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Despite numerous claims to the contrary, nobody knows what the new year will bring.
I'm hoping yours is sparkling with verve and fizz. Here's to you, my friends! Happy new year!
Photos: Signs hanging in the French quarter, New Orleans and light trails from a staircase at Antoine's shot through glass.
Trees along a canal are enhanced with tiny gold lights, the Netherlands.
Farolitos are lit in a 15th-century church courtyard, in a special Christmas Eve service re-enacting the Nativity scene.
Wise men walking past cows and sheep kept behind metal barriers in the church courtyard. The house with the five windows and two small ones on the top floor is where we're living now.
Bicycles wrap around the block.
The Christmas star and the faint silhouette of a horse's head at lower right.
Our fireplace mantel with 19th-century French Madonna crowns, a framed 18th-century page from the Koran (yes, religions can peacefully co-exist) from Sevilla, Spain; 18th-century French books topped with Delft porcelain miniature shoes and a vintage Santa ornament; a hand-carved wooden lamplighter from the Netherlands; an 18th-century wooden angel from an Italian church (wearing a rush crown woven with irridiscent beads from London); Christmas parcels from my daughter in the US and a glass cylinder containing an arrangement of amaryllis, berries, a silvery fern and "snow," a gift from a Dutch friend, who is a talented florist and interior designer. The mercury glass and gilt mirror is French, circa 1830. Click photos to view detail.
Antique porcelain figures at an exhibition of Christmas decorations currently underway inside the city's 15th-century gate tower.
The Virgin Mary.
Baby Jesus in a straw-filled manger. "For unto us, a child is born..."
Joseph.
Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus (and a wood-framed leaded window at the top of the historic town gate).
A handmade nativity scene. This picture is slightly out of focus (taking pictures was frowned upon at the exhibition), but you can see the amazing detail of each cloth figure and the surrounding scene, including a hand-woven tent.
Vintage ornaments on a wire tree.
Gingerbread in a shop window.
Outside our window, bells are ringing, while carpenters build a manger in the 15th-century church courtyard. And a house-drawn carriage is ferrying last-minute shoppers through the cobblestone streets.
Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas, filled with tidings of comfort and joy!
Rain and mist on the windows, the Netherlands.
House-buying bureaucracy has taken most of my time and energy these past couple of months. It seems I haven't had a stress-free moment to gather my thoughts about the remarkable events of 2011 and their impact on all our lives. Rebecca Solnit's article (excerpted below) is a timely reminder that what's most important is how we care for and respect one another. Please take a few moments to read "Compassion is our new currency."
"Usually at year’s end, we’re supposed to look back at events just passed -- and forward, in prediction mode, to the year to come. But just look around you! This moment is so extraordinary that it has hardly registered. People in thousands of communities across the United States and elsewhere are living in public, experimenting with direct democracy, calling things by their true names, and obliging the media and politicians to do the same.
"The breadth of this movement is one thing, its depth another. It has rejected not just the particulars of our economic system, but the whole set of moral and emotional assumptions on which it’s based. Take the pair shown in a photograph from Occupy Austin in Texas. The amiable-looking elderly woman is holding a sign whose computer-printed words say, “Money has stolen our vote.” The older man next to her with the baseball cap is holding a sign handwritten on cardboard that states, “We are our brothers’ keeper.”
"The photo of the two of them offers just a peek into a single moment in the remarkable period we’re living through and the astonishing movement that’s drawn in… well, if not 99% of us, then a striking enough percentage: everyone from teen pop superstar Miley Cyrus with her Occupy-homage video to Alaska Yup’ik elder Esther Green ice-fishing and holding a sign that says “Yirqa Kuik” in big letters, with the translation -- “occupy the river” -- in little ones below.
"The woman with the stolen-votes sign is referring to them. Her companion is talking about us, all of us, and our fundamental principles. His sign comes straight out of Genesis, a denial of what that competitive entrepreneur Cain said to God after foreclosing on his brother Abel’s life. He was not, he claimed, his brother’s keeper; we are not, he insisted, beholden to each other, but separate, isolated, each of us for ourselves.
"Think of Cain as the first Social Darwinist and this Occupier in Austin as his opposite, claiming, no, our operating system should be love; we are all connected; we must take care of each other. And this movement, he’s saying, is about what the Argentinian uprising that began a decade ago, on December 19, 2001, called politica afectiva, the politics of affection.
