Winter Blue ...

I posted, over on Facebook, that some friends in Genova will no longer believe me when I tell them I go there to escape the grey skies of Belgium.  Roberto and Doris flew in from Liguria on Monday, just as a high pressure weather system stalled over us.  They have enjoyed deep blue skies these last 3 days ...

We have had our first frosts here but a lot can be lived with if deep blue skies are involved.  I mentioned the fact that I had laundry drying on the clothes-line outside ... not completely drying but still, it was out and it was drying some, and she asked if I had photographed my lovely December clothes-line.

The thing is, once I pick up my camera, the difficulty is in putting it down again.  So rather than simply photograph sheets and duvet covers drying on my clothes-line outside, I wandered round our little pocket-sized garden.  I noticed the honeysuckle has been fooled into flowering again and that the raspberry leaves look rather divine in their autumn state. 

And so, a collage ...

Venice Reflected

In the end I can't resist playing with reflections ... even in Venice. 

Or maybe, most especially in Venice.

All Streets Lead to the Water, Venice

Or so it seemed, especially when we were lost in Venice.

Scenes Found In Venice

I would like to go back one day, with more time, and be out wandering very early before the city wakes up.  Sunrise in Venice might be rather special.

Lost in Venice

Getting lost is the only place worth going to.

Tiziano Scarpa, author Venice is a Fish

And we did get lost, Julie and I. We were on our 8-day roadtrip through Italy, Croatia, Hungry, Austria and back into Italy.  We were driving past Venice on our way from Trieste to Como and Julie said, as you do, let's pop into Venice for a couple of hours.

She had been once and wanted to introduce me to that mythical Italian city I had never seen.  So we parked and caught a bus across the long bridge into Venice.  And we were confident, for a while, that there was no way we'd get lost but ... oh we did.

So lost.  But the sights we happened upon were worth it in retrospect.

There were sights I had never imagined before, around every other corner ... like this.

Creativity

This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.

Jessica Olien, extracts from her article, Inside the Box - People don't actually like Creativity.