With the sad news coming from Auckland about finding the poor wee girl, my first post today will be about something life affirming, and joyous – Art & Poetry.

My children and I visited the Tauranga Art Gallery on Saturday to see the Rembrandt sketch exhibition; what a treat. Of course that may seem like a contradiction in that I'm opposed to government (see you & me) sponsored aesthetics – I'd have willingly paid directly to see this exhibition if provided by a private business; but what is important for this blog post is the fact that good art does exist in New Zealand – all one has to do is sort the wheat from the chaff.

Rembrandt's sketches are smaller than I'd have imagined – the detail so fine that the light provided for the exhibition meant that to see them properly one has to have their nose nearly touching the glass of the fame. Anyway a very worthwhile trip to town to see the master...I highly recommend it.


A Rembrandt sketch.

On that note, and to improve your artistic knowledge, I suggest you visit my favourite artist, Michael Newberry, at his blog http://artistsvoice.wordpress.com/
Here he is talking about the use of light in art.

Professor Stephen Hicks has a blog which I visit every day for a dose of philosophy. At the moment he is putting his course on Postmodernism – the man's a gem.

Visit Stephen's site http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/10/10/archilochus/

Stephen Hicks on Archilochus

I think of him as the anti-Homer poet. While Homer's subjects are gods and heroes, Archilochus writes of drunkenness, running away to live and perhaps fight another day – the common man with his feet planted firmly on the ground and occasionally of sweet love.

Not much is known about him other than that he was alive sometime during the mid 7th century BC.
The italicized introductions are mine; the translations are from this Bernard Knox edition.

On drinking:
And I know how to lead off
The sprightly dance
Of the Lord Dionysus,
The dithyramb.

I do it thunderstruck
With wine.

And:
Kindly pass the cup down the deck
And keep it coming from the barrel,
Good red wine, and don't stir up the dregs,
And don't think why we shouldn't be,
More than any other, drunk on guard duty.

Some more gems at his site http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/10/10/archilochus/