Preacher Man?: I have somehow volunteered to lead a service at a Unitarian Church in Lewisham. It’s apparently tiny and very new and the new minister sent out a call for service leaders. Andy, the New Unity minister, forwarded it to me, since he knew that I had participated in services in NJ (mainly ones dealing with the UU Legislative Ministry). I expressed some mild interest and, the next thing you know, I am going to Lewisham on 31 January to meet the minister and check it out and I am scheduled to lead the service on 13 March, although I am not sure exactly what that entails. So I’ll get to see a different part of London and meet some new people and do something nice for a new Unitarian congregation. How bad can it be? We’ll see, I guess.

Meanwhile, at New Unity, the focus for the January through March period is Justice and I suggested that a message (Andy doesn’t call them sermons–too religious sounding I guess) could be about Law and Justice and the difference between the two. His reaction was “OK. Good idea. You give it.” I’m not positive that it will happen, but I’ve started researching it and thinking about what I would want to say. I discovered that it is much easier to find quotes decrying the Law and its failures to seek or accomplish justice than it is to extol Law’s virtues in that (or any) area. What am I getting myself into?

More theatre thoughts: They call the intermission between acts an “interval” and ice cream is always sold, usually in the theatre itself. Eating ice cream during the interval seems to be a British tradition. And you can bring the ice cream (or a beer or a glass of wine) to your seats. I wrote earlier that British audiences don’t do stranding ovations. But after the “Henry V” and the conclusion of the “King and Country” marathon, the entire audience did spring to their feet to cheer (justifiably) the performances of the Royal Shakespeare  Company.

BBC Story: The BBC presented a story about global warming and the temperature rise in 2015. They had their science reporter do an introductory piece on it and then turned to conduct a live interview with an expert in the field, as they like to do. So this “Climate Professor” from the University of Leeds came on to opine. Unfortunately, he was a stutterer and very nervous, which made him stutter more. You could see the panic in his eyes as the panic made the stuttering even worse, to the point where you were wondering if he was going to ever get the next word out. (Imagine an even worse stutterer than Colin Firth in the “King’s Speech”, but without Geoffrey Rush to help him.) It was slightly humorous, but mainly incredibly painful to watch. I can only imagine what the BBC newscaster conducting the interview must have been thinking. (“Didn’t my producer talk to this guy before putting him on? How can I end this gracefully?”)

An odd political casualty: The Minister for the Environment (or some such title) was forced to resign recently. One of his duties was to deal with natural disasters, like the flooding in Northern England and Scotland in the weeks before Christmas, which as pretty awful. He never showed up, which in itself isn’t so bad since he would have just gotten in the way. What really got him into trouble was that he said that he was at home with his family and was monitoring the situation. Too bad for him that it emerged that the home was in Barbados! One instantly pictured him on beach sipping pina coladas, while thousands of middle class and poor people were on television crying about their losses and army guys are slogging around in cold water up over their knees. He was doomed.

Lumiere: Last weekend, London held a four-day, light-inspired arts festival. There were some indoor exhibits of neon and other types of light art. I went to one at Bloomberg’s offices, but they wouldn’t let me take a picture of it. Most of the event was outside and on Sunday we met up with Jane and Paul Jee (after Henry V) to have look. After a delicious meal of Indian food at Dishoom, we wandered about Regent Street and Carnaby Street, eventually wandering over to Trafalgar Square and then on to Westminster Cathedral, where a projection on the front was supposed to show what it originally looked like when the statues were all painted. Another highlight was an incredible neon light exhibit on Regent Street in which figures jumped, climbed and cavorted in a complex pattern that went for over ten minutes. I also loved the huge movie of an elephant that was projected between two columns on a beaux art building near Piccadilly Circus (complete with sound) and loved it even more when we went around the corner and saw the back of the elephant. There were lots of huge projections and a whole series of men formed of lights floating in the air or sitting on buildings. Many of the pieces had music accompanying them and the crowds were surprisingly enormous, especially since it was pretty cold. All kinds of streets were closed and it was all very festive. A few photos are below.

A New Painting: Jamie sent me a picture that one his friends took of shacks in the desert and I liked the composition and decided to painting. Shortly after starting, I decided that I didn’t wan tot try for a realistic or impressionistic rendering of the scene and decided to see if I could create it using largely geometric shapes (triangles for the mountains in the distance, circles for the sagebrush or whatever the cactus was and other shapes for the wood on the ground and the two shacks). It was a kind of instructive exercise. The end product looks kind of like some sort of naive folk art or something. Not what I was expecting. But it is good to try different things since it is not like I am incredibly proficient at some particular style. Here it is: