A Quick Guide To Democracy

Too Good Not To Share

UPDATE: alas, too good to last! It was the BBC's 2016 production of "Peter Pan Goes Wrong."

Absolutely magnificent:



A reprise of the 2016 production; unbeatable!

Twelfth Night

Image source

Shine out, fair Sun, with all your heat,

Show all your thousand-coloured light!

Black Winter freezes to his seat;

The grey wolf howls, he does so bite;

Crookt Age on three knees creeps the street;

The boneless fish close quaking lies

And eats for cold his aching feet;

The stars in icicles arise:

Shine out, and make this winter night

Our beauty's Spring, our Prince of Light!

by George Chapman

from "The Masque of the Twelve Months", first performed on Twelfth Night 1619

Image source

On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas

FRIDAY MUSIC: An Orthodox Christmas, by JD

As we come to the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Orthodox Churches prepare to celebrate their Christmas Day it seems appropriate to join them with some of their traditional Christmas music -

On The Eleventh Day Of Christmas

JD adds:

It is a tradition in Spain to have a procession on the evening of 5th January of the arrival of the three wise men, the Cabalgate de los Reyes Magos:

https://www.enforex.com/culture/reyes-magos.html

Potholes: a lesson never learned

Potholes are a popular item for discussion around this time of the year: the first hard frosts and persistent rain bring about an explosion of these obstacles on our roads with a regularity that is now an acceptable fact of life.

A twenty mile journey on a local A road that I had to make in pretty awful conditions highlighted the true state of potholes in this area and I suspect everywhere else. Constant neglect of our road system and the temporary repair ideology that all councils adopt in the name of cut backs has left the road I traveled on looking in large parts like a cross between the Nairobi – Mombasa highway - anyone who has traveled on that will know what I mean - and no-man's-land in the Somme. The endlessly refilled potholes had as one succumbed to the cold and wet and scattered their collective innards all over the highway leaving an assortment of craters to be avoided.

This annual farce forced upon the populace by hand-wringing local government officials as an inevitable consequence  of “cuts” is, as has been pointed out by those who really know about such things, nothing more than money down the drain, as the temporary repairs last for ever shorter spans. We have one at a small road junction nearby that has been filled three times this year alone, showing the cost of the short-sighted approach to this and all the other infrastructure defects in this country.

A good resurfacing will last without further maintenance for a predictable time if the work has been properly carried out, and so the costs can be reliably approximated. Continually employing people to fill ever more potholes is a waste of taxpayers' money as eventually the road will have to be resurfaced at greater cost than originally due to excess damage, and the refilling money has to be added to that.

Anybody coming back from a continental trip can see the disparity between our road infrastructure and that abroad and the gap in the quality is growing apace, year by year .

I suspect the government is fully aware of the problem but successive governments  have failed to do anything meaningful about it and now the cost has reached a prohibitive level, such is the problem unless toll roads are introduced (and they are not coming anytime soon, but will come as necessity demands.)  No political party wants to be “unpopular”-  which is rather funny considering none of them are popular - and they will kick the can down the road as long as possible, until perhaps another party has to deal with it as they do with everything else.

In Africa you get enterprising men who stand by the badly potholed roads with a large pile of gravel, and if you give them a small amount of cash they will fill a few holes; perhaps a cottage industry on those lines could be started up here !

If the trend in neglect continues will we all have to fit monster truck tyres to our family cars in order to navigate the ever increasing number and size of these craters? Will the I-Spy books make a come back with "I-Spy the biggest pothole"? Will they become part of our national heritage and demand national treasure status, perhaps even an AA * star grading? All is possible, for certainly they are not going away.

_________________________________________
Sackerson comments:

On The Tenth Day Of Christmas

On The Ninth Day Of Christmas

The art of Rita Loureiro

"Boi vento" (Ox wind), by Rita Loureiro

Image source: http://animaelibri.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/arte-rita-loureiro.html

There is a mysterious illustration on the cover of the 1984 English translation of  Mário de Andrade's book "Macunaíma" (1928):

Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1099648.Macuna_ma

The artwork is by Rita Loureiro (not to be confused with the Brazilian actress of the same name).

What struck me is the alien feeling of it. It does not look to me like what a European artist might do, and one senses some informed, intuitive connection with the weird subject.

It's not easy to find much about Loureiro on the Web, at least not in English, but this site gives a few biographical details: http://animaelibri.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/arte-rita-loureiro.html.

According to this, she was born in 1952 in the old rubber plantation town of Manaus, a city in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest (Amazonas Region). [Manaus may ring a bell with you: it's where an Irish fortune-seeker carried a steamship over the mountains, as in the film "Fitzcarraldo."] Loureiro moved to Rio de Janeiro to begin her career as an artist but (if I understand correctly) returned to the rainforest region to develop her art and understanding of the aboriginals/first peoples.

