The Oscar Strikes Back

On Monday morning the Oscar ceremony was making headline news as, apparently, one actor hit another actor onstage.  As I do not care for  these innumerable ceremonies in which Showbiz tells itself how wonderful it is and awards itself prizes, I wasn't watching.  But I was surprised to note this headline from Monday's online Guardian: 

"‘Violence isn’t OK’: Hollywood reacts to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock"

What?!?!?!    Isn't graphic depiction of violence part of the very essence of its movies?   Which is one reason why I try to avoid Hollywood's movies as well as its self-congratulations.

Psalm 11:5 says: "Jehovah examines the righteous one as well as the wicked one.  He hates anyone who loves violence." 

Isn't Hollywood training us to be entertained by, to love, violence, which our Creator hates?  And not just Hollywood to be fair. I was on the sofa reading while the Captain watched "Peaky Blinders". It was violent enough just hearing it, never mind watching it.

On Tuesday morning the headlines were telling us that the actor who slapped the other actor has apologised saying that "violence in all its forms is poisonous and destructive".   

Good for him. So can we now expect an apology from Hollywood for the violence in all its forms it has been promoting as entertainment for so many years?    I won't be holding my breath while I'm waiting.

The horrors of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine continue, as does the suffering of the Yemeni people and so many others, including my faithful Russian brothers and sisters.  As does the Covid pandemic, but in a minor key now.  Though I believe it is still killing people, especially where vaccination rates are low.  And Jean, Jackie and I continue to lament the pains and indignities of old age in our phone chats - and usually manage to cheer each other up. And we are still being cautious, Covid-wise.

I wish everyone could know of the coming of the loving and perfect Kingdom of God - the Kingdom preaching work gets more urgent by the day. Yet I did not do very much of it yesterday.  I hope to do better today, as I usually spend Wednesday morning in the field service with my congregation siblings. 

And the Captain and I continue with our routine of Zoom meetings - congregation and family, metal detecting, and veggie soup lunches in front of Bargain Hunt ("They've paid too much for that" is usually a safe comment). And I am very grateful that is so. But we are all going to be hit by the coming - already arrived? - economic storm.  And hit by all the increasing problems that will bring as the rich get even richer and the poor get even poorer.  

The Clocks Spring Forward

I was just re-reading that great Sylvia Plath poem "Mirror" and thinking how strange old age is.  Not that Sylvia herself ever got old.

I was also thinking that they don't make mirrors the way they used to. They gave a much better reflection 20 years ago.

But why would anyone not want to live forever on this lovely planet - when we are no longer in this damaged and dying condition, but are living in happiness, in peace, in perfect health - and always learning?  And how wonderful to be there during the Thousand Years and welcome back the resurrected dead - welcome them into paradise.

On Saturday night, the clocks sprang forward.  And we will have longer days, lighter evenings, which will cheer a lot of people up.  I am reasonably happy with greyness, gloom and rain - which probably says something terrible about my personality - but having said that I do love Spring and Autumn, May and September being my favourite months.  

More and more family and friends are going down with Covid, but so far none have ended up in hospital, thank God.

Captain B beat me at both Wordle and Quordle today.  Grrrr.

My Part in the School - Memorial Invitation

We Quordle and Wordle every morning - and share our triumphs, failures and excuses with family and friends on facebook. Col beat me Wednesday morning, but only just.

I am a householder in the Ministry school this week - though I have reversed the parts in my dialogue below. We are offering the invitation to the Memorial of Jesus' death, and it is a 2 minute part - we are working on enthusiasm.

Sue:  Hello, I’m ringing to invite you to a special event that will be attended by millions all over the world.  It’s the anniversary of Jesus’ death.  And I also want to invite you to a special talk.  It’s entitled:  Where can you find real hope?”

HH:   Oh. That’s kind of you, but I’m afraid I’m pretty much housebound these days, I really only go out for medical appointments.

