zaterdag, mei 15, 2010

 

Newly added links

(Daar er verwezen wordt naar buitenlandse/internationale sites en blogs, is deze post in het Engels) As there are some foreign/international sites and blogs mentioned here, this post is in English. Most pictures are from the mentioned sites and blogs.

It is about time to ad some new links in the side bar of this blog .

It’s already nearly two years ago I wrote about the Thunderbirds. Well I guess that is what happens with youth sentiment. In that article I mentioned a website which contains almost everything you always wanted to know about the Thunderbirds in particular and supermarionation in general. The site is made with great care and love and is in English.

For those who hate modern pop music which is hardly good enough to musically decorate a shopping mall with, or which is too monotonous to inspire you, dj Casper on The Hague Radio Tonka had a program for some months with more or less golden oldies. The programmes lasted an hour each and were full of music that may sound familiar or is completely unknown to you. You can still enjoy the music as for the time being the programmes can be heard on this site. Let it make your day!

And now for something completely different: do you plan to have a camping holiday in Spain, particularly in Asturia? In that case it might be interesting for you to keep an eye on this website. Astrid and Thomas are good friends of your Villa and Thomas even had an exhibition in Villa La Repubblica. Now they are trying to organize a campsite. For Dutch readers who want to follow the activities of the couple on a regular and detailed basis there is a blog here.

As regular readers of this blog (and especially of Van niets naar nergens) know, your Villa editor has a special relationship with Africa. Especially Zambia and Zimbabwe feature regularly in the Van niets naar nergens series.

For those who might be interested in Zambian news features, politics and economic and social development there are now two links to Zambian blogs in the side bar. The first is Zambia News Features which just brings you the news. Being used to postmodern populist politics and/or politics of the big mouth here in Western Europe it is interesting to read about the recent return from hospital of the Zambian vice president. In another development you can also read how Dutch do gooders are allegedly compromised in Zambia.
The other Zambian blog – Zambian Economist, run by Chola Mukanga, in spite of its title a very readable and interesting blog - is quite critical about the running of affairs in the country. It is interesting to compare the articles of both blogs. E.g. read about the widow of the late president Mwanawasa here in Zambia News Features and read a comment about that here in Zambian Economist.

As for Zimbabwe, you might find it interesting to see what is happening in that country as seen by a critical blogger in Zimbabwe itself. Denford Magora states the facts and gives his opinion about them. There seem to be very few Zimbabwean politicians who can do any good in Magora’s eyes, which is probably not that strange in a country which doesn’t seem to have any major politician with any charisma. Or maybe there is no place for political charisma as long as Mugabe is in charge.

On a brighter note, if you want to keep in touch with artistic events in Africa click to Africa Colours and take a regular look there. You find the link in the art & artists section in the sidebar. It tells you all about exhibitions of African works of art in Africa and elsewhere. Also festivals in Africa are announced and African artists are highlighted. The site covers Africa including the African Mediterranean countries.

Talking about Africa, Villa readers know your editor is a keen bird- and game watcher. Where else could you do that better than in Africa? Lynda is a zoologist studying dwarf mongoose in the South African Lowveld. She is living out in the bush in between nice and cuddly creatures like snakes, toads, spiders and other creepy crawlies. She uses her blog as a kind of diary in which she not only tells you about the mongooses, but also about daily life in the African bush and her fascination with all aspects of it.

One of the most interesting blogs to follow about African wildlife photography is Photo-Africa by Gerry van der Walt. (picture right: copyright Gerry van der Walt) On an almost daily basis he posts pictures of African game big and small, all taken in the wild. Your Villa editor enjoys them enormously as they remind him of experiences in the parks of Zambia and Zimbabwe, although Gerry is taking his pictures in South Africa. Now and then he also has a guest post e.g. this one by Karine Aigner who made some really breathtaking pictures about African wild dogs. I’ve seen these fascinating animals in the 1980’s in South Luangwa, Zambia (when they were still there), but from Aigner’s pictures you can almost sense the smell of them. But also take a look of Gerry’s own pictures which are sometimes very atmospheric, like these spotted hyenas in the mist on a wet African road in a cold and wet African morning.

Enough about Africa. An extremely interesting site for poetry and spoken language lovers is http://lyrikline.org/. Poets from countries as near as your own or as far as Japan read their own poems, while you can read the same poem in suitable translation. Listen for instance here to Basque poet Kirmen Uribe reading his poem about the cuckoo and click on es, de or en to read the Spanish, German or English translation. Or listen to the great Hugo Claus reading his poem about West Flanders.

In the arts section of links in the sidebar many artists have been added. I’ll probably introduce a few of them in a later post.

VLR

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  • 4 Comments:

    Blogger Claude said...

    Thank you, Bertus. Many of those sites (African Arts, Broadcast Music, Lyrikline) will be great to explore. How would I have known that a German poet (Armin Sensor) wrote a poem about Canadian Glenn Gould's connection with Bach? My favourite pianist and my favourite composer!!!The French translation is very acceptable.

    zaterdag 15 mei 2010 om 02:34:00 CEST  
    Blogger VLR said...

    Glad you like those sites Claudia! Don´t miss the wildlife photography.

    VLR

    dinsdag 18 mei 2010 om 00:47:00 CEST  
    Anonymous Gerry (Photo-Africa) said...

    Bertus, thanks a lot for adding a link to Photo-Africa! Greatly appreciated all your kind comments and humbled that you like the images on the site!

    dinsdag 18 mei 2010 om 17:01:00 CEST  
    Blogger Claude said...

    Thanks! I immediately added Photo-Africa to my chosen links. Magnificent! For me, much better than wild animals in a Zoo...

    dinsdag 18 mei 2010 om 18:13:00 CEST  

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