mokie | Reading

Extracts from John Logan's play Red, starring Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko turned up in my YouTube feed this morning. Was Rothko really so loud, angry and incapable of shutting up? Had I been nice young Ken, the assistant whom Rothko browbeats and lectures from the moment he enters the studio, I think I might have turned on my heel and walked straight out. I guess he needed the work.

I've never been too sure of my response to what I guess we'll call the New York school. Were these guys- abstracters and popsters- really as world-bestridingly wonderful as the Art World thinks they are? When I learned the other day that the CIA had a big hand in getting them talked up and exhibited, as a way of establishing the USA as cultured and futuristic in opposition to those grim, dim, backward-looking Russians, I thought, "Ah....."

That's not to say the New Yorkers were talentless. But. Pollock's drip paintings took abstraction to it's logical conclusion and so into a brick wall. Rauschenburg is chaotic and messy and as for Lichtenstein, how many blown up comic images can you turn out before that clever idea starts to pall? None of this work detains me. The only New York artist I love unreservedly is Andy Warhol. I love Andy because he is the artist as trickster, always one hop, skip and a jump ahead of you. Dali played the same game- and I admire Dali- but Andy was so much lighter on his feet.

And Rothko? What Rothko thought he was painting was the human tragedy, but is the human tragedy really inherent in those big vibrant wodges of colour? Would we talk about them in such terms if we hadn't been schooled to do so? Molina's Rothko stands nice young Ken in front of one of his paintings and asks him what he sees. And nice young Ken says "Red".

That was an expensive lunch!

A very good lunch but I've never had a pricier one- or, at least, not that I've paid for myself.

French, nouvelle cuisine, leisurely....

And the most horrendous indigestion afterwards.

Still I'm glad to have had the experience.

We asked Miriam, because she is wise in these matters, how we could tell someone who is being clingly and manipulative and stalkery how to fuck off without hurting their feelings.

And her answer was so simple: "Tell them you're sorry, but you already have a full slate of people you're committed to and you can't give them what they want...."

Yeah.....

Or as Dylan wrote and sang, "It ain't me, babe; it ain't me you're looking for...."

Two skip-loads of rubble and miscellaneous junk have been extracted over the weeks from the garage conversion. The second- and last- of the skips was removed this morning. The forecourt will look bare without it.....

We have a large forecourt- and it's mostly paved- which is convenient if we have visitors with cars but is otherwise wasted space. Most of our neighbours have nice little front gardens- and I'd like to have one of too. A little lawn, generously filled with flowering shrubs and the appropriate annuals. The house at the corner has a front garden which fills up in the season with bright orange Californian poppies. Oh, but they're glorious.....

I fell over a low wall yesterday evening, pitched forward, barked my shin and banged my knee. The wall is a newish addition to our front yard (it borders a ramp leading up to the front door) and that's my excuse for diregarding it. How long has it been there? Oh, two or three months, but this was my first dealings with it in the dark. I thought I would be hurting this morning, but I'm not. My ability to fall and bounce back again is something I claim to have inherited from my mother, who was famous for laughing it off when she came off horses and bicycles or broke the bedside furniture tumbling out of bed.

British Quakerism is organised in tiers- like the Tower of Babel. These are local, area, regional and national. I have decided to concentrate on the local level. Whether local is the topmost tier or the bottommost I shouldn't like to say.

Anyway, being intensely local, I've no great desire to participate in regional events- the most recent of which in the South Eastern region hosted a speaker who was addressing the question "Do Quakers Pray?"

An additional reason for not attending was that I already know the answer- which is, "Some do and some don't".

Quakerism is an ethos not a creed- which incidentally, I'm told- is why local ecumenical councils won't break bread with us. I don't know if this is actually the case but Ailz once went to a supposedly ecumenical get together for the Womens World Day of Prayer and it turned out to be more Catholic than the Pope and she came away saying "Never again". So they're probably right in thinking we'd be a bad fit.