Sue:  I am sorry to hear that.  I hope you are coping alright.

HH:   Yes, thanks for asking.  I have a supportive family and am very grateful for the NHS. And I am sorry to turn down your invitation. It sounds intriguing. Especially the title of that talk.   I feel as if we all need something positive in our lives these days.

Sue: Absolutely.  It is going to be such a timely talk.  And the Memorial of Jesus’ death  truly is a wonderful occasion, something we look forward to so much.  Can I ask you if you are familiar with the internet, with Zoom?

HH:  Yes. In fact we talk to the Australian branch of the family in Zoom every week.

Sue:   Great.  Because, due to the fact that we are not yet out of the woods Covid-wise, our invitations this year, as last year, are to join us via Zoom.  Would you like to consider that?  Your family would be so welcome too.

HH:  What a good idea.  Yes, I think I would. And I will ask them.

Sue:  It would be lovely if you could.  The Memorial is going to be held on Friday the 15th.  And the talk, also in Zoom, on Sunday the 3rd.  Would it be possible to send you an invitation via email?

HH:  Yes, of course.  My email address is:

Sue;  Thank you so much, Sue. I will send it now. And I will also include a very short video that you can share with your family if you wish.  And may I ring you next week after you have had a chance to watch it, in case you have any questions after you have watched it - for example, why did Jesus have to die when he was such a good man?

HH:  Now that is a very good question. So, yes, please do ring me again.

I was out on the balcony this morning. It was really hot. And the Channel was so calm and pale that once I looked past the sparkles from the sun on the water, I could not tell where sea ended and sky began. I was reading an upsetting book - well written by a friend of mine, but on an upsetting subject - and I was very grateful to have the calm reassuring beauty of the creation in front of me.

The Return?

This splendid butterfly - taken by Captain Butterfly himself in Corfu (I think) - is simply here as a reminder of the beauty and glory of the creation in "difficult times, hard to deal with". I can't think of a link.

The news from the Ukraine is awful. Awful. There had to be a better way to deal with whatever the problem is that started all this. But what does start these things?

Baldric, of Blackadder fame, explained the beginning of World War 1 in this way. He said he heard it started when "a man called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry" - an explanation which probably makes every bit as much sense of mass slaughter as the official one. And here we go again - as if the Ukrainian people had not already gone through so much.

We are still living in the tragedy that began with the loss of Eden. But not for much longer. Please see - and accept - the invitation which will turn up later in this blog.

We. the congregation, are resuming meetings at the Kingdom Hall from 1st April onwards - after 2 years of Zoom. The Covid crisis is not yet resolved of course. For example:

"In less than two months, Hong Kong has run out of coffins and space in the morgue. Pictures of sick elderly patients on hospital beds outdoors – and of body bags piling up next to patients in a chaotic hospital ward – have shocked the population. In recent days Hong Kong has had the highest mortality rate since the beginning of the pandemic anywhere in the world. What’s more, there are fewer and fewer people left to ask the authorities hard questions – accountability has never felt further out of reach."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/18/hong-kong-covid-surge-vaccination-rates

It seems from the article that the vaccination rate there is low.  And of course the new variant - Omicron - is more infectious than the old.  

I am grateful to the government here for their efficient and speedy vaccination programme.   However, on talking it over with my better half - the Captain himself - I have decided to hold off on The Return for the moment, and stick with Zoom.  They treat my arthritis with a powerful med that lowers my immune system, so I think i would rather wait until I have had my next booster.

I feel a bit of a wimp though as I am as fully vaccinated as is possible at the moment. If only I was sure that my immune system would attack Covid as fiercely as it attacks me I would feel full of confidence. But...

