Flowers Plants Insects & Spiders

This is a new group dedicated to photography of:

Insects, plants, flowers and spiders only.

The Landcapes Scenery And Sunsets Group

This is a new group dedicated to:

Landscapes, Scenery, Sunsets, Valleys, Hills, Mountains, Rivers, Seascapes, waterscapes, Cityscapes, Sunrises, Fields, Digital Art, Paintings, and Photo-manipulations are also welcome as well as just photographs.

As you may or may not know I have a flickr account on yahoo, and I've recently set up 2 groups for people to submit their work to and to get their work noticed and commented on, trouble is having only just set them up these groups now need members. I know at least one person with a new camera who might be interested in sharing her new photos with me *winks at Denise* the photography groups are for the genres listed above. Follow the link to join, it's free to join flicker anyway if you don't have an account and you don't need a pro account to submit photos.

You are all invited.

Part I

When I think of the trouble I have caused my family in the past, living recklessly and acting like a teenager, I have to say I'm embarrassed by my past actions. I guess it's all part of the process of growing up, but really there is no excuse for bad behaviour. Luckily most things have now been put right and myself and my family are are good terms again. Today is Fathers day and I wanted to get something extra special for him besides a cd he might like, I've ordered a book full of photos of him in his band when he was young as I know how much he loved and still loves his music and the fond memories they bring him. Trouble is it won't be ready until a few weeks time, but still, I can surprise him. I mean really why do we need a certain day set aside for family members, why can't we just surprise them with gifts on any day of the year? I mean surely it would be more interesting that way and more sincere.

I visited him last night and he showed me all his new gadgets for music creation which were rather impressive I must say, he's an inspiration to me and so is my mum. My mother nurtured my creativity when I was young and helped me make things, she still shows great interest in all my artistic endeavours. My father ever since I was a child has been very good at tuning me in to music and the in's and out's of creating it, now I write songs and play guitar myself. My creativity as a child has led onto other things too, like photography, a very intensive hobby I hope to turn into a career one day. I have a lot to be thankful for, and many of those thanks I owe to my parents.

I know not all people have good parents, but for those who do, my message would be not to abuse their kindness. At the end of the day your parents should be the best friends you'll ever have. They have a love that goes deeper than you can know for you and may be the only people you can ever truly and completely rely on to would support you through anything. I should know this, I've been through so much trauma in my life and the only ones who've ever pulled me back into the safe area have been my parents, and I've landed back on my feet each time thanks to them. There have been times when I can honestly say they have helped me out more than they should have done, because I don't feel I deserved their kindness given what a horrible person I was at the time. Yet I'm grateful they did show me that love, even when it meant tough love, because I would have had a far rougher ride without it.

Love your parents as they love you, they gave you the gift of life, and if they raised you and nurtured you right, you will know, time is precious, love is endless. Don't take for granted what you have.

Part II

So Fathers day has gone rather well, my dad enjoyed his CD of Coldplay and was blasting it out all morning around the neighbourhood, and then later we all had a lovely Sunday roast although mine was a quorn version of a sunday roast as I'm a vegetarian, my brother was there too. There were many hugs and kisses and my brother announced that in about five years time he want's to move to Australia, good luck to him, but I shall miss him terribly as I won't be able to afford to visit all that often at all. Whether this is a lifetime plan or just for a while I'm not entirely sure, but as and when he goes over there I hope things go well for him. Took a few pictures of family, but Mother didn't want her photo taken which was a pity. My father was trying for a mean and moody posing session but the truth of the matter was he was in a good mood and good spirits. You wouldn't know by the photos though. It's bean a very nice afternoon and was lovely to pay them all a visit.

As for the rest of the afternoon, I may look over the photos I took and then do some tidying up, my other half is coming over later, he didn't even get a card off his son. My step son to be that is. We still have to get prepared for his birthday, he wants a new computer for his birthday, so we'll be not too well off at the end of this month. Other than being rubbish at fathers day duties he's a good lad and as teenagers go he's pretty laid back, so I guess we have to count our blessings on those scores.

When I was a teenager I was horrible. I even annoyed myself, so what chance did anyone else have with me? I'm so glad I've grown up and got past all that nasty stuff now.

STOURBRIDGE MP Lynda Waltho has asked Libraries Minister Margaret Hodge to investigate after the News revealed thousands of the town's library books were removed from the shelves and binned in a skip. The Labour MP described Dudley Council's book-culling saga as "one step away from censorship and book burning".

And now, amid fears the removal of books is just the start of Dudley Council's controversial library modernisation plans, she has asked the Government's library chief Margaret Hodge to keep her eye on the situation -which comes nine months after the council rubber-stamped its unpopular proposal to close five of the borough's smaller libraries.