A propos all of this I've been wondering what it is that all Quakers have in common- and came to the conclusion that the only thing we'd be sure to agree on is the name "Quaker" and/or "Friend".

Quaker officers stay in position for three years. Alan, our clerk, has done his three years and has stood down. He is succeeded by Ailz and our friend Jackie- who will serve as co-clerks. They're people who get things done. We were going to have a team of four- but the other two who were willing- myself and Edna- are already elders and it says somewhere in the Book of Rules That You Can Obey If You Want To that a person shouldn't hold the office of clerk and elder at the same time. Privately I'm relieved- and am happy to pretend that this rule is binding even though it isn't. I don't want to be running things- at least not in name- though I'm happy to function as an eminence grise....

Picture Diary 104

1. Becoming clear

2. Think fish

3. Migrating fish

4. Be seein' ya

5. I do like to be beside the seaside

6. Can I get there by candlelight?

The Church of England struggled long and bitterly with the ordination of women. It was an issue I cared about a great deal in my churchy days. In the early to mid '80's American women priests used to come over to demonstrate that women could celebrate mass without the roof caving in. I attended one such event in Manchester Cathedral in defiance of church law, though our bishop, who was liberal, winked at it- and it seemed daring and defiant. Now, 40 years later, a woman has been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.

I am no longer churchy and I think, "How nice" and wish Dr Mullaly well and pass on to other things. I am not one of the 74% who, according to a recent survey, care not a fig for the Archbishop of Canterbury but I can't say I care very greatly. I have changed and society has changed....

....So much, so much....

"More fingerless gloves?"

"These are cheap ones for wearing round the house. The expensive ones that came earlier are only for going out in"

Fingerlesss gloves are not hard wearing. Threads come loose and when you wash them they go all bobbly. This doesn't bother me, but Ailz isn't keen on me looking like a Victorian miser.

I get my lack of sartorial awareness from my mother who once went on holiday to Venice having packed nothing but her gardening clothes.....

this issue is solved! turns out aspect-ratio works just fine on DW, i was just not using it correctly so the problem was in front of the keyboard and not in the code, haha

here's what i originally posted:

hi again! this is more of a general html/css question, but it has to work within dreamwidth's constraints, so i decided to ask it here. please let me know if this isn't the appropriate comm for this. i hope i used the right tags for this post.

here's what i'm trying to achieve (this would be displayed inside the most recent entry on my journal, so i can use regular CSS and not just inline, in case this matters):

i want to have a big box, and inside it a picture and a small box below that. i want the big box to resize responsively while keeping its proportions: suppose its width:height ratio is 1:2; i want it to keep that ratio always. as it resizes, i want the picture and small box inside to also resize while also keeping their proportions.

normally this would be really easy to do with aspect-ratio (<- this is a link to mozilla's developer resources) but that property doesn't seem to work on dreamwidth -- when i put it in my custom CSS, it doesn't seem to do anything, and it gets highlighted in red. (it works okay when i try it in online CSS editors, so i think it's not my mistake that's causing this.)

assuming this is true and i can't use aspect-ratio on DW, i need to cobble together some other solution, but i'm completely out of ideas. is this possible to achieve without aspect-ratio, or should i just change my idea to something that can be done on DW?

thanks again for your time!

The US government has shut up shop.

The US President and his Secretary of War have managed to seriously annoy the military top brass (and gosh but history teaches that the last people the Emperor wants to alienate are the Praetorians!)

And it has been suggested- by aforesaid US President- that the ruins of Gaza should be run by a former British Prime Minister who is widely regarded as a war criminal and hardly dare show his face at home for fear of suffering citizen's arrest.....

Oh, but those who run the world just don't seem to get it......

Portchester sits alongside Portsmouth Harbour.

