Irish Selfie
Weekly Photo Challenge: Selfie: “For this challenge, snap a selfie with your camera phone or camera.” Photo was taken in 2004, on Inish Mór, one of the Aran Islands, Ireland. A selfie, one of the few I take really. ©Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2013. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Caged
In a recent visit to Dublin Zoo, I sat down next to a snow leopard busy contemplating life, separated only by a thick window. It was still early morning, and nobody was around. Time seemed suspended as we were taking in each other’s presence and it was a soul-searching as well as soul-enhancing experience. While there, I thought about the kind of people that create problems on so many levels while others mean well and only speak from the heart. On the other side of that coin, so many incredible, misunderstood animals like Amur leopards as well as snow leopards, wolves, whales or arboreal mammals are ruthlessly hunted or driven from their habitats and a only seem to have a future on Planet Earth when they’re protected and locked up…
9/11 Heroes
The word “hero” is often misused, declaring celebrities as the one we have all been waiting for. We attribute them a talent or other star-like characteristics that might not exist once they close the front door behind them. Real heroes are at work every day: rescue workers like firefighters policemen and women, doctors and nurses in overcrowded hospitals, or in war zones. Oftentimes heroes are just like you and me, saving a child from being run over by a car or caring for animals who were abandoned by their owners. When I think of heroes, I think of firemen, especially those that made incredible sacrifices on 9/11. When they ran up 70 flights of staircases with heavy tools strapped to their backs, they knew there was a real chance they…
Irish skies
WordPress Daily Prompt: Release Me Tell us about the blog post you were most nervous to publish — and what it was like to set it free. Photographers, artists, poets: show us FREE. For me, flying is being released from life, on earth and in my mind. Wonder about how people are able to create machines to take you abroad in no time takes over. Freedom is life. I would rather be free and ill than being stuck in a bad relationship and healthy. Flying and seeing Ireland beneath me time after time is proof that dreams do come true. Seeing Ireland below me is release enough for me to be happy for the rest of my life. “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your…
The Thinker & Me
The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin, “represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy which had inspired The Gates, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell, while meditating on his work. The Thinker was therefore initially both a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his torment through poetry. The pose of this figure owes much to Carpeaux’s Ugolino (1861) and to the seated portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici carved by Michelangelo (1526-31).” (from http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/sculptures/thinker)
W.B. Yeats in Sligo, Ireland
In July I visited Sligo in the west of Ireland, where William Butler Yeats is engraved in Drumcliffe near his beloved Ben Bulben mountain. Since I am a big fan of Irish literature, and have a very definite weakness for Yeats’ poetry and life, I took several pictures from a different angle. I was trying out my new smartphone and unfortunately for the thingie; it had to take a lot of photography abuse from my part! Bronze and stone sculpture featuring “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” at Drumcliffe Cemetery; work of the well-known sculptor Jackie McKenna of the Leitrim Sculpture Centre. “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the…
La Sagrada Família
WordPress Daily Prompt “Anachronism (noun): an error in chronology; a person or thing that’s chronologically out of place. Write a story in which a person or thing is out of place, or recount a time when you felt out of place. Photographers, artists, poets: show us ANACHRONISM.” There is no better way to display anachronism than with the La Sagrada Família cathedral in Barcelona, Spain (Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family). Left unfinished by Antoni Gaudi, old and new are built into one big cathedral, with two distinct architectural styles. It is of yet unfinished, hoping the project will be completed in time for the centennial of Gaudi’s death. “Though construction of Sagrada Família had commenced in 1882, Gaudí became involved in 1883, taking over the project and…
