From 'The Prophet':

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart...


Photo

Al Jazeera
10 August 2008

**See also Darwish laid to rest in Ramallah

Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, has died after open heart surgery at the Memorial Hermann medical centre in Texas (Saturday, 9 August 2008).

Ann Brimberry, Memorial Hermann's spokeswoman, confirmed to Al Jazeera that Darwish died at 1.35pm (18:35 GMT).

Siham Daoud, a fellow poet and friend of the 67-year-old, had asked not to be resuscitated if the surgery did not succeed.

She said Darwish departed for the US ten days ago for the surgery, and he had undergone two operations for heart problems before Saturday's surgery.

Best known for his work describing the Palestinian struggle for independence, the experience of exile and factional infighting, Darwish was a vocal critic of Israeli policy and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Many of his poems have also been put into music - most notably Rita, Birds of Galilee and I yearn for my mother's bread, becoming anthems for at least two generations of Arabs.

"He felt the pulse of Palestinians in beautiful poetry. He was a mirror of the Palestinian society," Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist and lecturer in cultural studies at Al Quds University in Jerusalem said.

Last year, Darwish recited a poem damning the deadly infighting between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, describing it as "a public attempt at suicide in the streets".

Early life

He was born in the village of Barweh in Galilee, a village that was razed during the establishment of Israel in 1948.

He joined the Israeli Communist Party after high school and began writing poems for leftist newspapers.

He was put under house arrest and imprisoned for his political activities, after which he worked as editor of Ittihad newspaper before leaving to study in the USSR in 1971.

Originally a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Darwish resigned in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, signed with Israel.

As a journalist, he worked for al-Ahram newspaper in Cairo and later became director of the Palestinian Research Centre.

In 2000, Yossi Sarid, Israel's education minister, suggested including some of Darwish's poems in the Israeli high school curriculum.

But Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister overruled him, saying Israel was not ready yet for his ideas in the school system.

In 2001, he won the Lannan prize for cultural freedom.

Leaves of Olives was published in 1964 when Darwish was 22-years old. Since then more than 20 volumes of his works of poetry have been published in many languages.


I Come From There

--Mahmoud Darwish

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother,
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood,
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up,
To make a single word: Homeland....

mahmouddarwish.com

Very first entry: August-9-1938

Explanation and introduction from: Orwell Diaries

‘When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page’, wrote George Orwell, in his 1939 essay on Charles Dickens.

From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.

What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.

Orwell wrote of what he saw in Dickens: ‘He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’

What will you see in the Orwell diaries?

Shona and I were discussing getting her writing published, and she asked me about a site, and after I went looking for a free download of Writer's Market, I found this page just full of wonderful links for almost everything to do with English. It is put out by the Coe College writing center. I will add it to my links list:

Writing resources

I was going to tell you about this morning's events in my neighbourhood, but it was so depressing and scary, involving gunshot wounds, police helicopters, sirens and such that I decided not to. :(

But I do have something cheerful and wonderful to write about. There was a time in my life when I had all the books I ever wanted, but I had to give most of them away. Now I find that many of them are available from various sites for the taking. I have spent the rest of the morning finding and downloading the grandest books for free. I have read most of them, but I wanted to reread them again. These are just some of the ones I got this morning:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry [plus the other 3 books in this series]

Shogun by James Clavell

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Richard Shirer

Little Drummer Girl by John LeCarré

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

I the internet!


*P.S. Oh great! Now I have someone named oneragingbull wanting to be my friend on that Scribd site I told you about. :O

Last night I was looking for a book I had just bought, and lo and behold, there it was being offered in a free download from a site I didna know about called Scribd. So I quickly joined and downloaded it and its sequel. Then I started looking around and saw that Scribd calls itself a document sharing site, so we all know what THAT means, but it's done very tastefully and without having to use complicated methods such as you would find on PirateBay with the huge movies and videos and such. First of all. I canny download those on my connection [at least in this century], and secondly I dun go in for that 'group computer sex' you guys call BitTorrents. </joke>

But at Scribd you can make yourself a wee profile and then as soon as you get your avatar up, you start getting friend requests in your email. 'Tis a bit reminiscent of melo with the number of people coming out of the woodwork and wanting to friend you. ha!