The Romans built a fort there and the Normans built a priory church and a castle inside the walls of the fort (just as they did at Pevensey- a mile or two down the road from us). Richard II converted the castle into something rather more palatial. Elizabeth I stopped by during one of her progresses and found it in an embarrassingly sordid state of disrepair. During the Napoleonic era it housed French prisoners of war- who constructed a nifty little theatre inside the keep.

Here's the keep. Grim old thing. Only respect for its antiquity prevents me from calling it ugly. And, yes, I climbed the spiral staircase all the way to the top- and walked the battlements.

Here's the gatehouse on the north side. The first picture is taken from the churchyard. The blue van serves refreshments. Note the headstones with anchors on them; this is a naval town.....

And here's a view inside the castle, looking from the entrance of a lesser tower towards the base of the keep

And finally, the view from the top of the keep, with Southampton in the distance......

The chap from the food bank (we collect for them) asked whether Quakers do Harvest Festival- and whether, therefore- he could expect an overplus of tinned goods at this time of year.

The answer is "No".

Quakers don't observe any church festivals, bloody killjoys that we are.....

Ailz and I were in Portchester yesterday, meeting up with my sister and brother-in-law. St Mary's church- which sits rather wonderfully alongside a Norman castle inside a largely intact Roman fort- is celebrating Harvest- and has hidden their amazing Romanesque font in seasonal prettyness. All very nice, but a damned nuisance for us antiquarians.

Normally I'd have photographed the thing from all angles. As it was I had to grab one or two shots where there were gaps in the prettiness.

The font is in two halves. The bottom half was pictured and recorded in the 19th century but has since gone missing. The Victorian replacement is in the right style, but the difference in colour between old and new gives the game away.

Here's a picture of the church from the outside.

There was a time when public clocks- and there were a lot of them- were always to be relied on- but now they've disappeared from shops- and the ones on public buildings are mostly stopped or wrong. I prefer not to wear a watch or carry a phone- so I miss them.

The Eastbourne Town Hall clock, however- which has been inoperative for a good while- has been set going again- and if the wind is blowing from the west I can hear it strike. A friendly, reassuring sound. It takes me back.....

The Area Meeting- which is about to spend quite a lot of money on repairing our building- sent out a message to ask us how much we wanted to keep it. There's been some debate and hesitation about this in the recent past but there are a couple of us who feel strongly that if we lose the Meeting House we might just as well shut up shop altogether- and we prevailed at the local business meeting and a strong response was returned.

We have the best Meeting House in the Sussex East area- and we'd be foolish to abandon it. Noy only foolish but- which is much worse- defeatist. British Quakerism is in decline but our little lot in Eastbourne don't have to be.....

Mary spends much of her spare time playing Roblox.

For the longest time I misheard this as Road Blocks- and thought, "That doesn't sound very interesting"....

I envisaged little cars running round a maze-like road system, avoiding pile-ups and fallen trees and the like.

I have since informed myself.

(Get with it, Granddad!)

So what did I have recourse to when I was Mary's age?

Books.

I used to read books.

Setting aside generational prejudice I think the two activities amount to much the same thing. Both could be characterised as escapist and/or stimulating to the imagination.

Wikipedia describes Roblox as "a universe" of player-generated games- the most popular of which is one in which you grow a garden.

Sounds like fun.

Ah, to be young again......

i was able to fix the problem i was having by removing the

.module-content .userpic {
	position: relative;
	left: 280px;
	bottom: -65px;
	border-radius: 50%;
	width: 50px;
	height: 50px;
	border-style: solid;
}

problem i was having

hello! i'm back again~ working on another thing, and having issues with the module userpic and hiding it or moving it, essentially. i was able to move where i want the contents of the module userpic to be displayed and how i want the module content to be displayed, but i'm still having the issue of it showing up at the center and top, with the border.

you can view the live version at

testerjournal, and the image here. as you can see, or hover over the circle at the top it still shows as if the module userpic is up there which i don't want it to do.

