Things
 Tings

click to return home
 
 
 
about my favourite stuff - links, people, places and obsessions
    
 
   
 
Its called “things” not because I’m lazy and couldn’t think of a better word, or because I wanted an alternative to “stuff” or “favourites” (although those are pretty good reasons), but because THING is a Humpty Dumpty word.
    
 

Why is “things” a Humpty Dumpty word?

Two chief reasons:

 I'm grateful to Prof John F.A. Sawyer for introducing me to Humpty Dumpty’s importance in the study of words and their uses
       
  Firstly, most of the time “things” is used in a dull way to refer to what we mistake for “lifeless objects”, artefacts or scenery, stuff you can pick up or put down ... mere inanimate matter. But “things” refers to things that have a secret life. They aren’t only acted on, they also act. They work on us. They play a part in making the world what it is. We might need to talk about “object persons” or discuss a “new fetishism” and consider that animists may know the world better than modernists.
See my animism website for more on this.
  
     
  Secondly, “Things” is the name given by the Anglo-Saxons to meetings where people (perhaps not yet all the people) discussed issues and made decisions. “Things” were assemblies of interested persons. You could look at books about Anglo-Saxon history, politics and social systems, but a much more exciting approach would be to see what Bruno Latour and company make of this use of “things”.   Tings
       
  Perhaps these two uses are not so far apart ... After all, we are often (usually?) treated as “mere things” by those who rule and those who sell and those who own and those who advertise.  

rant rant!
     
  So, this assembly of links and rants and introductions and ideas and recipes and photo-essays and so on gathers together things of importance to me, things that have constructed me and, I think, the world I inhabit.    
       
  So, here for a start are gatherings of    
       
  places - links and photo essays about some places of importance to me    
       
  festivals - photo diary of seasonal festivals, starting with Samhain 2005    
       
  books - just a few of the books I think are important, inspiring, fun, useful, provcative or something    
       
  cats - about Sappho and Solomon. But mostly its a record of Solomon's diet!!    
       
  I propose to add stuff about people, events ... and whatever else takes my fancy.    
     

 

last updated 24 August 2007