Tag Archives: solstice

Happy Solstice

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How well do you know Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? I have to admit straight off that I really think of this as the Shrek song.

There’s a BBC test, based on there being (at least) two top twenty Christmas number one contenders singing the same song.

Leonard Cohen’s ironic and mournful Leonard Coheniness seems to have been completely obliterated in the current overblown version by the winner of a some TV Pop-Idol-Celebrity-X-factor or whatever contest. (I think that I’ve given you a clue to the last question there.) It’s now rapidly becoming an item of Christian pomp-rock. Maybe it’ll soon fit into the Exterminator’s mother’s collection of Christmas songs written by Jews.

I’ll let you go to try the test now. “Do you know your Hallelujahs?”

Stonehenge and Photoshop

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It has been a while since I posted some quick edit photographs here, so I will try to make amends. These are two photographs of Stonehenge (World Heritage site in Wiltshire) I took in December when the ground was frosty and the visitors were thin on the ground. I have pushed them through a variety of Photoshop filters to create the additional effects:

Stonehenge in the Winter Photograph with Poster Effect Stones in shadows Stones in shadows - greyscale Stones in shadows - greyscale with added sepia overtone and blue overtone on sky.

On an additional note, in addition to massive visitor numbers, Stonehenge is often inundated by “druids” and new-age hippies in the summer, come the cold weather and they are noticeable by their absence. For some reason the idea that Stonehenge is a “summer” monument.

I can understand, say, 50 years ago, people thinking this but surely almost all modern studies point to any religious significance of this site being focused on the midwinter solstice?

I should point out, there are die-hards who turn up for the midwinter solstice – even if they don’t know what the correct date is – but no where near the scale of the midsummer one.

Maybe modern people just cant take the cold as well….

[tags]Stonehenge, Photographs, Pictures, Images, Photoshop, Image Effects, Black White, Sepia, Megaliths, English Heritage, National Trust, Wiltshire, Druids, Solstice, Midwinter, Midsummer, World Heritage Site, Religion, Stone Age, Cults, Culture, Society[/tags]