"If it’s a movement about love, it’s also about the money they so unjustly took, and continue to take, from us -- and about the fact that, right now, money and love are at war with each other. After all, in the American heartland, people are beginning to be imprisoned for debt, while the Occupy movement is arguing for debt forgiveness, renegotiation, and debt jubilees.
"Sometimes love, or at least decency, wins. One morning late last month, 75-year-old Josephine Tolbert, who ran a daycare center from her modest San Francisco home, returned after dropping a child off at school only to find that she and the other children were locked out because she was behind in her mortgage payments. True Compass LLC, who bought her place in a short sale while she thought she was still negotiating with Bank of America, would not allow her back into her home of almost four decades, even to get her medicines or diapers for the children.
"We demonstrated at her home and at True Compass’s shabby offices while they hid within, and students from Occupy San Francisco State University demonstrated outside a True Compass-owned restaurant on behalf of this African-American grandmother. Thanks to this solidarity and the media attention it garnered, Tolbert has collected her keys, moved back in, and is renegotiating the terms of her mortgage."
In this Christmas season and beyond, my fervent prayer is that compassion continues to occupy our hearts and minds - and we act accordingly.
My daughter Jordana, pictured in May making cake balls for her grandfather's 80th-birthday.
Please indulge a little sentimentality as I wish a very Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter! I couldn't be more proud of her.
This is also the day David and I signed the final documents for the house we're buying just north of Amsterdam! All being well, we will move on January 26th.
Later in the year, Jordana will spend her vacation time with us in the Netherlands. I suspect we'll also take a quick jaunt to Paris (where Jordana graduated high school).
Happy days! We are truly fortunate.
In 2009, I took the above photograph in my Paris apartment, using my Sony A900. I posted the photograph on my blog Paris Parfait. But the image you see on today's post didn't come from my photo files; instead I downloaded it from Pinterest.
How did it get there? Someone "pinned" it, giving another photographer credit. That photographer is Lara Rossignol, who happens to be a brilliant photographer and author of the lovely blog Piewacket. Lara owns a pink Royal typewriter exactly like this one. But she didn't take the photo; I did (and Lara has no direct role in this comedy of errors). Yet on Pinterest, the photo source is listed as "From Google.com" and the credit given to "Lara Rossignol."
This is just one example of erroneous photo credit on Pinterest.com. In a Pinterest search I found hundreds of my photos displayed under Paris Parfait and Tara Bradford. I don't have time to check every photograph; a quick run-through suggests most images have proper photo credit listed. But I noticed a few "pinners" list Google as the source and no direct attribution is provided. Obviously, Google is not a photographer and doesn't take photographs (other than for Google Maps).
Some people argue that having one's photos used on Pinterest is good publicity. Maybe, but only if proper photo accreditation is provided. I found several Pinterest examples where another photographer's work is listed under my name! For instance, photographs from the divine Fifi O'Neill's book Romantic Prairie Style - used in my blog piece, with permission - are wrongly listed on Pinterest as mine. Instead, they should be credited to Mark Lohman, who took all the photographs in Fifi's book.
To report a copyright violation, Pinterest requires filling out a separate form for every single image wrongly attributed or falsely credited. This seems like a lot of paperwork (and time) to safeguard images already protected by copyright law. It's no wonder many photographers are dismayed by having to track their images on Pinterest.
So all you lovely people who see online images that interest you, if you want to use them, make sure you give the photographer proper credit. I have a Creative Commons license, which means my photographs may be used in an attribution share-alike sense, only for non-commercial purposes. You are allowed to share the images in public forums - with attribution - but you can't put my photographs on posters or greeting cards or any other commercial ventures. If you would like to use them for a non-profit campaign flyer or in a theatre production program, etc., kindly email and ask permission.
If you want to "pin" my photographs on Pinterest, please provide proper photo credit! I would never use your work without giving you credit; please show the same respect for mine.
In two extreme cases, I applied for a Google takedown notice. After finding my photographs used without permission or without credit, I emailed the sites in question, politely asking that the photos be removed. The site owners ignored several requests, so I issued takedown notices. They were forced to delete my images.
Read more about copyright protection:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation: Teaching Copyright
Sheep in a deer park, the Netherlands.
Politicians seem to expect us to follow along like sheep, even as they violate the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. If you're an American, please take a few moments to read about the US Congress's latest attempts to rob us of our civil liberties and human rights. Even the Bush-Cheney administration, with all its failures, never dared to impose such Draconian measures on American citizens. President Obama's decision not to veto this bill is an outrage!
"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge. We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge." - Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said President Obama “should more carefully consider the consequences of allowing this bill to become law.”
