

"In Western culture, artists aren't encouraged to be integral to the social, environmental, or spiritual life of the community. They do not train to engage with real-life problems. Instead they learn to be competitive with their products in the marketplace. All our institutions are defined by this market ideology-none have escaped. "Professional recognition" in the form of brisk sales and positive reviews still remains the primary pattern of thought that structures the internal rhythms of art-making. For a long time now, I have been questioning these premises; anyone who has ever read anything I have written will know that my books are meant as a challenge to our reigning paradigms of economic control and domination. They seek to expose the coercive propaganda of capitalism as a form of spiritual and ecological suicide-and they look at the Big Picture, always with a view to recovering from the estrangements of Western civilization. Instead of art-as-commodity, deprived of any useful social role, I believe that art can help us to participate in what geologian Thomas Berry deems the "great work" of our time: moving from a devastating presence on the planet to a more benign presence".

Suzi Gablik

Linda Smith RIP Comic

"I do sympathise with Bush and Blair trying to find WMDs. I'm like that with my scissors. I put them down, then I search all over the house, and I never find them. Of course, I do know that my scissors exist."

10 different things to give up for Lent. I promise to make more effor with the plastic bag thing.

Still jetlagged and tired despite sleeping most of yesterday. Will bore about holiday later. What a threat. Its hailing here in Scotland.

too much to post

dogs in camoflage coats

empire state all silvery by moon

yiddish labour posters in the Ellis island museum

tired feet

Sammys 'Romanian' restaurant

virtuous and vicious circles

An interesting blog post from 37 days

I have to say that I've made a conscious effort to move my focus on what was bringing me down all last year. There is a certain self punishing tendency that we should be able to cope with things and not have them bring us down to just move away out of the circle.

25 lessons about creativity via Jenny Vorvaller.

swallows know its time to head for summer climes when the leaves start to fall - temps must move when the postits fade

slow down now

I Always Get What I Let Myself Need

(this is from Molly Gordon's newsletter go to her website to sign up)

My name is Molly, and I'm recovering from terminal self-sufficiency.

One of my strategies for remaining self-sufficient is to manage my needs, especially my emotional needs. I can go for weeks or even months with a breaking heart and not know it. Believe me, that takes a lot of energy. In fact, I've been living that way for 15 months, and I'm exhausted.

The highlights of my heartbreak are in my blog, but what I want to share here is not the drama but the healing that came about because I finally let my myself feel broken.

I don't know about you, but feeling broken doesn't match my fantasy of success. On top of that, I know I am blessed in so many ways, that I sometimes feel that it would be wrong to feel broken. Between wanting to appear whole and feeling guilty, I fail to notice that feeling broken is not the same as being broken. Grief and fear are not terminal conditions, unless, perhaps, we resist them. "Falling apart" is not the end of the world, it is more likely to be a new beginning.

About six weeks ago some wise colleagues helped me see that I was utterly and completely worn out. As soon as I got it, relief and ease flooded in. When I stop striving to have more energy than I have, to be more evolved than I am, when I stop defining wisdom in terms of my high-flown thinking and listen to my heart, I discover (again) that the cracks I've been trying to hide are the way that Light gets in.

These days I'm taking things simply and easily. I sleep in often; I eat real food, and I'm learning to prepare it before I'm starving. Most of all, I'm not worrying about what I'm not doing right now. It's sort of eerie; the shadow of my preoccupation with "keeping it together" still hovers about me, yet I can no longer pretend that it's necessary. Keep what together? How?

Lately, I've been waking up with a profound sense of well being coupled with immense involuntary gratitude. As one of my wise colleagues said to me, the other half of "Let go" is "Let God."

I get what I am willing to notice that I need. How about you?

Free Range Librarian

excellent post on writing.

Keep on saving the Cameo

Just got an email from the campaign today. Cameo cards have been re-introduced. £25 per year for discounts on all films, free sunday matinees, free previews (I saw Good Night and Good Luck last week). Its an easy way to show your support if you live in Edinburgh.

Lighting Field NY photo blog - just getting warmed up

Getting ready

underwear tick!
hotel tick!
puzzling over maps tick!
notebook (I plan to do lots of writing in NY) tick!

Great website Muse to Muse (via 52 Projects) I do envy the layout.

have I mentioned this recently?

You are beautiful

14th of February Love Yourself Day

Promise to marry yourself and never leave yourself.
Buy yourself flowers.
Buy your own chocolates (perferably truffles from Plasir Du Chocolat)
Do what you wanna do don't wait until you have someone to go with whether to the shops, cinema, theatre, or the Trans Siberian Express (and if you do end up with a partner who doesnt want to go on the Trans Siberian Express and you do for heavens sake GO alone if needs be)
Write a to do list - burn it make instead a list of your deepest desires and keep it close much worse to forget them than renewing the insurance.
Promise yourself to not to agree to social activities you don't want to do. Make inventive excuses if you can't just say no. If you still can't say no investing in an assertiveness training course probably will be more help to you than a box of chocolates anyway.
Adorn yourself with clothes that you love not just made do with.
Have a massage if you've never had one.
Invest in all your relationships, yes phone/email/write your funny cousin, hell send your friends valentines.
Take the day off, leave work early, sit in a cafe with a coffee and watch the world go by.


add your own in comments please

more guerilla gardening reports...

Stop managing problems solve them. Great article from the New Yorker and as I read it realised it can be applied to so many other things.

'The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom' Brenda Ueland

great quote from Keri Smith.

I did leave the house

and was rewarded by seeing a rainbow over Leith.

I had lunch at my favourite cafe, read Saturday newspaper supplments and picked up a present for a friend's baby ( a year late) bought chocolate truffles and chicken to make my favourite meal of roast chicken and potatoes.

Today I walked on the beach, there was mist on the water and hard to see where it ended and the horizon began, I did errands, bought my NY underwear and came home and fell asleep. The truth is I'm very tired, I don't want to do anything on my to do list, tidy, wash up, clean, dozing while listening to Radio 4 is about it for me.

