Pormenores #175

So care free and so fixated on birds

Coisas que não mudam #593

Zelensky addressing the British parliament on 8 March 2022, 

quoted both Shakespeare and Churchill

(...) “Ukraine were not looking to have this war. The Ukraine have not been looking to become big but they have become big over the days of this war. We are the country that are saving people despite having to fight one of the biggest armies in the world. We have to fight the helicopters, rockets.

“The question for us now is to be or not to be. Oh no, this Shakespearean question. For 13 days this question could have been asked but now I can give you a definitive answer. It’s definitely yes, to be.

“And I would like to remind you the words that the United Kingdom have already heard, which are important again. We will not give up and we will not lose.

“We will fight until the end, at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.

“We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets." (...)

Retirado do contexto #399

"O povo ucraniano não existe"

--Vladimir Putin, fevereiro 2022

11 anos, um saco de plástico, um número de telefone e uma viagem solitária até à fronteira da Eslováquia.

Sem título #222

Squint harder...

Numa sala perto de mim #437

The Lorax (2012) is an animated musical based on Dr. Seuss's 1971 children's book by the same name. The colourful scenery, the catchy tunes, the lovable and relatable characters, all instil in children an environmental sense and a willingness to get involved:

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

--Dr. Seuss

Coisas que mudaram #15

Há coisas que mudaram em aparência, mas na realidade andaram foi dissimuladas por uns tempos. Refiro-me ao PCP e ao BE fazerem parte da solução governativa da defunta geringonça, sendo que agora votaram contra ou abstiveram-se na resolução do Parlamento Europeu de condenação à invasão Russa da Ucrânia. Nem o mágico António Costa conseguiria tirar esse coelho da cartola para tentar convencer que só negociaria com as esquerdas moderadas. Razão temos para dizer que "nunca nos enganaram" mas ainda assim não levaram arrepio suficiente nas recentes eleições que felizmente (para eles) aconteceram antes da monumental cara de pau que fizeram no Parlamento Europeu. É a decrepitude partidária de esquerda... que descansem em paz.

Quem bem o disse foi Manuel Carvalho num artigo de Opinião do Público (aqui na íntegra):

O voto contra uma resolução do Parlamento Europeu que condenava a invasão da Ucrânia põe o PCP onde, na prática, ele sempre esteve: do lado de lá da democracia liberal; no caso, do lado dos autocratas.

Palavras lidas #506

Vortex

by Laura Foley

Arriving early for a meeting
in a dim church basement,
I nearly stumble
on a dazed elderly lady
fallen prone on concrete,
beset by a deacon
fearful of lawsuits, who asks
who she is so repeatedly
he sounds like a machine,
heightening the scene’s
surreality, till she quavers
a name vaguely familiar
to my groping brain,
as sunlight fingers
through a dusty window
like a feeble god ray—
she’s my mother’s old
elementary school friend—
whose arm I take,
to walk her slowly home,
through city streets
so loud with hurry
their fury blurs my vision,
as we descend
through the eye of its vortex,
into the vast unspoken realm
of memory predating me.

Coisas que não mudam #592

Some places are sadly cursed with a history of violence

(photo from The Economist at the western Ukrainian border)

An excerpt from the article "Meatball soup and Molotov cocktails: a dispatch from Ukraine" from The Economist:

(...)

Then Oksana began to talk about her family. Her grandfather’s sister had been arrested in 1933, aged 15, for giving bread to children during the Great Famine and sent to a gulag in Kazakhstan for ten years. Her grandfather had fled to Moldova when he was denounced during collectivisation in the late 1920s and early 1930s, then returned after two years to find his fruit orchards had been ploughed up. She was telling us these things, said Oksana, because she wanted us to know that it was the communists who had brought war and suffering to this place. Now Putin wanted to turn back the clock and impose it all over again.

(...)

Ditto #505

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

--Joan Didion

Espantos #634

Up from 1.7m on Saturday when I started following

Desde 1.7m no sábado (26/2) quando comecei a seguir

Espantos #633

Meanwhile in Lisbon...

Sem título #221

Ukraine vs Russia

Coisas que mudaram #14

Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Donetsk, Luhansk

Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia

how we all got familiar with the geography of Ukraine

Coisas que mudaram #13

Dnipro, Ukraine

photo from the New York Times

Coisas bonitas #95

The beautiful Coombe Abbey

and its sequoias

Espantos #632

Zelensky rising up to the occasion: I need ammunition not a ride.

Coragem de Zelensky: preciso é de munições, de boleia não.

Foi neste dia #381 (2022)

 Foi neste dia que a Capital da Ucrânia foi invadida pelo Exército Russo

Historicamente com conflitos, avanços e recuos nas fronteiras, o Hino da Ucrânia poderia ter sido escrito hoje

Sem título #220

Theory and practice...

Pormenores #174

musgo / moss

Palavras lidas #505

Coventry Cathedral after the blitz of 14-15 November 1940

The Lamb
by Linda Gregg

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
All our desire for love or children
is treated like rags by the enemy.
I knew so much and sang anyway.
Like a bird who will sing until
it is brought down. When they take
away the trees, the child picks up a stick
and says, this is a tree, this the house
and the family. As we might. Through a door
of what had been a house, into the field
of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.