Living in books

‘“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
~Neil Gaiman

“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
~Jane Austen

“I can’t imagine someone really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
~C.S. Lewis

La Peste (1947) by Albert Camus – The Plague

Michael mentioned in his exhortation the book The Plague by  (or the original French title La Peste),

It just so happened that a version was broadcast on 26th July on BBC Radio 4.

This is available on this link below and is available until 22nd August – probably on iPlayer for longer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000l7kf

Albert Camus, French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall)

The Plague was adapted from the globally renowned novel La Peste by Albert Camus, and directed for radio by Neil Bartlett, based on his 2017 Arcola Theatre production and script. A disturbing, deeply relevant listen. Bartlett’s adaptation is the English language world radio premiere production of The Plague and focuses the story on five characters, using only words contained in the novel.

Cover of the first edition of the novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story from the point of view of an unknown narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author’s distinctive absurdist point of view.[

It is often said of La Peste – written in 1947 by the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Albert Camus – that the plague and the rats in his novel are an allegory for the rise of fascism across Europe. He always denied this.

For us today, The Plague will have uncanny echoes of the pandemic, the restrictions and the moral dilemmas we are living through, as well as the rise of extremist ideology in many countries today. Just like our current crisis, the characters in The Plague comprise heroes, selfless and selfish acts, those who shame themselves into changing, and those who do not and suffer the consequences once the plague has been conquered. Hope surfaces when there is talk of a serum but, with the arrival of the first attempts at a cure, who should be selected as the guinea pigs? In an uncanny parallel, this drama about a community facing lockdown due to a deadly plague was recorded by actors, locked down in their own homes during our own pandemic. The scope of the production was not reduced as a result. 

Cast:

Doctor Rieux ………… Sara Powell
Raymond Rambert …. Billy Postlethwaite
Mr Cottard ……………. Joe Alessi
Jean Tarrou ………….. Jude Aduwudike
Mr Grand ……………… Colin Hurley

Adapted for radio and directed by Neil Bartlett
Producer: Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 4

Hong Kong DVD Release of The plague (La Peste) this time telling the story of Dr. Bernard Rieux in the 90s (Camus’s novel was set in 1940s),

For those who want to see the 1992 Argentine-French-British drama film written and directed by Luis Puenzo. (On Disc/Streaming: Nov 17, 1993) – 105 minutes

 

Released directly on to video in the U.S., but exhibited on the festival circuit and in Europe, Plague is an adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel and reteams filmmaker Luis Puenzo with actors Robert Duvall and William Hurt, Sandrine Bonnaire, and Raul Julia, to tell the story of a South American city that must be cut off from the world following an outbreak of the bubonic plague. The key characters include a French tele-journalist, her cameraman and a fearless doctor.

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We talked  about it also for our payertheme for this month:

1 Chronicles 28:20

And David said to his son Solomon,

“Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God—my God—will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord. (NKJ)

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Find the prayertheme for the month: Prayertheme for August 2020: Feeling alarm or anxiety

Mood Booster L’aventure en Belgique

Curieusement, pour de nombreuses personnes, des vacances ne sont plus possibles sans voyager à l’étranger. Pour beaucoup, les vacances sont même devenues synonymes de «partir en voyage», même pas dans leur propre pays mais à l’étranger.
Pour cette raison, un mot anglo-saxon a été créé pour représenter un séjour à la maison. «Staycation» semble être le mot à la mode pour 2020.

Beaucoup oublient qu’il y a beaucoup à vivre dans leur propre pays.

Même si un voyage à l’étranger ne sera peut-être pas possible cet été, selon le groupe de travail Psychologie & Corona, il est important de se détendre en investissant du temps dans vos passe-temps, en profitant de la nature ou en découvrant quelque chose de nouveau. Vous cherchez de l’inspiration ? Nous vous donnons avec plaisir dix conseils pour partir à l’aventure en Belgique !

