Judith Johnson > Recent Status Updates

Very much enjoying this but parking it while I read Fraud by Paul Holden about the execrable Keir Starmer.

‘ Even though Billy’s train wasn’t moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight …
… Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets, which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them … The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared’ …
❤️ Vonnegut’s humanity

‘I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

‘I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that’.

Just so, dear Kurt.

Reading of the rebuilding of Warsaw after the Nazi regime levelled it to the ground, I wonder if Gaza will ever be rebuilt by Palestinians for Palestine?

Reading Hollie McNish makes me feel happy!

Quote from Ms Temelkuran ‘ … the story of humanity: a big savage bunch capable of indescribable violence but one that somehow surprises you with its beauty only when you are about to give up on it, the frequency of its appearance being as rare as finding a large banknote in one of your old coats when you need it most.’

I’m well aware of quite a lot of this story - tomorrow will be our 48th fortnightly vigil for Gaza in our small Welsh town - but even so I am having to read this book earlier in the day as if I read it at bedtime I would be too angry to sleep.

It strikes me, reading M. Myriel’s Notes on the Disposal of My Household Expenses, that Monsieur Jeff Bezos might take some good counsel from the Bishop’s good example…

I intended to start reading this great work yesterday, it being the anniversary of Victor Hugo’s birth but was delayed by a nasty virus which, incredibly unusual for this inveterate bookworm, made me too weak to even read! Quel horreur!

It may be great art, but! On page 132 and feeling rather depressed! 🤪

Proving a source of much enjoyment! Our poetry group did a reading this morning in our little wet windy town in Wales, and the audience was much amused by my reading Roger McGough’s poem Dylan the Eavesdrop!

Ffiw! Hanner ffordd trwy'r lyfr nawr!

‘Stories layered with stories, all laid down in the mind to become part of being.’

Sadly, this is a book I’m only reading now to get to the end faster.

McLoving this!

What a stunning poet, whose work is even more powerful when you see him performing it. His poem The First Night on Earth is deeply moving.