She told the News: "Not content with riding roughshod over the wishes of local people especially in Quarry Bank and Dudley Wood, we are now insulted with the binning of many thousands of well-loved, and useful texts.

"To hear staff are being instructed to throw away stock that is only a few years old just after the much-loved local archive has been taken from us has made many of us suspicious that the town library is being undermined ready for another bombshell to come."

Dudley Council claims the books were thrown away to clear the backlog resulting from a decade's worth of poor stock management - and has said there are no plans, either during or after the Crown Centre regeneration, to close or relocate Stourbridge Library.

Library bosses are also promising £8,000 worth of new stock for Stourbridge by Sunday June 22 and are extending the library's opening hours to include Sundays and later nights on Wednesday evenings.

Worried library users, however, remain concerned about the future of the Stourbridge the borough's busiest library - which has seen its user numbers drop by 50 percent between 1998/9 and 2006/7, according to research by Wall Heath councillor Dave Tyler gathered during his fight to save his doomed village library, which is set to close on Saturday June 21. Meanwhile Amblecote Library, based at Wordsley's Brook School, closes this Saturday (June 14), just two-and-a-half years after £50,000 of public money was spent on creating the facility for both the public and schoolchildren to use.

Head teacher Lynn Cartwright said: "It's very sad; it's closure of a really good up-to-date facility that could have been developed to the benefit of the local community. I think it's shortsighted."

She said the vacated library space would be used for new classrooms and the children's books from the facility would be donated to the school.

The above text was taken from the Stourbridge News June 12th 2008

The reporter was Bev Holder

In a previous report on this terrible waste of books, it was stated that many of the books were in top notch condition, my personal view on this is that it is disgusting to think that so many books got thrown in a skip when they could have gone to local charities book stores or schools. The humble book is a very important thing to people and to just waste information and the books containing them like that is completely stupid. Sure, we have the internet nowadays to look things up on but sometimes we need a good solid book to just pick up off the shelf for reference. Plus reading is fun and informative, it's one of the fundamental tools we have available to us to grow and learn from. I'm absolutely appalled by this news and to think that someone must have thought it was a good idea in the first place is even more ridiculous.

If given to local charities they'd go to a worthy cause and put money in the hands of people who could aid the community. If supplied to schools or colleges they would provide much needed information and aid the learning curves of their students, plus help save on some of the library costs of such institutions. If sold in a local book store they would at least end up in the hands of people who wanted that specific book and would cherish the texts plus they would serve the businesses well. I can't believe that the best idea they could come up with is to throw a load of books out into the rubbish tip. Just because a book may not have been borrowed from the library for a short period of time, doesn't make the book worthless, it simply means that in that library full of books the person who wanted to read it hadn't arrived yet. To someone at some point it may well be checked out for reference. To throw the books in the skip and render them worthless is simply denying a service to someone in the future. I'm so angry that this could happen. Beyond this words fail me.

Having struggled with depression for most of my adult life, I've become able to clearly mark periods of depression from simply bad days. Some people don't see much difference between the two they see a bad day or a bad mood as a period of depression. However a bad day has it's reasons for being a bad day, usually it is full of negative things and you can clearly distinguish why you might feel angry, upset or moody. With depression it's often quite different, there tends to be a major low mood that seems monotonous endless and often you cannot pinpoint why you feel that way. The one thing that is for sure, is that when depression, real depression hits, you feel unable to function at all. You feel tired, you see no future, every task is a major struggle even simple things, you close yourself off from life because coping with it it too difficult, your energy levels and motivation drop dramatically, you feel worthless, pointless, you may sometimes even feel anxious. It is a debilitating ans serious illness albeit considered mental and not physical. However physically it's hard to get yourself to do anything.

The only way to get out of depression I've found is to force yourself to do little things that need doing at a time and gradually increase what you do to bring your energy levels back up. Not an easy task at all, it also helps to be surrounded by good friends and family who could draw you out of yourself again. This may not be what you feel like doing, but if the company is the right sort of company it can help leaps and bounds. I've had times when even leaving the house felt uncomfortable and I chose to stay indoors for weeks on end rather than dare to step outside, nowadays I still get those feelings quite often but now I make excuses to go out that make me feel better. I might decide to go for a walk, but to do that I'll take along my camera to make the walk worthwhile, and when I get back I can then view the resulting photographs, therefore I don't just get out of the house, I award myself for doing so by having created something I can be proud of, more importantly than this though I have something to feel happy and proud about, because in depression these are the main things that are missing; self-respect, self-esteem, sense of worth.