So I look to see if what these people have uploaded is decent, and if so, then I friend them. Then I thought, 'Well Oona, you had better upload something to share,' so I put up a few ebooks I had that were not commonly available on sites like Gutenberg. I've been getting those science fiction novels from Tor.com which I dun read but thought someone might, so I am giving those. I gave Future Shock, and Dr Zhivago and The Exorcist. You can put your own work up there and pictures, etc. I like it a lot. Go and check it out. I am 0ona with a zero as the first letter in case you want to be friends! ;)

Scribd

James Sturcke and agencies
Guardian
Friday July 11, 2008

**For those of you like myself who adore Shakespeare, you may view a digitised copy of the folio courtesy of Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University. I found this link on the Brandeis University Library link, and it is really awesome. I ♥ the INTERNET!

A tale of greed, woe and comic folly - not unlike those contained within its ancient pages – appeared to be nearing its final act today after the recovery of a "priceless" edition of Shakespeare's plays stolen a decade ago.

The first folio edition, printed in 1623, was among a number of books and manuscripts taken from Durham University library in December 1998.

The Shakespeare book alone would have a market value of around £15m, though the university described it as an "irreplaceable" part of north-east England's heritage.

At the time it was stolen, experts said it was "the most important printed book in the English language".

Today, detectives confirmed that a man was arrested last night in the town of Washington, Tyne & Wear, after the book had been taken to a US library.

Durham police said a 51-year-old man, claiming to be an international businessman who had acquired the volume in Cuba, had showed the folio to staff at a library in Washington, DC and asked them to verify it was genuine.

In a moment of apparent foolhardiness, he agreed to leave it with librarians, whose research revealed it as stolen.

After a search involving the FBI, the British embassy in Washington DC alerted Durham police to the find.

Academics from Durham University expressed their "excitement and delight" at the Shakespeare volume's reappearance.

Bill Bryson, chancellor of the university and author of a book on Shakespeare, said: "Like Shakespeare himself, this book is a national treasure, giving a rare and beautiful snapshot of Britain's incredible literary heritage.

"I'll certainly be joining the crowds who will be eagerly welcoming it home."

The Shakespeare first folio was acquired by John Cosin, former bishop of Durham, and was part of the library he established in Durham in 1669.

It was one of the first collected editions of Shakespeare's plays printed. Only between 200 and 300 copies are thought to have survived.

It was taken from a display stand during an exhibition charting English literature since the middle ages.

Also stolen were two handwritten manuscripts from the late 14th or early 15th century, one bearing an English translation of the New Testament and the other being a fragment of a poem by the Canterbury Tales author, Geoffrey Chaucer.

A Beowulf edition printed in 1815 and two editions of the Old English epic by the 10th century scholar Aelfric, one printed in 1566 and the other in 1709, were also taken.

The arrested man was taken to Durham city police station where he was still being questioned, Durham police said

A police spokesman confirmed that officers had discovered other old volumes at the Tyne & Wear property.

"They have found a large number of old books and documents.

"They will be inspected by experts."

He said there was no suggestion at the moment that the house contained the other seven books and manuscripts taken from the library.

The Shakespeare edition is in the care of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC until it is returned to Durham. The university's vice-chancellor, Prof Chris Higgins, said security had been significantly improved in the past decade.

I have to confess that up until tonight, I had no idea what people meant when they mentioned slash fiction. Stupidly, I thought it was a genre of fiction dealing with gratuitous violence. Now I find out that it is fan fiction, written largely by females, concerning the romantic and sexual pairing of two male characters. You too can be enlightened here at Wikipedia. And evidently it started a long time ago in the 70s with the characters of Kirk and Spock from Star Trek.

Alritey, I have to say that I cannot even BEGIN to understand the attraction that a straight female author would have in pairing two men together. This goes completely over my head. It does NOTHING for me.

You learn something every day I guess.

I've been looking for The Exorcist all night. Finally found it here:

Bookyards.com

If you dun have time to read the whole book, you can watch this video:

'The Exorcist' in 30 seconds as re-enacted by bunnies!

eBook Hood

This site has so many good books you won't find elsewhere because they are still under copyright.

Download for free.

This particular link is arranged by title.