“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and America’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” Murphy said in a statement. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”
Read Glenn Greenwald's excellent assessment of the bill and how it affects our rights in Salon.
Sign of the times.
Suspicion.
What, no guards? This boy turned his bike around and rode in circles, apparently looking for a gatekeeper.
Echoes of uncertainty:
Human rights abuses in the Middle East
Every newspaper or news bulletin is rife with similar reports of upheaval and turmoil. So how do we counter the constant flow of negativity and alarm??!!
I think we have to remember who we are and embrace our strengths, no matter what difficult challenges we may face.
On the side of the angels, we have children hungry for knowledge...
Inquiring minds and faith that better days are ahead...
Enduring beliefs, even when exiled from one's homeland...
Songs of peace that can't be silenced...
Comforting rituals of devotion...
Flickering flames of hope.
Prayers sent spinning into the universe.
...community efforts that make a difference.
Let's light a thousand candles...
...and then a thousand more...that the best and the brightest of human endeavours always will prevail.
All photos taken in Bhaktapur, Bungamati and Kathmandu, Nepal in November, 2010.
Rossetti's Collected Works, Volumes I and II, 1870, from my private collection. The books were featured in The Cult of Beauty Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 exhibition earlier this year at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I purchased them from Liberty's 2011 Annual Arts & Crafts Selling Exhibition in London. I am mad about Arts & Crafts design and am lucky to own a few original pieces.
A page scanned from Stephen Calloway's book The Cult of Beauty, which accompanied the V&A exhibition. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti's books are blocked in gold on blue-green publishers' cloth (pictured upper left). Algernon Swinburne's 1873 Songs before Sunrise (upper right) was also designed by Rossetti. Love Is Enough was written and designed by William Morris in 1873 (bottom left). Architect Philip Webb designed Morris's book Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, published in 1870 (bottom right).
These books were featured in Liberty's 2011 Arts & Crafts Selling Exhibition. The book at right - The Roots of the Mountains - was written by William Morris and is extremely rare. It is a first limited edition of 250 copies, printed on Whatman paper and bound in original Merton Abbey block-printed linen “Honeysuckle” designed by William Morris. The book is inscribed ‘with love,’ possibly by Morris. It was printed at the Chiswick Press and published by Reeves & Turner, London, 1890. The book was also exhibited at the 1890 Arts & Crafts Exhibition.
Liberty's Arts & Crafts Yuletide Selling Exhibition is currently underway on the 4th floor through Saturday, December 24th.
The Guardian has a fascinating article about making beautiful books in an era of e-books. When traveling, I read books via Kindle. But in my home, an electronic device never will replace actual books.
I have an antique iron book press from Scotland. Every time I glance at it, I am reminded of the care and attention with which so many beautiful books once were made by hand. It's a part of history I'd like to help preserve.
Carousel horse, vitrine, French quarter, New Orleans.
Am finding life a bit dizzying at the moment - as though I'm spinning on a never-ending merry-go-round - thanks to a whirl of Dutch house-buying bureaucracy. Hoping the wild ride stops soon and cool heads prevail.
Meanwhile, am honoured to be included in Christine Mason Miller's Five Six Things column today. It was such fun to be part of her Global Inspirations series for Create Mixed Media. Read about Christine's virtual book tour for her latest creation Desire to Inspire here. You can pre-order a copy here.
Other inspirations:
Harrison Solow's The Birthday Present
Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 trilogy
Longing for Paris? See Eugene Atget's iconic photography in Paris: 1898-1924
How exercise benefits the brain
A trio of frosted and mercury glass candles on a windowsill.
Floral displays on a foggy day.
Snow-dusted plants.
Zinc pots of festive berries and pine cones.
An abundance of red in stoneware pots.
A florist's vitrine, with trees made of frosted pine cones.
An interior design firm's display window.
Sinterklaas decorations in a show window.
The entrance hall to the store in the former post office. The building has its original 17th-century tiles and traditional Dutch architecture. It's now been broken up into a store, a house and an apartment, with a huge garden and courtyard.
This moss-covered Buddha reclines in the garden.
Shoppers seeking bargains.
An organ grinder to entertain the children.
A garland of flowers to brighten a bicycle.
A simple and elegant front door.
I'm still working on our Christmas decor. I have the fireplace mantel decorated, but much more to be done. Am off to see my favourite local florist for inspiration.
I hope you're taking photos of your holiday decor! It would be nice to see images representing Christmas celebrations around the world.
