Information Country

If you want a town that offers you a little bit of everything, visit Lucca. It is located in Tuscany in central Italy. Located on stream Serchio in the Province of Lucca, it has abundantly rich soil for growing various plants and foods. The town has many celebrations and holidays which makes it simple to discover how crucial Lucca’s culture is to their community. For example, one of the festivals that imply the culture of Luccan residents is the annual Lucca Comics and Games. This festival is meant to celebrate comics and other famous and upcoming artists in the region.

Famous museum in Lucca include the Nazionale di Palazo Mansi. The museum is full of bits and bobs of Luccan culture, dating all of the way back to the 16th century. Well-known artists whose works can be viewed in the museum include Agnolo Bronzino, Domenico Beccafumi, and Correggio. You may know Bronzino for his work with the Cosimo painting and Corregio is famous for his perception of the Madonna. Any visitors to this museum are bound to gain profound revelations into the life of Italy as a country as well as into the lives of the residents of this beautiful country. The Nazionale di Palazo Mansi is an example of a monument that’s in a position to educate, instill the love for culture, and make a good subject over family dinners. For all of those who would like to get a taste of what this extraordinary place has to offer, it is open five days every week to the public..

Visit the churches, like the Saint Martino and the Saints Giovanni, and you will get to see more famous works of art. Even the church buildings are monuments unto themselves simply thanks to the amount of time they have existed, the people and events they have seen during these many years. Because weddings, baptisms, and funerals play such a vital part in the final culture of Lucca, many residents love these buildings for the memories they house. These churches are also the home to a dazzling quantity of artwork, showing pieces like Trono by Ghirlandaio, and Tintoretto’s Last Summer, that give spectators a taste of Italy’s artwork. Are you ready? Select a boutique Lucca Hotel and begin your travel!

The simple truth is, kids who laugh are kids who learn. It has been shown that happy children have a much greater chance of success in life than those who are unhappy or are in bleak situation. One of many ways to keep the little ones smiling at home and in the classroom is by implementing a steady regiment of laughter. I tend to do this with silly rhymes and poetry.

Rhyming sequences have a profound effect on people of all ages, not just kids. You
often here rhyming sequences being referred to as “catchy”; that’s how you describe
the feeling of rhythm that is implied in a rhyme. As human beings, we tend to like
order and rhythm; it balances out our life. This is no more true than it is with children.
Songs, poems, and rhymes are a huge part of most classrooms today because they are
such powerful teaching tools. Children will retain facts and knowledge with out even
being aware that they are learning. Grade school kids have even been taught the full
periodic table when put to rhyme or song.

When I write poems for children I try to use the english language in a way that they
may have never heard before, yet will be able to grasp the meaning. What I hope to
achieve is to bring a wider sense of the english language and how it can be used in a
fun way. Speech today is stunted by excessive use of slang, jargon, and buzz words
that have no real meaning in the english language. Kids are making up words to
describe events or emotions, instead of knowing the real dialogue to make their story
interesting.

What I love to do best in writing a poem is encompass a nonsense story or moral within
a framework of tightly woven, yet mentally stimulating rhyming lines that challenge the
child’s awareness of sentence structure. I like to keep them on their toes.

This
combination, I find, amuses children to no end. They smile or laugh, and then read it
again and again until it rolls of their tongues effortlessly, laughing all the while.

Hmm… sounds like learning to me.

Adam Merrifield is an author and photgrapher of all things child-like. He maintains http://www.wigglywumble.com, a poetry site for
kids, and http://www.merrifield-photography.com, a baby photography site.

A poetic comment that just welled up inside my head - why cant we just do something - before many more are dead?

How pious those politicians are,
When up there on T.V.
Saying that, all the things they do,
They do for you and me.

I don’t remember requesting weapons,
Or to send my sons to war.
Just how many tons of food,
Would all that money provide for?

I didn’t ask for that highway,
Or the ‘modern art’ with purple lights.
I would rather all those millions,
Helped with Human Rights.

Did I ask to stockpile food in hangars,
Until the price goes high.
Why can’t we send it, to Africa,
Instead of letting them die.

The cost of clothes, for the ‘P.M’s’ wife,
Or even the President’s daughter.
Would probably give thousands of villages,
Access to clean water.

And if every politician, in the world,
Gave just one tenth of their wages.
It would feed millions of people in Africa,
Help them survive for ages.

If we must invade some countries,
Because of ‘principles’ so high.
How about those, spending money on weapons,
While their people die.

Conglomerates make huge profits,
Feeding those, already obese.
So why can’t they spare some millions,
To help fight this disease?

So Mister Politician, if you are itching to invade,
Let’s all invade Africa, with help and love and aid!

So now it’s over to you, let your voice be heard. Don’t let this sin continue, it really is absurd!