module coding is here, and i can't figure out how to fix this

eta: using tabula rasa, plain

/* secondary */

#secondary {
font: 'Montserrat', sans-serif, #33343F, 7px;
background: #transparent;
width: 607px;
}

#secondary > .inner:first-child {
background: transparent;
padding: 0;
width: 500px;
text-align:right;
}

.module-wrapper {
padding: 10px;
}

.module-content li {
margin: 0;
}

ul.module-list {
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-transform: lowercase;
font-color: #ffffff;
}

.module-navlinks {
	font-family: Montserrat;
	font-size: 9px;
	position: relative;
	left: 75px;
	bottom: -40px;
	font-color: red;
	text-shadow: 0.5px 0.5px 0.5px #D7D9D7;
}

.module-navlinks:hover {
	font-family: Montserrat;
	font-size: 9px;
	position: relative;
	left: 75px;
	bottom: -40px;
	font-color: red;
	text-shadow: 0.5px 0.5px 0.5px #D7D9D7;
}

.module-list li {
margin: 0 .0 0;
display: inline-block;
font-size: 30px;
font-color: ;
}

div.journal-name {
	font-family: Sour Gummy;
	font-size:40px;
	display:inline-block;
	position: relative;
	left: -10px;
	bottom: -80px;
	font-color: #fff;
}

.module-content .userpic {
	position: relative;
	left: 280px;
	bottom: -65px;
	border-radius: 50%;
	width: 50px;
	height: 50px;
	border-style: solid;
}

.module-content .userpic img {
	position: relative;
	left: 280px;
	bottom: -65px;
	border-radius: 50%;
	width: 50px;
	height: 50px;
	border-style: solid;
}

.module-customtext {
text-transform: lowercase;
font-size: .8rem;
margin: .8em 0 .8em 0;
}

Our granddaughter Mary at the Gao restaurant on Terminus Rd in Eastbourne.

We'd not been there before. In fact I've never eaten Vietnamese before. Vietnamese joints may be common in the States (for obvious historical reasons we needn't go into) but much less so over here.

I started moving Mari's books out of boxes and bags onto bookshelves yesterday afternoon, gave up when my back had had enough and went back this morning to finish the job. The Eastbourne Meeting House now possesses a library of "World Religions and Spirituality". I wanted to get it sorted in time for Sunday worship. Most of our folk, I imagine, will think, "Well, I'm not reading any of those..." but I think I know one or two who will be pleased.

The books are arranged as they came to hand, so all higgledy-piggledy. Ordering and cataloguing will have to wait for another day. The library has strong holdings in Buddhism and Hinduism and smaller ones in Judaism and Islam. There are some Bahai writings and- we're not going to censor ourselves- even a Book of Mormon....

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mokie

January 2025

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Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Black Lace by nornoriel

Page generated Friday, 10 October 2025 10:42 am

About dream/reading tags

y-* tags categorize dreams.

For types: beyond the obvious, there are dreamlets (very short dreams), stubs (fragment/outline of a partially-lost dream), gnatter (residual impression of a lost dream).

For characters: there are roles (characters fitting an archetype), symbols (characters as symbols), and sigils (recurring figures with a significance bigger than a single dream's role/symbolism).

x-* tags categorize books.

Material is categorized primarily by structure, style and setting. If searching for a particular genre, look for the defining features of that genre, e.g. x-form:nonfic:bio, x-style:horror, x-setting:dystopian.

people I read

Reading

Red

Well, That Was A Thing

Ask Miriam (And Dylan)....

But I'm No Gardener

Bouncing Back

More Quakery Stuff

Regime Change

Picture Diary 104

So Much

Bobbly

resizing while keeping proportions without using aspect-ratio

Ever So Strange

Portchester

Have A Thought For Us Antiquarians

Boing, Boing, Boing.....

Refusing To Give Up

Not Road Blocks

[solved] moving around the module content or hiding it!

Mary At The Gao

A Library Of World Religions And Spirituality

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January 2025

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