1 Besoin de rafraîchissement? Partez faire du kayak, du rafting ou du stand-up paddle (SUP)! Lors d’une session de SUP, vous êtes debout sur une planche de surf et vous vous déplacez à l’aide d’une pagaille. Si vous êtes assez stable sur l’eau, vous pouvez aussi essayer le SUP yoga.

2 L’homme ne peut pas voler, mais le flyboarding est quasi la même chose. Relié à un jet-ski, un genre de snowboard attaché à vos pieds vous propulse jusqu’à 15 mètres dans les airs, où vous pouvez faire des figures acrobatiques en déplaçant votre poids. Un flyboard vous permet également de nager comme un dauphin sous l’eau !

3 Vous préférez rester au sec ? À Bokrijk au Limbourg, vous pouvez traverser l’eau à vélo (ou à pied) sans vous mouiller. À Hechtel, aussi au Limbourg, vous pédalez dans les arbres à une hauteur de 10 mètres.

4 Préparez votre sac à dos et traversez la Belgique via les GR! Choisissez votre étape (de plusieurs jours) sur le site des Sentiers GR. (e.g. GR5)

5 N’oubliez pas votre tente pour en faire une vraie aventure de camping ! Le camping sauvage est interdit en Belgique, mais les zones de bivouac sont une belle alternative. Ou consultez le site Welcome To My Garden, sur lequel des particuliers mettent leurs jardins à la disposition de campeurs.

6 Nous espérons évidemment qu’il fera beau cet été, mais un jour de pluie ne peut certainement pas gâcher le plaisir ! Mettez-vous à l’abri dans une arcade de réalité virtuelle. Avec des lunettes de réalité virtuelle sur le nez, vous vivez des aventures impressionnantes avec vos amis ou votre famille.

7 Et si le soleil est présent, utilisez-le pour faire des dessins d’ombre. Placez un objet de sorte que son ombre tombe sur votre papier et faites un dessin en utilisant cette ombre. Inspirez-vous de l’oeuvre de l’artiste belge Vincent Bal.

8 Faites quelque chose de nouveau : lisez un livre d’un genre que vous n’avez pas encore lu, essayez une nouvelle recette, faites vos courses à un autre supermarché, courrez votre parcours de jogging dans le sens inverse, cueillez vos propres fruits et légumes dans une ferme bio…

9 Les salles de cinéma sont à nouveau ouvertes ! Regarder un film avec un masque buccal ne vous tente pas trop ? Réservez votre place de parking au drive-in de Kinepolis On Tour. Lors des mois d’été, Kinepolis organise des séances de films (récents) en plein air dans des endroits insolites en Belgique. Même l’achat des chips est complètement corona proof!

10 Aidez à rendre le monde un peu plus beau en consacrant un peu de votre temps à autrui. Demandez au refuge si vous pouvez aller vous balader avec les chiens, collaborez au magazine de la maison de repos locale, donnez votre sang ou plasma, faites un beach clean up avec vos enfants… Besoin d’inspiration pour faire du volontariat ? Consultez ce site !

L’art thérapeutique pour la period Covid

L’art est thérapeutique. Sortez vos bics, crayons, pinceaux et laissez couler votre créativité.

Quelques idées :

• Faites un dessin sur votre fenêtre pour égayer un peu votre quartier
• Écrivez une lettre pour un résident quelconque de la maison de repos locale
• Cherchez des branches, fleurs, plumes, feuilles… dans votre jardin ou lors d’une promenade et utilisez-les dans vos dessins ou peintures
• Vous aimez la photographie ? Transformez votre caméra reflex en sténopé et faites des expériences
• Décorez vos photos et cartes postales avec de la broderie
• Arrachez une feuille du journal, d’un magazine ou d’un livre et faites un poème en sélectionnant quelques mots et en noircissant le reste
• Peignez des oeufs cuits (et cachez-les dans votre jardin ou appartement comme trésors pour vos enfants)
• Construisez un nid d’oiseau ou un hôtel d’insectes et décorez-le avec vos enfants
• Imitez des scènes de film connues avec vos enfants ou animaux, ou filmez un clip vidéo de votre chanson préférée
• Essayez quelque chose de nouveau, comme la pyrographie, la reliure de livres, le chant a cappella… et gardez vos évolutions dans un blog
• Inventez une fin alternative pour votre film ou livre préféré

 

Interned and tortured at Breendonk before deportation to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.

