Unbought Delicacies: Quotes for today

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Quotes for today

I found these two quotes on Dick Gaughan's site this morning:

"Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
-- R. D. Laing

"Any damn fool can get complicated; it takes a genius to achieve simplicity."
-- Pete Seeger on Woody Guthrie

I hadn't heard of Dick Gaughan until this morning, so checked out his website:

http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/main.html

There's a recording of one of his cocnerts on TV tonight, so I think I'll give it a go. Will report back :)

3 comments:

hen said...: Dick Gaughan is my absolute hero!!!!!!!!! A voice like a tortured angel! If that's not too cheesily melodramatic!

I can whole heartedly recommend Prentice Piece as a starting point if you wanted to buy any of his stuff. It's a kind of best of 2 disc cd.

He is amazing... for these reasons...

1) Fathers Song
2) Both Sides the Tweed
3) Flooer's o' the forest
4) The World Turned Upside Down

These are just my ultimate favourites, I have many favourites of his. My best friend did the sound for him at a venue in Reading and Dicks performance blew his mind! I'd LOVE to see him live, but haven't as yet.

I'll look out for that radio show too!

Thanks for mentioning it!

hen
xx

p.s.
thank you for tagging me! It's going to take me ages to think of anything!!; 23 October 2008 at 11:39
hen said...: just re-read your post, it's on telly. doom. I don't have telly. Will it be on the BBC? I can watch it on Iplayer then. I'm off to investigate...; 23 October 2008 at 11:40
MrsL said...: Hi hen!! :)

Always nice to get someone else's recommendation, so will definitely stay up for it. I have a spinning/knitting project to do for Saturday, so that should keep me awake. I think teh Scottish bit was the attraction for me. I'll post up what I think :)

MrsL; 23 October 2008 at 12:52

I have found such joy

I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are:
The elemental things- old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

~ Grace Noll Crowell

Ideas for handmade gifts

Small knitteds - gloves, scarves, hot water bottle covers, hats, tea cosies, phone covers, little toys,,cushion covers, bags. Some of these can be felted/fulled for extra interest.
Edibles - chutneys and jams, pickles, nice teas in a vintage/retro tin, sweeties, toffees, mustard, home made wine and liqueurs, home dried fruits, ketchups.
For the home - trimmed tea towels, handknitted dishcloths, quilted wallhangings, small samplers, restored picture frames, pot pourri, lavender bags, covered coathangers, little scented bags for hanging on handles, framed photos of family,etc you've taken yourself, pincushion,needle book, scissor keeper, book of promises (eg babysitting, 1 hour's housework, the ironing, etc)
Bathtime - homemade soap, bath oils, bath salts, knitted washcloths, herbal bags for the bath, hand sewn toilet bags, trimmed hand towels, homemade lotions and potions packed in pretty jars and bottles.
For the garden - home saved seed in handmade decorated packets; homemade handcream, exfoliating soap, wheat bag for those digger's aches and pains!

Handmade books, personalised printed notepaper and envelopes.
Hamper of bits and bobs from the above lists, packed in a pretty lined basket.

I'll add some more as and when I think of them; These can be used all year round and easily tailored to the recipient - everyone loves a homemade gift. :)

Inspiring thoughts.............

I saw a man, an old Cilician, who occupied an acre or two of land that no one wanted.
A patch not worth the ploughing, unrewarding for flocks, unfit for vineyards;
he, however, by planting here and there among the scrub cabbages or white lilies and verbena and flimsy poppies, fancied himself a king in wealth, and coming home late in the evening, loaded his board with unbought delicacies.
Virgil

I had no theories to prove. I merely wanted to try living by my own hands, independently as far as possible from a system of division of labour in which the participant loses most of the pleasure of making and growing things for himself. I wanted to bring in my own fuel and smell its sweet smell as it burned in the hearth I had made. I wanted to grow my own food, or forage after it. In short I wanted to do as much as I could for myself, because I had already realised from partial experience the inexpressible joy of doing so.

Harlan Hubbard, Shantyboat: A River Way of Life

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Thursday, 23 October 2008

Quotes for today

3 comments: