Heaps of books to read.

Dust; Yvonne Adhiambo Owour;  Africa, Kenya comes alive.

Civilisations of Ancient Iraq; Benjamin R. Foster; Karen Polinger Foster.

 How dare our modern, western  civilisation go in there and destroy this ancient world. They did with impunity calling it a cake walk, such barbarians.

A most dangerous book; Christopher B. Krebs.  Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich. It is said that history is always written by the victor powers.

How to manage your slaves; Marcus Sidonius Falx with Jerry Toner. Slavery was a core institution in the Roman world. It almost never occurred to anyone, that slavery might be dispensed with or that it was morally reprehensible. If this would have been published 2000 years ago it would have topped the management charts. Are today's "wage slaves" really so much different? How different are we from the Romans?

The dark side of Love; Rafik Schami. Above St.Paul's Chapel in Damascus,  a body hangs in  a basket over the city wall...

The Towers of Samarkand; James Heneage. ...torn away from all he loves,  Names like Tamerlane, Mongolia, Constantinople, the world in the 14th century.

The Drowning Lesson; Jane Shemilt; I am in yesterday's clothes...a year on Emma remains haunted....

The Stylist's guide to NYC; Sibella Court.  Probably THE Eden for unusual merchandise. Haberdashery; oddities and Curiosities; Kitchen and Table Paraphernalia, and more and more, what does exist is available. 

Now go and read.

Where I live...

I live where the sun shines.

©Photos/Text Ts 

Sepia Saturday 16th July 2016

Pictures, palaces, and bingo numbers are amongst your possible themes this week for Sepia Saturday 339 …

I want to showcase the Eclecticism, a mixing of various architectural styles and ornamentation of the past. Eclecticism in architecture was very popular in the second half of the 19th century.

Here a variation of rooflines from Australian country towns in Queensland and New South Wales.

Stucco

A plaster used as a coating for walls and ceilings, and often used for decoration; it is common to many parts of the world.

Frieze

A band of richly sculpted ornamentation on a building.

Bundaberg

The part of a building that rises above the building’s eaves. Rooflines can be highly decorative, with balustrades, pediments, statuary, dormer windows, cross gables, etc.

Township of Maclean NSW still steeped in Art deco. Hopefully, all these old buildings will be restored to their former glory and the tangle of wires put underground.

Maclean NSW

Bourke is a town in the north-west of New South Wales, Australia. The administrative centre and largest town in Bourke Shire, Bourke is approximately 800 kilometres north-west of the state capital, Sydney, on the south bank of the Darling River.

©Photos/Text Ts 

Good News.

May I introduce Boo, the homepot;

a great helper,

vacuums and dusts,

cleans windows and bathrooms,

lives happily ever after in a cupboard.

Do not ask, no cooking, but might do the kitchen afterwards if you order one with an extra button.

The war machine scientists have changed course. They have abandoned the production of killing machines  and are now producing very welcome helpers for the household.

For sale now at  any arms industry.

©Text/Photo Ts

Sepia Saturday 9, July 2016; Mesmerized;

In the 1870s,  New Yorks Department stores started to display Christmas cheer.
The elaborate displays  were loved and appreciated  by young  and old, waiting with anticipation for the unveiling of Christmas window displays. Many department stores  have been well-known for their impressive Christmas window spectacles for generations. The availability of large sheets of plate glass in the nineteenth century  led to the concept of using department store windows to attractively display the store's merchandise.

CHILDREN LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS WINDOW OF MACY’S IN 1907.

1920's  a child's pleasure.

Wigs display in Paris.

A shop window display of underwear, c 1935.

 Photograph showing a display of underwear in a lingerie shop including the 'Body Belt'. 

The notice reads: 'For the Slim - We introduce the new Body Belt with a unique graduated all-way stretch'. 

The manufacturer appears to be J Roussel. (Daily Herald Archive / SSPL via Getty Images) 

Shop in Murano Italy, displaying Murano jewellery. (My daughter Lilli.) 2007

Photos/Text Ts
Old Photos pinterest

Thinking about thinking;

A mindless society worships  a cultureless shell of nothing, fast food, fast news, banality, mindless celebrities, fast consumerism, debts,  drugs  to forget their misery….a Kardashian  what’s the name,  has millions of mindless  worshippers .

What does this tell about the intellect of a society?

It is a like a religion to these people.

Sepia Saturday 25 June 2016

.... Our theme image is entitled "Woman Reads As Baby Sleeps"  It might seem like a "nice" bland and uncomplicated image but, believe me, there is a lot to discuss. Let's just see where Sepians go with it! 

The earliest images of mother and child found in the Catacombs of Rome, date from the Early Christian Church. After Mary was proclaimed Theotokos, Godbearer,  it became common to use her image in paintings and sculptures. 

Mary and child were the most used image through the Byzantine, Medieval and Early Renaissance for over a thousand years. Duccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Caravaggio, Rubens, have turned their artistic skills to create Mother and child images. 

Italian Mother and Baby, living in tenements of New York. He  captured the misery of urban poverty as well as the tenacity of life. This forlorn mother with her swaddled baby is evocative of Mary and of many paintings of "Madonna and Child." 

In the early 1960s, myself and my firstborn daughter Marie-Louise.

Photo/text Ts