I have enormous difficulty in admitting how I really feel instead I want to layer on what I ought to feel. Ie I had a lazy day yesterday to today I 'should' be raring to go. Accepting how I am right now is very hard. I'm now scrolling through the week thinking of what I need to achieve when for certain deadlines and frankly it makes me feel even worse! Hopefully I'll be able to do all I need to do tomorrow night. Tonight. I'm going to watch Miss Marple and eat left over chicken and talk to cats. I think I'm lacking in noodling time. Swathes of time to just be. I've been rushing and rushing from work to social appointments for months now and its just all catching up with me.

just leave the house

Lets be honest I'm not feeling too good this morning. Someone called and the second before I answered the phone my nose started to bleed. Last night I came home from work and nodded off at 9pm. I'm out of sorts, sluggish and awfully cross. The person who I spoke to on the phone did not improve my mood by suggesting that I should settle for less in my life, take up the job I do at the moment permanently, urgh ! let me stamp my foot right now! stamp stamp!

I am worth more than this. Each time I have in my life investing in myself worth which sounds a bit drippy but by that mean mentally leap up yell 'NO' and positively affirm that I am worth more I deserve more and put limits on what I will not accept things have changed I have got more I have been rewarded. Ironically I do have a better job starting in June one which I'm not only paid much more but get an assistant but no to settle and get a job one loathes but is more pemanent by 6 months is supposed to be superior.

I challenge you to set limits say beyond which you will not put up with. I've put in a mental time limit on my current job. Scheduled in a sabattical between jobs so I can pick up on my life. I've firmly given myself a break from a friend who drags down myself worth on a regualar basis. A friend of mine was doing a part time job where the woman disrespected her by not paying her for all the hours she put in amongst other things she has left it and I'm sure that this will give space for something better to enter in its place.

Now I'm leaving the house I'm going to have a late lunch, journal in a cafe, buy underwear for my upcoming trip (I can't go to NY with out new knickers!) and lose this mood.

Jenny Vorwaller's Creative Cues

Something that I have noticed about other artists I admire is how their creativity seems to take cues from their everyday life. If you are feeling humdrum lately, try enriching your way of living as much as possible by taking risks. Making changes is one of the best ways to be inspired. When you make an effort to do something different, you will be amazed at how these new things cross over into your work and fuels your life in return. Here are just some examples of things that keep my life interesting.

~Write everyday in a journal, blog or to a penpal. Writing keeps me aware of what I believe and what I want to change and recording my thoughts helps me understand who I want to be. I am always so impressed at what I find in my old journals. I see how all of my hopes and fears have changed, what I have conquered. Putting all of my abtract notions into words is the best way that I solve problems. Writing letters to people who have hurt me and then never sending them is a good way for me to learn to forgive. Making lists of projects is a good way to spark excitement. Carry something to write with with you everywhere and see what happens.

~Visit a gallery or museum often. Don’t forget to bring the essentials to allow the most pleasure from your day adventure: camera (no flash), sketchbook, snacks (not around the art), and your time. I try to make a few trips a month to local museums and then in between, find little galleries. You could also do your own searches of different artists online and bookmark your favorites, but it’s just not the same when you see works in real life. There are usually free days and even fun events that help you socialize with like-minded artists.

~Try a new style. If you always wear your hair a certain way, try cutting, coloring, growing out, putting it up or down. If you find a lot of basic black in your wardrobe, go to the thrift store (low financial commitment here) and find a funky frock or something that you think is flattering but that you wouldn’t normally choose. Carry a backpack? Celebrate being a girl and seek out a pretty handbag or tote. Look on ebay for something vintage. If you don’t have any spare change, sell some of that boring or old stuff in your closet and then go for it. Wear flats instead of heels. Or better yet, find some shoes in a different color. The thing to learn here is that it’s just hair, fabric, accessories, play and see how you feel! You are not your appearance, but people react to what they see in it. Do you like what you see? Are you reflecting who you really are? Try it, who knows, you might love it.

~Visit a Flea Market or Antique Mall. When I was first married, we lived near a dozen or so antique malls in florida. I had a favorite that was within walking distance of our house. Even on days where I didn’t find anything, I would always leave dizzy with all of the things I saw. Treasure from other times can be humorous, gaudy, and beautiful. Treasure hunting forces me to be selective, and helps me learn about the crafts and collectibles from different eras. When we go back to visit florida, I still try to fit in a visit to that favorite spot.

~Get a crush on an unknown (to you) artist. Read about them, study them, find out what they did that caused them to produce so many fascinating works. What appeals to you from their life? Maybe you could adopt some of the same things. Minerva Teichert used to set the clock ahead so she could send her five children to bed a little earlier, and she would then paint until midnight after they were tucked in. Julia Cameron writes three pages, longhand and stream-of consciousness, first thing in the morning to overcome obstacles that stops her from becoming her most creative self. Go to the library, pick a book or biography and see what you can find.

~Play with a child. Max and I build blanket forts, make cardboard houses, draw on the sidewalk with chalk, swing at the park, watercolor paint, collage, and cook together. I used to struggle with having to wait until he was asleep or occupied to do my own projects or paintings that he couldn’t be around (paint fumes, scissors, knives you get the picture.) But I am finding out more and more things that I can introduce to him. We have creative fun together.

~Turn off the tv as long as you can. Trust me, you won’t miss it.

~Find or listen to a different genre of music than you normally would. This always gets me motivated to go in a new direction, especially when I play a new playlist while I am painting or sketching. There is a world of sound out there waiting to be serenading your work. Pop onto itunes and see what you can find in the jazz, rap or folk section. Listening to the same old thing can be like having the same thing for dinner every night, which brings me to the next thing.

~Find new recipes to try. My favorite is anything mostly vegetarian and ethnic. I have recently fallen in love with indian dishes. It’s easy as pie to look online for something different, and the library is again a super resource. Or be really brave and make up your own. Start with a stir-fry with your favorite vegetables and noodles and make your own sauce. Grow your own herbs, throw out all the junk food and refined sugar, chemicals and preservatives in your kitchen. Food tastes much better when it’s just food and not all the extras, and you feel better in return. Invinsible health leads to better inspiration!

~Moving, getting outside to play or do yardwork, doing some yoga, going for a walk are ways that increase my creativity. Exercise is a great way of clearing my mind so that creative solutions can flow more freely.

