Bits and pieces

Stingless bees in Peru will have rights and hopefully law enforcement.  Slowly the wheel turns as the human race has to grip the understanding that in order for us to survive we must allow everything else to survive.  We  are utterly dependent on the way this planet grows.  Nature would throw such fools as Trump out like the Scapegoat by Holman Hunt, he would be sent to exile out in the desert.  It always upsets me that painting and I see it is in an American gallery far from the Pre-Raphaelite group.

"The ordinances are precedents with no equivalent worldwide. According to Prieto they will establish a mandate requiring policies for the bees’ survival, “including habitat reforestation and restoration, strict regulation of pesticides and herbicides, mitigation of and adaptation to the impacts of climate change, the advancement of scientific research, and the adoption of the precautionary principle as a guiding framework for all decisions that may affect their survival.”  

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Stonehenge by John Piper 1981.  Ink and chalk

Art seems to haunt me, I see Thomas Hardy's words of the sacrificial offering of Tess of the D'Urbervilles on the Slaughter Stone at Stonehenge and wonder if Piper visioned it also.  The sky is so dramatic.  Storm tossed, a raging fury but the stones are implacable.

When we went to visit the opening of the new centre a few years back, I felt sad for the stones.  They have become a focal point of neopagan religions, when in truth they belong to the prehistoric people who put them up.  They dragged the bluestones down from the Preseli range of hills to mark their greetings of the sun and moon, so different to the people who attend now and who come from a completely different era.

North Stoke: Alternative Theories For Silbury Hill

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The Gnomon in Rome

Horologium Augusti

Well they are off to Rome tomorrow and I said look out for this large gnomon in one of the squares.  It was the word gnomon that had sprung into my head the other day.  I think it must be to do with the coming of the light from the sun and the way stone circles are arranged and the whole dependence on the sun and the seasons to grow food.  Apparently China is the first to be recorded in a Wiki.  A painted stick from 2300 BC.  Sun dials are often to found in National Trust gardens and they have been around a long time, for instance this Saxon sundial which is situated above the doorway at Kirkdale Church belonged to the Saxon minster this church was originally built as a Saxon church and still has the remains built into the more modern Norman church - still pretty old though, see here.

Sun dial on St. Gregory's church

When I was looking round for St. Gregory Church I came across another sundial at Machu Picchu this by Jacquetta Hawkes who had written a book on Sun Gods.

And if you wondered where your gnu or gnocchi came from!