Van Gogh – art and angst

Wheat Field with Cypresses, Saint-Remy, Oil on Canvas, 1889

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Vincent Van Gogh, that glorious nutter, was born on this day in 1853. He died at the age of 37 after a short life filled with genius and despair.

Some years ago I read Martin Gayford’s book The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence. This excellent work uses old letters to reconstruct the few months Van Gogh spent living and working with Paul Gauguin in a house in Arles. I was left with the overriding feeling that Van Gogh wanted nothing more in life than to be loved and understood.

Vincent invited Gauguin to stay because he deeply admired the older man’s work and imagined he could learn much from him. In preparation for Gaugin’s arrival at the Yellow House, Vincent painted his iconic Sunflowers series just to decorate the walls of Gauguin’s room! But Van Gogh’s mental illness made him erratic and volatile and his dreams of founding a collaborative artistic commune with Gauguin rapidly fell apart.

The wonderful painting above – Wheat Field with Cypresses – was made during Van Gogh’s time at Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. I’ve visited this beautiful town a few times. It really is surrounded by those distinctive hills that Van Gogh reproduced so perfectly in his work.

I love those places, Arles and Saint-Rémy, but their beauty is tinged by thoughts of poor Vincent and his sufferings. I feel the same way about his wonderful, vibrant, disturbed and magnificent paintings.

Women not witches: an important distinction

Witches in Word, not Deed – an exhibition at Central Library until 30 November 2023

Witches in Word, Not Deed is an exhibition…

….to remember the real women who were persecuted as witches in Scotland… Thirteen women are remembered … bringing attention to the loss of life and identity in which the witch trials resulted.

https://talesofonecity.wordpress.com/

These were not witches. They were simply women: accused; often tortured; then murdered for the commission of utterly fictitious crimes.

There have been a number of projects in recent years, raising awareness of the many women who were tried and executed as witches in Scotland. The first I became aware of was the vocal and tireless, Witches of Scotland. This is a campaign seeking justice for those accused women.

The Witches of Scotland (WoS) Campaign was launched on International Women’s Day 2020 by Claire Mitchell [KC] and Zoe Venditozzi. The campaign has 3 aims: to obtain a pardon for those convicted as witches under the Witchcraft Act 1563, to obtain an apology for all those accused, and to obtain a national memorial to remember those killed as witches.

https://www.witchesofscotland.com/

The very excellent Claire Mitchell KC, and author Zoe Venditozzi also host a podcast. They originally planned a short run of (I believe) 6 episodes, but will soon reach their 70th!

Witches of Scotland podcast

Through this podcast I learned of a project local to me, The Calder Witch Hunt, along with many, many others. They interview authors, academics and fellow campaigners. Very much worth a listen and follow.

Speaking of local “witches”, there’s a “Lizzie Brice’s Roundabout” near me. The local lore is that Lizzie Brice was a witch and, I was told, “the last witch burned in Scotland”. Everyone accepted that as truth… However, according to a booklet produced by the Local History Library, Lizzie was, happily, not accused of witchcraft.

Lizzie Bryce was a widow living in the parish of Mid Calder in the 1800s. She and her daughter were employed to house “pauper children” from Edinburgh, keeping them out of the workhouses and in the more wholesome country air.

_{source: West Lothian Council Local History Library, 1999}

Unusually, for a poor woman, her name lived on: attached to the strip of woodland where she lived and later the roundabout built nearby, a petrol station, and a pub.

Van Gogh – art and angst

Happy birthday to a glorious nutter!

A Very Fine Library

Wheat Field with Cypresses, Saint-Remy, Oil on Canvas, 1889

Vincent Van Gogh, that glorious nutter, was born today in 1853. He died at the age of 37 after a short life filled with genius and despair.

Some years ago I read Martin Gayford’s book The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence. This excellent work uses old letters to reconstruct the few months Van Gogh spent living and working with Paul Gauguin in a house in Arles. I was left with the overriding feeling that Van Gogh wanted nothing more in life than to be loved and understood (I can so relate to that).