We are not resuming the door to door preaching work, as we feel that a lot of people would not be happy talking to us at the door yet.  But we continue reaching out in every other way we can. And at the moment we are issuing invitations to the Memorial of Jesus' death - invitations to join us in Zoom.  So please do.

https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/memorial/

It's not yet 8 o clock in the morning (as I start this blog), and I have already done my WORDLE and QUORDLE - and will have to wait till tomorrow for the next one - twitch twitch.  I did OK with Wordle, but it was touch and go with Quordle.

SLURP PRONE BOOTH SCONE

SLURP PRONE BOOTH SCONE.  Those were the Quordle words on Wednesday. Almost a Haiku in themselves.  I finished Quordle, but I took it right down to the wire, getting the last word on my last guess.  

The Electrician was here on Wednesday and did a good job of updating us. We had no computer, no internet, no telly, no light in the loo while he was working. Col used the time to make a new batch of his chutney (gas hob), and we were reminiscing about our expat days, when we could go out and pick our own dates from the streets round about.  I got on with some housework and made a start on reading Curtis' book.  It is good.  He certainly knows how to write, but it is going to be a very difficult one for me to review.   His subject is so distressing and so powerful that I will have to take it in small doses.  At the same time a dust cloud from the Sahara arrived, and covered my car in sand.  That also reminded us the sandstorms of our Saudi years. 

The death toll in the Ukraine mounts and mounts.  And what for?  Who is benefiting from this?    I was so grateful for the congregation Zoom meeting last night, especially as we are starting the last chapter of our study of Ezekiel in the Pure Worship book.  And we are looking at the glimpse that the Inspired Scriptures give us a thousand years into the future, a time when the whole earth has become the paradise of peace it was always meant to be.  At the end, another sister and I found we have a part in the school next week!  Panic, panic.  Even though it may only be the 2 minute one.  I have to check today and sketch it out - a sort of Haiku length part I guess.

In the meantime, worry about the pandemic is being replaced by worry about the financial crisis that is descending on us.  Although, in fact, we are in no way over Covid.  My sister and bro in law have just gone down with it - hopefully the mild version. They are fully vaccinated, which seems to help a lot.  This probably sterms from one trip to the supermarket where not everyone was masked.

And the Kenyans living by Lake Baringo - and the many other lakes in Kenya - have something else to worry about, as it seems they are being swallowed up by their lakes.  What is happening, and why does the government there not seem to care?   This is from Thursday's online Guardian:

"One of the first scientists to realise that something was wrong with the lakes was a geologist named Simon Onywere. He came to the topic by accident. Between 2010 and 2013 he had been studying Lake Baringo, Kenya’s fourth-largest lake by volume. The bones of residents of the area around the lake weaken uncommonly fast, and Onywere was investigating whether this may be linked to high fluoride levels in the water. Then, in early 2013, while he was meeting with residents of Marigat, a town near the lake, one old man stood up. “Prof,” he said. “We don’t care about the fluoride. What we want to know is how the water has entered our schools.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/17/kenya-quiet-slide-underwater-great-rift-valley-lakes-east-africa-flooding

 

A Host of Golden Daffodils

Here is a Wordsworthian moment caught in one of Col's photos from his dig on Sunday.  It's like a painting, catching the turn of the season beautifully.  

Judging by the tabloid coverage on Monday, the latest ceremony in which Showbiz tells itself how wonderful it is and awards itself prizes is of as much import as the war in Ukraine. Admittedly, both events do make me upset, angry and depressed.  

This - the events in Ukraine - is also throwing a strong light on the amount of wealth accumulated by the "oligarchs" - and at last some public questions about where that wealth came from:

 "A new documentary by the BBC has claimed that Roman Abramovich cheated the Russian Government out of £2billion and was investigated for fraud by his country's Department of Economic Crimes."

It seems especially important at the moment to keep Jehovah's teachings firmly in mind. 

"How fitting, then, that God should require us to be slow about wrath. Explaining why slowness about wrath is especially important for imperfect humans, the inspired writer James said: “For man’s wrath does not produce God’s righteousness.”  - James 1:20

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1960163?q=anger&p=par

God will destroy the present wicked system of things on the earth at Armageddon - in the right way and at the right time.  