On a 'bad day' you can still function, you may throw a strop and feel the world is unfair and mean, but you just can reach the end of the day knowing that tomorrow may be different. You may even reach the end of the day and feel you can laugh off what's happened to you. This is not the case in depression. It doesn't mean your sense of humour goes mind you, I've met many sufferers with wicked senses of humour, because it's a kind of coping mechanism. However once alone and behind closed doors the darkness one can feel can be so intense it may drive someone to harm themselves, some people see depression as just a name for a low mood, but the truth is it can be life threatening in severe strains when people feel so desperate and hopeless that they see no way to break free from the illness and/or life experiences that have caused the illness. Often thoughts of death become very welcoming in severe depressive cases. It's a terrible state of affairs to be in. To feel that death is the only cure and a permanent one, is the worst case scenario for anyone.

This is why I would like to draw a clear distinction between a bad day/mood, and depression. It's not to be sneezed at this is a serious illness and disability. People often don't see it that way who have not experience it. Often if there are no flesh wounds or broken limbs people fail to see the serious nature of the condition. In our society pills are dished out like candy more and more as a remedy for depression/anxiety and other mental illnesses, but my personal belief is that pills alone do not work, and a person needs encouragement, support, understanding, and also to help themselves to some degree if they're ever going to get better.

It can be a long and enduring struggle to get well again, and often depression sufferers can relapse later on. There is no guarantee that once cured you will always be okay thereafter. It doesn't happen that way. Some employers fail to understand that, if an employee is off work with depression they tend not to take it that seriously, and further more when the employee returns, if they return, they expect that like a case of the flu, they've got over it. The mind is complex and depression can have its triggers, in this life we are surrounded by negative situations waiting to happen, as many as positive ones. If we are particularly sensitive to a certain negative situation in our lives it can be a trigger, just as bad memories, a certain place, a certain person etc. Sometimes there is no cure for the cause of depression, and sometimes there is no cause as with clinical depression, where one is naturally prone to be depressed. I hate it when people tell you to pull your socks up and get on with life when you're feeling depressed, because it's not that simple at all. It may be what you need to do eventually, but one can only take it a small step at a time. There is no way you can simply forget how you are feeling and feel better in the blink of an eye; however it is important to suggest here that one should not give up trying to function normally either.

The problem with depression is the more withdrawn you allow yourself to be, the more withdrawn you become. The harder it is then to function at all. To force yourself against your depression to do a little bit and often does help to raise your self-esteem, energy levels and self worth. It may not cure you, but it will help you get by day to day easier. I know this because I've suffered with depression for a long long time, and if I didn't do this occasionally, I might not have seen today or I might have been hospitalised more often than I have been. I speak from the point of view of one who has experienced this illness first hand and also from the point of view of not wanting this illness to win me over. There have been times for sure that I've almost given in completely to this condition, but it's those times that have caused me to never want to get that low again. I write this on the basis of wishing to help people understand a little better about depression, and also to help others who are suffering with the condition to understand that pills alone are not a cure-all miracle.

So why have I been having sleepless nights and nocturnal tendencies? I've been busy building some books ready to publish at Blurb.com, I have constructed a whole entire poetry book and 3 photo books and hope in the near future to get a few copies, you can buy one or many, personally I want just a few copies of each for my own use, but you can sell books through blurb and earn the profit off the sales. Which may come in useful if I earn enough profits after a while to put towards a new camera. But the only rule is you must buy at least one copy of your book before making it available through blurb, Not a problem as I want copies anyway. They have this neat little program you can download for free called booksmart, which enables you to view your book page by page as you edit it and preview the entire thing from cover to spine to front and back page.

You can create all sorts of books with it, then when you're ready you upload your final design to blurb and start the purchasing process etc. I'm so far pretty happy with it as I'm not planning on buying a whole lot of books from it just a few of each I make for friends and family and myself of course, the ocassional gift if you like. So costs are not too bad bearing that in mind. I'm pretty happy so far with how the books appear in the program and hope to get some purchased in the near future to test drive the finished results. It all seems pretty cool to me anyway and I could use a portfolio for my photography and a copy of that book would be a nice start. If you're looking to self publish on a small scale like myself it may be worth looking at the site link above for further details. If you're mega rich you might want to bulk purchase and they offer that service too! But I'm not, so I'm starting small.

Anyone interested in purchasing my photography or poetry follow the link box at the top of this message!

Many a great artist has succeeded by not conforming to the normal, it may take some time to pay off and it pays off in ways that often don't make money, but it pays off within the soul far deeper than any amount of money could afford.

