Photo Hunt - Blue

this week's Photo Hunt. The theme is blue. This is another photo taken at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris

Bela Lugosi's dead

An old Bauhaus favourite for Halloween

You could clean this chair, human

This week's entry for Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

A Nasreddin Hoca story

While on a trip to another village, Nasrudin lost his favorite copy of the Qur'an.

Several weeks later, a goat walked up to Nasrudin, carrying the Qur'an in its mouth.

Nasrudin couldn't believe his eyes. He took the precious book out of the goat's mouth, raised his eyes heavenward and exclaimed, "It's a miracle!"

"Not really," said the goat. "Your name is written inside the cover."

Mexican Crystal cave - a wonder of nature

Monday's Telegraph carried this item about a crystal cave that was discovered in Naica in the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico by two miners excavating a new tunnel for a commercial lead and silver mine.

Known as Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) it contains some of the world's largest known natural crystals–translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet. The crystals thrived in the cave's extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals' growth.

Modern-day mining operations exposed the natural wonder by pumping water out of the 30-by-90-foot cave, which was found in 2000."There is no other place on the planet," said geologist Juan Manuel García-Ruiz.Where the mineral world reveals itself in such beauty. It's the Sistine Chapel of crystals."

The full story of this amazing cave will appear in the November issue of National Geographic... I think I'll be getting a copy asap.

She should have been a superstar

WW FOLLOWS



Cheryl Bradshaw performing a multiple personality counting act on the Gong Show. Marvellous stuff!

WW - Water

Doneraile park. This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday edition of Wordless Wednesday.

Elahe Heidari's UK debut an utter disappointment

Regular readers will know that I have a great love for the work of Elahe Heidari an extremely talented artist who lives and works in Tehran. Elahe is already well regarded in Iran her works have been exhibited in India, Portugal and (shortly) Germany. I was delighted, therefore, to hear that several of her works were to be included in an exhibition of young Iranian artists called Heaven on Earth Now at the Brick Lane Gallery , London from 23 October to 2 November.

This being the first time her works were exhibited in London I had hoped to attend a well-organised event. Sadly I was mistaken. Only two of her works were actually on the walls and these were very poorly placed. Putting two large paintings together at a corner (as you can see from the above photograph) hardly does them justice. It was not just Elahe's work - other paintings were not well placed either. To be honest I've seen pictures hung better on the walls of a kindergarten.

Worse, at least two of her other works (I didn't turn over all of the other paintings) were simply leant against the wall, one on top of another. It hardly made a good impression and I can't imagine it did the paintings much good either.

The accompanying catalogue describes Elahe's works thus:

Elaheh Heydari tells the story of her women starting with the special texture of her paint on canvas, a texture which.... resembles a plaster that was not supposed to be painted upon. What you see are mementos that children or at times adults write on walls and quickly run off not to get caught...

Hmm as if she daubed "Tracey Slag does blow jobs for cigarettes on a wall then ran off? I don't think so!

The simplicity of the lines and the forms as well as the compositions reflect the painter and her character's fear and anxiety of getting caught - having their secrets exposed -and capture the fear and vulnerability resulting from that fear...

I won't go on but suffice it to say that I concur with the not-wife when she said "Eh? Haha! Who wrote this bollocks?"


I did not think the organiser was justified either when he made what I considered a disparaging remark about Minoo Emami's work - He considered her work to be in a rut and that nobody would want to buy it. I disagree entirely of course.


For me Elahe's London debut was very disappointing - The organiser did not seem to have much idea about hanging the exhibits to ensure that they were at least adequately presented. This may have been exacerbated by the size of the Brick Lane gallery itself which was clearly too small for the exhibition. That is not a slur on the gallery itself; it is a fine gallery.


The organiser's motive was clearly to make money from this exhibition. That is not a criticsm of course. However I wonder if some buyers were put off by what what seemed to be a shoddy display. I hope that the second appearance of her work here in the UK will be better organised.

Hadijatou Mani victory should mean freedom for thousands of slaves in west Africa

The is taken from the Guardian. It is excellent news. The justice arm of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) court has convicted Niger of failing to protect a young girl sold into slavery in a landmark judgment with potentially far-reaching implications for the tens of thousands of people who remain enslaved in the region.

Yhe court ruled that Niger, where slavery remains common in rural areas despite being officially abolished five years ago, failed in its obligations to protect Hadijatou Mani.Mani, who brought the test case with the assistance of British anti-slavery groups, said she was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for around £325 and regularly beaten and sexually abused.The court, sitting in the capital, Niamey, ordered the state to pay her 10 million CFA francs (about £12,000) in damages and accumulated interest.

"I am very happy with this decision...It was very difficult to challenge my former master and to speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew that this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate. Nobody deserves to be enslaved." Mani told Reuters reporters after the ruling was announced.

"We are law-abiding and will respect this decision," Mossi Boubacar, a legal official for Niger's government, told Reuters.The ruling by the panel of judges from Senegal, Mali and Togo is the first time Ecowas had been asked to rule on slavery. It is binding for all the organisation's 15 member nations. As well as Niger - where a recent study by the London-based Anti-Slavery International and local human rights group Timidria estimated at least 43,000 people were enslaved - the practice remains widespread in other west African nations such as another Ecowas member, Mali, and Mauritania.

Slavery was officially outlawed in Mauritania in 1981 but some human rights groups estimate up to 20% of the country's 3m people are still enslaved. A Malian human rights group, Temedt, estimated there were at least 7,000 slaves in just one region of the country, Gao. Anti-Slavery International described how slaves in Niger were owned and completely controlled by their masters, receiving only minimal food and a place to sleep in return for their labour.

The life of a sadaka, or sexual slave, was described in detail by Mani during the court case. She explained how she had been born a slave, sold and then transferred as a child against her mother's wishes to a man. She testified that she had been raped at 13 and constantly forced to have sex with her 63-year-old master, who owned seven other slaves. In 2005, two years after Niger enacted a law forbidding slavery, Mani was presented with a liberation certificate. This proved to be worthless, as she was immediately forced into a "wahiya marriage", giving her the status of a concubine.When she fled and married another man, her master had her arrested and charged with bigamy. She was imprisoned for two months on remand.

The issue has become deeply embarrassing for the government of Niger, which has failed to act on evidence of continued and widespread slavery in rural areas....I say screw embarrassment. Slavery is an evil practice that should have been wiped off the face of the earth a long time ago. We shall see if Niger and Mali now honour this ruling and free the slaves. The hell with tradition.

Light blogging for a few days

Wrenched my damned shoulder....