Topic-focused blogs tend to get large readerships. But I’ve always expressed whatever takes my fancy here on JHM.
I’ve been writing posts on ‘Journeys of Heart and Mind’ (JHM) for twenty-two years now. Sometimes I’ve written daily, or even more often than that, sometimes I’ve gone for months without posting at all, but recently I decided to deliberately write more frequently. But what I’m considering right now is not the frequency of posts, but the range of topics I cover.
The most successful blogs specialise on a topic, often quite a narrow topic – for example ‘Infra-red astronomy’, or ‘greenhouse gardening’; poetry or photography or evolution or Bronte or Paris. These topic-focused blogs tend to get large readerships. But I’ve always expressed whatever takes my fancy here on JHM; I’m not interested in audience size, more on variety and sharing an insight here or an opinion there.
My favourite topics include spaceflight, history, following Jesus, science, technology, astronomy, photography, world events and more. I’ve decided to continue posting an any topic that grabs my attention.
I spend £100 a year or so on the blog, about £2 a week. This is what it costs to keep and manage the domain name scilla.org.uk (though this covers my email address and Donna’s too and allows me to set up and manage subdomains like jhm.scilla.org.uk as well. And it also covers the cost of web hosting and a Word Press account to manage the blog, cover data storage, editing facilities and the rest. I could return to using Google’s Blogger platform which is free of charge; that’s what I used until July 2016. But it’s more limited and doesn’t provide such flexible formatting as Word Press.
All of this to say I shall probably leave things as they are, post a little more than I’ve managed for the last few years, and try to keep posting on a range of topics that interest me.
But it would be good if you, my readers, gave me some feedback. What do you like or dislike? Are there other topics you’d like me to write about? Are there things you wish I would not write about? If you have anything to say about this, do please leave me a reply. I don’t guarantee to follow your advice, but I promise I will consider it carefully. Thank you! And thank you also for reading JHM.
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What will persuade me to do more? What will persuade you? And what form might ‘doing more’ take? It’s easy to feel helpless as an individual. What can one person do? Here are some simple, effective suggestions.
We all know what an amplifier does. It takes a signal from a microphone or a musical instrument and increases the power dramatically so that a relatively quiet sound can be sent to a loudspeaker and become very loud.
And we know what a broadcast is. It takes sounds and pictures and sends them to many different places, often very far away. So a TV broadcast will appear in many homes across an entire nation.
Sometimes it’s necessary and important to amplify and broadcast ideas – make them louder and spread them more widely. That’s what I want to do here. Please read this message from Yaroslava Antipina (Yara), writing from Kyiv, Ukraine. Here’s an extract to pique your interest.
Hi!
It’s a bit gloomy headline today. But it describes the reality we have in Ukraine now. russians kill children (adults as well, of course) and destroy our energy infrastructure. Often, homes without children and power don’t have walls, either.
I am writing to you surrounded by generous spring sun rays. It is warm and green outside. But these bright colours cannot hide our current reality.
A few words about the photos you will see in this letter. I will show you the pictures of a Ukrainian photographer, ethnographer, folk writer and artist, Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit (1927-1998). She is called Homer Hutsul. What is Hutsul? It is an East Slavic ethnic group spanning parts of western Ukraine (mainly the Carpathian Mountains). I will tell you shortly about Paraska in the second part of the letter.
Here’s something I wrote in reply, a comment at the bottom of Yara’s message:
‘It amazes me how people survive through the worst nightmares. Paraska is one example and you, Yara, are another. But you are both just examples of the determination of thousands, millions of ‘ordinary’ people. Actually nobody is ordinary, every living person is extraordinary. Every last one. It’s not just that people survive, it’s that despite the circumstances people actually thrive. We, in our comfortable countries, want all Ukrainians to survive and to thrive; but do we want it enough to make it happen? That is the big question.‘
And it’s a question I want to put to all my readers. What will persuade me to do more? What will persuade you? And what form might ‘doing more’ take? It’s easy to feel helpless as an individual. What can one person do? Here are some simple, effective suggestions:
Read about events in Ukraine. One good place to start is with Yara’s posts. But also read the news and dig deeper than just TV and news channels. Listen to blogs, watch video interviews. (You may need to scroll around to find the stories about Ukraine and the war, there’s world news here.)