~Rearrange, paint or change the look of a room you live in. This can do a lot if you are as sensitive to your surroundings as I am. Try moving your furniture to different rooms or just spots in a room, see what happens. New colors mean new environments. Sometimes you can find oops! paint for a few bucks at the hardware store and it’s just what you need to feel at home and make your place personal.

From True Nature

(the linking thing on blogger appears not to work so do google for her blog)

let's consider psychologist Carl Jung's words: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul." Do you fit that description? Have you ever employed tortured logic to explain to yourself why you're not following your heart's promptings? In the past year, did you take a detour that has led you further and further away from your true home? Are you engaging in evasive measures in order to keep yourself from seeing the open secret about love that's right in front of you? I'm just asking, Virgo, not accusing. Only you know the correct answers.

ouch ! from freewill astrology

doing the easy thing

interesting blog about this at Superhero. I've been struggling to do something which has been very hard. As a friend put it succintly a square peg in a round hole. Time to stop. I've given myself an end date. I'm hoping that by giving myself some 'space' then something better can fill it - something which has flow.

I've had an increase in synchronicity already. Many anxious people told me to go and get travel insurance for my upcoming trip. I had to find a credit card to pay for it and as I was opening up envelopes to find it I found ANOTHER tax refund. Thank you !

I have a tulip eating cat

she prefers the red ones.

Am ill again - third time in a row. I think my body is telling me something about my job and it isn't complimentary.

Off to bed with hotwater bottle, chocolate and Ian Rankin (book).

What to say...

January has been so busy and up and down. One minute I've been in full grieving mode for a creative project that looked dead in the water (actually a whole weekend). I was practiceing putting myself together and reminding myself 'I am not my projects, my projects are not me, I am worthy without them'. Finding out how much Abba compliation CD's help the process - have you heard the lyrics?
What's the name of game?
Does it mean anything?
You can change your mind.
Take a chance on me - thats all I ask.
and of course

I had a dream - a song to sing...
very appropriate to a frustrated creative!

I got myself back on my feet - then got a phonecall from NY saying another film of mine is being shown at the Red Shift Festival. So I've been dashing about trying to get things sent off for that. I got a mysteriously large amount of money credited to my account (turns out to be a tax refund) which I'm squandering on a ticket to NY - I've always wanted to go. If anyone still reads this blog and has stayed in a nice hostel in NY and can let me know the address I'd be very grateful.

Then I got feedback on the application for the dead-in-the-water project. Turns out they thought it too long 'no problem'! and advise us to apply again (which producer and I thought we couldn't) so that's back as a possibility.

Work for money has been crazy... I've got new people to 'look after'.

Hummm what else...wish we could have parades and cards for just keeping going in life. It amazes me what a struggle it is. Not just the dealing with the big stuff derailed projects, but the blocked sink, producing decent food from scratch, exercising.

I took out my camera this morning and took photos of the mist on the park time to breathe be here now. I took photos on the hell commute in as well. Not enough photos of commuters taken.

Also saw many good films recently Jarhead twice - excellent and much better than Sam Mendes other films. I've ordered the book from the library.

Cock & Bull Story - great fun and excrciatingly funny for anyone whose spent time on a film set.

Brokeback Mountain - usually when a film gets rave reviews I go and am highly disappointed this exceeded expectations. Not a note out of place. I'm going again to see if it was as good as I remember it.

I am a bad blogger

in the meantime go here to read about Eskimo Disco my friend H-C's partners band and and vote.

Flow

Fantastic blog post from Jory Desjardins. I'm tempted to copy the whole thing but do hop over there.

'My mother tells me I'm on a writing streak; What's really going on is I'm learning the art of cultivating my connection to flow. I know what times of day I'm most likely to hear the voices. I know that, even if I have a thousand other things to do, if I go to a Starbucks or coffee shop, I can fool my mind into thinking I have all the time in the world. in this unrushed atmosphere the voices feel welcome. I do not look up to the lights at Starbucks and pray for the divine to strike me like a double espresso, but I sip coffee and silently summon it forth. "OK," I say. "I'm just gonna sort of start writing random stuff and you're going to help me connect the dots, dig?" Nine times out of ten I'll hear a voice asking me to repeat what I just said so that it can take in what I've written, and then it corrects me. The voice has great rhythm--it coaches me like my dance teacher did when I was a kid, "Keep your head up! Point your toes. Bop, bop, BOP! Stay on the beat."

After a while the voice gets tired and ducks out. I read what I've written and fix a few typos. I'm bound to read it the next day and curse myself for the typos. But I also marvel at the outcome and wonder, where the hell did this come from? Who really wrote this? '

Arctic Monkeys Wedding

I got caught in a hail shower and then a hail and sun shower. In Africa we called the concurrence of rain and sunshine a monkeys wedding. I therefore call this the Arctic Monkey's Wedding.

Patchwork blog via 52 Projects

oh and heres a link to Naked Ambition a calendar raising money for Bristol Uni's Rowing Club for a friend

Just different

Wow this morning I was experiencing complete frustration. I had earache in the night and still had twinges this morning. As I've had a cough as well and in the autumn was under par for nearly the whole of November I thought it best to cancell my plans for today and stay at home. My plans consisted of moving forward various projects which I want to do to get 2006 on its way. Instead I've been shuffling around the house sending plaitive emails to friends begging for sympathy. Then I checked one of my email accounts and noticed that I've had a ton of emails about my spare room which I'm letting. I then had a few phone calls about the room. So I was able to schedule times for people to come and see it tomorrow. Rather than being a waste of a morning. I've actually been able to do quite a lot just where I am. Sometimes things are different from our plans but I have to remember this doesn't necessarily make it worse just different.

The Artists Way

I think I've posted about this book by Julia Cameron before. Her 12 week course has made innumerable changes to my personal and creative life. I'm currently doing her follow up book 'Walking in the World' with a friend. In the meanwhile there is a group of bloggers doing it online and blogging about their experiences.

doable resolutions

I found a great post online in a blog (which I now can't find) about doable resolutions. This person's take was to commit to something for one lunar calender month. Next one starts 14th January. The result is that you have only committed to 4 weeks at a time. It makes a new change or habit less daunting and therefore you are more likely to stick with it.

It made sense to me - once I've got rid of my current cough I'm going to try and implement more exercise.

the eight irresistable principles of fun - found this a few months ago and lost link so posting quickly!

green lights all the way

Hogmanay Greetings!

