On wet and windy days like today I tend to walk along looking down and wonder what patterns will emerge from the rain. According to one English philosopher and mathematician, "Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern." (Alfred North Whitehead). Here's what I came across without lifting my head.
Triangle
Squares and oblongs
Circle plus ....
If our mathematician friend could derive a formula for these, perhaps it would drive him mad finding one for this.
Crazy paving
And here it's difficult to see the wood for the trees.
It's patently obvious to me what it as it is visible to me as I use the keyboard to compose this post. To see other patterns this week check out those behind the links at Carmi's Thematic-Photographic-312.
We don't buy many stamps and it annoys me when the local post office insists on putting one large generated stamp on the occasional parcel we send abroad. Apparently it's easier for them that using proper stamps. We buy a booklet of six First Class stamps especially for birthday cards and last week was no exception. This is what we got.
Great Britain - First Class Stamp Booklet
When I opened the booklet I thought it only contained four stamps untill I looked at the fish - the Common Skate (Threatened) and the Cornish Sardines (Sustainable)
These are two from a set of six issued on 5 June 2014.
To see what others have chosen in a week when Viridian lets us post what we like you need to follow the links at Sunday-stamps-191.
Every day that I walk to fetch my paper there is a tree that stands out from the rest.
Dead wood
I have to say it reminds me of the tree in our prompt this week.
My tree stands at the side of the road from Yarm which in 1803 became a part of the turnpike road from Yarm to Thirsk. This brought trade to the Crown Inn at Kirklevington, but not without some risk.
An accident at Pond Corner (Artist's impression)
By 1900 the Crown Inn had become the Crown Hotel and this is what it looked like then.
Crown Hotel, Kirklevington
Today it is my local and looks like this (taken from a similar angle.)
Crown Hotel (2014)
Of course the stage coaches gave way to the iron horse and today only riding school horses pass the Crown.
Not long before that 1900 photo of the Crown was taken another famous stage took its last trip and a lot of folks where there.
The last Deadwood Coach - December 28, 1890 (John C H Grabill - Library of Congress)
The Deadwood Stage had mountainous country to contend with as show by this picture from a glass negative from the 1880s.
The Deadwood Stage in a mountainous area (probably the Black Hills of South Dakota) - By Charles C Pierce
A replica of the coach made its appearance at Fort Laramie celebrations in 1937 (the year I was born)
Replica displayed at Fort Laramie (1937)
However it was the 1950s before I heard of the Deadwood Stage. I just wonder what Calamity would have said if she had the seen all those fellas at the site of the Stage's last journey.
I'll let her have the last word,
For others' views on coaches or what has inspired them visit the links at Sepia-Saturday-249.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down." (Aneurin Bevan) But you can get run down at the side of the road as well.
Fence run down by grass cutter in the Spring.
Sometimes however you wonder where the culprit rebounded to.
But perhaps it didn't rebound at all.
I'm not sure what role the JCB had in running down the conifer in our garden yesterday.
Now it's too late to change its mind.
Run down stump
I'm glad I don't have to clear up the mess. It would be enough to make anyone feel run down.
I thought I had used all my se-tenant stamps before so I went to my favourite market stall this week where I found some Libyan stamps (the first I had seen).
Libya - Tokyo Olympics 1964
I like the way the Olympic rings are used across the block. By the way Libya did not win a medal that year.
I also discovered that what I thought was a strip of stamps was actual part of a se-tenant strip issued in April 1972 to commemorate the USA National Parks Centennial.
We have never been a family that subscribes to magazines. We may have dabbled with one or two related to cooking or to the art or writing, but now it's a case of a weekend magazine issued with the Saturday paper and in which i usually only scan the pictures. However I do have a few back issues with which I have been associated. These have had an influence on many of my blog posts. In 2008 my "Houses in Fiction" appeared in "The Lady."
The article included photos chosen by the magazine - and I'm not sure where I stand with copyright so you will have to settle with these representing the houses I wrote about. From Uncle Tom's cabin I jumped to:
followed by Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. That triangle at the bottom left of the blurb was a picture of Pride and Predujice's Mr Darcy on the steps of Pemberley, aka:
Chatsworth House (By Paul Collins - 2007)
The site for Brideshead Castle on TV and in a more recent film was here at Yorkshire's -
Castle Howard
We have to move further north for the location of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the films of JK Rowling's Harry Potter Books.
Alnwick Castle, Northumberland
My second magazine is from a local Yorkshire town.
The piece that was my second blogspot post was about Gertrude Bell. You can read Al Khatun here.
I hadn't discovered Sepia Saturday then or identified the source of photos I could have used. But here is two that would have been appropriate.
Gertrude Bell in Iraq in 1909 (From the Gertrude Bell Archive)
Rather unkindly the photo identifies the lady's age as 41.
The Al Khatun article also revers to the Theodore Roosevelt's famous African safari in 1909 where he shot his first lion.
(From African Game Trails, published in the USA 1910)
Sir Alfred Eward Pease (centre), is flanked by Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore's son, on the left and the former President Theodore Roosevelt on the Athi Plains in 1909.
As for the lion, it is immortalised in the stained glass window in Guisborough's St Nicholas Church shown in the Al Khatun blog post.
"To find a form that accommodates the mess that is the task of the artist now." If you substitute photographer for artist in the quote from Samuel Beckett you get the task that Carmi has set us this week. Where to begin?
Messy corner
Having loaded up with cameras, backpack and hat I only had to travel to the bottom of my drive for another messy corner created by a sycamore tree losing its leaves.
Autumn's first mess
With autumn taking a step forward, it does seem to have been long since something in the pink has turned into a messy sight.
'Browned off hydrangea'
Then there is a mess that is becoming more useful as it ages.
Maturing horse manure
And a sign that nature can take care of its own mess as it rots.
Blackberries past their best
Some autumn sights add colour to a scene.
Grass verge carpeted with leaves from an ash tree
But there is some mess that I wish some people would not leave behind.
Messy litter (5 months old) dumped in a lay-by
Have I succeeded with this 'messy' post?
"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things." (T S Eliot)
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