Maoist rebels have claimed responsibility for the murder of Saraswati and four of his followers, yet extremist Hindus have blamed Christians for the murder. The arrest of the two Christians would appear to justify the allegations of the Hindu reactionaries, yet this is still not the case.

While not denying the arrest of these two so-called Christians, the two are also closely connected with the Maoist rebels – a connection which demonstrates more correctly where the blame for Saraswati’s murder should lie.

However, should the blame rest entirely on the shoulders of the two arrested men and not with any other Maoist rebel whatsoever, then the blame would rest on these two men alone and not with Christianity itself. The actions of these two men, if indeed they are guilty of the allegations, is characteristic of behaviour that is not that of true Christianity, but is rather that of ungodliness – as is demonstrated in the behaviour of the godless thugs and terrorists who are currently persecuting Christians and others throughout India.

Should these two men be proven guilty of the murder of Saraswati and his four disciples, it will in no way justify the actions of extremist Hindus involved in assaults, rape, murders, threats, the burning of homes and Christian owned buildings, etc. If these two men are guilty they should face the consequences of their actions as outlined in Indian law, as should each and every Hindu who has participated in criminal behaviour over the last couple of months.

Reports from India indicate that a third person has also been arrested – most likely a Maoist with no interest in Christianity.

Situated in industrial hinterlands and run down suburbs, none of these temporary installations exist today, his photographic presentations remain their only record. As strange as it was to see work so similar to my own, I was obviously drawn to the inspirations for Matta-Clark's ideas.

Clearly influenced by the Situationists, it could also be argued that his works takes Situationist ideas a step further. By physically reordering the buildings, he implemented a seemingly anarchic view of architecture that he coined 'Anarchitecture'. He would buy up pieces of land that were overlooked and ignored by town planners for not fitting into their designs (officially described as curb or gutter property) - 'the waste products of the architectural process'. The destruction of each and everyone of these artworks highlights the continuous cycle of commercial architecture, demolishing old buildings and replacing them with new ones.

In relation to my own work, I struggled to see myself replicating anything like the large scale physical art of Matta-Clark, although it's certainly food for thought. I'm inspired however to look at structures in the virtual world and approach them in the same way that Matta-Clark looked architecture. In turn, I'm interested in drawing parallels between urban spaces and so called networked or computerised environments.

Are there similarities involved? What are the differences? Has the computerisation of society affected the way we perceive and use physical space and does our familiarity with this space affect our approaches to computerisation?

And it still has an Allders.   Bromley's Allders, where you could buy almost everything, became a giant Primark.  Croydon's goes from strength to strength.  Sometimes all you need is a shop with a really good haberdashery department.

Kretulescu Church - in the center of Bucharest, near Royal Palace - in a winter day.

This has been a fine week all around.

1. Film Feast

I went to a mess o' films at the EIFF (Edmonton International Film Festival).

Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Hard Core Logo) and Stephen McHattie, director and star, respectively, of the cerebral Canadian "vampire" film Pontypool.

Steve "Lips" Kudlow of the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil. Sacha Gervasi's documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil was a real charmer. I also liked Man On Wire about Philip Petit's guerrilla highwire walk between the twin towers in 1974, and the Spanish horror film [REC], a movie so wonderfully scary grown men were screaming like little girls.

2. Indian Summer

The weather has been wonderful - as nice a fall as you could ask for. As often as I could I walked downtown to festival screenings, about an hour each way through the river valley.

3. You can always go...

saturday farmer's market, 104th street

Downtown doesn't seem as desolate as it's been. I guess all the new condos are starting to make a positive impact with lots of new stores and services starting to pop up to meet the demand, and human activity taking place at street level.

I've  been taking pictures of my favourite downtown buildings. Above and below: The Federal Public Building, sort of a truncated art deco skyscraper.

It's been vacant since 1989 but it's being refurbished and will reopen in 2011.

Above and below: Free Masons' Hall.

4. Birthday Brunch

For Sandra's birthday we took her to the Santa Maria Goretti Community Centre for Sunday pranzo (lunch).

She looks amazed and appalled by my present.

5. Velvet Vahine

I found an authentic fake Leeteg black velvet painting at the Sally Ann for 5 bucks. If it was a genuine Leeteg it would be worth a few thousand, but it's an authorized copy, apparently painted in Japan in the 60s. I'm still happy - it will look nice in my home tiki bar (when I have one).

6. Up From Down Under

My niece returned from nearly two years in Australia. We took advantage of the good weather to hang around at outdoor cafes.

She took this picture of me that delights me so much I think I'll use it as my avatar for everything.

7. Moai-to-Eye

We discovered this flock (is that the collective noun?) of Moai at a landscaping place near my favourite Goodwill store.

That's all.

good advice

ourself and your kids to triker treating.

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Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri is a sprawling metropolis of 146,867 population (2000 census). Our daughter had a doctor's appointment at University of Kansas Medical Center in the heart of KC situated just about on the state lines. Daughter and I wandered around the unique small shops, taverns, and restaurants busy with people and vehicles surrounding the large campus and hospital. I didn't have time to photograph cityscapes of Kansas City. I had just enough time to capture some inner city scenes and shops.

{Click smaller photos for a larger view}

A window washer of the medical center's windows dangling up high.

Inside a used bookstore with books stacked every which way, and various intriguing paintings and prints hanging on the walls. Outside, a cast iron caldron of sorts filled with books which looked like a place to burn them. I haven't a clue. Broken mirror pieces of quotes from books glued to the side of the bookstore's brick wall.

A painted mural of a cityscape on a shop's brick wall.

A retro and collectibles shop.

Copyright © 2008 by Anna Surface. All Rights Reserved.

Another drawing of those houses by Hampstead ponds, this one done on bristol paper (no, that's not one of sarah palin's offspring); these buildings have a very hundertwasser quality, and I'm sure are very expensive (although possibly less expensive right now than before).

The last one I did, in my moleskine with a brown wash, is below. I'm leaving this one washless.

WARNING: Some of the scenes are extremely disturbing

Another nice old London church, another concert...

This was at St George’s Hanover Square, a fine 18th-century building designed by John James in 1721-24, with connections with George Frederick Handel.  Broad, handsome, light and spacious, it is a fine church and a great venue for music (...but MIND YOUR HEAD if you’re going to the loo :-( ...)

Wednesday’s lunchtime concert was part of the Midweek Music in Mayfair series, given by the BERKELEY ENSEMBLE, a chamber group formed from members of the Southbank Sinfonia – including my niece Rosie on bassoon.

They played two pieces:  Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, K581, and the Octet by Howard Ferguson (1908-1999) – surrealistically misprinted in the programme as ‘Maynard Ferguson (1928-2006)’, a jazzer who did indeed have an octet but didn’t write this one.

The Mozart featured John Slack on clarinet – one of the current breed of ultra-cool clarinettists, which is nice because he doesn't intrude when it isn’t his solo, but he seemed almost too laid back to the point of disappearance on occasion, and it took him a while to warm up to pitch (which is odd:  shouldn’t the strings have tuned to him?).  Oddly, the first violin, Tatiana Bysheva, also seemed to disappear at times, but that might just have been from where I was sitting.  Otherwise the strings provided a rock-solid support, warm, dependable and very pleasing – Rebecca Mathews on 2nd violin, Dan Shilladay on viola (relishing his ‘sighing’ moment in the second Trio of the Minuet:  I always imagine that this part was originally played by Mozart himself), and, above all, Gemma Wareham holding everything together from below with her authoritative (but discreet) cello playing.   [click here for biographies of the players]

I came away thinking (as always) ‘What a wonderful piece this is’, which was the right reaction!  The clarinet (as played in the 1780s and 90s by Anton Stadler) brought out the best in Mozart;  I can never quite work out whether the thematic unity of the Quintet is deliberate, or if Mozart just came out with the same thematic shapes whenever he imagined the sound of the clarinet.  Either way it makes for a most satisfying and tightly-knit experience.

Then the Howard Ferguson:  I have to confess I was expecting something typically ‘English’ and characterless, and of course I was agreeably surprised.  The opening has a bittersweet, acid-drop quality (think of the Forlane from Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, perhaps) – basically tonal harmony subverted by chromatic twists and turns.  At first I thought ‘Frank Bridge’, but my brother Tony said ‘somewhere between Finzi and Bax, which is a place I didn’t know existed’... The four movements do not disappoint, although the idiom varies at it goes along:  the slow movement is more conventionally tonal, but beautiful, and the Finale wanders off in the direction of Walton (big swoopy tune for viola and cello in unison), Britten (triadic string fanfares) and almost Tchaikovsky (a big horn tune) before the opening theme from the first movement comes round again.