On a more mundane level, we have the electrician coming tomorrow - and the electrics will probably be out all day.  No internet!   We will be frantically doing our Wordle and Quordle before he arrives.  

How am I going to keep Him down on the Farm?

We are now all into Quordle, along with Wordle.   I hope they don't continue on this line or our whole lives will be spent doing Mordle (a million Wordles) - fordling while Rome burns.  The News from the Ukraine is awful. The Russian forces seem to have met much more sustained and determined resistance than President Putin had been expecting.  I don't think anyone knows quite what to do about this.  But there are some very weird politics swirling around.  The last time Russia, under Stalin, occupied Ukraine, killing millions, weren't the Movers and Shakers all for it?  This time they are not. Who knows what is up?  But what I do know is that our Creator asks us not to take up arms and kill our brothers and sisters.

We got a lovely Oz calendar from Ian and Sheryl, together with a news update.  Some years ago, in their sailing days, they gave us an evening on board their fabulous yacht, which was moored in a local harbour, with black swans coasting round it.  

Col's alarm went off at 4:30 on Thursday morning, and I didn't see him again till gone 11 at night.  He chauffered Jim - who is carless at the moment - and stopped on at Jim's for his supper and went straight to SUSSAR training: https://www.sussar.org.uk/

Apparently Jim cooked him Toad in the Hole, with new potatoes and beans. And it was delicious.  So how am I going to keep him down on the farm with my constant offerings of veggie soup and pizza?  Will the homemade cakes be enough?

Which is a reminder to myself that I need to bake some more cakes, as Jim has kindly given us some more eggs.

Drummer Hodge

Thomas Hardy - 1840-1928

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
     Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
     That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
     Each night above his mound.
 

II

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
     Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
     The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
     Strange stars amid the gloam.
 

III

Yet portion of that unknown plain
     Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
     Grow up a Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
     His stars eternally.

https://poets.org/poem/drummer-hodge

Once again, the young Drummer Hodges are being sent out, to kill and to be killed.   Ever since the loss of Eden, and Cain killed Abel, hasn't human history been war, war, war, brother killing brother?  From generation to generation we do not seem to learn the lesson of our past.

So here is a promise to cling on to, at Psalm 46:8,9:

•  Come and witness the activities of Jehovah,

  How he has done astonishing things on the earth.

   He is bringing an end to wars throughout the earth.

  He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;

  He burns the military wagons with fire.

Astonishing things indeed - as every human effort to bring about peace on earth has failed, often spectacularly,  as in the example of World War 1 - the "war to end wars". 

I seemed to spend much of Saturday night in a stressful dream of leaving. We were leaving our house which was an odd mixture of our flat here, Nabbs, and our various homes in Saudi Arabia - with an echo of Ralph Barracano's excellent video library.  We were leaving - returning to our expat life it seemed - and could take nothing with us, beyond a small suitcase.  I was anxious about leaving such a mess behind, every surface cluttered with our stuff - but also anxious about what we were leaving behind.  I wanted to take a least some books. And I do remember collecting 2 cookery books and the larger of my Oxford Poetry Anthologies.  It was when I was looking for the smaller one that I reminded myself to look in the bookshelves of the downstairs cloakroom at Nabbs. But I never actually got there - never made it back to Nabbs.

Was this dream reflecting my anxiety about Go-bags, which the Governing Body urges us to have.  Mine seems so basic and insufficient.  Or is this reflecting something my body knows - that it is packing up to go, and I can't take all our stuff with me into the dreamless sleep of death?

Either way it was a bit of a stressful night. Why do I do this to myself?