John Roberts is a Freelance Training Consultant in the UK and a Director of JayrConsulting Ltd. http://www.jayrconsulting.co.uk

In the midst of darkness, there is light.
In the midst of evil, there is virtue.
In the midst of war, there is peace.
In the midst of agony, there is ecstasy.

In the midst of night, there is day.
In the midst of illness, there is health.
In the midst of winter, there is summer.
In the midst of hate, there is love.

In the midst of grief, there is healing
In the midst of hunger, there is Bread of Life
In the midst of thirst, there is Living Water
In midst of loneliness, there is companionship

In the midst of sin, there is redemption
In the midst of catastrophe, there is restoration
In the midst of rain, there is a rainbow
In the midst of adversity, there is privilege

In the midst of decay, there is renewal.
In the midst of hopelessness, there is possibility.
In the midst of poverty, there is wealth.
In the midst of pain, there is joy.

In the midst of tears, there is laughter.
In the midst of anguish, there is pleasure.
In the midst of disappointment, there is satisfaction.
In the midst of futility, there is hope.

In the midst of the bad, there is the good.
In the midst of the ugly, there is the beautiful.
In the midst of the unholy, there is the sacred.
In the midst of the body, there is the soul.

In the midst of suffering, there is mercy.
In the midst of rage, there is calm.
In the midst of failure, there is success.
In the midst of death, there is life.

In the midst of all…. THERE IS GOD.

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, veteran social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. http://www.clergyservices4u.org. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, will be available in July.

Emlyn Williams Theatre, Mold, North Wales: 20th February 2003

Clwyd Theatr Cymru commemorated the 50th anniversary of the death of the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) with a superb run of performances by a small but accomplished cast of actors.

Described in the programme as “A theatrical journey through the prose writing of Dylan Thomas”, the production was created by Tim Baker, an Associate of the Royal National Theatre, who won the Manchester Evening News Best Visiting Production award in 1992 for the highly acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird.

Although Thomas is best known for his ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood, his evocative poems such as Fern Hill and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night are rarely overlooked when anthologies celebrating 20th century poetry are put together. Indeed, this mesmerizing interpretation of Thomas’s short stories could well be described as a rich fusion of prose and poetry. For example, in a scene crossing a river he speaks of, “slipping stepping stones” and early on in the piece he describes his “love” of words thus:

“And these words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea and rain, the rattle of milk carts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing.”

The company of five use only stools and orange boxes to set the scenes for Thomas’s vivid recollections of his boyhood in Swansea. The young Dylan is played brilliantly by Russell Gomer, who struts and capers across the hazily lit stage, reliving the poet’s every memory as if it was his own. His fellow actors play a myriad of characters. The slightly built but enormously gifted Zo Davies is adept at playing both male and female roles, from oppressed aunts to inebriated old men. And Morgan Walters, a ginger-haired giant of a man, is memorable for his portrayal of the young poet’s bear-like uncle, as well as Les, Thomas’s friend who invents names for passing strangers, and as a relation who steals livestock to pay for drinking binges. Whilst the cherubic-faced David Rees Talbot puts in a particularly memorable performance as Ray, a young man whose tragic past is briefly forgotten but inevitably revisited when he and Thomas ramble to the seaside to paddle in the surf.

The enigmatic and engaging Thomas lived a short and self-destructive, if literary fruitful life. His father, an English teacher at the local grammar school, began to read Shakespeare to him at the age of four and he started to write poetry in his eighth year. His childhood and adolescence were central to his later work - although he left school without formal qualifications and did not learn the Welsh language. He moved from Swansea to London in 1934, famously remarking, “The land of my fathers My fathers can keep it.”

Thomas’s first two books, 18 Poems and Twenty-five Poems, were published respectively in 1934 and 1936. He married Caitlin Macnamara in 1937 (they had three children during their tempestuous years together) and he made his first radio broadcast with Life and the Modern Poet on the BBC Welsh Services the following year. After the Second World War, his popularity as a poet grew in direct proportion to his reputation as a heavy drinker. However, his positive, rhetorical style won an enthusiastic following and poems such as A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London led to lecture tours of the United States. He died in St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York, on 9th November 1953.

This stage adaptation of Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog - so bristling with humour and pathos - will undoubtedly delight parents and teachers endeavouring to introduce young people to Thomas’s work. Adult audiences will also be entranced by its wry, witty narrative and flamboyant presentation. There is little doubt that, in the future, new theatrical companies will revive the production and it will become a fitting tribute to one of the world’s great 20th century poets.

About The Author

Paula has contributed features to numerous guidebooks, magazines and journals on the subjects of literature, travel, culture and history. She is currently the editor of two online guides: All Info About Poetry http://poetry.allinfo-about.com and All Info-About English Culture http://englishculture.allinfoabout.com.

poets@allinfo-about.com