There are lots of jobs to be had if you wish to choose a soulless mindless sales job, but they don't pay well, you're expected to be robotic in your actions and words, wear a uniform and are never given a moments grace to feel the least bit emotional or creatively inspired. I hate that and refuse to give in easily to another dead end job with no prospects, little pay, no thanks and a whole lot of hard work that is never good enough for the manager’s profit margin.

You know; I'm sure, as well as I do, that within the human being there is so much more to work towards than keeping the boss happy.

We live in a society nowadays that needs its workhorses for the supply and demand of a greed that is running out of control. The world today is too busy in most parts ‘taking’, that they've forgotten the meaning of giving or caring.

The nature of depression, often for those who suffer from it, is something that comes and goes and places one on stand still when it comes, when it goes for a while we might seem to take life as a breeze, but then depression stops us in our tracks, it's like being on a roller coaster which has not yet been fully built we roll around quite merrily for a while and when we reach our highest point the track runs out and we get stuck in mid-air not knowing how to go back to safe ground or how to continue our journey. It takes a lot of hard work to roll back into a happy mood and feel capable of standing on our feet again.

I think that creative minds are often more apt to suffer depressive illness because our minds are so active, our bodies are not so, but all that mental stuff takes a lot of energy and wears us sometimes. But within the creative process there is much to be said of good energy being used for if people never were creators of things this world would be a pretty dull place.

Creation is useful and supports existence as much as it relieves the artistic mind of its need to constantly create and express its ideas.

To not be able to create is where the artist feels most dead. If you take away the creative flow the artist simply feels lost and confused, lifeless and void.

It is our purpose to create and we need to do that. Simple. Without creators, such as musicians the music shop would have nothing to sell, without artists to paint pictures, the galleries would be empty and we'd have nothing to hang on our walls etc.

Most people forget there was a tin can creator yet they eat out of them everyday for example. They don't see the artists all around them who make their very existence more comfortable and easy because they only see the workhorses and the greed factor.

Living itself is hard enough for an artist who has no outlet for their work as yet, but still the work we produce has it's meaning. Why should we compromise our life’s work for a whole lot of wasted time behind the cash till?

I think though there is some art that although it may have meaning and be very well thought out, symbolic even; it is not functional or practical in the every day life, so it fills up your average gallery and gets viewed but beyond that it has no real function except the function of being an art exhibit.

When people think of modern art; they are increasingly thinking along those lines, they tend to see past the everyday and traditional art 'as art' and more as an everyday commodity. People who buy an art piece from a shop don't think about who the artist or photographer was I mean, most the time they think oh isn't that pretty!

It's not for an artist to expect credit so much. It's more important the work is a credited for what it is ‘art’.

Artists have always been in the shadows of their work. However there is still the need to create and the demand for the creations...so where are the jobs? Most often; self-employed, or unemployed. Otherwise finding their way in something close to what they enjoy doing, I mean in photography for example it may be in wedding photography.

And yet still the results are all people care about, not the actions. That's life my dears! Sad but true.

Finally I got to the quit smoking clinic appointment today and came out with some nicotine patches, I haven't smoked a cigarette since last night and although I feel a little lost without them I feel good that I'm finally quitting the smokes again. It's been a tough few months since I started smoking again at Christmas time, because I felt I'd let myself down, after all I had quit smoking for a good year or so before I started again. Plus I was making up for lost time I guess because I was smoking more than ever. The early morning coughing has been no fun either. I do miss having a smoke to some degree but I know that if I'm successful in quitting like last time I won't really miss them too much after a while. The main thing is to not give in to temptation even once, because once you get a taste for them again it's pretty much guaranteed you'll get hooked again. It starts off with oh I'll have one occasionally then you have more than one occasionally and then it builds up to full packets per day etc.

I don't want that, I was perfectly happy without them for the time I wasn't smoking and that was quite some time...and I would like to feel that way again. I don't mind if other people want to smoke and they enjoy it, I'm a strong believer that if you want to quit you should only do it when you're good and ready and you have made up your mind to do so. No one should feel forced into quitting, because it won't/doesn't work.

I would recommend quitting however because you do after some time get to see the benefits of quitting smoking, such as more money in your pocket, fresher breath, more energy, less coughing, easier breathing, and not feeling pushed outside in social situations when you want a cigarette. You do feel healthier after a while and you don't miss smoking if you quit successfully for a long period of time, in fact the first cigarette you have if you try smoking ever again will actually taste disgusting, I mean after a while although you might not mind others smoking around you, the smell of the smoke won't seem so appealing when you've quit for a while. I know this because I've tried, and this time I hope to quit for good.

It's difficult to quit initially though, and you need a lot of will power even with nicotine replacement therapy.