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I went to the press conference when the exhibition opened and shared some photographs on our Munich Artists Facebook Page.  Now the exhibition is getting ready to close and I would love for you to run over to the Haus der Kunst and see the cells before they move on to their next destination.

If you don’t know this artist, here is a link to Louise Bourgeois’s Wiki page.

Louise Bourgeois structure of existence: Cells

If you hate going to Munich museums by yourself, I will be going with another Munich Artist tomorrow at 1000.  Just email me beforehand and you can meet me at my studio at Frauenstrasse 18. The cost of the exhibition is 12 Euro.  I have a yearly pass to the museum which is 50 Euro. (BUT don’t get a discount at the bookstore. The museum said I was lucky enough to get the 50…

Poetry is a house with many rooms and so, rightly, is criticism. David O’Hanlon-Alexandra’s ‘New Defences of Poetry’ project, now available on its own website here, marked the bicentennial of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s essay ‘A Defence of Poetry’ by inviting defences of poetry today and received an appropriately diverse and challenging range of responses. I was very glad to have a piece included.

David’s introduction says everything I would want to say and more about why criticism, poetics, whatever you want to call it, is so important today. It is also generous survey of the ‘defences’ themselves, which are a treasure trove. There is a great deal to think with in there and I was humbled, frankly, to be in the same store as so many poets/critics I always look forward to reading. In the spirit of David’s call for the project to be a spark for further discussion…

Abandoned cars are a feature of the landscape in Shetland. This one is in the initial stages of decay.

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Here is another abandoned car:

Sometimes the fastest way to get somewhere when walking in Tokyo is to make your way through the alleys between the major streets.

During my last trip to Tokyo I had been out sightseeing with a retired colleague. I parted with him at a subway station so that he could make the long trip home by rail, and I headed off by foot to my hotel.

I thought about which way was the quickest way back to the hotel. By major streets I would have to walk past where my hotel was and then angle back toward it. However, I knew some of the alleys in the area and knew I could take a shorter path. Besides, I knew that I would have a scenic walk.

You can see that I had to descend down into the residential area here. A lot of the major streets may be very flat…

Here is Burrastow House near Walls on the West side of Shetland. It was built in 1759.

One of the delights of the house is that it has been adapted over the years. Here is a view from the vegetable garden. You see the different roof levels.

The white curved area on the left is a segment of the polytunnel. The grey circular item is the oil tank. Above that, the small circle is the satellite dish. I like the way you can see right through two windows, in the room on the top right of the picture.

Here is a view from the garden near the driveway.

While I was drawing this, a Jaguar…