“I can hardly think it practicable to make a single room so capacious, with pews and galleries, as to hold 2,000 persons, and all to hear the service and see the preacher. I endeavoured to effect this in building the parish church of St James’s, Westminster [Piccadilly], which I presume is the most capacious, with those qualifications, that hath yet been built.” Sir Christopher Wren
The case was one of the most famous unsolved murders in Britain. An 18-year fight for justice by Lawrence's parents led to a public inquiry which uncovered blunders by the Metropolitan police, blamed on institutional racism, which allowed his killers to escape justice. Lawrence, 18, was murdered on 22 April 1993, as he and a friend waited for a bus in Eltham, south-east London. They were attacked by a group of five to six white youths who shouted: "What, what, nigger?" and then rushed towards them.
"But when the Florence Nightingale museum in London reopens after a £1.4m rebuild on her birthday next month, an installation by artist Susan Stockwell will remind visitors that the pioneering nurse actually lived on for another half century until 1910 – and spent most of that time in her bed.
"For the sculpture, funded by the Guy's and St Thomas's hospital charity as a gift to the museum, Stockwell has taken a Victorian brass bed and made a ghostly mattress pressed down by the weight of an invisible figure out of thousands of furled pages from books.
"The pages convey the fact that though Nightingale was in bed, she was not inactive. She wrote more than 200 books, pamphlets and articles, including pioneering work on hospital planning, and her 1860 Notes on Nursing, regarded as the foundation of modern nursing."[...]
"There is a final joke hidden in the bed which may not have amused Nightingale, a woman of sharp wit but apparently without a frivolous bone in her body. Stockwell had hoped to make the mattress from old copies of Nightingale's books, but the idea proved too expensive. Instead, while the outer layers are from Notes on Nursing and Cecil Woodham Smith's classic biography, the core is made from 700 copies of Mills & Boon romances Stockwell bought on eBay, including hospital romances in which fragile nurses are eventually crushed against the manly chests of handsome doctors – as Nightingale certainly never was."
Now, if they could only get rid of the dirty pigeons! When I lived in London, I'd pass through the square en route to Embankment tube station to catch a Circle Line train for the ride home, stopping occasionally to watch one of the many demonstrations taking place.In Gaza, children,
you learn that the sky kills
and that houses hurt.
You learn that your blanket is smoke
and breakfast is dirt.
You learn that cars do somersaults
clothes turn red,
friends become statues,
bakers don’t sell bread.
You learn that the night is a gun,
that toys burn
breath can stop,
it could be your turn.
You learn:
if they send you fire
they couldn’t guess:
not just the soldier dies -
it’s you and the rest.
Nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
nowhere to hide
in the home you know.
You learn
that death isn’t life,
that air isn’t bread,
the land is for all.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
From THE LONDON INFORMER:I lived on the same street and would pass by St Jude's daily en route to my bus stop. It's typical of small and struggling London churches, trying to survive and also reach out to others.
Kensington and Chelsea Council decided on Tuesday night that Grade II listed St Jude's Church in Collingham Road, Earl's Court, which was built in 1870, should be transformed into a training centre for up to 200 would-be theologians. But the application has drawn letters of objection from 25 households which surround the Victorian building. Many are concerned that students will increase the numbers of visitors to the nearby communal gardens.
Another Courtfield Gardens wrote: "The influx of so many people to our quiet residential square, even if they are theology students, is not welcome."
‘As a church, this expresses our commitment to solidarity with poor and marginalised people,’ said Revd Dr Charles Hedley of St James’s.
‘Africa is the poorest continent on earth and produces the least CO2, but her people are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Knowing this, we cannot just bemoan climate change, but must do something.
‘It has been a real opportunity to think global and act local.’
St James’s presented the work as an educational project – to make visitors and people in the local community think about renewable energy and climate change...