I originally was going to have a very quiet New Year's eve with my parents and go to the end of a dinner party held by a friend. In the end when I got to the dinner my host spontaneously proposed going up to Arthur's Seat (a hill in the middle of Edinburgh) to see the Hogmanay fireworks. To my amazement we got a taxi at 11.15pm on New Year's Eve. We got off at the bottom of the hill slithered and slid our way to its middle rib known as Salisbury's Crags. There we had a magnificent view of the city laid out before us. We opened some gin & tonic which we shared to keep out the cold while we waited for the the countdown. It was wonderful. Some of the fireworks were almost over our heads. The others we had a wonderful view including ones being set off over in Fife. Sadly none of my photos will I'm sure do justice. One of our party sang a traditional new year's song (not Auld Lang Syne) and we stumbled off the hill again. I walked home cheerily greeting passers by.

~~~~

My brother and sister in law due to her work ended up going to the wedding of minor European Royalty during the summer. Naturally we wanted them to tell all. The best bit of the wedding they thought looking back on it was the journey to the reception. 'Green lights all the way!'. The next night after being told this story I got a taxi home and it was zipping along the almost deserted streets. Just before I got to my house the taxi driver said 'The lights have been green all the way'! I hadn't noticed but when he said this I felt a burst of joy. YES! This year which I have hoping to be different - will.

Why your camera does not matter

People know cars don't drive themselves, typewriters don't write novels by themselves and that Rembrandt's brushes didn't paint by themselves, so why do some people think cameras drive around and make pictures all by themselves? The most advanced, exotic and expensive car can't even stay in the same lane on the freeway by itself, much less drive you home. No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. Every camera requires you to make manual adjustments now and then as well, regardless of how advanced it is. Never blame a camera for not knowing everything or making a wrong exposure or fuzzy image.

Here's how I came to discover this:

When it comes to the arts, be it music, photography, surfing or anything, there is a mountain to be overcome. What happens is that for the first 20 years or so that you study any art you just know that if you had a better instrument, camera or surfboard that you would be just as good as the pros. You waste a lot of time worrying about your equipment and trying to afford better. After that first 20 years you finally get as good as all the other world-renowned artists, and one day when someone comes up to you asking for advice you have an epiphany where you realize that it's never been the equipment at all.

You finally realize that the right gear you've spent so much time accumulating just makes it easier to get your sound or your look or your moves, but that you could get them, albeit with a little more effort, on the same garbage with which you started. You realize the most important thing for the gear to do is just get out of your way. You then also realize that if you had spent all the time you wasted worrying about acquiring better gear woodshedding, making photos or catching more rides that you would have gotten where you wanted to be much sooner.

I met Phil Collins at a screening in December 2003. It came out that people always recognize his sound when they hear it. Some folks decided to play his drums when he walked away during a session, and guess what? It didn't sound like him. Likewise, on a hired kit (or "rented drum set" as we say in the USA) Phil still sounds like Phil. So do you still think it's his drums that give him his sound?

A fan from Michigan teaches auto racing at a large circuit. The daughter of one of his students wanted to come learn. She flew out and showed up at the track in an rented Chevy Cavalier. She outran the other students, middle aged balding guys with Corvettes and 911s. Why? Simple: she paid attention to the instructor and was smooth and steady and took the right lines, not posing while ham-fisting a lot of horsepower to try to make up for patience and skill. The dudes were really ticked, especially that they were outrun by a GIRL, and a 16 year old one at that.

Sure, if you're a pro driver you're good enough to elicit every ounce of performance from a car and will be limited by its performance, but if you're like most people the car, camera, running shoes or whatever have little to nothing to do with your performance since you are always the defining factor, not the tools.

Catch any virtuoso who's a complete master of their tools away from his or her sponsors and they'll share this with you.

read the full article here via kottke

the inbetween time - wanting striving and failing

Between Christmas and New Year is so w e i r d a space. Its the time that people start making resolutions, change job, get fit, move. I too used to make resolutions often to 'have more fun' in a life raining down with obligations. But its not specific enough and often I'd get to the end of the year and realise I'd had very little 'fun' let alone a big belly laugh on a regular basis.

I was lying in bed last night doing a mental inventory of my friends (prompted by seeing a friend on Wednesday who I was shocked to discover we hadn't seen each other for 6 months). Everybody I know has been walking slowly through the most horendous 'challenges' this year. Relatives dying of cancer, 3 breast cancer scares, degenerative blindness, a sister with breast cancer a brother with Hodgekins lymphoma (both brother and sister to the same friend), infertility, coping with parents growing older... I suddenly realised I had one friend without a major 'challenge' in her life and then remembered her cousin with the inoperable brain tumor!

We all have problems and one of the way we get through them is being a kindly presence with each other. Bearing witness to what we go through. I'm not good at this - when did I ever get the life lesson on how to help someone facing potential blindness? Was that one of the days I missed at school? I can only bring my ordinary human broken patched together wanting striving and failing self.

This year I've decided that my resolution is to be the imperfectly human me I am. Just as I am.

The friend I met (I wrote and erased a list of her 'challenges' it was too long!) said that after a close relative dying of cancer slowly and painfully over many months that her resolution was to stop putting off the things she loved doing but had put aside due to a focus on her work. She drew up plans for riding and skating in the coming year. Energetic outdoor activities she'd given up in her striving in her career.

What a challenge! I realise that I've been so focused on surviving the past two years I'm not entirely sure if I could write a list of things to do that would make me happy. Currently my list contains things I would like NOT to do. This is my second resolution. Remember and rediscover all the things that make me happy and do them and not let them get lost in the business of living.

Alternative Photographic Processes site - fascinating.

Saw Narnia yesterday

- did anyone else watching hope against hope that the cool whicked Witch of Narnia was going to win instead of those frankly dull and irritating children?

Cuteness overload

oh and keri smith has a sort of guerilla guide to christmas which looks great but you know what I'm so damned tired I shall look a the list, admire it and do nothing

cameo update

Hi Cameo supporter

Before everyone disappears for what I hope will be a cracking Christmas and New Year for each and every one of you, PLEASE don't forget The Cameo Campaign and here are some simple things you can do straight away to help:

1)) Register for email notification of the Cameo programme. This is a practical way to show interest in the Cameo and its films and to help staff morale - sign up, sign your friends up, get the programme
details weekly and please please please, come along to every film
possible!
Why are we recommending this action when the owners are not safeguarding the Cameo's future? Well, the for sale signs are up and the owners are starting to run it down - eg by stopping the membership scheme. Yet The Cameo is NOT a failing business and we need your help to show it is still thriving. It costs nothing to subscribe to the email programme, but it does show your interest in the cinema, which is judged by how many people come to see films, use the bar, and sign up to receive email programmes.

Please do all three! The Cameo needs you to go see films
in its lovely space, all year round, for as long as its there standing as a cinema.


Email a brief Christmas message to staff from you, mention you're
a Cameo Campaigner, and request to be added to their weekly email
programme. That's all it takes! Do it now at:
managers@picturehouses.co.uk

2) contact your local councillor and MSP to remind them of the Cameo situation and to urge their support in ensuring current and any future plans by City Screen are looked at critically and opposed unless the arthouse identity of the Cameo is kept intact, not least by ensuring the safeguarding of Cinema One, the Cameo's showpiece. Do it before Christmas if you can, and/or in the New Year!

We repeat, The Cameo is NOT a failing business. On the contrary it is not doing badly considering multiplex competition.

Sarah Boyack MSP and Cllr. Lorna Shiels have been stalwart in support of The Cameo. If you live in Edinburgh and not in their constituency/ward, please contact your own MSP and councillor - these individuals need informing of your concerns! Find your MSP and councillor if you don't know who they are,
via:

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/CEC/Member_Services/Wards/wards.html

3) As soon as the New Year starts, Save The Cameo will need your help again to bring The Cameo back on to the public agenda: please don't let it fade from view.

Write to newspapers, contact people, check the website regularly, and help make sure the start of the year promises a brighter future for The Cameo.

4) Soon there will be an email survey carried out of Edinburgh-based Cameo customers. This is important and we will email you soon with details. Please elp us by responding quickly.

Finally, "Its A Wonderful Life" is on at The Cameo from 23-29 December. If you can be there, please go to a screening, take your family - a great film in a great cinema.

Thank you so much for your support. Have a wonderful time.

Warmest wishes
Genni



Genni Poole
Campaign Coordinator
SAVE THE CAMEO
www.savethecameo.org

slow movement

There is a slow food movement but I want to start a slow travel movement. Not only is travelling by bus and train much better for the environment and safer than travelling by car but it doesn't cut you off from life. Packed into metal boxes, all you can do is observe life or wait in a traffic jam. On Sunday I waited on a wet street for a bus to visit a friend. While I was waiting, a small boy also waiting, gave his mother and I an inpromptu rendition (with actions!) of the 'Hokey Cokey' - completely entrancing. Then at the other end I walked to my friends house admiring the Christmas decorations glowing in the dark - if I'd driven all I'd have been thinking about was finding a parking space. Slow travel is the process of the journey being the destination, because we are already here. Stop rushing there, thinking that is where here is.

Free Christmas Cards

at Michael Nobbs - what a nice man he is!

Personally I write New Year cards if I do write at all.

camera mail look like a fun project.

Embracing what is

I stood at the bus stop this morning and realised it was still dark. We are rapidly reaching the shortest day. I'm not good at this dark stuff. I want to go and hide in a cave (sofa) knit and talk to kittens. My capacity for doing stuff plummets. I spend a lot of time fighting the urge to hibernate. I decided this week I wouldn't I would accept that this is the way it is at this time of year. Get through the last few weeks before the holidays and lo! I immediately felt much better less frazzled and overwhelmed. I began to enjoy the thought of christmassy things like visiting the German market in town.

Instead of railing and fighting a situation you can't change, the weather, co-workers, crazed christmas behaviour, accept it - it frees up energy.

What a month - I've just realised I've been over a month at this temp job. Its been a roller coaster ride and I've learned or rather re-learned so much.
1. You can't cope easily with what life throws you if you are ill and tired. REST is the no 1 cure for it.
2. Reframing - commute = thinking time not waste of time.
Temp Job = Arts grant
3. How much I've lost my connection to my original self. How much I've put other people before my needs.
4. Clawing back that slightly eccentric self. You will find me standing outside the main entrance of the World's 10th Largest Employer determinedly knitting at lunchtime in a bid to push back SAD.
5. Self care only I can do it and sometimes it means saying 'no' and I hate saying 'no' - it pushes every one of my people pleasing buttons. I have to practice more 'no'.
6. You can have a job and still create step by step. In between all this crazy temping, communting stuff I've put together a proposal with my noble long suffering producer. Its away being considered please annoy small mammals on my behalf.*
7. Awful things happen, which seem to career out of of nowhere. You survive. I've lost the drama perhaps because of the tiredness - I just don't have the energy. I just think 'This is the way it is'. And as soon as you stop banging your head on circumstance then there is more energy for other stuff.
8. Acceptance see above
9. Gratitude - focusing on what I do have instead of what I perceive as lacking makes life a lot easier.**
10. Stepping away. I keep on being tested. People keep arriving in my life or reappearing in my life who I realise are only there to distract me from what I really should be doing or really should be feeling. I'm practicing counting to 275, feeling guilty and walking backwards anyway.
11. When I don't listen to the wisdom of my body and walk in the wrong direction the pains in my feet tell me where to orientate myself.

*I used ask people to sacrifice small mammals on my behalf then I became friends with a vegan so instead if you see a fox just really annoy them by saying things like 'I don't think that colour suits you' and 'Didn't I see that coat last year in Maplin'.

** Sound glib but when a friend phoned and told me about the papparazzi attended vast media party launch do which I couldn't go to in London because I was temping I had to practice this a lot.

networking for introverts

Top 10 bookshop list from Guardian - makes me itch to get out and visit them all. Especially Shakespear and co in Paris.

We must be willing to be in the gap between what we want to create and what we are actually creating

A really interesting post over at Loudenmouth.

So many people give up as soon as what they are creating doesn't exactly match what is in their heads.

save the cameo update

(Only interesting for Edinburgh based readers - sorry)

My uncle was at the public meeting which I couldn't make. Here's his report and Genni Poole the daughter of the former owner of the Cameo Jim Poole has got in touch with a few amendments and additions.
~~~~
The hall was packed with >300 people sitting and standing, to the surprise and delight of the organisers (and of councillor and MSP attending, one representing the Fountainbridge ward, the other the chair of the Scottish Parliament's Planning & Environmental Committee). Four main speakers: Genni Poole, (Save the Cameo)Sarah Boyack (MSP Edinburgh Central), Dr Gordon Barr (co-designer of a website on the history and architecture of Scottish cinemas) and the Fountanbridge Ward councillor Lorna Shiels.

