Chris Jefferies

Image of the day – 19

Agreement and mutual benefit are essential and beneficial in human societies, and are recognised as such worldwide.

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

This wooden carving marks the point where two canals meet in Stroud. The Stroudwater Canal to the right allowed Severn river boats (trows) to carry Welsh coal to Stroud to power the steam engines taking over from the less efficient water power in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Thames and Severn Canal, opening a few years later, enabled the smaller London barges to make their way to and from Oxford and London to the east.

Cargoes would need to be unloaded from barges and reloaded on trows or vice versa to make the entire journey. But London barges were not suitable for the waves, winds and currents of the River Severn, while trows were too large for the locks and other facilities of the upper Thames.

Shaking hands is an interesting choice in a sculpture to signal agreement and mutual benefit. Agreement and mutual benefit are essential and helpful in human societies, and are recognised as such worldwide. When agreement and mutual benefit break down we have arguments, murders, violent demonstrations, and even wars. These are all social on some scale or other. How much better it would be to stop those behaviours and shake hands. But that’s not always possible, sadly.

There’s a saying that it takes two to have an argument. That’s true – but it also takes two to stop arguing and shake hands.

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 18

Knowing what is the right thing to do is not the same as doing the right thing.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

This is an image of an image of a story. It’s my photo of a stained glass window in a little church in the village of Upper Framilode near the River Severn in Gloucestershire.

The words at the bottom of the window read ‘Go and do thou likewise’ which we might rephrase in today’s English, ‘Now you go and do the same’.

It’s the punchline from a story Jesus told to show that love is an active thing, and if we don’t love the needy people around us in practical ways, how can we claim to be pure, or spiritual, or selfless?

Knowing what is the right thing to do is not the same as doing the right thing. It’s quite easy to mix those two ideas up in our minds, but it’s oh-so-important to have clarity about it.

You can read the story in modern English on the internet.

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Image of the day – 17

When you eat makes a huge difference to health, wellbeing, and even the length of your life.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Food! You can’t live without it, it provides the energy for all your conscious activities and also the energy to keep your body working – the brain, the liver, lungs, heart, kidneys, even the digestive tract that digests your food – all the organs need energy to do their various essential jobs that you rarely think about.

But also, too much food is bad for you, the wrong kind of food is bad for you, and when you eat it makes a huge difference to health, wellbeing, and even the length of your life.

There’s plenty of good advice out there, but many of us fail to follow it. If you haven’t thought about this very much, right now is a good time to start. Where to look? The UK’s NHS provides some good ideas. So too does ZOE. Maybe watch a ZOE video, pick one that seems interesting to you.

Food – Enjoy it, but rule it. Don’t let it rule you!

PS – Think about others too. If you can afford it, donate some items to your local foodbank (most supermarkets have donation points). And if you are unable to afford what you need, get along to a local foodbank and ask for help. The Trussell Trust is one of the big organisations, search for a local branch. Or search Google for other options.

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Image of the day – 16

The stratus is semi-transparent near its fuzzy edge, you can see the higher layer through it.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

I spotted this cloud scene in May 2024 and just had to capture it. As you can see, it’s a fine example of multiple horizontal levels of clouds of different kinds. At the bottom are small cumulus clouds, including one that looks higher than the others. That’s just perspective, they’re all at the same level, imagine them sitting on a transparent sheet stretched out from the horizon and passing overhead.

Above this is a grey layer with a fuzzy edge, it’s stratus cloud and again it’s a flat sheet at a higher level than the cumulus layer. The third layer is altocumulus, a third sheet at a higher level again. The stratus is semi-transparent near its fuzzy edge, you can see a higher layer through it.

The fourth layer is cirro-stratus, white and stretched out from side to side. And the final layer is cirrus, stretched fore and aft, at right angles to the cirrostratus below. So much going on at different levels in the atmosphere!

It’s very clear that things that seem really simple (the air above our heads) can show complex patterns of behaviour. That’s a good lesson to learn for life in general.

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Image of the day – 15

Going against a designer’s explicit instructions is always asking for trouble. In this example, the blunderer was dismissed.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Well, what happened here? This is Blunder Lock on the Thames and Severn Canal at Stonehouse. When the canal was being built in the late 18th century, the engineer failed to follow the designer’s instructions and excavated this lock to an incorrect depth. For this and other issues, the engineer was later dismissed, and the lock became known as ‘Blunder Lock’. It’s a quirky name, but a good one! Click the image to enlarge it, you’ll see the name board on the far bank.

Going against a designer’s explicit instructions is always asking for trouble. In this example, the blunderer was dismissed, lost the canal contract, and no doubt missed out on future employment opportunities. This is surely something we all need to remember – an object lesson that applies in all walks of life! Following engineering instructions; following national and international law; and, for those of us who follow Jesus, obeying his command to love.

It should go without saying that all of this applies only to instructions that are good, wise, and intended to generate good outcomes.

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