Catherine Annabel, who established in 2012 “Inspiration for Life” loves to write about the things that interest, challenge and move her. She is retired after many years working in higher education administration, most recently for the University of Sheffield.

She gave a talk at the 2019 Conference, Violent Spaces, of the Landscape, Space & Place group from the University of Nottingham, where she mentioned Winfried Georg Sebald who was born in Bavaria in 1944, in the last months of the war.

Born in Wertach, Bavaria Winfried Georg was one of three children of Rosa and Georg Sebald. From 1948 to 1963, he lived in Sonthofen, having his grandfather as the most important male presence in his early years, because his own father being in prison as a prisoner of war until 1947. His father had served in the Wehrmacht, but after he returned home, having spent a couple of years as a prisoner of war, the things that he had seen, and done, were never spoken of.

While at school in Oberstdorf the boy got to see images of the Holocaust. –  probably the liberation of Belsen – it looked unbelievable. No wonder that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen, because those who had to speak about it, where at the time of the events ‘part of the system’.

writes:

It was, in a way, what we’d now call a box-ticking exercise. Because, of course, the teachers were part of the context. Sebald, like many of his contemporaries, was unable to accept this collusive silence, and his increasing alienation from his homeland led to him working first in Switzerland and then moving to the UK, where he spent the rest of his life, teaching at UEA until his death in a car accident in 2001. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

Sebald’s work imaginatively explored themes of memory as they related to the Holocaust. His novels include Schwindel, Gefühle (1990; Vertigo), Die Ausgewanderten (1992; The Emigrants), Die Ringe des Saturn (1995; The Rings of Saturn), Logis in einem Landhaus: über Gottfried Keller, Johann Peter Hebel, Robert Walser und andere (1998; A Place in the Country: On Gottfried Keller, Johann Peter Hebel, Robert Walser, and Others), and Austerlitz (2001).

Catherine Annabel writes,

The Holocaust, indeed, became a presence in his poetry and his prose writing. It seems never to be very far away, invoked maybe by the name of a place, innocent in itself, but carrying the weight of history. In many of his works, it is addressed obliquely, but the figure of the refugee appears in several of his books.

Max Ferber, one of the four protagonists of The Emigrants, left his home in Munich (capital of Bavaria) in 1939, following Kristallnacht, his father having obtained a visa for him by bribing the English consul. We are introduced to Ferber via the narrator, who does not ask about his history, why or how he left Germany, until their second meeting, at which point Ferber tells how letters from his parents ceased, and he subsequently discovers that they were deported from Munich to Riga, where they were murdered. In Sebald’s final work, Austerlitz, the Holocaust becomes text, not subtext, foreground rather than context.

Sebald’s (fictional) protagonist, Jacques Austerlitz, is an architectural historian, with a particular interest in what he calls ‘our mightiest projects’ – fortifications, railway architecture, what they used to call lunatic asylums, prisons and law courts. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

We meet the narrator first in a carceral space – Antwerp’s zoo. After his first conversation with Austerlitz, he is moved to visit Breendonk, one of the fortresses that Austerlitz had mentioned.

But it is not the history of how such places were designed, the flawed theories of defence against enemy incursion, that confront him there, but the much more recent past, Breendonk’s conversion into a concentration camp in the Nazi era – a transit camp for deportation to Auschwitz, and a place of torture.

