Hot Chilli Mama

Hot Chilli Mama
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

Here is my Bellingen friend, Angelika Aulerich, aka Hot Chillia Mama, who cooks up a storm. Her chili sauces are magnificent, and so are the meals she cooks as a caterer.

I really like catching up with Angelika, who is also a great gardener, and her garden is something to behold.

She started her chili business in Sydney 20 years ago and has been purveying her wares in Bellingen for four years. I highly recommend Angelika's chili, which can be purchased by a call to 6655 2878. Say hi for me.

Categories: bellingen, food

Choosing a profession

An old country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young men his age, the boy didn't really know what he wanted to do, and he didn't seem too concerned about it. One day, while the boy was away at school, his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy's room and placed on his study table four objects.

1. A bible.

2. A silver dollar.

3. A bottle of whisky.

4. And a Playboy magazine.

'I'll just hide behind the door,' the old preacher said to himself. 'When he comes home from school today, I'll see which object he picks up.

If it's the bible, he's going to be a preacher like me, and what a blessing that would be! If he picks up the dollar, he's going to be a business man, and that would be okay, too. But if he picks up the bottle, he's going to be a no-good drunken bum, and Lord, what a shame that would be. And worst of all if he picks up that magazine he's going to be a skirt-chasing womanizer.'

The old man waited anxiously, and soon heard his son's foot-steps as he entered the house whistling and headed for his room.

The boy tossed his books on the bed, and as he turned to leave the room he spotted the objects on the table. With curiosity in his eye, he walked over to inspect them.

Finally, he picked up the Bible and placed it under his arm. He picked up the silver dollar and dropped into his pocket. He uncorked the bottle and took a big drink, while he admired this month's centerfold.

'Lord have mercy,' the old preacher disgustedly whispered, 'He's gonna run for Congress.'

[Thanks Lynn from Israel.]

The defeat siren is sounding for Blair's vainglorious jihad in Afghanistan

The defeat siren is sounding for Blair's vainglorious jihad in Afghanistan

Categories: afghanistan, uk, usa, blair, war-on-terror, taliban

Smedley Butler, US general and peace activist

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

1881 General Smedley Butler (d. June 21, 1940), peace activist best remembered for his book War is a Racket, one of the first works exposing the military-industrial complex.

Butler was a Major General in the US Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated marine in US history. He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor ...

Categories: usa, biography, war, peace, military, activism, progressive

When is Starbucks not Starbucks?

The answer is, when it starts rebranding its stores with local names so you think they're local cafes. Starbucks has twigged to the fact that people would prefer local shops to transnational corporations, so they're now clever enough to respond by covering up reality.

Categories: corporations, marketing

Time of Thorn/Feast day of King Olaf II

Around this time, ancient Northern Tradition honours the god whom the Anglo-Saxons called Thunor and the Norse, Thor. The time of Thorn, as it is known, is a period of proper order and higher powers. This day also honours the sainted Norwegian king, Olaf, murdered around Lammas Day (an ancient festival on August 1, a time when other European kings of old were allegedly murdered, but in fact relates to harvest magic).

Traditionally it was portrayed on calendars with the sign of the axe.

The letter 'thorn' in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets, pronounced 'th', could sometimes be shaped like the letter 'y', which explains why sometimes the word 'the' appeared to be written 'ye', as in 'ye olde English tea shoppe'.

Categories: anglo-saxon, calendar-customs, iceland, uk, language, english, deity, saint

Ólavsøka Eve, Faroe Islands

Held at Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, the smallest capital in the world.

Ólavsøka, or Olsok, on July 29 is the national holiday of the Faroe Islands, and today is its eve, featuring a cavalcade and boat races. Tomorrow is the day that the Faroese Parliament (Løgting) opens its session.

The literal meaning is 'St Olaf's Wake' or vigilia sancti Olavi in Latin, from St Olav's death at Stiklestad in 1030. But the Løgting is certainly older than that. Like several other Faroese holidays, the celebration begins the evening before. So Ólavsøka always starts on July 28, and this afternoon there will traditionally be a cavalcade and boat races ...

categories: calendar-customs, saint

Aussie terrorism, 1890s style

1893 Australia: Next door to William McNamara's first bookshop at 238 Castlereagh St, Sydney, Larry Petrie (Larry De Petrie; Laurence Petrie; pictured) ran a Labour Bureau to help unemployed men find work. After telling Ernie Lane he was off to blow up a non-union ship, the American anarchist booked a passage on the SS Aramac.

On board at midnight on Thursday, July 27 near the entrance to Moreton Bay, Queensland, about seven nautical miles south of Point Lookout, there was a tremendous explosion in the forecabin.

"The funny thing was" said Petrie some years later, "that the moment the bomb went off my first and only thought was to save people's lives."