It seems she produced a number of illustrations for "Macunaíma", which don't appear in the English translation and as yet I haven't established exactly which edition (this limited edition from 1984? or this?) of this seminal Brazilian work does contain them, though here are a couple:

Image source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/119978777556191067/

http://nabc.org.br/arquivo/nabcIII63/loureiro.jpg

There is more of her work to be found here, at the Itaú Cultural centre in São Paulo:
http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa1387/rita-loureiro

Desfoliante Naranja (1983) [Orange defoliant] Image citation

Boi Floresta (1982) [Ox Forest] Image citation

A Dança da Morte (1989) [The dance of Death] Image citation

Carta Pras Icamabias (1981) [Letter to the Amazons - illustration for "Macunaíma"] Image citation

To me, it seems that an overarching theme or approach is seeing humans in a context full of meaning, whether social, natural or cultural-religious-magical, a turning away from the modern "homeless mind" and entirely in keeping with Andrade's  disgusted view of São Paulo as seen through Macunaíma's forest-bred eyes.

This photo of Pinacoteca do Estado is courtesy of TripAdvisor

See reviews (2015 - 2017) of the gallery in Manaus here:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g303235-d2364491-r394775627-Pinacoteca_do_Estado-Manaus_Amazon_River_State_of_Amazonas.html#UR394775627

That's not to make the savages into hygienised Walt Disney characters; one of Andrade's chapters describes a macumba rite involving nudity, unbridled sex and uninhibited violence against a female temporarily possessed by a demon so that Macunaíma can by proxy inflict his revenge on a rival. Macumba is an umbrella term for a group of religious-magical syntheses - local, African and Christian - see https://www.britannica.com/topic/Macumba.

The Galeria do Largo in her home town of Manaus has a web page on her from her 2006 exhibition there, which also lists some of her previous shows. One of these was "Boi Tema" (Ox Theme) in 1984 and after, turned into a book in 1987. The ox is celebrated in various ways across Brazil, in death-and-rebirth rituals known as the Bumba-meu-boi.  A 2004 guide to Barcelona says that in Brazil, the celebration has its roots in nineteenth century cattle farming there, though of course the ox has ritual significance in many other places in the world; but the same guide refers to a Bantu festival centred around an ox named Geroa; I had thought that the Bantu were in South or South-West Africa but it seems they originated in the angle of west Africa by modern day Nigeria/Cameroon; so quite possibly one of the roots of Bumba-meu-boi springs from the cultural complex transmitted to South America via the West African slave trade.

O Boi, a Morte do Verde e a Represa (1984) [The ox, the death of the green land, and the dam] Image citation

Like Andrade, then, Rita Loureiro's art is a transmission of the old world's voice to the new and rootless incomers.

A green New Year's Eve meteor streaks across UK skies

On The Eighth Day Of Christmas

Did China just send the USA a coded military message?

Last night there was a display of mini-drones in formation over Guangzhou, ostensibly to celebrate the New Year.

But clearly coordinating over 1,000 drones so perfectly is unlikely to be a job for an army of fallible humans.

Imagine a battlefield where instead of dumping 500-pound smart-guided bombs out of circling jet fighters with only a short "playtime" to kill a handful of insurgents, a swarm of computer-controlled heat-seeking/visually guided dronelets seek out and kill individuals precisely and cheaply, with a few ounces of explosive each.

The potential has been discussed online within the last two years, e.g. here:

https://scout.com/military/warrior/Article/Air-Force-Seeks-Swarms-of-Attack-Mini-Drones-101454682

Was China saying, we're there now and woe betide etc.?

NYE: East meets West

In Australia, New Year's Eve fireworks really go with a bang:



... while in Guangzhou, the night has a thousand eyes drones...



(htp: RT.com)

On The Seventh Day Of Christmas

Hogmanay revels continue

A guid New Year to ane an` a` and mony may ye see!

While New Year's Eve is celebrated around the world, the Scots have a long rich heritage associated with this event - and we have our own name for it, Hogmanay.

There are many theories about the derivation of the word "Hogmanay". The Scandinavian word for the feast preceding Yule was "Hoggo-nott" while the Flemish words (many have come into Scots) "hoog min dag" means "great love day". Hogmanay could also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon, Haleg monath, Holy Month, or the Gaelic, oge maidne, new morning. But the most likely source seems to be the French. "Homme est né" or "Man is born" while in France the last day of the year when gifts were exchanged was "aguillaneuf" while in Normandy presents given at that time were "hoguignetes". Take your pick!

