Celtic knots

My college thesis was on Pre Christian Celtic art. I have continued to love the knotwork designs they created. I was interested how the Celts moved westwards across Europe and into the British Isles. Their art was stunning. Various archaeological discoveries of intricate gold and bronze artefacts showed the sophistication of their culture. A massive horde of treasure was found at Sutton Hoo and historical artefacts were found in Halstatt in Austria? I’m sorry it’s 40 years since I wrote it and memory fades.

I continued to draw celtic knotwork, but this style of art needs practice and I haven’t done much of it recently.

Partial Eclipse

There is a partial eclipse across Europe tomorrow. 25.10.2022. Don’t look up at the sun unless you have proper eclipse glasses. It can burn your retinas and blind you because of ultra violet radiation. But one thing you can do is look at the ground, either in a puddle and yo may see a reflection, or if you stand under a tree that’s in leaf you may see images projected on the ground that look like crescent moons. These are images of the sun as the moon partly glides across it. The reason for the images? The leave are acting like a pinhole camera.

Lightning

I’ve been keeping an eye out for thunderstorms and lightning after they were forecast for us for the weekend, but apart from some heavy-ish rain tonight, which caused one of the cats to come in looking like a bedraggled wet otter, there hasn’t been much in the way of storms or anything else.

I do check the weather forecast online and noticed as each day came and went the rain symbols dwindled. But I also look at a website called blitzortung.org which shows real time thunderstorms and tracks them with detectors so you can virtually see lightning strikes within seconds of them happening. The strikes are also colour coded so you can see strikes from two hours ago in red, changing to orange and yellow for more recent ones and finally white for the last twenty minutes. So you can actually track where they have been and what direction they are heading in. I think it’s interesting.

I just looked at the UK which was blank. Then Europe where there seems to be a big storm over the toe of Italy. Then I looked at the overview map of the whole world and saw many storms scattered across North America. I hope they are providing much needed rain and are not as severe as the ones that caused major flooding recently.

Have we forgotten?

Despite all the things that are happening in Europe (drought, fires, evaporating rivers) and the rest of the World, more fire and drought. There is still a war in the East of Europe in Ukraine. The danger from their action is real. The Russians have recently been sending shells near zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. They hold the plant and the technicians there are being held by Russian troops. There is a serious risk of damage to the plant which could lead to a release of nuclear material or worse. Imagine Chernobyl only worse. The war has to end. The danger is real. Meanwhile Russia still calls this a special operation and denies it is waging an unfounded war on its neighbour…

Eurovision is on!

Eurovision is on tonight. A four or five hour song contest with European and a few non European countries challenging for the win. There are forty countries that compete in semifinals then twenty five in the final. Half the votes in the final come from the voting panels of each country and the rest come from a phone vote open to the public. The results take almost longer than the singing part. The singers can get up to twelve points from each judging panel and voters, so the total can rise well over a hundred or more. I’d like the UK to win but we got NO points last year. As we can’t vote for our own country I will be voting for Ukraine. They have a very good song called ‘Stephania’ I think, by the Kalush Orchestra.

Madness from Russia

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Looking East this morning at the rain I feel sad and worried.

It’s happened. Russia is invading Ukraine. Why? President Putin seems to have become angry with Ukraine getting on with life and decided to try and take it back into a new sort of Soviet Union. However he tries to justify it, it does seem like madness. His troops have even taken over the old chernobil nuclear power station that blew up disastrously (in the 1980’s I think?). Why? If they shell that it could spread nuclear waste across Europe, Ukraine, but also Russia. Why be so mad? Why try and hurt people.

Russia and the West could get on, we could discuss things sensibly, but children, adults, older people are being hurt and killed. Why? What right has one man got to hurt and maim and kill people in a country that he does not control. Perhaps this is more notable to Europeans as it is happening on European soil. It says bad things about us that we neglect what happens in other parts of the World. We leave places to their fate like Syria and Afghanistan. We don’t understand the internal politics and the problems between different factions. How can we deal with anything if we don’t understand. Russias preemptive strikes are frightening and baffling.