Poppy Day

In November each year many people wear bright red paper poppies. What are the poppies for? And why November?

The First World War finally ended on November 11 1918. The guns stopped on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

To this day, almost 100 years later, at 11am on November 11 many people across Britain stay silent for two minutes to think about those who died.

At first, November 11 was known as Armistice Day because 'armistice' is the word used for an agreement between enemies to stop fighting. These days it is more usually called Remembrance Day or Poppy Day.

Poppies make a very good symbol for remembrance for several reasons. They were the only flower that grew easily on the battlefields after World War One. They're very delicate flowers too, that only live for a short time, which is rather like the young men killed in battle.

The color is important too because the fields of poppies look like fields of blood.

The Royal British Legion use money raised on Poppy Day and at other events through the year to help thousands of ex-soldiers and their families. They also organize festivals, parades and church services of Remembrance.

Rites of Passages

I would like to tell you a little bit about religion in UK.

I recently read an article where many Anglican clerics admitted that, regrettably, the only point of contact with their parishioners is the different rites of passage, such as marriages, deaths and, in a lesser extent, births. Vicars refers to them as “ hatchings, matchings and dispatching”.

Surprisingly, in surveys, up to 88 per cent of English people tick the box saying that they “belong” to one or another of the Christian denominations (usually the Church of England).

How can you explain this? According to the writer, the answer is the “Default-Religion rule” which involves choosing the Church of England as the less embarrassing option. By the way, there’s nothing the English hate more than a fuss.

Now, let’s look at Spain. It’s worth noting that, despite not fear the scandal as much as the English, the Spanish religious behaviour is similar to theirs.

If you ask me for the reasons, honestly, I only see this: the catholic religion, the majority in Spain, serves as support for events that could well be pagan.

To sum up, we are facing a crisis of religious identity that only will finish when people become more responsible about the true meaning of religion.        

the power of simplicity

The Dog is one of the so-called Goya’s  “Black Paintings”, the sequence of murals, usually with nightmarish subjects, that the artist painted on the walls of the Quinta del Sordo, a country house outside Madrid he occupied in the early 1820's. These murals were eventually detached, and ended up in the Prado Museum.

The picture's structure is minimal and non-specific. It is divided in two, an above and a below. The upper area is a pale golden yellow; the lower one is brown. The upper area fills most of the picture; the lower is a strip across the bottom with a slanting wavy edge. You could call the upper area sky, and the lower one earth.

You can see the dog as submerged in the lower area, buried in the ground, or swallowed up by something more liquid, like quicksand. It is stuck there, sinking, and is unable to extricate itself.

It raises its head, trying to keep itself "above water" but, the great empty gulf that towers above it only emphasises its helplessness.

Either way, it is a picture about bare survival in the face of hopeless doom. Whether the danger comes from below or from above, the picture tells us there is no escape. There is no way out of the drowning mire. There is no hiding place from the avalanche. This is the effect of its very elementary structure. The scene consists of nothing but an above and a below. Each is a source of dread, and the little dog is caught between them.

And the fact that we see only the dog's head, and nothing of its body and limbs, further reduces its chances of escape. It is deprived of any sense of movement or action. It is only a head, a consciousness, lost in a universe of terrors, afraid for its life.

Goya's The Dog