In Scotland a similar practice to that in Normandy was recorded, rather disapprovingly, by the Church. "It is ordinary among some Plebians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year`s Eve, crying Hagmane." Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1693.

Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and virtually banned in Scotland for around 400 years. (I think it became a public holiday round about 1960.) The reason for Christmas not being celebrated has its roots in the Protestant Reformation when the Kirk portrayed Christmas as a Popish or Catholic feast and therefore had to be banned. Many Scots had to work over Christmas and their winter solstice holiday was therefore at New Year when family and friends gathered for a party and exchange presents, especially for the children. There are traditions before midnight such as cleaning the house on 31st December (including taking out the ashes from the fire in the days when coal fires were common). There is also the superstition to clear all your debts before "the bells" at midnight. (I wonder how many people still try to clear their debts!)

An integral part of the Hogmanay partying, which continues very much today, is to welcome friends and strangers, with warm hospitality to wish everyone a Guid New Year. The underlying belief is to clear out the vestiges of the old year, have a clean break and welcome in a young, New Year on a happy note.

"First footing" (that is, the "first foot" in the house after midnight) is not as common as it used to be in Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house, the first foot should be male, dark (believed to be a throwback to the Viking days when blond strangers arriving on your doorstep meant trouble) and should bring symbolic coal, shortbread, salt, black bun and whisky. These days, however, whisky and perhaps shortbread are the only items still prevalent and very welcome they are!.

And of course it has become traditional to overindulge and wake up the following day with a 'sair heid'. -

Interlude: another German New Year's Eve tradition

JD presents Hogmanay!

A guid New Year to ane an` a` and mony may ye see!

While New Year's Eve is celebrated around the world, the Scots have a long rich heritage associated with this event - and we have our own name for it, Hogmanay.

There are many theories about the derivation of the word "Hogmanay". The Scandinavian word for the feast preceding Yule was "Hoggo-nott" while the Flemish words (many have come into Scots) "hoog min dag" means "great love day". Hogmanay could also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon, Haleg monath, Holy Month, or the Gaelic, oge maidne, new morning. But the most likely source seems to be the French. "Homme est né" or "Man is born" while in France the last day of the year when gifts were exchanged was "aguillaneuf" while in Normandy presents given at that time were "hoguignetes". Take your pick!

In Scotland a similar practice to that in Normandy was recorded, rather disapprovingly, by the Church. "It is ordinary among some Plebians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year`s Eve, crying Hagmane." Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1693.

Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and virtually banned in Scotland for around 400 years. (I think it became a public holiday round about 1960.) The reason for Christmas not being celebrated has its roots in the Protestant Reformation when the Kirk portrayed Christmas as a Popish or Catholic feast and therefore had to be banned. Many Scots had to work over Christmas and their winter solstice holiday was therefore at New Year when family and friends gathered for a party and exchange presents, especially for the children. There are traditions before midnight such as cleaning the house on 31st December (including taking out the ashes from the fire in the days when coal fires were common). There is also the superstition to clear all your debts before "the bells" at midnight. (I wonder how many people still try to clear their debts!)

An integral part of the Hogmanay partying, which continues very much today, is to welcome friends and strangers, with warm hospitality to wish everyone a Guid New Year. The underlying belief is to clear out the vestiges of the old year, have a clean break and welcome in a young, New Year on a happy note.

"First footing" (that is, the "first foot" in the house after midnight) is not as common as it used to be in Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house, the first foot should be male, dark (believed to be a throwback to the Viking days when blond strangers arriving on your doorstep meant trouble) and should bring symbolic coal, shortbread, salt, black bun and whisky. These days, however, whisky and perhaps shortbread are the only items still prevalent and very welcome they are!.

And of course it has become traditional to overindulge and wake up the following day with a 'sair heid'. -

My New Year's Resolution

... is never to open the pages of the MoS' "You" magazine:

It's so easy to deconstruct, isn't it? A manufacturer's freebie, or something bought on expenses in a hurried cabbed trawl through West End shops, or even worse, a sponsorship.

Just don't tell us that "we" paid for it out of her own pocket or intends to continue using it, especially at that you-really-are-silly-aren't-you price.

A touchstone for the whole bloated, false-valued paper. If it wasn't for Peter Hitchens I shouldn't bother at all.

A German NYE tradition - divining the future by molten lead

We used to do this in Germany. The lead came formed into the shape of common objects, a bit like the old Monopoly player pieces. The result was always a frazzled lump in the bottom of the washing up bowl.

Started in Greece with tin-smelting, they say - so maybe dates back to the Bronze Age?

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdomancy.