The 'new' old desk

It arrived, the new old desk. 

It was so unbelievably heavy that I didn't believe it could be carried up the stairs  ... but turns out it could, after it was cut into two pieces.  Carried by Gert and by Oliver.

And then it was too high, so we took off the little round feet. 

Then it was too low, and I didn't say anything for a little bit.  I just kind of avoided it.

Gert found some pieces of wood yesterday, at just the right height, and voila, here it is ... my new old desk in its place here in the sun.

 

Howard Thurman

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.


Murmuration ...

Loved this!

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Video of a massive starling flock turning and twisting over a river in Ireland has gone viral, and with good reason. Flocking starlings are one of nature’s most extraordinary sights: Just a few hundred birds moving as one is enough to convey a sense of suspended reality, and the flock filmed above the River Shannon contained thousands.

What makes possible the uncanny coordination of these murmurations, as starling flocks are so beautifully known? Until recently, it was hard to say. Scientists had to wait for the tools of high-powered video analysis and computational modeling. And when these were finally applied to starlings, they revealed patterns known less from biology than cutting-edge physics.

Feel free to continue reading here  :-)

 

The New Year ...

I always get sad during the holiday break here in the northern hemisphere. 

I always miss home and family, more than at any other time of the year. 

So January is a bit of a climb out of the dark of a Belgian winter and, clearly, my blogging voice falters too.

I miss the road home (as per the photograph), the big messy familar family Christmas, and summer.

I miss the quiet joy of walking long beaches with my dog, good air, and crazy-friendly people.

Eight years is simply too long to stay away but I rarely understand it like that.  Just as I collapse distance with my favourite telefoto lens, I also collapse or compress the passing of time. 

But the 'telefoto' collapse doesn't work over the big holiday break ... not at all. 

2012 has to be the year I go home.  But meanwhile, all the very best things to you and yours in this new year.

Cristina Zenato

What an extraordinary woman ... an extraordinary life.

Speaking five different languages, Italian, English, German, French and Spanish, Cristina became a tour de force – a PADI, NAUI, SSI, SDI, open water instructor, NSS-CDS full cave instructor, Extended Range Instructor, TDI advanced Nitrox with decompression procedure and more ...

Cristina has a natural ‘gift’, some would say, with Sharks. Practicing a little known technique of rubbing and manipulating her fingers across the ampullae of Lorenzini, the visible dots [electro-receptive sensory organs] all around a shark’s head and face, she induces a tonic immobility. To the observer, this looks like a shark falling asleep right in her lap. Last fall a Blue shark appeared to fall asleep in her hands, on the surface. As she caressed the beautiful ten foot ocean traveler, the fact that she had no chain-mail suit on this occasion never seemed to cross her mind.