Reply to some of the people out there, people like Yara. There are many of them, all with good perspectives, all worth your attention, all deserving and benefitting from friendly interest from beyond the borders of Ukraine.
Consider buying Ukrainian goods, hunt around on the internet, there are many outlets. This is one practical way to help Ukrainians directly. If you want advice, ask around. People like Yara who are posting articles regularly will be able to answer practical questions like this.
Lobby your government representatives, in the UK write to your MP asking them and their party to do more.
Donate to good causes in Ukraine or to organisations supporting Ukraine in your own country.
Here’s a little more from Yara’s Sunday letter:
Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit’s literary heritage includes 46 books, 500 pages each, mostly handwritten, and dozens of smaller ones. Thirty of them are spiritual works, and sixteen are philosophical reflections. There is also poetry and works on Hutsul folklore.
I do like her personality. To see more of her photos, please visit the Facebook page.
I almost finished the letter. At the moment, I am in the cafe, having a cup of warcoffee and enjoying the calm Sunday. People are passing by; children are laughing, and some may think that it is a perfectly normal life. But it is not. We became masters of pretending.
Okay, it’s time for me to go. Thank you for reading my letter, leaving a comment, and possibly even buying me a warcoffee. Your support is what helps me continue writing these letters and my war diary, as well as sharing my love for Ukraine with the world.
So be an amplifier and a broadcaster for Ukraine, we can all help in this way. Learn more about Ukraine, speak out (or write), tell your friends, share some of Yara’s letters.
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The photo shows a peaceful scene along a stretch of water, this is Barton Mill Pound in Cirencester. Two mallard ducks swim past. What do you see?
Mallards that you can see on the water and reflections of things on the far bank that you can’t see. Light carries information to our eyes, but the brain has to interpret it. A clever thing, the brain!
You just know, without giving it a single deliberate thought, that there’s a stone-built house on the far bank, and there are bare trees so it’s not summer time. And even the little brains of the mallards can process information in the same way. We (and they) do this all day long, every day we live, without having to take any trouble to process the information. We don’t even know how we do it! The brain has multiple layers of neurons, brightness and colour information in from the eyes to the top layer, understanding of what we see out from the bottom layer.
Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars Chapter 2 (1992)
This is a great quote. It’s true, I think, that these things are usually beautiful. But it’s worth paying attention to the times when they are not. Power, particularly can be turned to evil and then it is one of the most ugly things we can imagine. It’s quite possible to be elegantly cruel and not hard at all to be elegantly unkind. The same goes for intelligence.
For the other qualities listed here it seems much more difficult to distort them into ugliness.
What do you think? Leave a reply with some thoughts or examples.
Despite repeated assurances that no invasion was planned, Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine on 24th February 2022. As the tanks and support vehicles rolled towards Kyiv, paratroops were dropped to take the city’s Hostomel Airport.
On 24th February, 2022, Russian forces moved into Ukraine, despite Russia’s repeated assurances that they had no such intention. That moment represented a step change in Russian relations, not just with Ukraine, but with the rest of Europe and the entire world. The tanks, personnel carriers, and self-propelled howitzers rolled across the border from Russia and from Belarus, much as the German tanks had rolled across Eastern Poland and into the Soviet Union 80 years earlier.
Informed opinion among Western military and government thinkers was that Ukrainian forces would buckle, the government would fall within a few days, President Zelensky would be captured or would flee, and a new, puppet regime would be set up by the Russians. There would be almost no resistance, defeat would be swift and complete. Everyone was wrong-footed, Ukraine resisted, Zelensky stayed in Kyiv, and the Russian invasion stalled. And here we are ten months after the invasion, and Ukraine’s army has the upper hand having forced three or four major Russian retreats (it depends how you count them).
Map of Ukraine before the 2022 Russian invasion (From Wikimedia)
Why did Russia invade?
