in honour of our patron..

today is the birthday of the lovely dr angelou
she is now 78 years old

when i was eleven or twelve, and was a total geek, the school librarian, upon seeing my distress at having no further books left unread in the library, handed me a book named 'i know why the caged bird sings', by said lady

it was the first book i had ever read that made me feel sick, made me laugh, made me cry, made me lose sleep, made me not rest until i had it read, made me want to thank the person who had written it.

if you, dear readers, have come this far in your lives having read none of her books, please come round to my house and borrow one...i have all of them,. they are many. if you live in a foreign country, i will send you one of your very own, should you wish.




i am sorry again for such a lapse in posting..i wish i had been busy doing exciting things and had some thrilling tales to tell you all, alas..they would have to be made-up stories! i am well, unemployed, which is mildly scary, but have been having a lovely few days of no work, learning how to dream and hatch plans again, after the dream amnesty of 2005.

i am not going to be studying the law, god has moved me on from that particular idea..praise him

am learning lots and thinking lots about community advocacy, about the city, about neighbourhoods and the issues facing cities, especially this fine one of ours...

had been thinking through all those things for only about a week, maybe ten days, when i happened upon a course at manchester metropolitan university. it is named MA in European Urban Cultures. it is amazing and i kind of do this strange gasping thing when i read the pages about it. which i do often. its one of those things that you look at and then think, god, god, god, let me pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaassssseeee!!!

it is a rather sharp detour/diverion/something else, from what i have thought of doing before, until you really think about it....

imagine being an advocate for a city, and for cities in general. imagine being someone who in ten years' time can really have knowledge and heart wide and deep enough to be able to speak to those running the great cities of europe, maybe even talk to them about what it means to love the place. to really love it, to give to it, invest in it, and dream for it and with it...


i don't know guys, it doesn't make much sense to me either, and i'm nervous about even writing this much. it sounds dumb. but i'm enjoying the idea, and i'm reading lots...went to urbis today to look and think...felt like a field trip.....am sketching things in my head, rough outlines of what job it could be in the end.....and at the same time, thinking about what job am i going to do next week.......

it will probably all pass, in favour of yet another new idea, almost certainly....i don't want it to this time though.....it such a pretty idea in my head....and i'd get to live in helsinki for three months.....god god god plleeeeeeeeaaaaaseeeeeeeee