Paul Robichaud

Beautiful!

Those solitary stones that keep silent watch, that persist across the rise and fall of our own petty kingdoms, are storytellers. When we learn the language of the Long Neolithic they speak across time. It is beholden on us to listen. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Megaliths, Colonsay, Scotland #StandingStoneSunday

Carol Anne Ford as Susan and William Hartnell as the Doctor.

Happy #DoctorWhoDay to all who celebrate!

Standing stones in a field.

Standing stones at Erdeven in Brittany, June 2023. The alignments are a bit messy, but you can still walk amongst the stones. #StandingStoneSunday

Lovely!

I don’t know Quilter, but I will look him up!

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
- Doris Lessing

Kate Kennedy, ‘Dweller in Shadows: a Life of Ivory Gurney’ (2021)

My current non-fiction reading, Kate Kennedy’s excellent 2021 biography of composer and poet Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), who spent his last 15 years in a mental asylum.

I discovered ‘Penda’s Fen’ in 2018, when I was writing on the poet Geoffrey Hill and stumbled upon this fascinating essay that reads the play alongside Hill’s ‘Mercian Hymns’ (1971):

Thanks!

Penda’s Fen reinvents Mercia for the modern age How an experimental British 1970s television play pioneered a folk horror revival

I rewatch this every year, most recently the excellent restoration included in the Severin boxed set ‘All the Haunts Be Ours’ (2021).

Interesting! I need to read more Jeffries, who I mostly know through the work of Edward Thomas.

An illustration from her children's book The Acorn's Story; scene featuring a barn owl perched in the old oak tree trunk and a young fox emerging from a hollow at the base, ferns at base.

Old Oak Tree, Valerie Greeley.

A laughing Pan sits on the riverbank.

‘In the hushed recesses of Hurley backwater, where the canoe may be paddled almost under the tumbling comb of the weir, he is to be looked for; there the god pipes with freest abandonment.’ — Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Rural Pan’ (1894) #BookwormSat

🎨Norman Price

A red sunset slips into cloud over the sea. In the foreground five white sheep mill on and around the central recumbent stone between two standing stones. The moorland grass is scrubby and green with patches of rushes.

Sunset at the Waen Oer (cold moor) stone row

‘Tales of Occult Britain’

Weekend reading!

American academic job ads are getting truly ridiculous. I saw one today for a position in Religious Studies, Literature, and Creative Writing, calling for someone who had both an MFA and a national reputation in a specific denominational field of religious studies.

YouTube video by Peculiar Pictures Alice in Wonderland 1966

If your working week has felt like a visit to the Mad Hatter’s tea party, you might enjoy Jonny Miller’s 1966 adaptation of ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ For me, this version captures the weirdness of Carroll’s vision better than any other, with a mind-blowing soundtrack by Ravi Shankar.

YouTube video by Saturday MornIng Rewind The Wind In The Willows - S1E12 - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' episode from Cosgrove Hall's wonderful 1983 adaptation of 'The Wind in the Willows.'

Hope you are OK!

Richard Texier, The Philosopher’s Secret (bronze with green patina, 2000)

Black cat with white patch on chest

In Scottish Gaelic folklore, the cat-sìth was a faery being in the form of a black cat with a white patch on its chest. The cat-sìth would attempt to steal the soul of a laid-out corpse, but on Samhain would bless a house if given a saucer of milk. #WyrdWednesday

🎨Aedsu

Sending what Pan energies I can your way!

Sunlight at the end of a stone passageway.

Looking out from the Table des Marchands tumulus in Locmariaquer, Brittany, June 2023. #TombTuesday

A sign of how bad are relations between academics and their universities. When I joined Twitter in 2016 it was widespread practice to include one's university in your biog to promote your institution/dept. Now it's non existent on here (& Twitter). For good reason.

Yes, I remember someone back at the other place told me his real name. I definitely prefer the first part to the later pathworking section of the book.

Philip Carr-Gomm

A young Philip Carr-Gomm on Glastonbury Tor.

'Modern humanity's sense of alienation lies in the fact that we have cut ourselves adrift from both the natural world and from the roots of our past' (Philip Carr-Gomm, "Druid Mysteries: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century") 🌳

‘It is a good face by any standards, strong and kind, but you are sure it could be very stern if the occasion demanded it. The head is covered with strong, curly brown hair that is tinged with red and gold at the ends.’ — Leo Vinci, ‘Pan: God of Nature’ (1994)

🎨Thalia Took

I think one of the reasons I like ironing is that it brings back the childhood feeling I had watching ‘Coronation Street’ with my mother while she ironed my father’s shirts.