Twenty Years Ago Today The First Cloned Animal In The World, Dolly The Sheep, Was Born.

Birth of a universe: by Sam Del Russi

Alexander the Grey Heron #shrewsbury (at Shrewsbury, Shropshire)

#MDM Get me the moon

“What hits really hard in moments like this is that really… nothing is forever. The loss of history, of art, of creation, is real and deeply tragic. But what’s really itching at the insides of my chest is watching something I thought was forever suddenly not exist.

“We know this, of course. We know in our brains that nothing lasts. But that doesn’t stop us from just going about our lives forgetting about that reality. And then we get hit in the face by it… sometimes individually, sometimes collectively.

"A lot of us are feeling this now together… though at the same time, many other people don’t have such a visceral tie to Notre Dame. Which is why I’m doing my best to not be very angry at the "it’s just a building” comments. (Though, honestly, if that’s how you feel, be quiet.)

“But Katherine also reminded me that Notre Dame is not one thing… and while nothing lasts, the story of human culture isn’t of building things that last forever, it’s changing, growing, progressing, remembering, and /rebuilding./

"She reminded me that Notre Dame is history, but so is today. We don’t get to be separate from history. And we are not the first people to see beautiful things destroyed. Indeed, we’re not the first to see much of Notre Dame Cathedral destroyed.

"Much of Notre Dame is nearly 1000 years old. Some of it is 50 years old. The spire was built 150 years ago. The Rose Window is (was) from the 1200s. It’s heartbreaking.

"But in a moment when I’m reminded of how fragile things are, I also want to be reminded of how much we have created and preserved… and how much we have rebuilt. So that feeling is in there with the bad ones. It’s not bigger than the bad ones, but it’s in there too.”

- Hank Green after talking with his wife Katherine about the tragic fire consuming Notre Dame

In early modern Britain, disbelief in the existence of spirits was tantamount to atheism. The overwhelming majority of people, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, believed in the existence of a countless number and variety of invisible supernatural beings. Different types of people were concerned with different types of spirits: for the devout Christian, angels and demons stood centre stage; for the elite magician, spirits originating from classical cosmologies could be equally significant while the uneducated country people placed a greater emphasis on the 'fairy folk’. Trying to make any hard and fast distinction between categories of spirits in early modern Britain is impossible because supernatural beings were labelled differently, depending on geography, education and religious perspective and definitions overlapped considerably. The term 'fairy’, for example, is a misleadingly broad generic term which, in the period, covered a wide range of supernatural entities. On a popular level there was often little difference between a fairy and an angel, saint, ghost, or devil. We find the popular link between fairies and angels, for example, expressed in the confession of a cunning man on trial for witchcraft in Aberdeen, in 1598. The magical practitioner, who was identified in the trial records as ‘Andro Man’, claimed that his familiar (described by the interrogators as the Devil) was an angel who, like Tom Reid, served the queen of the fairies. The records state 'Thow confessis that the Devill, thy maister, quhom thow termes Christsonday, and supponis to be ane engell, and Goddis godsone, albeit he hes a thraw by God, and swyis to the Quene of Elphen, is rasit be the speking of the word Benedicte.’

Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits - shamanistic visionary traditions in Early Modern British witchcraft and magic (via ophidiansabbat)

NARRATOR:  In the frozen land of Nador they were forced to eat Robin’s minstrels.  And there was much rejoicing.   

ALL:  Yay!

Scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), manuscript-influenced animation by Terry Gilliam. 

                                        www.esotericaromas.etsy.com.

http://www.thethinkersgarden.com/2020/11/evelyn-de-morgan-and-the-art-of-the-imponderable-an-interview-with-emma-merkling/

The Thinker's Garden

Evelyn De Morgan and the Art of the Imponderable: An Interview with Emma Merkling - The Thinker's Garden

Evelyn De Morgan was a highly spiritual artist whose paintings offer a taste of those imponderable realms as-yet-unknown to science.

For the woman whose husband makes an “extra stop” after work every evening.

For the woman who is mourning the loss of a pregnancy that nobody else knew about.

For the woman who still leads from the front even although she’s lost inside.

For the woman who was fired for her fourth late because she has been awake for a straight week with a sick child.

For the single mom who doesn’t know how the utilities are going to stay on this month.

For the woman who has gone through 2 IVF’s and has tried for five years without success but still shows up to every baby shower for her friends.

For the woman who still hasn’t forgiven herself for the abortion that she had 20 years ago.

For the woman who has a line of judging eyes at her and her children as she counts out coins or has to put something back at the supermarket.

For the woman that opens the door to the news of her husband being killed overseas three weeks before he was to return home.

For the woman that lives with a quiet anxiety because nobody understands what you could possibly be stressed about.

For the woman that gives to her family all day- everyday and just.needs.a.break.

For the woman that smiles at strangers all day in public- but weeps silently every night.

For the woman who has wanted to end it all but found strength to carry on.

For the woman that heard the rumor about herself at church today.

For the woman sleeping next to a stranger every night.

For the woman whose genetics will never allow her to look like the ones in the magazines.

For the woman that endures one broken relationship after another because there was no father around to teach her what love looks like.

For the woman raising a fatherless daughter and praying that history doesn’t repeat itself.

For the woman who loves with all her heart who’s desperate to be loved.

For every single woman that cries in the shower so that nobody else can see. Because if you aren’t strong-nobody is.

Just because the water washes your tears doesn’t mean that you don’t cry. Just because you cry doesn’t mean that you’re not strong enough to handle it.

I am you. I see you. I am with you, I cry with you. I love you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnVzWHihD0lLNoIrj6NZ7dz07o9iMgJuNLSMQM0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1cmjigijmsw3k