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.

Better World Books – virtual tour

Today I was pleased to attend a short virtual tour of Better World Books’ warehouse in Dunfermline. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take any screenshots but as a longtime supporter and customer of theirs, I found the tour extremely interesting.

“Better World Books is a for-profit, socially conscious business and a global online bookseller that collects and sells new and used books online, matching each purchase with a book donation. Each sale generates funds for literacy and education initiatives in the U.S., the UK, and around the world. Since its launch in 2003, Better World Books has raised $33 million for libraries and literacy, donated over 32 million books, and reused or recycled more than 397 million books”

source: https://www.betterworldbooks.com/

A few interesting points from the Virtual Tour:

• Books received at warehouse from libraries or donation drop boxes are processed and either sent to the Internet Archive, donated (children’s books), or listed for wholesale
• Unsellable/unusable books are recycled into animal bedding
• 1 million books currently on their shelves for sale
• Partnered with 4000 libraries globally
• Received a Circular Economy award from ScotGov
• Packaging is recycled, biodegradable plastic and cardboard boxes are reused multiple times before being recycled into animal bedding

History: History – About Better World Books

Impact: Our Impact – About Better World Books

Buy your secondhand books from Better World!

The healing power of Nature (and books)

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous” – Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (10th-16th May 2021) is Nature. Our relationship with nature is critical to supporting good mental health and preventing distress. Research shows that any and all contact with the natural world can help our mental wellbeing.

• Edinburgh Libraries has put together this lovely list of nature writing and resources: Connecting with nature through reading | Tales of One City (wordpress.com)

Kathleen Jamie, Sightlines – ebook available from Edinburgh Libraries

• Contact with nature reduces anxiety and stress
• Time outside can effect the chemical make up of our brain
• Nature can help you learn mindfulness
  • info via LawCare

When feeling anxious, stressed or depressed your natural instinct may be to courie up indoors (mine certainly is!) but if you can push yourself to get outside and find a greenspace to just be with nature, it can really help. There’s scientific evidence that we feel calmer when we look at trees for example – this is known as biophilia.

Forest bathing or Shinrin-Yoku, is the Japanese practice of spending time slowly and quietly among trees. The power of Shinrin-Yoku is a fairly recent discovery, dating only from the 1980s. It is proven to lower the stress hormones, suppresses the fight or flight instinct, lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, and improve sleep. Also, the activity of white blood cells increases when humans spend time with trees. You don’t even have to visit a wood or forest every day since these benefits can last for weeks.

Forget the gym! There is evidence that exercising outside can be more effective than antidepressants for mild to moderate depression, and research from the University of Exeter showed that the presence of birds in a landscape can help to lift your mood. It is also known that time spent with animals, or gardening has a positive impact on your mental health.

Time spent in the natural world, and particularly in sunlight, triggers an increase in serotonin (happiness chemicals in our brain). Exploring outdoor environments – and engaging in activities such as foraging for mushrooms or brambles, tracking, collecting shells or leaves – releases dopamine which helps regulate movement, attention, learning, and emotional responses. Cold water swimming is shown to boost serotonin, oxytocin (the love hormone) and endorphins which reduces pain, relieves stress, and enhances pleasure. It also helps to control our fight or flight instinct. Even just looking at houseplants or pictures of natural environments is soothing to our minds.

Meditation or mindfulness is proven to reduce stress, but if you’re having a hard time getting started, Nature offers many ways to be mindful without really trying. Whether it’s practicing Shinrin-Yoko or just bird watching in your garden, enjoying a sunrise or sunset, star-gazing, or listening to the buzzing of a bee or the sound of the waves, these are all ways to be calm and still and help focus on the present moment. This can help maintain good mental health and wellbeing and keep stress at bay.

I think this is always good advice, but this week especially: Go outside. Hug a tree!

Or, as the inimitable Nick Offerman would say:

Nick Offerman, Paddle Your Own Canoe

#ReadHarderChallenge 2017 – final list

Here’s my final BookRiot Read Harder Challenge list for for 2017:

1. Read a book about sports – Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
2. Read a debut novel – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
3. Read a book about books – The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane

4. Read a book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author – A View from the Mangrove by Antonio Benítez-Rojo

5. Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative – The Highland Clearances by John Prebble
6. Read an all-ages comic – Lobey’s the Wee Boy!: Collected Lobey Dosser by Bud Neill
7. Read a book published between 1900 and 1950 – The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene, 1930
8. Read a travel memoir – The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria by Gertrude Bell
9. Read a book you’ve read before – The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey
10. Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location – 365: Stories by James Robertson
11. Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location – A Splendid Isolation: Lessons of Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan by Madeline Drexler
12. Read a fantasy novel – The Obsidian Throne by James Oswald
13. Read a nonfiction book about technology – Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink by Richard L. Currier
14. Read a book about war – Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45 by Maggie Craig
15. Read a YA or middle grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+ – The Marvels by Brian Selznick

16. Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country – Ulysses by James Joyce (I haven’t finished this one yet. It’s gonna fit great into one of the 2018 challenges!)