Vincent invited Gauguin to stay because he deeply admired his work and imagined he could learn much from the older man. In preparation for Gaugin’s arrival at the Yellow House, Vincent painted his iconic Sunflowers series just to decorate the walls of Gauguin’s room! But Van Gogh’s mental illness made…

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Votes For Women! #Suffrage100

100 years ago today Westminster finally passed an Act giving  women over 30 (who owned property) the right to vote.  As an information geek, I’m celebrating the day with a (very) short list of data sources on the Women’s Suffrage Movement…

An umbrella stand painted by Suffragettes in Glasgow’s Duke Street Prison, at the Glasgow Women’s Library

• A Guid Cause…The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland – a history of the women’s suffrage movement in Scotland using material from the National Library of Scotland
• Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) created a booklist of Suffragette themed stories
• A guide to records on Women’s Suffrage held by the UK Archives (if they haven’t all been “lost”!!!)
• Women’ Suffrage in Scotland from the Scottish Archive Network (includes a wee film)
• Following the GWL’s 2016 Edit-a-thon, Wikipedia should be a good source of info too. More details on their event wiki page

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/960788865052299264

Too Much Information by Firefox and HitRecord

Inquiry into fake news: the CILIP ILG response

The CILIP Information Literacy Group’s response to UK government inquiry into fake news:

In January 2017, the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport launched an inquiry into fake news. As is usual with such inquiries, the Committee invited submissions from interested parties, prior to compiling a report – which we hope will be published later in the year.

The CILIP Information Literacy Group, in collaboration with InformAll, submitted a response in March. Not only is this inquiry timely, but it is directly relevant to information literacy. Indeed, one of the questions posed by the Committee in its call for submissions was ‘How can we educate people in how to assess and use different sources of news?’.

In April, the Committee published our response (the list of the nearly eighty submissions made by a range of other bodies and individuals is also available here. Amongst the other respondents are Google, Facebook, the Guardian, the BBC, Research Libraries UK and the Open University).

These are the highlights of some of the key points that we raised in our submission:

• Much of the current debate in this area is articulated around what Google, Facebook and others do to limit the spread of fake news, for instance through changes in their algorithms.  But although these often technological approaches are undoubtedly important, they fail to address the place and responsibility of users as consumers, creators and sharers of information. So the question we are posing is how people’s fundamental beliefs and commitments have an impact on the way that they relate to information and news; and what might be done to help them become more judicious in their approach to information and mis-information. This is where information literacy comes in.
• In confronting fake news and misinformation, the search for evidence – founded on enquiry, questioning and research – is more relevant than the notion of truth. Truth is a subjective concept, and is not a helpful term when trying to address the challenge of fake news; it follows that the expression ‘post-truth’ is equally unhelpful.
• A major part of any solution is a greater emphasis on the teaching of critical thinking, associated with information and digital literacy, in secondary schools – something that does not currently feature prominently in the curriculum. School students’ attitudes and practices towards information are often sorely lacking, but there is evidence to suggest a more discerning mindset can be fostered, given the right sort of interventions.
• By and large, public policy in the UK does not properly address information literacy, and the recently-published UK Digital Strategy, in spite of its thinking on digital skills, conspicuously fails to touch on how to foster more critical and questioning approaches to online information.
• Psychology can go a long way to explaining people’s propensity to believe fake news, and people’s powerful attachments to what they believe to be true can breed attitudes that are very resistant to evidence and facts. Cognitive factors are important in determining attitudes to information.

We recommend keeping an eye on the Select Committee’s webpages to monitor progress with their inquiry.

Source: Inquiry into fake news: the CILIP ILG response

Total number of female MPs ever elected finally matches current male number

The total number of female MPs ever elected finally matches the current male number –  and it only took 97 years! (not counting all the years women couldn’t even stand!!!). Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long again before achieving full parity.

SWOP Forum

191 women were elected as MPs in 2015 bringing the total to 455 female MPs since 1918. The same as the current number of male MPs.

Click the link below for the full article.

An interesting, if somewhat depressing statistic. As many women MPs (ever) as men (now) https://t.co/RVWJvQN887

— JA Condie 📚 (@VeryFineLibrary) December 14, 2016

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