The main news was that a City Screen rep met the ward councillor and the representative of Culture and Leisure Department of the Council. It became clear that City Screen and/or their architect had misled the Council over the planning application; they did not make it clear that there would be a substantive change of use of the main auditorium. Despite this, City Screen sent Genni Poole a long email on the afternoon of the meeting, in which they claimed that they had abortively tried to hold a meeting with Council officials "to which no one turned up" (although it was very short notice and two Council representatives managed to rearrange their schedules to attend); as a result they were instructing the architect "to withdraw the planning application" due to the opposition received.

Ginnie Atkinson also spoke, making it clear that, if it became possible, Film House would love to run the Cameo in tandem with Film House. She is writing a strategy paper re art films for submission to the council, who apparently give a small grant representing about 2% of Film Houses's income, It also emerged that the screen 2 space in the Cameo is owned by the Council and merely leased to City Screen (8.5 years to run, which is why City Screen were seeking an extension of the lease for another 50 years, so they could sell this leasehold on to a new buyer when they put The Cameo up for sale).

Someone in the audience pointed out that City Screen are merely a subsidiary of
the Allied Arts Media Group, whose main business is selling and renting DVDs. Their main interest is raising the level of profit from their art cinema chain, as the Group apparently lost about £1M last year. (NB The Cameo made a profit last year, but obviously not enough for the owners.)

Gordon Barr said that he had contacted Historic Scotland, to query the possibility of upgrading the Cameo's Listed Building status from C to B (which would make it more difficult for any owner to obtain consent for change of use). However, HS cannot change the status, while the Cameo is the subject of a planning application. If the application is rejected or withdrawn, then HS may look sympathetically at an upgrade, if there was sufficient strength of feeling.

Further actions were agreed, namely:
a) An attempt would be made to verify whether or not the planning application was being withdrawn.(To date the planning applications have not been withdrawn)
b) Meanwhile, objections from Save the Cameo members can still be lodged with the Council's Planning Department.but only until 9thDecember.This should be done through the campaign website link: www.savethecameo.org
c) Possible buyers for the Cameo (asking price £750,000) were being sought but, unless the current managementand staff were to be retained, cinema expertise would be needed by any new owner. (Ginny Atkinson commented that Film House could supply that, if requested.)
d) The website will be expanded and information circulated to everyone with an
email address (forms were available at the meeting).
e) People can write to HS supporting the proposed upgrade in Listed Building status.
f) Anyone with knowledge which could be of use was asked to contact the organisers (most of the work so far having been organised by Genni Poole).




Save the Cameo

You're probably figuring out that the most productive things you need to do in life, you cannot do alone. Yet at this moment, you may not see how you can collaborate, nor can you sense how that might affect you. Indeed, your focus is still decidedly inward, where it belongs. But time is moving, and with it, your sense of identity. A variety of factors will help you shift the energy in your life and help you go a long way toward both developing and focusing your mission. You don't have to do much - just do what feels right every day, give the planets a chance to work their odd little miracles.

Jonathan Cainer this morning for virgos ... I had to smile almost completely chimes in with advice given to proponents of The Artists Way. At the moment I'm trying to institute a new regime of self care. Proper home cooked meals, vegetables, adequate sleep etc. Its a slow movement towards my goal of taking better care of myself.

Jory Des Jardins

great blog with even better blog roll.

make your own traditions

have a Buy Nothing Christmas

the barfy postcard project

hop over to visual chronicles to join in!

Life lessons

~ Life can be one big "do over" if we want it to be. It's never too late to make a dream come true, if even just a small piece of the dream.

~ The most powerful transformations can begin by doing just one kind or compassionate thing a day. Do one nice thing today for someone you really dislike...not for them, for you.

~ An attitude of gratitude will lead to plenitude.

~ Fear is a great motivator...if I get up off the couch long enough to allow it to be.

~ Pity parties don't get the credit they deserve. I think of them as a celebration of bottom dwelling. If I've reached the point where I'm throwing myself a pity party, there's nowhere to go but up.

~ Once I stopped thinking of depression as the enemy, it began to lose its power over me. That doesn't mean I stopped getting depressed--it just means I reframed it. Now I'm able to experience it without the accompanying fear. I've lived with depressive cycles long enough to understand that they're just that--cycles. I'll tumble down again...but I'll rise again, too.


from Life lessons

save the cameo

Our second last traditional purpose built cinema has its owners just put an application in to turn it into a superpub. Go here to get involved in saving the Cameo.

I've been going to the Cameo for over 10 years to see films, meet friends in the bar, go to film-makers events, and even meet and knit with my Stitch & Bitch group. Its a total part of my life. I love the atmostphere in the Cameo. Every person who works there loves film. It exudes film culture from every brick. If it goes our lives will be pulled even more into the banal, top down corporate life. The range of films we will be able to see in this city will be more narrow. Our cultural life will be definately poorer. Please sign the petition and write to the planning department if you live in Edinburgh. Please circulate the link to any people you know with Edinburgh connections.

i love this country sometimes

land of eccentrics - meet Rob the Rubbish

Hugh's

sex and cash theory

or grow your own trust fund.

cats in sinks because its monday

Selftaughtgirl's

good karma birthday

the craft

MANIFESTO!

via caterina

notes on surviving creatively a job for money

1. Use the commute for thinking time.
2. Stay in the present don't put everything onto 'when this job is over'. Keep seeing friends. Take pleasure in what you can even if its reduced to shocking pink post-it notes.
3. Do something creative everyday even if tiny. Phone someones or email someone about your project. Knit at lunchtime. Do post-it sized drawings.
4. If you can't get out at lunchtime - take a stack of postcards with you to the canteen and catch up on correspondence with friends.
5. Journal or do 'morning pages' its an exercise in saying 'Here I am' 'this is who I am' an affirmation of self when most work does the opposite.
6. Try and stand outside during your breaks to get natural light on your face even if for a few minutes to ward of SAD.
7. A nice pen always cheers me up.
8. Eat as well as you can. Double your cooking amounts and take in left overs. Almost always more nutrious than bought in a canteen and cheaper.
9. Invest in a treat for yourself. During one henious job in the docks (in the payments dept!) I would leap onto the first bus every Monday night and go to a cinema which had a half price ticket deal and see two films one after the other. It was indulgent. Indulge. Think of what that would be for you. A double cream hot chocolate... a bubble bath?
10. A warm cozy scarf and pair of gloves for waiting at bus stops.

away....

in Galway visiting friends. I love travel - the getting of distance from where you are to where you are going. Taking yourself along for the ride. I find my perspective on the life I've just left crystalises. I start to think the unthinkable. The truths I've been talking myself out of.