• • Originally built for the Belgian army 1906-13 to protect Antwerp – ‘it proved completely useless for the defence of the city and the country’
  • Covered by a five-metre thick layer of soil for defense against bombings, a water-filled moat and measured 656 by 984 feet (200 by 300 m)
  • Requisitioned by the Germans as a prison camp for political dissidents, captured resistance members and Jews
  • Infamous for prisoners’ poor living conditions and for the use of torture. Most prisoners later transferred to larger concentration camps in Eastern Europe
  • 3,590 prisoners known to have been imprisoned at Breendonk, 303 died or were executed within the fort itself and as many as 1,741 died subsequently in other camps before the end of the war. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

Sebald brings in a human witness here, the Austria-born essayist Jean Amery, born Hanns Chaim Mayer, who by his participation in organized resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium got detained and tortured by the German Gestapo at the Auffanglager Breendonk in Fort Breendonk, afterwards to be brought to other concentration camps, Auschwitz and later Buchenwald and finally being liberated at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war the former Hanns Mayer changed his name to Jean Améry (the surname being a French-sounding anagram of his family name) in order to symbolize his dissociation from German culture and his alliance with French culture. He settled in Belgium, where he  lived in Brussels, working as a culture journalist for German language newspapers in Switzerland. He did not write at all of his experiences in the death camps until 1964, when, at the urging of German poet Helmut Heißenbüttel, he wrote his book Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (“Beyond Guilt and Atonement”). It was later translated into English by Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld as At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities.

Haunted by nightmares of the horror he had witnessed he committed suicide in 1978.

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• 

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Our narrator finds Breendonk to be a place of horror. The darkness inside is literal, but also metaphysical, and it becomes heavier as he penetrates further into the building. He begins to experience visual disturbances – black striations quivering before his eyes – and nausea, but explains that

‘it was not that I guessed at the kind of third-degree interrogations which were being conducted here around the time I was born’,

since he had not at that point read Amery’s account. Sebald is telling us that the narrator’s reaction to Breendonk is not, therefore, personal, not related in any way to his own experiences or even to things he had read, but intrinsic to the place, as if its use, or abuse, has changed its very nature, violence become part of its fabric.

Breendonk is the first of the trio of Holocaust sites around which the text is structured.

It’s built to a star shape, a six-pointed star. This was a favoured design both for fortresses, designed to keep invaders out, and for prisons, designed to keep wrongdoers in. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

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• 

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According to Austerlitz this is a fundamentally wrong-headed design for a fortress, the idea that ‘you could make a city as secure as anything in the world can ever be.’ The largest fortifications will attract the enemy’s greatest numbers, and draw attention to their weakest points – not only that, but battles are not decided by armies impregnably entrenched in their fortresses, but by forces on the move. Despite plenty of evidence (such as the disastrous Siege of Antwerp in 1832), the responses tended to be to build the same structures but stronger and bigger, and with inevitably similar results. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

• 

• 

As the design for a prison, the star shape makes more sense. It does not conform to the original layout of the panopticon, but it does allow for one central point of oversight and monitoring, with radial arms that separate the inmates into manageable groups. The widespread use of existing fortresses as places of imprisonment for enemies of the Reich was primarily opportunistic, of course, but the ease of this transformation illustrates Austerlitz’s arguments quite well. {Marks of Pain: Architecture as Witness to Trauma in W G Sebald’s Austerlitz}

Being a Writer Without a Dregree

To remember

• being a writer doesn’t take a degree.
• to become a good writer = Being able to articulate your thoughts, being able to edit yourself, and avoiding being bias towards subjects in which you are writing.
• 1. Avoid bias, 2. Use active verbs, 3. Eliminate most adjectives + adverbs, 4. Use concrete detail, 5. Tell a story worth telling, 6. Know your subject.
• being an expert in something doesn’t necessarily mean your good at it.

