Category Archives: Postcards 2023

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The appearance of an artist with a typewriter

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Today was one of those days that just ambled around itself, caught between sunshine and rain – the kind of day where you try to shut out the news and concentrate on what has to be done.

All was going reasonably well until I looked out of the window and saw someone crouched over a typewriter, and a long ream of paper. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing but could not. The pavements were still wet and the sky grey and cold, but the artist continued, head bowed and focused intently on the building in front of them, their fingers hitting the keyboard and the paper rolling out of the typewriter towards the floor.

Who were they? I have since discovered – typewriter artist Keira Rathbone. Seeing them at their work, so comfortable and at ease with what they were doing, restored my faith in humanity. The bright, creative, surprising side of life, still feels alive and well.

If you would like to see more of the work done by the typewriter artist, here’s a little more about her.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Shakespeare’s First Folio turns four hundred

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The volumes in the photograph above have nothing to do with the First Folio but they are Shakespeare, and just one of the many editions of his work that have been published in the four centuries since the First Folio came to be. The Folio, the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, was produced seven years after he died.

I haven’t read much Shakespeare, in fact I haven’t read any voluntarily. School required us to read A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, and Macbeth but they made little sense to me in sub-Saharan Africa.

Since then I’ve travelled a bit, learned a bit, and even attended a talk by Germaine Greer on Shakespeare’s wife, Ann Hathaway. Germaine Greer’s viewpoint was fascinating, disrupting previous opinions with some awkwardly possible ones of her own about the role and influence of Shakespeare’s wife. She also suggests that Ann Hathaway might have been involved in the production of the First Folio.

As for the plays in the First Folio, I remain way too ignorant of them but a few days ago I came across this clip of Dame Judi Dench reciting a Shakespeare sonnet. Her delivery was like a candle lighting in my Shakespeare dark.

Here it is. It’s very short, and ends with a brief Arnold Schwarzenegger appearance.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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24 Hours in Charlottesville by Nora Neus

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An Oral History of the Stand against White Supremacy

This took me right inside an event I knew very little about – the stand against the right-wing and white nationalist groups who joined the ‘Unite the Right’ rally at the Lee statue in Charlottesville in mid-August 2017.

The viewpoints in this oral history are gathered from hours of interviews with officials, faith leaders, students, activists, journalists and more – all of them involved either on the ground, or overseeing the rally. Their voices mix defiance with regret and fear, and anger with disbelief that such an event could happen and did happen in their city. Also included are brief excerpts from the media and official reports. White supremacists are not interviewed.

On the day the park is surrounded by members of heavily armed militia groups and the National Guard, each looking much like the other. Counterprotesters, including robed clergy, enter the park. Some of them are singing. Next come the white supremacist groups carrying shields and banners, and wearing helmets. The police stand by watching. They take no action even as the event erupts into mayhem and injury. Some three hours later a state of emergency is declared and the park evacuated. Sadly this is not the end of the fighting, nor of the marching. Then comes tragedy.

I found it a gripping account – an insight into an America I did not know, and a reminder of how quickly things can get out of control … and of how brave you have to be to take a stand.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023