17. Read a classic by an author of colour – The Man in the Iron Mask – Alexandre Dumas
18. Read a superhero comic with a female lead – The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua
19. Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey – Warrior of Peace: The Life of the Buddha by Jinananda

20. Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel – The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

21. Read a book published by a micropress – The Birlinn of Clanranald by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald), translated by Alan Riach, (published by Kettillonia)
22. Read a collection of stories by a woman – Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland
23. Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love – Nua-bhárdachd Gháidhlig/Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems: a bilingual anthology – edited by Donald Macaulay
24. Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color – Little Green by Walter Mosley

Book Riot #ReadHarder Challenge 2017

Here’s what I read for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge this year! My own rules for the challenge were to:

• only read things that were new to me (except for that one challenge)
• choose from the books growing dusty on my own shelves as I often as I could
• read books with a Scottish slant whenever possible

You’ll see there are two still unticked – both very hard reads, for different reasons. I’ll finish them next year (Ulysses will even fit a challenge on the 2018 list!)

Wilfred Owen, the Advocates Library and the Stevenson connection

To commemorate the centenary of Wilfred Owen’s visit to the Advocates Library I put together a small exhibition. This is the story…

Edinburgh Library and Information Services Agency

One hundred years ago, on the 22^nd October 1917, war poet Wilfred Owenpaid a visit to the Advocates Library to meet with Charles John Guthrie (Lord Guthrie). To commemorate this centenary I put together a very small, private exhibition in the Advocates Library. However, since we’re approaching Armistice Day, and it’s a sweet story, I decided to post something here too.

Wilfred Owen’s letter to his mother, 22nd October 1917 from ‘Selected letters’ by Wilfred Owen; edited by John Bell, 2nd edition 1998

From the end of June to early November 1917, Wilfred Owen was resident at Craiglockhart War Hospital, receiving treatment for shell-shock. His doctor, Arthur Brock practised ergo therapy, ‘the cure by functioning’. Brock encouraged his patients to work and explore outdoors, and to experience the local community and culture.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen. Written at Craiglockhart in the…

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Read Harder Challenge 2017

I’ve decided to take part in the Book Riot reading challenge this year. I came to it rather late but I’d already finished several books that met various challenges so it’s achievable I think.

For the rest, I’ve been scouring my bookshelves and Kindle lists for items to fit the bill. I love that it’s encouraging me to read things which have been literally gathering dust until now. I’ve looked out books which have been languishing, for years in many cases, and added them to the ‘Book Riot Challenge pile’.

However, this is my personal reading and I have my own reasons for taking the challenge. Therefore, I may not stick stringently to the requirements in every case. For example, my pick for the ‘Central or South America’ challenge is likely to be a book about the Caribbean by a Cuban author – but it looks interesting and it’s already in my possession (also, there was some debate on the challenge forum about whether the Caribbean was or was not part of ‘Central America’. I have chosen to embrace that grey area). And, of course, there’s always going to be a Scottish slant to my choices whenever possible.

For those remaining challenges my current bookstock just can’t meet I’ll be utilising local libraries and the Scottish branch of Better World Books. A few of the challenges have me seeking books I wouldn’t normally consider reading at all – which is, of course, the whole point… But enough writing, I have reading to do! I just finished “an all-ages comic” so I’m off to pick my next read now. Which one to choose? Maybe that Caribbean one?… Or a banned book? So many choices!

FYI, here’s my list so far:

1. Read a debut novel – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
2. Read an all-ages comic – Lobey’s the Wee Boy!: Collected Lobey Dosser by Bud Neill
3. Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location – Saltire Invasion by John Ferguson
4. Read a travel memoir – The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria by Gertrude Bell
5. Read a book you’ve read before – The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey
6. Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location – A Splendid Isolation: Lessons of Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan by Madeline Drexler
7. Read a fantasy novel – The Obsidian Throne by James Oswald
8. Read a superhero comic with a female lead – The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua
9. Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey –Warrior of Peace: The Life of the Buddha by Jinananda
10. Read a collection of stories by a woman – Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland
11. Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color – Little Green by Walter Mosley
12. Read a book about books – The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane
13. Read a book published by a micropress – The Birlinn of Clanranald by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald), translated by Alan Riach, (published by Kettillonia)