Greyth

I have said 'Make friends with grey' before, and here are a few offerings from a day out up to Brantwood http://www.brantwood.org.uk/house.htm, home of John Ruskin. Now there was a prolific natural blogger if ever there was one! he would start to write every day first thing, and then a sack of letters would arrive each day and he'd be writing replies to them etc etc. I bought a book containing a weeny proportion of his offerings on just about everything. An introductory film show at the place told us how much of his vision had come to pass - free schooling, health care, homes for the elderly, and an understanding of the noxious effects of capitalism. He understood that the individuals who make up the capitalist system are not in themselves evil and selfish, but that they don't look at the bigger picture in which what they do makes up the brushstrokes. (I think he knew that if his ideas were to get anywhere, he had to concentrate on the good points of his audience.) Anyway, I can see that we need his wisdom more than ever now, and the condensed book of his writings will be my guiding light for a few weeks, that and Margery Kempe, and the book of household hints from the 1950s.

 Ruskin was perhaps one of the first to read what the skies were saying, and he even did a watercolour of a sunset called 'An Old-fashioned Sunset', of a sky before the days of what he called the Plague-wind. He made up some great little words, such as Illth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illth, which is the opposite of well-being, and recognised as a word by the Oxford English Dictionary, as you will see if you follow the link.

 So - I am friends with grey - and I hope she will be pleased with these pics of her, even if the previous blog shows I'm really besotted with silver.