Jay Armstrong

Stories, pictures and the natural world | Founder and editor of @elementumjournl

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

'Breathing Space', etching by contemporary artist and printmaker  Janis Goodman #WomensArt

[Lewis Pugh @LewisPugh]

I’ve completed the #HudsonSwim2023! 315 miles from source to sea.

People have fought for 50 years to get this river clean. And today she is beautiful. I will never forget the wildlife. The bald eagles, the vultures, the beavers and black bears.

So this is my message 🏊‍♂️👇🏞️

The Hudson is emblematic of all rivers in the world. If the people of the New York can do this, then your river can also be saved. But it takes constant vigilance!

Rivers are the arteries of our planet. Everything that we hold dear relies on their protection.

[Simon Knott @SimoninSuffolk]

'Eden Rock' by the Cornish poet Charles Causley is one of his most moving, I think.

'They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

I had not thought that it would be like this.'

My mum and dad in Ely, Cambridgeshire in 1954, the earliest photograph I have of them together. She is 18, he is 19. They had first met perhaps a few weeks previously.

[Scotland's Churches Trust @SChurchesTrust]

Enjoy a peek from the gallery at the utterly remarkable stencilled ceiling of the A-Listed Chalmers Memorial Church in Port Seton and one of its beautiful windows by Margaret Chilton and Marjorie Kemp.

#StainedGlassSunday #ChurchCeilings #SundaySermons

[Julian May @julian_may]

Catherine Heaney with her mother, Marie, in the kitchen where we recorded much of the second episode of Four Sides of Seamus Heaney, all about love in his poetry. On ⁦@BBCRadio4⁩ at 4.30 this afternoon, then on BBC Sounds. ⁦@seamusheaneyest⁩

[Dr Sarah Whittingham FSA @DrFrond]

Bracken is the only British fern where spore-cases are in a narrow line along the edges of fronds, with the margins curled backwards to form a cover. But it only spores about every 10-25 years after long, hot summers, when it produces c.30,000,000 spores per frond in Aug/Sep #WWW

[Kathleen Jamie @KathleenJamie]

Climate. Scotland. Action. Writing. Announcing Paperboats: a website, a zine, actions in the real and beautiful world. Please follow, please join. More later today. We will rise! @paperboatswrite

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

Evening at the sunken cottage – west coast, Isle of Tiree.

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

Important and interesting 🧵 about how narratives develop, who gets the say, and why the experiences of those on the ground matter.

[cat frampton @cat_frampton]

A short thread on exclusion in landscape decisions and narratives that feels (but almost certainly is not) deliberate.

It’s something that plays into the polarising chat about us v them & ‘bad farmers vs nature’ & is a odd ignoring of lived experience in a changing landscape ⬇️

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

@jampedlar @bourbonandwolfe @RedRiverCroft Would love to know the history behind that one! And yes, the postbox in my picture is still in use.

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

I’d like to share my joy in finding a Victorian postbox hewn into granite. I think there’s one similar near you @RedRiverCroft in South Erradale?

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

Female fighter horse training for the militia, Inner Mongolia,1979 by photographer Eve Arnold #WomensArt

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

@calcat @RedRiverCroft It is!

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

@verlafortier Yes, how true.

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

Wind and wave art.

[TreesMendUs @verlafortier]

@jayarmstrong_ As physicist Richard Taylor says in my podcast “ awww this is what I am meant to look at - our eyes are thirsty for fractal patterns.”

[Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_]

@RedRiverCroft @GairlochMuseum So sorry I can’t join you! So near and yet so far. Have a fabulous time!

[Peter Schade @psframes]

We re-framed Rembrandts Anna and the Blind Tobit this week. We replaced the re-gilded French 18th century frame with 20th century gilded slip with an un-cut Dutch 17th century ebonised pearwood frame. Suddenly the light shines out of the window inside the painting

[Linda Cracknell @LindaJCracknell]

Today my book 'Writing Landscape' is published in North America 🎺🇺🇸🇨🇦 🎺
“An object lesson in attentive looking … wonderfully intense … a small book, but a mighty one.” Scotsman
https://t.co/c7dv0ZWgtM
#naturewriting
@Orion_Magazine
@SarabandBooks