Kirkhouse Kirkyard….New Year's Day......From ‘Emergence’ – On Beings……Next Ness Top 10 For 2022…..
by Bernie Bell - 11:02 on 01 January 2023
Kirkhouse Kirkyard…..
New Year’s Eve we drove from a snow-free Rendall Parish, to a snowy Kirkhouse/Pool of Cletts, South Ronaldsay, as we did two years ago…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/01/03/kirkhouse-revisited-1-1-2021/
After a walk along the beach, with a beautiful light in the sky and the sea, we wandered around in the Kirkyard which has headstones which tell the stories of families in the area and noticed some names which have now gone out of fashion, such as Isabella – a very fashionable name at one time. One headstone named a woman called Michael and I wondered if maybe in the past that was one of those names which was accepted as being either male or female, such as Leslie? So when we got home I Googled it and….. https://nameberry.com/babyname/michael/girl
History on a wider scale, with the headstone of two Finnish sailors who perished in the M/S Johanna Thorden accident in 1937…. https://canmore.org.uk/site/102213/johanna-thorden-the-tails-of-the-tarf-swona-pentland-firth
Dating from the First World War, the grave of a young man who was stationed at the Hoxa Battery …. http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=15892 . Someone still remembers him – recently placing a Poppy cross …..
An older grave slab, with a skull and cross-bones, dating from when grave markers were laid down rather than standing up. I couldn’t read the date as time and weather have taken their toll…
A stone which forms part of the top of the Kirkyard wall presents a miniature landscape…
Then we drove to Glimps Holm…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2019/04/07/what-we-glimpsed-at-glimps-holm/ and parked by the 3rd Churchill Barrier to watch the sunset on the last day of 2022.
Not a bad way to see out the old year – and hoping that this year will be better than the last few years have been!
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New Year's Day....
Mike is going to be my first Guest Blogger! Here he is…..
This year I have decided each day to record a personal act of creativity, how ever small. It could be a piece of writing, a photograph, a meal, or even just a personal reflection. Today, a poem:
Acts of Creation – a New Year
And so, 2023
What do I resolve to do and be?
Mainly, to be truly me
What makes you and I, we
And accepting that to be free
Means taking self-responsibility
Not weird or afeared, but to see
Each day as a fresh act of creativity
McB - 1st January 2023
Back to me…..I’m reading the ‘Narnia’ books of C.S. Lewis – again. Beginning with ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ - not ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’, as ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ is where it all begins.
I’d just read of Aslan singing the new world into life – when Mike asked did I want to hear his poem. I put my book down, listened, picked my book up again and started to read Chapter 9 - ‘The Founding of Narnia’.
The world is full of wonders and LIFE and creation.
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by Boyce Upholt
Photos by Bear Guerra
“The O’odham peoples of the Sonoran Desert have long revered the saguaro cactus as a being with personhood—a belief that is congruous with the recent rights-of-nature movement. As legal protections for the cactus come up against the push to build a wall through Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, Boyce Upholt travels to the US-Mexico border, where a coalition of Indigenous voices are speaking on behalf of the rooted beings of the desert.”
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‘Butterfly’ Carving…..
https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/2022s-top-ten-butterfly-stone/
And – my tuppenceworth about ‘art’ at The Ness……
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/04/23/stromness-museums-new-exhibitions-makers-then-and-now/
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This time last year….. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/01/11/one-day-at-a-time/
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PS
Andrew's comment (below) reminded me of how long it is since he published 'Skara: The Fourth Wave'...........
https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/08/02/skara-the-fourth-wave/
About time too!
Add your comment
Wonderful.
I'm now getting on with Skara The Fifth Wave.
Andrew.