Logical, reasonable thinking always begins with unbiased observation; but there’s an inbuilt human tendency to instead begin with our own opinions which may or may not be biased, and then to look for things that will back those up. There are plenty of examples all around us: for example the tobacco industry in the 1970’s and 80’s had the opinion that smoking provided them with solid profits and was not harmful to health and looked for ways to argue against any evidence for harm. That’s just human nature.
And that’s exactly how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. The Russian government began with assumed opinions about history and about NATO intending to harm Russia. Next, serious attempts to justify these positions were made: Russia was the origin of Ukraine which was therefore no more than a Russian region along with the Baltic states and some other parts of the old Soviet Union; NATO was not a defensive organisation but had expansive territorial ambitions, the West wanted to destroy Russia.
On the basis of these assumptions political arguments were made by Vladimir Putin and his supporters, that bringing Ukraine back into line would return territory that had always been Russian, would expose Ukraine’s military weakness, prevent NATO expansion, be welcomed by the majority of Ukrainian citizens, and be tacitly accepted by a weak-minded West. And on that basis, after building up forces along the Ukrainian borders with Russia and with Belarus, the ‘Special Military Operation’ began. Mr Putin’s miscalculations were exposed very quickly. Ukrainian citizens did not support Russia; the Ukrainian forces were much stronger than expected; the West including the EU and USA supported Ukraine in practical ways and applied sanctions; Sweden and Finland were alarmed and applied to join NATO.
Stages of the war
Despite repeated assurances that no invasion was planned, Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine on 24th February 2022. As the tanks and support vehicles rolled towards Kyiv, paratroops were dropped to take the city’s Hostomel Airport. The plan was to capture the city quickly, arrest President Zelensky, install a puppet regime, and then mop up the remnants of the fleeing Ukrainian forces. But that didn’t work out well for the Russians.
The paratroops were defeated at the airport and the city of Kyiv did not fall. The armoured columns and their support vehicles and troops were badly mauled by the Ukrainians and were forced to retreat north across the border and east as far as Kharkiv, and something of a stalemate resulted in the north. In the south, Russian forces fanned out from Crimea and took the coastline of the Sea of Azov, capturing Kherson. Ukrainian forces were able to stop the Russian advance before the cities of Mykolaev and Zaporizhzhia. In the east, Russia expanded their hold on Luhansk and eastern Donetsk, and captured the city of Mariupol.
For some time there was a stalemate in terms of territory, with relentless Russian shelling of settlements along the line of control. During this period the Ukrainian forces grew stronger with aid and materiel from the West, particularly the USA but also the UK and other European and some non-European powers. At the same time Russia was weakened by a heavy toll on both troops and equipment.
As a result of astute leadership and good use of Western precision armaments, Ukraine became strong enough to push the Russians back, initially in the north, and then also in the south where Russian forces had to retreat from Kherson. This seems to be a development that is still ongoing as we approach the beginning of 2023. There are signs that Ukraine is growing stronger while Russia continues to grow weaker. It’s likely that we’ll see further Ukrainian military successes and Russian forces holding less and less territory. What is harder to predict is how the Russian government, armed forces, and population will react as these failures become more and more clear for all to see.
An analysis to consider
Here’s a video of Michael McFaul speaking at Stanford University. He is familiar with government figures including presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden; he understands their thinking; he presents a shrewd and well considered analysis of the situation – one that is well worth watching. I’m not going to write anything here in the way of conclusions; far better to settle back and listen to McFaul’s thoughts and ponder his arguments and conclusions for yourself. His address therefore forms the conclusion to my article.
It’s a ship that will continue to take on water and is likely to founder and disappear for ever
I rarely make any political comment here on JHM, largely because I don’t want to annoy or alienate a significant fraction of my readers. This blog is about other aspects of life.
But sometimes events demand some sort of response. This is such a time.
The Conservative party is in a state of confusion right now. The parliamentary party is clearly rejecting Boris Johnson as leader and Prime Minister, and the electorate is hugely critical of the party (recent byelection results illustrate that).
I believe two things need to happen as soon as possible.
First, the party must find a way to remove Johnson from his leadership position in the next few days or weeks, and they must elect a new leader and form a new cabinet and all the government machinery that goes along with that. So much is self-evident.