Snowdrops, Daffodils, the Lily and the Rose

On Friday we had a Zoom chat with the new Membership Secretary (Butterflies) - a sort of extra briefing.  Hopefully this handover will take.  I also chatted to Jean and to Bea of the North, and the plumber fitted the new shower head in Col's bathroom.  I had a Gym lesson - a session with my lovely young physio, who is kind and helpful and nothing like the fearsome gym mistresses of my faraway youth.  She got me creaking painfully and slowly about and I have a new exercise to add to the twisty ones and Crush the Crisp Packet.  I confessed that as yet not a single crisp had been harmed by my Crisp Crushing. The poor girl looked a bit discouraged.

Anyway, driving back I saw that the daffodils were out in Lobbs Wood.  Had I only had the technology, i.e. if I could park the car in a smaller space than would be needed to park a couple of buses and if I was smarter than my Smartphone, there would be a photo of the Lobbsian daffodils heading this blog.

Every single one of them was a miracle of loveliness - more exquisite than a Tiffany jewel, with finer engineering than our latest fighter plane.  The Creation is telling us more and more clearly that we have a Grand Creator.  The Bible is telling us who that Creator is.

Fortunately, Captain B got some lovely snowdrop pics on his Thursday expedition  which I am hoping to borrow.  They too are miracles of loveliness and engineering.  And it made me think of flower poems. For example, this mysterious and beautiful one, with a sadness about it.  And its hard not to think about "the sadness that belongs to the world" at the moment.   Its called The Lily and the Rose  - by that prolific poet Anon (a cousin of that ubiquitous horse "also ran").

The maidens came

When I was in my mother’s bower, 

I had all that I would. 

The bailey beareth the bell away; 

The lily, the rose I lay. 

The silver is white, red is the gold; 

The robes they lay in fold. 

The bailey beareth the bell away; 

The lily, the rose I lay. 

And through the glass windows shines the sun, 

How should I love, and I so young?

The bailey beareth the bell away, 

The lily, the rose, I lay. 

Text: Anon. 16th-century English

https://iowcantatachoir.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Programme-Notes-The-Lily-and-the-Rose.pdf

A Yellowhead Butterflyfish

Our calendar picture for March is of this Yellowhead Butterflyfish from the Indian Ocean, taken by Captain B on one of our many diving trips there.  Clearly - to those who know such things (e.g. the Captain) - it is a Butterflyfish, but had I been given the naming of it, I feel it could just as well have been called The Stripeybodied Butterflyfish.  Though, there again, maybe they all have stripey bodies.

So how about the ExquisitelyLovelySueKnight Butterflyfish - to choose a name completely at random?

I wonder how its life went - happily in the Indian Ocean or not?  I hope it wasn't fished up, damaged and discarded in the relentless search for Nemos after that Hollywood movie.   Surely the more we understand about the complex nature of our oceans, the more we can see that even the biggest and best of aquariums cannot begin to replicate the complex world that fish need.

But we, the fish  - all the earthly creation - are living in a tragedy, and will be until the loving and perfect Kingdom of God is ruling over us. And it is so close now, thank God.

I feel so sorry for both the Russian and the Ukrainian peoples.  And these sanctions are going to his the poorest in Russia the hardest.  I can't see they are going to incommode the Oligarchs much. if at all.  They probably have enough money to see them through a millennium's worth of sanctions.

Well, politics is a devious business, and best stayed out of.  Just think about the people on both sides who simply want to get on with their lives in peace, and how "the world" (the current system of things on the earth) will not let them.

I woke up on Wednesday morning - which is supermarket delivery morning - to a symphony of grey and green.  Perfect little raindrops covered the windows - the Channel was a slightly different shade of grey from the sky above it, and our lonesome pine was dancing with all its branches.  And Thursday morning, as I write this, is beautifully gloomy and moody - sea, sky and Green all a shade or two darker, and everything is very still. 

This is such a lovely planet, so beautiful in all its moods.  And it will not always be full of war, suffering and sadness.  Please do read this very short article:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/series/more-topics/russia-invades-ukraine-bible-meaning-hope/