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Tuesday 10 December 2013

Tuesday; Bookshelf; Burial Rites;



BURIAL RITES  by Hannah Kent



Hannah Kent, the author of Burial Rites said:"  first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland. It was 2002, I was 17 years old, and I had left Adelaide for Sauðárkrókur an isolated fishing village, where I would live for 12 months. This small town lies snug in the side of a fjord: a clutch of little buildings facing an iron-grey sea, the mountains looming behind.

When I arrived it was January, and the days were gripped by darkness, 20 hours at a time. There were no trees. The town’s houses were hostage to snow, and in the distance the north Atlantic Ocean met the north sky in a suggestion of oblivion. It felt like the edge of the world.

I was intensely lonely. The community was tightly knit, and I was an outsider. For the first time in my life I felt socially isolated, and my feelings of alienation were compounded by the claustrophobic winter darkness, and the constant confinement indoors. I turned to writing for company, to fill the black hours. I sought shelter in libraries, consolation in books.

It was during the first difficult months of my exchange that I travelled through a place called Vatnsdalshólar. It’s an unusual tract of landscape: a valley mouth pimpled with hillocks of earth. When I asked my host parents if the area was significant, they pointed to three small hills, nestled closely together. Over 100 years ago, they said, a woman called Agnes had been beheaded there. She was the last person to be executed in Iceland.

I was immediately intrigued. What had she done? What had happened? Over time I discovered that Agnes was a 34-year-old servant woman who had been beheaded on 12 January 1830 for her role in the 1828 murders of two men. It seemed a tragic tale; Agnes had been unequivocally condemned.
Excerpts from Hannah  Kent.


 In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.
Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes's spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes's ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she?
Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about personal freedom: who we are seen to be versus who we believe ourselves to be, and the ways in which we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland's formidable landscape, where every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

We talk about the "good old times" yet when we go back to those times they were anything but good for most of the populace. Life was more a  tragedy, a constant battle. Work from morning to night. Living in dismal conditions, no rights, nothing. Ts

Burial Rites, is well written and makes you shudder to think that people lived under those conditions. Ts






Sunday 1 December 2013

Sunday, teachings;



It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly.
 And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.



©Photo Ts/Titania Everyday;

Wednesday 27 November 2013

...apple of my eye;



Nothing like a home grown apple,
A jewel glinting in the tree
Ripens in sun and rain and dew;
It’s taste of honeyed blossoms,
The warmth of summer days. Ts


©Photo my garden/Text Ts/Titania Everyday.

Saturday 23 November 2013

Woof...woof..


A dog's life; Billy;


Billy, wait...


Billy, luag do...understands Swiss German  as well...


Billy,  good boy...


Billy, walkies...

©Photos Ts/Titania Everyday

Friday 22 November 2013

Nature's art;



For me, Art summons up a feeling of life and energy. It is part of mankind, our first artworks were scratched into stone.  I  am mostly inspired by colour,  natural sculptures, love the diversity,  subtle designs and colours of lichen  and  fungi which I find in my garden.  For me Art is  and has always been a vast  and profound exploration.  



Fungi garden;









Lichen on bush rock;


Gifts of the sea; fantastic patterns and  subtle colours.


©Photos my garden/Text/Titania Everyday; Ts

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Wednesday; Platypus;



     Old Man Platypus
   
Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown–
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.

And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and fewer friends,
For Old Man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.

He shares his burrow beneath the bank
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under water.

Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls,
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.

And he talks in a deep unfriendly growl
As he goes on his journey lonely;
For he’s no relation to fish nor fowl,
Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl;
In fact, he’s the one and only!

Banjo Patterson 1864-1941



The platypus is a semiaquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth. 

The unusual appearance of this egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal baffled European naturalists when they first encountered it, with some considering it an elaborate fraud. 
It is one of the few venomous mammals, the male platypus having a spur on the hind foot that delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans. The unique features of the platypus make it an important subject in the study of evolutionary biology and a recognizable and iconic symbol of Australia; 

Scientific name: Ornithorhynchus anatinus
Lifespan: 17 y (In captivity)
Mass: 0.7 – 2.4 kg
Rank: Species
Daily sleep: 14 h on average
Length: 50 cm on average (Male, Adult), 43 cm on average (Female, Adult)


Courtesy Wikipedia