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Read: Spring by Ali Smith ★★★★★ 📚

It is, she says. You’re right. We are a fairy story. We’re a folk tale. I don’t mean to sound in the least fey. Those stories are deeply serious, all about transformation. How we’re changed by things. Or made to change. Or have to learn to change. And that’s what we’re working on, change. We’re serious, too. She pours him another whisky…

Rilke & Katherine Mansfield appear along the artist Tacita Dean. The declines of television & our treatment of refugees. A cast of characters include a magical 12 year old refugee, an old TV director with an imaginary daughter & a worker at an immigration centre. Rabbit holes galore. Finally a we bit of springlike hope.

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Likes The Landscape Artist Andy Goldsworthy Contemplates His Own Natural Decay | The New Yorker by Rebecca Mead.

Other experiments have been similarly challenging, such as putting foraged objects in his mouth and then spitting them out. “As soon as you put a petal or a flower in your mouth, the whole perception of it changes,” he explained, with undisguised glee. “It’s bitter. Is it going to kill me? You know? Until it goes in your mouth, it’s pretty. When it goes in your mouth, it’s ‘Oh, shit.’ I love that.”

The accessibility of his work, and his use of natural materials, means that it is often adopted by elementary-school curricula, and he has learned to smile politely when parents tell him that their kid “made an Andy Goldsworthy” out of sticks, stones, and leaves.

I really enjoyed reading, glad I signed up to read it. I’ve certainly been guilty of encouraging pupils by showing them Andy Goldsworthy’s work. I enjoyed Andy Goldsworthy – Fifty Years in Edinburgh last year.

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Likes Scripting News: Updated version of FeedLand Docker Compose by Dave Winer.

Updated version of FeedLand Docker Compose. It’s now possible to run FeedLand on a local machine on a private network.

I’ve now got Feedland running on my mac, despite a really sketchy idea of how docker works. Eventually I’d like to get it running on my pi again. Especially as I’ve a pi 5. But I really need to understand some more about hosting first.

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Read: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy ★★★★ 📚

Northern Ireland 1975 Cushla young RC teacher starts an affair with a Married Protestant Lawyer & gets mixed up with a mixed family of a pupil. Spent the whole book tensed against the expected end.

While in Dublin:

They walked up Grafton Street. Buskers were playing guitars, huddles of youths standing about watching them.
Something was wrong. She looked up and down the street and didn’t know what it was until she was in the doorway of Switzers, sliding her handbag off her shoulder and holding it open. Michael laughed. You’re not in Kansas any more, he said.

I remember in the 70s my aunt on a visit to Glasgow going up to the security guard in M&S & opening her handbag.

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Read: Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson ★★★ 📚

Last summer there was a rogue patch of phosphorescence at Cloughkeel beach, a psychedelic wreath. Tonight, in the dark swell there is only the sound of a lone whale, and Danu above. How lonely to be always reaching out for someone who isn’t there.

An artist living on the island she was born on. Lots of intriguing ideas: the descriptions of her art work; a weird sound that not everyone hears; a colony of women who have left the world; a local lover; a dead whale & a visiting film star. Not all quite tied up.