Hummmm travel isn't always comfortable.

Meanwhile the joy of catching up with friends, making new ones with adorable red haired toddlers, slowly browsing in superb secondhand bookshops, slowly sipping tea and writing postcards.

Here's where I visted yesterday

Retreat to Advance

I've been on a retreat these past two days - an enforced retreat. I was so tired on Monday evening I stayed home the day following and went to the doctors.

I closed the shutters lay down in my 'retreat space' futon and pile of blankets. Turned on the heating and shuffled out every now and again to reheat sausage casserole and read a bit of an Ian Rankin novel I'd borrowed from the library. The cats made themselves at home on top of me. Last night I stuck on a chicken to roast which I picked up on the way back from the doctors. Heaven ... comfort food. Watched a bit of TV. Today the cats had retreat cabin feaver and fought with each other over my innert body. I then graduated to women's magazines on the sofa. Luckily I'd had a shower and got dressed when I heard a banging at the door. It was a policeman making enquiries as my neighbour had died 'in suspicious' circumstances. Ian Rankin comes to my door. Yikkes and as a friend kindly pointed out I have no alibi...

However I feel SO much better. I was at the so tired I could weap stage on Monday night. Sometimes to STOP just everything is what is needed. Leaving our life for a bit helps us to pick up the thread again.

Serendipitously info came from Dhanakosa who offer buddist retreats and of course the Arvon Foundation have wonderful courses for writers.

Lorraines' blog about

tackling National Novel Writing Month - Get It Written

the relaxed urbanite...

more soon....

Goths

knit?

Interview with Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Lux Lotus: What inspired 52 Projects?

Jeffrey Yamaguchi: I would have to say my love of projects. While this is definitely about the actual process of making a creative project, it is also very much about how project-making fits into my life -- how making a concerted effort to make something unleashes my creativity. Everything that goes into a project, no matter how exhausted or frustrating it might get, deep down, where it counts, I feel energized, and I can tell my creative impulses and desire to make stuff just gets stronger. And this energy - I truly feel it course into all areas of my life. This idea of project-making, this is the underlying inspiration behind 52 Projects. The perhaps more straightforward answer would be that I have had some terrible jobs in the past, like pretty much everyone, you know, and being creative on my own terms through my own project-making efforts, that really provided me with an important outlet - I actually felt like I was accomplishing something of worth, and that feeling in turn helped me get through the day to day, and in the long run, sort of bend and twist and churn out a situation that was more ideal, closer to what I wanted to do with my life. This is an ongoing thing, of course. It will always be "ongoing."


more here

I'm currently waiting for my copy of the book which is on order at wordpower.

I nearly forgot

its National Novel Writing Month. It isn't too late to sign up!

More about it at the Guardian Blog

article about Sark

aka Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

Happy Samhain!

cough cough

Sometimes you just have to put your foot in front of you one at a time and ignore the big picture.

Not been a good few days.

Cough cold thing seems to get better but then I get felled by excruciating tiredness. Ah and the coughing fits whenever I exercise or move from one atmosphere to another...

A very dear friendship of mine going back to university days might be over.

I've been adjusting to a new job with a long commute and an early start.

The clocks have changed! Winter is coming!

Yesterday I felt so overwhelmed. I could have happily crawled into a hole and hid there coughing away.

Not an option as I had to do two applications for this morning. After meeting my producer returning home at 11am and doing the next application I went to bed at 1.20am.

I know doesn't exactly sound like self care does it? But I cancelled a swimming date tonight. Promised myself to go to bed at a decent hour for the next week and rest properly next weekend. I also removed the anxiety about suspending my exercise programme until I get well. Just one thing at a time. And my big thing is getting better.

Glorious link

Dawn of the Knitted Dead
in honour of Halloween.

Start where you are

I once had a student in a group who burst out petulantly 'I can't be a photographer because I can't afford to go to Egypt'. Actually it turned out that these were the least of his troubles. Recently I saw a Craig's list posting from the US a publisher wanting photographs of the very city this person did not think worthy enough to photograph.

Start where you are. If you are a photographer carry your camera with you at all times and film and take photos of your communte. Join together with other photographers around the world about their commute and you have a website, a book, or an exhibition in the making. If you are a writer take a pencil and some index cards you can write notes on and stuff into your pocket - writer Anne Lamott does this - as you go around your daily business. Feed your writer side by asking the people around you about their stories. Other people's stories feed your stories. I'm working at the moment in a situation I'd rather not be in but even I manage to send an email or phone someone at lunchtime to inch a project along day by day.

Start where you are - do not put off what you want to do by imagining some perfect set of circumstances where by if they existed you would magically become creative.

Ian Hamilton Finlay - Inverleith House RBG

I have a genius for visiting exhibitions on their last day or in their last days so it always seems a waste to blog them for people who can't then make them

Last Saturday while developing this cold I went to see the Ian Hamilton Finlay exhibition at the Botanics. I've been to ses Little Sparta the place he lives which has been turned by him in the last 30/40 years into a sort of living artwork due to diligent 'avant gardening'.

Here are some of the sayings I liked most on the walls.

Friendship is inclination
Aquaintance geography

The late night shipping forecast is a kind of High Church Weather Service for radio listners.

The art of gardening is like the art of writing, of painting, of sculpture, it is the art of composing, and making a harmony, with disparate elements.