A piece that definitely knows what it’s about:  great sounds, big-boned and very satisfying structure, very tricky to bring off, very well played.  It’s not special pleading to say that the bassoon has a particularly awkward part – difficult notes needing to be ‘joined up’ in angular but lyrical lines – but Rosie did a terrific job.  She was not helped, alas, by the clarinet’s diffidence once more;  I feel it really needed more leading from the front (incidentally, what an awkward line-up this is:  clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet and double bass – the model is of course the Schubert Octet).  The players sat in a rather confrontational layout:  string quartet in a line facing the three wind players and some distance away, with the double bass almost as a mediator between them.  Perhaps they could shuffle a bit closer together?

But I really have no quibbles.  It’s a fascinating piece and they played it brilliantly. This time the first violin (Tatiana Bysheva) really stood out when required, as did all the strings with their various solos.  The horn player was the apparently imperturbable Paul Cott – always spot on, big solid tone but careful not to drown the others.  A very nice way to spend a lunch hour.

And so, in the evening, to Cadogan Hall and the ECO, who gave us the most fabulous performance ever (which is saying something) of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, K364, with Stephanie Gonley on violin and the amazing Lawrence Power on viola.  But that’s another story...

I have christened Lawrence Power ‘the Bryn Terfel of the viola’ – and explained to him that it’s meant as a compliment!

This is one of the gateposts that used to say, left and right, "Couper Street School".

This is the house: it used to be the janitor's house for Couper Street School, which no longer exists. The bell is from the school days.


This is the garden: small, inside high walls, but sheltered. Cosy seems an odd word to use about a garden, but the right one for this: in the corner of the photo, you can see the beginnings of the new extension's sedum roof.

The garden used to be bigger, but a large part of it is occupied by a new extension, with copper cladding on the walls. (You can just see the extension from Coburg Street: I took a photo earlier in the year.)

The first clue that this isn't just an architect's design being shown off: on the decking and inside the front hall, visitors have been asked to take off their shoes. This is a family home that we have been invited to wander round.

It's not a large house inside: it would be just one room, sitting-room and open-plan kitchen, but built across the room from one corner to the other is a kind of mezzanine floor (can you say mezzanine when there's no floor above it?) edged with a balcony, decorated with ivy.

Looking down from the balcony makes you better appreciate the proportions of the room and the windows:

The upper floor was reached from the ground floor by a beautiful spiral staircase...

...mundanely, with a baby gate at the top.

I liked the ceiling lights, too:

The inside of the extension is still a work in process: you can see the bones of the house here.

About Mehregan Celebration

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/80sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:1600 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/50sec, Apreture:F/5, ISO:800 @ 23mm

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Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/160sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:1600 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/80sec, Apreture:F/5, ISO:800 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/80sec, Apreture:F/3.5, ISO:800 @ 23mm

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Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/40sec, Apreture:F/5, ISO:800 @ 36mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/60sec, Apreture:F/5, ISO:800 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/80sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:400 @ 25mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/60sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:1600 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/60sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:1600 @ 17mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/60sec, Apreture:F/4.5, ISO:1600 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/100sec, Apreture:F/3.2, ISO:1600 @ 17mm

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Part of October is being devoted to various sceneries shot whilst on photowalks this summer in Europe. The two images above were captured in a small village about 10 kilometres from the south west coast in Cyprus.

I found both scenes were custom of the surroundings and show a typical alleyway and presentation of this type of shot. All shot handheld with the D3 with a 24mm - 70mm Nikon f/2.8 lens and after initial development in Lightroom 2 were sent over to CS3 as a smart object for some filter adjustments and contrast tweeking. I am working on some other images of similar nature and will post them when completed. A small post today as I am currently working on a module for the course I am completing. Images will be posted shortly of the ones that made it to the final print.

Here's an interesting British concept: fuel poverty. Defined as households that spend more than 10% of their income on fuel. I think this means electricity and natural gas, but not transportation, but it's not clear.

Fuel poverty is obviously a function of income, fuel prices and efficiency. As prices have been rising all over, this will become a topic of greater interest, in the UK and US--especially if we have a cold winter and high heating oil prices.

BBC reports that about 3.5 million households in the UK were in fuel poverty in 2006 (not sure why there is such a data lag--it would be nice to see more recent data, with electricity prices in UK risiing). That about 15% of the 24 million households in the UK.

I wonder what the US data would show?