Encouragement Files

(21-2025) Field Notes for Curious Minds

This is the 21st edition of ‘The Encouragement Files’, a weekly celebration of others. This is our chance to showcase words, publications and people that have inspired us. It might encourage you to celebrate the creativity that lifts your spirits, and stories that offer a counterbalance to the fractious edginess of an out-of-kilter world.

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Beyond Substack

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I N T E R I O R S

Back in 2020 we had a plan. Sell the house, buy a van, roam. Before the global pandemic pinned us in place (temporarily in our case), we were due to start in Scandinavia and wander gently to the Arctic Circle to mark the ‘longest day’. Five years on, we have new plans and Scandinavia feels like the perfect place to start to explore Europe by train. A summer house could be an Autumn house?

Images from Dezeen

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“The things of Scandinavia tend to be secret, as if they were a dream.”
― Jorge Luis Borges The Last Voyage of Ulysses

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A R T

Komorebi is an evocative Japanese word meaning ‘sunlight leaking through trees’. I think we can all see the effect in our minds eye. Artist Duri Baek embraces the influences of light passing through trees to dazzling effect

© Duri Baek

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“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

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So Good We Saved It

1. Not that we need any more volumes on our groaning shelves, but it is hard to ignore a thoughtful suite of book recommendations; there’s a special fascination when the list is offered by an author. We are just discovering ‘White Ink’ by

   Anna Wharton
   and the Sunday Shelfie series.

2. It is a time in human history that weighs heavily on the conscience, that cuts deeply into the hearts of those with values and empathy. Perhaps that is why words of hope - like those offered so beautifully by

   Susie Mawhinney
   - resonate so strongly. These are words that shine light into the darkness.

3. Artist

   Emily Charlotte Powell
   shared lyrical words of beauty, elegant poetry to offer stark warnings about humanity’s inelegant neglect of nature.

4. Sometimes we save our own musings, to remind ourselves that life is good:

5. I just love this piece by

   Alex Roddie
   , a beautiful acknowledgement of a traveller’s story, a journey of remarkable tenacity done for its own sake, born of tough times and homelessness; a profoundly moving wake-up call.

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Postcard from a Bicycle Saddle

… how do you select a handful of images to capture the essence of 22 days of cycling, of 2000 kilometres pedalled, self-gifted to mark a milestone birthday. It is nigh on impossible. But the first words are emerging too as I consider the ‘Mountains of the Mind’, the way the hills get inside your head.

Images © Feasts & Fables

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Travel … Broadens the Mind

We have Istanbul in our sights as the furthest point East on our Autumn exploration of Europe’s rail routes so this lovely piece by

Marco & Sabrina

is the perfect recipe for our curiosity. Take the historic Splendid Palace Hotel:

“Staffed by shuffling octogenarian waiters in less than perfectly starched white uniforms and black tie, these ancient retainers were living breathing symbols of the establishment’s own charmingly sleepy decline into elegant, crumbling decrepitude and of the island’s slow pace of life.”

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And finally …

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See you next week, same time, same place, Barrie and JoJo