C. Jaiter

Over the years people have made it a point to tell me, being a writer doesn’t take a degree. As much as I wanted to believe the words that were perpetually thrown my way; I was having a hard time coming to that conclusion. Growing up it was instilled in me that to become a writer,a good writer that shows promise, I had to have certain things. Being able to articulate your thoughts, being able to edit yourself, and advoiding being bias towards subjects in which you are writing.
I practiced this for so long. My writing whether it was articles, short stories, scripts etc. was getting better with time. A couple years ago when I was seriously contemplating going back to university to finish my bachelors someone I met on a bus from New York told me things that still stick with me. She said, “1. Avoid bias, 2…

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Do books with more reviews get better ratings?

How factors like number of ratings and number of reviews have an impact on book ratings.

Book-reading is an activity that a lot of people enjoy. It is one that places one’s mind in a different setting while providing one with an empathetic feeling.

Mubarak Ganiyu was stunned by his discovery that The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown got a rating of 3.8/5 from the book collection website Goodreads.

Stunned by this discovery, he decided to look into the highest rated books on Goodreads. As he got higher up the list, he noticed a trend that highly rated books generally got more reviews.

Therefore, it became a task for him to confirm this hypothesis of him which is: Do books with more reviews get better ratings?

Read more about it: Do books with more reviews get better ratings?

+find a 3-d image to perfectly show how the relationship occurred between the books’ average ratings, the text reviews count and the ratings count.

What might there be interesting or not to miss to read

In this world there is so much to read. I just have no time enough to read everything which might catch my interest. I also know there are certain articles and books which certainly deserve my and your attention.

We can help to bring more eyes to such interesting writings, be it articles and books for adults but also for children.

On the net we may find lots of interesting writings from people who write about the things they have experienced. Lots of people bring a self-reflection, and share a view on their self-awareness. Many also give their thoughts about society and social issues.

Some also mention they would love to find like-minded people or want to share their thoughts. With “From Guest Writers” there is a place for many guest writers, people who do not mind sharing their ideas, be it musings, poetry, thoughts about our way of living, criticism, reviews, etc..

Martijn Scheijbeler, currently VP Marketing at RVshare RVshare, wrote blog posts (2019, 2018, 2017 & 2016) listing the books that he read in the past year and that he wanted to be reading during that year. Problem with him, as with me, is to find time to read all those books one wants to read.  He confesses,

As always, the past year I didn’t read all the books that I’ve listed out in the blog post as I discovered some new ones and changed my focus on some others. But I did read a lot, as I finished ~25 books (and put two books aside that weren’t worth finishing). {What books am I reading in 2020?}

Saadia Peerzada is one of those many bloggers who

Hope to help people, let them know that all emotions are valid and necessary, they are pointers to where we should or shouldn’t go. {About}

She always had a special place for books written for children, be it the unassuming descriptions, marvellous adventures, vivid descriptions of the country and food or the lessons that many adults seem to have missed out on. As parent and later as grandparent we are confronted by bringing something inspiring to our kids and grandchildren, which we do hope can give them some lessons for life. Peerzada presents a list of 10 such books that have brought not only her sustained joy (10 Children’s Books that will bring you Joy).

We would love to find such writers who also could present our readers such lists and reviews of stories to be known and read.

Are you an avid reader? Do you think there is something interesting to read? Let it be known to us and our readers.

Help us to build up a “Readers Digest”.

a Path to explore more

When I started with this website, I wanted to share common thoughts or give similar minds an extra open door to reach others, as well as to present a selection of websites, blogs and writings I thought (and think) worthwhile reading or looking at.

For years on all my websites I also presented a “Related” articles list, to give my readers other opportunities to find more writings on the subject. After the many complaints having linked to their article, and having to search for placed links I was asked to remove, from this year onward, I stop to invest time looking for related articles, investing time to read them for after approval, placing links after the posted articles. Now much more time shall come available to publish more articles which are in unison with my thoughts and not bringing readers away from my own sites. (From the statistics more readers from this site went looking at the mentioned site, than receiving readers from the linked site.) At the same time on my websites I shall not any more bringing people to websites which are against me or my beliefs.

