In the clouds....

The final week of CCL Learn the second wave. I'm desperately trying to get back on track and have launched myself into the clouds. Jane and Darryl both found this module very interesting and so have I. It is similar to the material I covered in Digital Technologies through Victoria University and MLIS but with the added bonus of no Philip Calvert to drive me insane. Anyway as always I digress....LibraryThing has become a bit of an obsession for me lately and I can see it being very beneficial both as a personal and professional tool. I like the idea of keeping an online reading log and being able to rate and tag items. I also find other people's reviews and ratings fascinating. As a professional tool it has many possibilities: author suggestions for 'If you like" reading lists, searching tags for titles (fiction is notoriously under-catalogued) sharing reading lists with colleagues etc.

Framed

This isn't the clearest photo ever, Ronald Hackston took the pic and is no David Bailey, but it shows a Seventeenth century gravestone from a Kirkyard just across the road from my Mumsey's house. She lives in Cupar a small Scottish town in the Kingdom of Fife. I went to school in Cupar and lived there for several years yet had absolutely no appreciation whats so-ever of its history or architecture.

This gravestone fascinates me as it represents the final resting place of two heads and a hand removed from Coventantor martyrs. Laurence Hay and Andrew Pitulloch were hung in Edinburgh's grassmarket and then beheaded. David Hackston of Rathillet had both his hands cut off, was hung but cut down while still alive before being disemboweled and having his heart removed. Their deaths and dismemberment was designed to act as a warning to others and various parts of David Hackston were deposited around Scotland to further reinforce the message that resistance to Episcopalianism was futile. The moral of the story, don't murder Bishops and don't mess with the Scots, we are a blood thirsty race.
I like the uncompromising and graphic representation of the heads and hand. Even everyday gravestones from this period in Europe had quite grisly imagery of skulls, crossbones, sands of time and interment tools. All quite different to the angelic scenes on Victorian graves.
I couldn't link this image to Flickr as I haven't joined up with Flickr and don't have a Yahoo account but I am getting the gist of it all I think....well maybe.
Toodle-pip