Madrid Bombings
I have just been looking at the power of language with my IB TOK students. We've been looking at bias in the media and the effect of using literary devices such as alliteration. In their essays students consider such quotes as Sartre's : "Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think." However, there are situations where the words do not begin to capture the horror, the brutality, the fear. Alliteration in newspaper headlines like: 'Madrid Massacre' simply seems to apologise for a paltry power, which cannot hope to attempt to convey the full impact...

I was only in Madrid last November and have family friends there. As Elderbob in BAW says these things are happening all over the world and we are a world community. However it cannot be denied that the pain and anguish are even sharper when you've walked the streets admiring such a magnificent city as Madrid and even more admired and conversed with the gracious, kind and very articulate citizens whose appreciation of life has refined itself into a fine and sophisticated humanism. As I watched the scenes around Atocha on the television followed by footage of the silent wake in Bilb?o, I found myself thinking of the Goya paintings which I managed to visit in the Prado museum and of Picasso's 'Guernica' in the Museo reina Sof?a.

Tonight I shall light a candle and I feel like wearing black. When lost for words all one can do is let the old rituals bring about some vestiges of peace.

'Words are the threads on which we string our experiences' apparently claimed Aldous Huxley. In that case let us choose 'solidarity','peace'and participation and spread the message in whatever way we can.
Antonia

A little flame in the forest...
Somehow there is something very fireplace-like : you know, warm & glowing about starting a blog. I think, (although I can't really remember), that its the feeling that I used to have as a child as I began a painting or a drawing or a story...or of course playing with matches in the garden, choosing some sticks and dry grasses and playing at 'being in the jungle'.
Maybe that's why my new blog is giving me such a lovely warm glow inside...because I can play 'make believe' once again and, what's more, the internet has really made that childish desire to have the whole world at your finger-tips come true.
The cat is purring on my monitor, a favourite snuggling place...I don't know how long the monitor will cope with this, but it certainly enhances the fireside mood and, as my children remind me of their presence with their chatter, the idea occurs to me that maybe grandchildren-to-be may one day visit my blog. That's a thought! And that inspires me with a vision for what I want it to be : My story of how it is to be me alive today...the things I do and want to describe, things I think and things which fascinate me about living in the world today.
Most of all, I look forward to hearing comments from those who may pass through on their journey through the blog forest and want to stop and rest by the fireside and share a thought or two with me...