After giving all my energy to the world of dance my body could not fit any more the physical world of exuberance and graceful unlimited mobility. Having reached a certain age where they consider a human being not able enough to give enough to the world, I was made redundant, considered to be part of the ‘third age’ group.
First having been very disappointed by the way I was treated, the first two years I did not want to do much with ballet or theatrical dance. Not having to work full time for our living, receiving retirement fund, I could spend more time to my church work. My religious activities started even taking so much time I had less time to write at my own personal blog. (Because pensions not enough to survive I still have a few days a month I work for my living.)

I feel blessed that I am allowed to work at three Bible translations, even when it might consume also a lot of time and lots of thinking-work, being it a seriously very faithful responsibility, not to add or change anything in the saying or purpose of the original words supplied by God. Therefore, those translations in Judaic Dutch (Yiddish Dutch or Flemish), with the eye of two (or three) different groups (namely a Jeshuaist, a Jewish and an Orthodox Jewish public) is and shall be a time-consuming job with lots of thought and consideration).

This does not take away that I would have lost my interest in humanity and how man treats other people, animals and plants. I even became more active, spending also time in meetings concerning our way of life, necessary political actions a.o..
I must admit at meetings and conferences I seem to belong to a minority who strive to get unity in Europe, with some liveable world for everyone. Convinced we have to do something against this capitalist greedy world which does not show respect to the gross of people, animals and plants, I keep going strong and letting my voice being heard.

From  the moment I got retired I did not stop to seek a connection of like minds, to share common positive beliefs, and to be able to learn from each other about how to live life to the fullest.

Jonathan Hilton seems also on such a track. He writes:

Even when things don’t go as we plan, we all know no matter how hard we plan, life will throw us curve balls designed to engender growth. Our lives are defined by the lessons we learn at this moment and the way we handle ourselves. {Mind Connections}

Raising his level of consciousness has become Jonathan Hilton’s passion in life.

and understanding that when I follow and focus on certain core principles in my life and live in alignment with them, things go well. {Mind Connections}

He writes on the opening of his blog Mind Connections, admitting:

When I fall off, and my focus isn’t so sharp, then things are not so pleasant. Conscious thought about where my attention goes allows all of my energies to flow in that direction. {Mind Connections}

With the knowledge that each viewpoint may bring a different set of emotions, a different thought process, and a different reality to the perceiver it only can be enriching to share thoughts and to get to know more people from all over the world and getting to know how they manage to make the best of their life.

We have little control over the perceptions of others, but we may not forget that when we utter our ideas, share our thoughts, we might bring others to other ideas too.

How often do we not wonder if what we are doing is or would be right? How often do we not wonder if we should openly write what we think or if we should write in ways and words others would love to hear? I always have been a bad one at that. By creating my ballets I did not mind criticising the way our society was moving. I never tried to be popular by my creative works. [Choreographing fashion shows was a totally different matter, there I tried to bring the customers to find a connection in a future world to form. (We always had to be seasons ahead, manipulating the fashion trends – and yes, there stimulating human desires of consumption.) There it was also part the business to know beforehand what others would love to wear and see. ] In such way I also kept busy to try to find out what others would like to see and read.

On the surface, it is a simple choice, but in reality, it is a constant battle, {Life is a Mirror}

Hilton notes.
According to him

There is only a short time allotted to each of us to write the story of your life and with that time, we are tasked with a lot of things to accomplish. You have really only one life to get things right and sing the song that you want to sing. {The Story of Your Life}

We can try to make our dreams so compelling, that we will that we can’t wait to work on them, because waiting to experience them, in reality, is too painful. Often it is that enthusiasm which gets us to be restless and gets us up in the middle of the night to scribble something down or even to write certain texts.

