Counts.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated and the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Ted Hughes

A-Crackling.

Schutler after Durrie, Home to Thanksgiving, 1867

THANKSGIVING TIME

When the night winds whistle through the trees and blow the crisp brown leaves a-crackling down,

When the autumn moon is big and yellow-orange and round,

When old Jack Frost is sparkling on the ground,

It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the pantry jars are full of mince-meat and the shelves are laden with sweet spices for a cake,

When the butcher man sends up a turkey nice and fat to bake,

When the stores are crammed with everything ingenious cooks can make,

It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the gales of coming winter outside your window howl,

When the air is sharp and cheery so it drives away your scowl,

When one's appetite craves turkey and will have no other fowl,

It's Thanksgiving Time!

Langston Hughes

Intercessors.

In her series, Tea with B, historian Bettany Hughes discusses the need for superheroes with Neil Gaiman ...

Communal storytelling is one of the things that makes us human.  The acceptance of story, the delight in stories and, of course the idea that we can be better; that there are intercessors between us and the darkness.

Beautiful.

On September 28, 2020, the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation hosted the first interview of its new online event series Building Beautiful. The event featured Nicholas Boys Smith, Founding Director of Create Streets and the co-Chair of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, in conversation with the Foundation's Senior Fellow in the Built Environment, Samuel Hughes ...

Heart.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Ted Hughes

Moment.

Hughes, Star of Heaven, 1903

The painter should not become conscious of his insights without taking the way round through his mental processes. His advances, enigmatic even to himself, must enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them at the moment of transition. For him, alas, who watches for them, delays them, they change like the fine gold in the fairy tale which can no longer remain gold because some detail went wrong.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Lullaby.

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

Socrates.

From the BBC series, Genius of the Ancient World, Bettany Hughes on the trail of the hugely influential maverick thinker, Socrates ...

Hughes' talk on Socrates and the Good Life ... HERE.

Seeking.

Old Walt Whitman 
Went finding and seeking,
Finding less that sought,
Seeking more than found,
Every detail minding
Of the seeking or the finding.

Pleasured equality
In the seeking as in finding,
Each detail minding,
Old Walt went seeking
And finding.

Langston Hughes

Caravaggio.

Written and narrated by Robert Hughes ...

There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same.

Sing.

A Robert Hughes song to learn and sing ...

CONNECT

Singing.

Baled hay out in a field
Five miles from home. Barometer falling.
A muffler of still cloud padding the stillness
The day after day of blue scorch up to yesterday
The heavens of dazzling iron, that seemed unalterable
Hard now to remember.

Now, tractor bounding along lanes, among echoes
The trailer bouncing, all its iron shouting
Under sag heavy leaves
That seem ready to drip with stillness
Cheek in the air alert for the first speck.

You feel sure the rain’s already started
But for the tractor’s din you’d hear it hushing
In all the leaves. But still not one drop
On your face or arm. You can't believe it.
The hoicking bales, as if at a contest. Leaping
On and off the tractor as at a rodeo.

Hurling the bales higher. The loader on top
Dodging like a monkey. The fifth layer full
Then a tettering sixth. Then for a seventh
A row down the middle. And if a bale topples
You feel you’ve lost those seconds forever
Then roping it all tight, like a hard loaf.

Then fast as you dare, watching the sky
And watching the load, and feeling the air darken
With wet electricity
The load foaming through leaves, and wallowing
Like a tug-boat meeting the open sea
The tractor’s front wheels rearing up, as you race
And pawing the air. Then all hands
Pitching the bales off, under a roof
Anyhow, then back for the last load.

And now as you dash through the green light
You see between dark trees
On all the little emerald hills
The desperate loading, under the blue cloud

Your sweat tracks through your dust, your shirt flaps chill
And bales multiply out of each other
And down the shorn field ahead
The faster you fling them up, the more there are of them
Till suddendly the field’s grey empty. It’s finished

And a tobacco reek breaks in your nostrils
As the rain begins
Softly and vertically silver, the whole sky softly
Falling into the stubble all round you

The trees shake out their masses, joyful
Drinking the downpour
The hills pearled, the whole distance drinking
And the earth-smell warm and thick as smoke

And you go, and over the whole land
Like singing heard across evening water
The tall loads are swaying towards their barns
Down the deep lanes

Ted Hughes