He who lives alone is always on sentry duty.

The wind roaring in the night, is both stranger and friend.
Of course these were all beautifully typographically designed and painted onto the walls.

Earnest Duffer to Genius: Vincent Van Gogh

Did ever an artist have a less promising start than Vincent van Gogh? People love to imagine that if only they had had the chance to see Vincent's early work, they would have recognised his talent, coddled it, saved him from neglect and his famous suicide. His genius would have been - well, just obvious.

But if one thing seems apparent from the big show of Van Gogh's drawings that opened last week at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's that anyone could have been forgiven for looking at his early work and passing it by. Perhaps no artist who got as good as Vincent has ever started out so bad. Not just bad, but worthy bad, which is (if anything) worse. Even today, you'd hardly want one as a present, unless it was from someone you didn't want to offend. Those dogged, I-share-your-suffering images of ground-down peasant women and Dutch cloggies grouped around the sacramental potato, done in glum, awkward homage to Jean-François Millet and English social-consciousness painters such as Luke Fildes, all testify that sincerity, on its own, is not an artistic virtue

Fascinating article on Vincent Van Gogh- the myths and the sheer terribleness of his artistic start

bits and bobs

"There's a secret. If you put in the effort, the universe has a matching grant program. And it'll meet you halfway every time."

From Crossroads Dispatches please go and read this great blog posting.

Discussion on Starbucks and fairtrade coffee.

~~~

Adjusting to my new job. Must must get camera fixed so I can capture this new landscape.

It amazes me how many jobs which are 'very busy' actually have vast swathes of free time. Busy? Snort! Not compared to how full on and in the moment being creative is or the way the phone rang off the hook in my last job... ah well will have to think of creative uses for these pockets of time.

Night People - free film screenings in Scotland

I just got this emailed to me from producer / director team Claire Kerr & Adrian Meade

Like to see a FREE sneak preview of a BAFTA nominated movie and get the
chance to win tickets to the glamorous BAFTA Scotland awards event on Nov
13th at The Raddison Hotel Glasgow?

HERE'S HOW - Attend a FREE sneak preview of "Night People" a new Scottish
movie being organised by BAFTA. Scotland.
(To see a trailer and for more information on the film please go to
www.meadkerr.com)

Audience members who would like to vote for Night People also have the
chance to win free tickets to the Bafta audience awards night by texting
FILM NIGHT PEOPLE and send to 81800

IMPORTANT INFO: Screening Tickets can ONLY be purchased in person at the box
office. (It's not on their behemoth of a computer and phone system)

VENUE: Night People is playing at CINEWORLD cinemas at 8.00pm THIS WEEK in
Aberdeen Monday 24th Oct
Dundee Tues 25th
Falkirk Wed 26th
Edinburgh Thurs 27th
Glasgow Fri 28th

Mary Jane Butters

MaryJane Butters is a force of nature. She bought a farm in Moscow, Idaho in 1986, hoping to live the rural life of her dreams. It was tough going, but she found some unconventional ways to finance the farm: she started a “Pay Dirt Farm School,” in which would-be farmers can pay three grand to spend a week tending beehives, planting crops, and chopping firewood (you heard me—people pay her to chop wood); she began selling packaged, quick-prep organic meals, and she sold shares in her enterprise to a group of stockholders.

Oh, and she runs a bed-and-breakfast, grows her own biodiesel fuel out of mustard greens, and sells her eggs and produce through a community-supported agriculture program. And she publishes a glossy magazine called MaryJane’s Farm, which is a gloriously disheveled mixture of recipes, gardening tips, advice for decorating the henhouse, and ads for her organic food.

Sound familiar? Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, thought so, too. They ponied up $1.35 million for a two-book deal, and many in the industry speculated that Butters would be the next Martha Stewart—the organic, dirt-under-the-fingernails, version of Martha, the one who you believe might actually do all that cooking and farming herself. And unlike Martha, there’s no need to worry that an ill-advised call to a stockbroker would land her in trouble. MaryJane was recently quoted as saying that, much to her accountant’s chagrin, she hasn’t even opened a savings account. And she’s turned down TV offers so she can stay on the farm.

Her first book, MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook, was published this summer. I was reading it in the garden last week when my chicken Eleanor jumped in my lap and stuck her beak right into the book as if she wanted to read along with me. That’s when I realized that I was having a farmgirl moment, and that between the egg-gathering, the worm-farming, and the berry-picking, I’ve been having farmgirl moments for a while now. Have I become a MaryJane devotee, or did she just happen to come along at the right time?

MaryJane’s world is not perfect, polished, or unattainable. (On the website she offers Farmgirl Chapter kits for people who want to organize local groups of farmgirls; those requesting the kit are warned, “The cover letter in our Farmgirl Chapter Kit says there are 10 posters included. We didn’t get around to making those posters, so please don’t think we left them out.”) So she doesn’t get around to everything. What do you expect? It’s a farm. She’s busy.

The new book, like her magazines, are an odd blend of clippings, stories, and craft ideas. Enter MaryJane’s world and you’ll meet a woman who embroiders pillows with the alphabet, in the style of an old-fashioned sampler, then underneath she stitches these lines: “My mama said for me to do this—it would be fun—it was not.” You can find out how to “sass up” flip-flops by adding old plastic clip-on earrings. There are ideas for making purses out of old calendars and contact paper, and lots of recipes involving Jell-O molds. MaryJane’s in favor of eating salad for breakfast (just add hard-boiled eggs and chunks of apple) and she likes to wear aprons because “they separate your outside self from your inside self.”

What I love about this book, and the magazine, is that woven through them I hear the voices of women like my great-grandmother, who was all in favor of darning socks and building your own “outpost” in the backyard where you can camp in the summer. She, too, would have called the campfire meal you’d eat out there—roasted potatoes and johnny cakes—a “hobo dinner.”

And when MaryJane wrote that women love chickens because “putting chickens to bed every night satiates our clucking, nurturing nature,” I was sure I was hearing one of my own aunts, who would have guessed (correctly) that I make a point of putting the girls to bed each night. They settle onto their roost, tuck their beaks under their wings, and let me scratch their necks and whisper to them for a few minutes before they fall asleep. Those are the kind of farmgirl moments I live for.

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from dirt by amy

Mary Jane Butters