A difficulty might be to:

Tune your enthusiasm to the size of your goals and attack it like your story depends on it because it does. That is how you write the story of your life. {The Story of Your Life}

At this blog I want to give, as many people as possible, the opportunity to share their thoughts which they and I find interesting enough to think about. I keep chasing my dreams that we can find enough people all over the world willing to bring others to see how we have to be careful which way of life we want to choose. As a Christian I also would love to see more people sharing the faith in One God and in His Gift and Good News of the coming Kingdom.

Once more, I dare to invite people to join us to share positive thoughts, but also to bring warnings how to tackle ecological and other problems.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, for becoming a part of joining hands across this globe.

A great five-minute “film” from Bianco, a Danish shoe brand

Receiving followers of my personal blog, it gives me also more possibilities to find writers from all over the world who have something good to contribute or giving others possibilities to discover other things.

Today I found my way to a

“Husband, dad, brother, uncle, nephew, friend, teacher, ex-swimmer, blogger, vegan, juggler, learner, introvert”

and as such someone who many more people could fit this cultural stereotype. As a “60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it” he does not mind going into minds of others or showing what others might think and feel. Doing that he gives us the opportunity to have some nice feeling coming over us. Sometimes he even might write a post he had not planned. {The 18 Uses for Dr. Bronner’s Amazing Soap}

I am not so good in following the fashion world any more (though I must admit I also made my way of living of it by choreographing fashion shows in the past). We should not be afraid to know presents brands, soon our children or grandchildren may let us know about them or give it to us. {The 18 Uses for Dr. Bronner’s Amazing Soap}. Mr. Jim Borden may always be looking for something to write about,

it almost became a necessity to proactively go out into the world and do things or to simply observe more closely what is going on. {Writing Is a Symptom of Thinking}

The blogger may know that the essence of Wheeler’s Which is that the customer should always be given a choice between something and something, not a choice between something and nothing. {What in the World Is Wheeler’s Which}

Good to notice that last year, the company Bestseller made great strides towards sourcing 100 percent more sustainable cotton and made a significant commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions plus revealed plans to build its own solar power plant. More: Fashion FWD seems to be Bestseller’s ambitious strategy that will make sustainability central to its way of doing business. Bestseller wants to do its part to transform the fashion industry for a sustainable reality. It’s the right thing to do and it also makes good business sense.

There you can get shoes of Bianco, which was founded by René Piper Laursen in 1987 with a vision of developing an international brand based on a profitable franchise concept. Bianco tells its customers that it offers fashion-forward footwear with sublime international standards and at an affordable price to a wider audience of women and men. Bianco is represented in more than 100 retail stores (a mix between own stores and franchise) and wholesalers in Scandinavia. I must confess I do not know if they succeed to make great shoes, pumps, stilettos, trainers, hi-tops, boots, bootees, ballerinas and other cool accessories like bags, belts, clutches, scarves and jewellery, but for sure I was pleasantly surprised when by the article of Mr. Borden I could enjoy one of their “spectacular ad campaigns”.

Lovely to see they dare to touch social strings.

He presents a film of the Danish shoe brand, part of Bianco’s “Step Out of Your Head” campaign and gives their description of it from the campaign web site:

In this year’s campaign, we’re encouraging you to silence your worst critic, yourself. Most of us tend to let our thoughts run away with us, and let our insecurities take hold. But by giving our inner thoughts its time in the limelight, we might inspire a more positive way of thinking about ourselves.

He too had never heard of Bianco before watching this video, and he also would not have known that it was a footwear company based on watching it. {Falling in Love on a Lift} (Though when they look down at their feet one could perhaps notice the Product Placement – and by law in Belgium it should have the PP logo in the right corner when screened publicly.) (- On the video there is no PP-logo, so viewers might stay in the dark. -)

I loved the short film.

In any case it is by such findings and people writing about their explorations we too can find some other worlds and interesting things to see. Therefore, now my turn to introduce you to Mr. Borden his blog and the Bianco film. Please do enjoy his trying to figure out the world, and his place in it.

Borden’s Blog

Falling in Love on a Lift