‘We Are Not Done With Covid, Not Even Close’

This article from The Guardian newspaper, UK, is sobering reading.
How lax we have all become.

Immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, Yale Professor and Long Covid expert, recommends continued using of masks and hand sanitisers.

Countries have to keep on top of the variants, and providing boosters to handle them.
Are we?

People are still dying from it.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/27/immunologist-akiko-iwasaki-we-are-not-done-with-covid-not-even-close

‘THE COOKHAM RESURRECTION’, BY STANLEY SPENSER

How all the graves of Cookham Church 
gaped breathless, baroque, gave up 
among hawthorn hedges hoary with leaf,  
box graves yawning, tilting on edges
stained pediments… the common grave,
the pauper’s grave, forgotten suicide, 
the restless babies, gave 
their elderly dead made brash with youth;
and the young dead, unelaborated.

How one day each grave of Cookham Church
turned over the copper and gold in its pocket, gave
change for the loan. The mysterious tomb, 
and the fenced-around thorn bush; the flesh and bone
in ranks and rows, to the right and the left –
climbed out whole into common light
and turned, shafts of light through July trees

their drift of pollen dust, to the sun.

Image from:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/stanley-spencer/the-resurrection-cookham-1927

Poem by:
me

The Company’s Lament

for Bakhmut.

Mental Health Awareness Week

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week?utm_source=PBS+Master+List&utm_campaign=c881f78210-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_05_10_11_36_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-f9285625ba-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=c881f78210&mc_eid=d69802b818

*

Also

One little money-earner at the moment is to use the ‘neuro-diverse’ label.

I’ve heard recently of at least one publisher wanting to publish writing by an autistic person, only to reject the offered material because the characters were not congenial enough.
Yes, they are autistic characters. That’s what you asked for.

A little earner must be some of the many online courses that advertise as being ‘neuro-diverse friendly’.
Only, when the neuro-diverse on the course respond they have all the old rejection, anger, and lack of understanding as always, from course peers as well as tutors .
No one had done the work, looked into exactly what this description means, implies, and how those who are neuro-diverse express themselves differently.

And they would have got funding for being ‘neuro-diverse friendly’.

*

I’m, sorry you feel that way, but…’

No, this is what I have observed.

What is really odd is the inexplicable anger flung at the neuro-diverse. The ‘straight’ people also seem shocked at their own responses.
But then double the anger in consequence.

Nothing is reflected upon, considered, thought about: the instant response is all, and acquires a kind of authenticity by being emotive rather than thought through.
How thought has become toppled by the puerile child of emoting.

So, how is neuro-diversity experienced, and responded to?
See:
https://neuroclastic.com/free-pdf-download-thin-slice-judgements-and-the-different-world-autistics-inhabit/

Eurovision 2023

Yep, it’s that time again!

Love it, hate it, or be indifferent, it’s here and it’s everywhere.

A uniquely European phenomenon, bringing together cultures and languages and locations… or so it used to be. Entries now seem to meld into majorly Westernised copying.
Which is a pity.

In some ways.
It did begin to seem parochial and redundant in that older format. The new acts, with more theatrics and fitness regimes than songs, are maybe not good showcases of cultural uniquenesses.
But they are just points on a journey to different formulations of the basic concept.
And it has blended gender-issues into cultural acceptance very well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest

The American fantasy and Sc-fi writer Catherine M Valente was amazed at Euovision’s uniqueness. There has been nothing remotely similar to it in the USA.
– Imagine if the Americas did draw on all their huge continents’ cultures, North, South, Mid and Caribbean!
It might even be quite therapeutic.

Catherine M Valente based a sci-fi novel on the Eurovision phenomenon, Space Opera.

One recent development has been a greater politicising of act material. A response to the Ukraine crisis. The old format has always steered well clear of overt political statements.
It is tempting to say that the barbarity of the attack on the Ukraine has so shocked people – like something from the far distant Stone Age lumbering through modern cities – but politics have been creeping in for some time.

In the UK I have found enjoyment of the event seriously marred by the UK commentators, who veer uncomfortable close to repugnant chauvinism in the responses to other nations. Insidious, poisonous.

Political voting has been in practice for some time, and is becoming more apparent.
These are not reasons for scrapping the event, but show how it reflects contemporary conditions and concerns.

I really must catch up on the entries this time around.

https://eurovision.tv

I am particularly struck by the French one, La Zarra’s ‘Évidemment’ .
A good, solid work with high production values, and uniquely French.
Of course, it did not make it through to the finals.

Perhaps La Zarra’s performance wasn’t considered gymnastic enough.

🇫🇷 France: La Zarra Releases Eurovision 2023 Entry “Évidemment”

Slam Performance Piece: Upside Down Song

I put a fist to the sky
and I left it there
I took a fist to the day
wished I wasn’t there
I took a fist to the face
of everything that would break
and everything that would break broke
so I took a fist to me.

I took a course in hatred
and passed top grade
I took a course in mechanics
to unmake the world
I took a course in religion, bigotry
anything that’d further me
and everything that furthered me stranded me
so I took a spanner to me.

I changed the colour of my skin
to better learn hatred
I changed gender, attraction
to learn centuries of oppression
I changed everything about me
to learn how to be someone
who has constantly to change to fit in
with someone like me.

I was born hungry like this
I cursed my fate, cursed it
I was born disappointed, unsatisfied
I thought this the worst, this
I was born restless, would never give in
it kept me going when everything failed
I was born with a dynamo
a bad one.