Secondly, they must call a general election as soon as possible.
They will need to do that because giving senior cabinet positions to people who supported Johnnson’s leadership for such a long time, knowing that he was – well, let’s say ‘a bit dodgy’ – is not going to pass muster with the general public. And it’s hard to see how a new government can be formed without including a significant number of tainted heavyweights.
Johnson has tarred himself with his own brush, but in the process he’s managed to splash quite a few of those around him with black marks. Not that they didn’t object to his behaviour, but that they supported him as Prime Minister for such a long time. I understand the difficulty, nobody wants to be the first to climb, suicidally, out of the trenches.
Somebody wrote recently that the sinking ship has abandoned the rat. Very witty, but it’s still a sinking ship. It’s a ship that will continue to take on water and is likely to founder and disappear for ever.
We need a new government, whether Conservative or otherwise. The electorate needs an opportunity to replace any MP they regard as tainted and untrustworthy. Two years is too long for a seriously damaged party to continue in power. Only a general election as soon as possible can remove the remaining spots and streaks of tar.
Most, including the crew, agree that we need a new captain, but we also need a new ship.
This video of the Earth rising above the slowly rotating view of the Moon’s horizon was reconstructed from still images taken by the crew of Apollo 8 in December 1968. Enjoy.
Earthrise from lunar orbit, December 28th 1968 – more info…
It’s that time of year again, cards have gone out and others have arrived on our doormat. I’d really like to include my blog readers. So, whoever you are, wherever you live, here’s the image that was on this year’s card:
And what I’d like to pray for everyone reading this is that you would find fresh grace and peace in your life every day and be blessed throughout the coming year. May 2019 be the year you meet Jesus as your friend and guide. And for those who already know him, may your journey find you going deeper and further with him than ever before, in increasing faith and obedience.
Happy New Year 2019 everyone!
The photo shows Cotoneaster berries covered with hoar frost, the photo was taken in 2012 in our old front garden before we moved to Cirencester.
Friends are important, we humans are fundamentally social beings
At my sister’s recent book launch, I was delighted to meet an old friend from school days, Nick Henderson. Although he looks older – as, of course, I do too – his personality is entirely as I remember from the mid 1960s. We agreed to meet again this morning at the Golden Cross in Cirencester, and it was a delight.
Nick and I last met when we were both living at home and very probably still at school. For a year or two we used to hang out quite a bit. I remember going with Nick to see a local band called The Corals during a record-breaking attempt at playing non-stop without repeating any songs; the drummer, one Colin Flooks, another lad from our school year, later became famous as Cozy Powell. And yes, they did break that record – in fact they smashed it by playing for 11½ hours.
The Corals during their record-breaking session, photo from The Wilts and Glos.
Nick and I talked about many things, catching up on our personal journeys over the last half century, recalling the cross-country runs that were compulsory on Wednesday afternoons at school, and thinking about Daglingworth Brook, the River Churn and how the water is channelled in and around the town. The drainage courses have changed over the years, altered for many reasons, beginning in Roman times when the town was young, and continuing right down to the present.
Friends are important, we humans are fundamentally social beings; renewing a connection after such a long gap has been a very special thing for me. More so than I had expected or imagined.
I don’t often re-blog other people’s stuff. But this post by my friend Chris Duffett deserves really wide coverage. So I’m re-posting to help spread it wider and further. Chris is an inspiration in so many ways – kind, peaceful, loving, encouraging, wise, arty – truly an excellent guy and alive with the life of Christ.
On my way home the other night I paused and pondered the day with the team whom I’m part of and realised that Jesus had been speaking very powerfully once more in the day that we had spent together.
Jesus appeared to have spoken to us very dramatically about our desire to plant seeds out of The Light Project. The seeds we’re seeking to plant aren’t franchises of what we do but rather pioneers who are willing to go to places that are bereft of good news and announce some!
As I stood and pondered the day I was struck how earlier on a past student called Lydia (from 10 years ago) had called by at the office, visiting from London and just so happened to call at the very time the leaders and I were meeting. Her visit wasn’t an…
Journeys of Heart and Mind 