Luckily, no one was killed, but two women nearby were slightly injured as a bolt of flame rose through the roof of the cabin. Petrie's presence on deck immediately afterwards, especially since the companionway was blocked with debris, aroused suspicion, his 'fake' name did also, and he was arrested as soon as the ship berthed and charged with attempted murder, but the case never went to court. The reason for this appears to be that Petrie's barrister, Marshall Lyle, a radical himself who was engaged by Arthur Rae, Ernest Lane and others to defend the American, uncovered an attempt by the police to persuade a witness to perjure himself and claim that Petrie bought explosives from him. The Attorney-General seemed to be more concerned about how it would look if all that came out, than if a crazy anarchist like Petrie was on the loose, so Petrie was released after months of half-starvation and half-torture in prison.

Some of the significance of this explosion can be seen from the uses to which it was put. The Sydney Morning Herald editorialized on August 4, 1893 that:

"… The Aramac explosion makes the eighth trouble on board ship within almost as many days. The Burrumbeet and the Sydney dynamite incidents … then came an extra-ordinary accident between the Ellingamite and the Guiding Star, the latter vessel foundering … Next the wreck … of the steamer Hilda … and the blow up of the barque Argo in Sydney Harbour are occurrences the origin of which continue to be regarded by many persons with grave misgivings; and latterly the sinking of the steamer Franklin at Townsville, and the accident to the Corea. Such a chapter of maritime disasters is probably unparalleled in Australian shipping history within the same short period."

Petrie and Knights of Labor
Scottish-born Larry Petrie (1859 - March, 1901) was a good-looking man with a big moustache who worked as a casual labourer. A co-founder of the Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886 and the Social Democratic League in 1889. He also tried to get a Six-Hours Movement going to demand a six-hour working day, and formed a small branch of the American organisation, Knights of Labor, a Freemason-like radical sect which had been brought to Australia by WW Lyght. Henry Lawson joined, as did William Lane, George Black, WHT McNamara and others. An anarchist by temperament and persuasion, although he didn't use the term of himself, Petrie became Australian Workers' Union (AWU) Secretary-Organiser in Sydney.

At some time before the Aramac incident, Petrie lost his arm. Verity Burgmann (In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885 - 1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985, p. 30) says it was so badly broken in a confrontation with a non-unionist in a shearing shed at Wagga Wagga, NSW, that it had to be amputated. Another version has it that Petrie was injured while shunting metal trucks for W Loud of Albert Park, Melbourne, and very nearly had his mangled leg amputated as well.

"(He) used to sing in a good, baritone voice 'The Marseillaise' to gather a good crowd around him … Raising his only arm when he sang 'to arms, my citizens' was always good for a laugh ... "

One day in March, 1901, while he was working as a general watchman at the railway station at Villarrica, Paraguay following his extreme disillusionment with William Lane and his New Australia disaster, Petrie jumped onto the line to push a child out of the path of an oncoming train and was himself killed. His body was claimed by another refugee from New Australia, Rose Cadogan (Rose Summerfield).

Petrie's bombing attempt at Sydney's main docks
In her old age, poet Dame Mary Gilmore told the National Times, May 6 - 11, 1974 of an earlier unsuccessful attempt of Petrie's to blow up Circular Quay, the main dock area of Sydney. No date is given, but it's probably 1892.

Petrie had left a bomb in a drain at the Quay, and some of his associates decided to remove it. While Mary Cameron (as she was before marrying William Gilmore) watched out for police, with great trepidation the diminutive Member of NSW Parliament Arthur Rae (1860 - 1943) crawled up the drain and removed the bomb, having volunteered to do so because at 5 feet tall he was the smallest person in the clandestine operation. Rae was Vice President of the AWU and one of the founders of the Australian Labor Party. In 1891 he was one of the first 36 Labor members elected to Parliament; he was later a Senator in the Australian Parliament (1910 - '14, 1918 - '35). Alongside Artie Rae and Mary at this extraordinary occurrence was Chris Watson (1867 - 1941), third Prime Minister of Australia and the first Labor PM (1904) ...

Categories: henry-lawson, terrorism, australia, labor-history, radical-history, sydney

Quong Tart, the Aussie Chinese Scot

1871 Australia: Mei Quong Tart (Mei Guangda; 1850 - July, 1903) became a naturalized British citizen at Braidwood, New South Wales.

At this time he was employed by the government as an official interpreter amongst the Chinese gold miners of Braidwood, Araluen and Majors Creek, and as a sometime gold miner. Born in China (Longtengli near Duanfen in southern Taishan, Guangdong province), Tart was to become a prominent and popular Sydney merchant, importer and philanthropist.

Like many Chinese people of his day, his uncle was lured to Australia by the chance of finding gold (the Gold Rush began in 1851 and continued for some decades in various forms), and nine-year-old Quong came with him. However, he made his fortune in businesses such as tea shops, and became a prominent member of Sydney society. He was well loved by his staff as he was well ahead of his times for worker benefits, giving holiday and sick leave with pay, as well as time off for shopping and family commitments.

Some of his tea rooms were used as meeting places for the suffragette activities of Louisa Lawson's Dawn Club -- tea rooms at 137 King St and 777 George St, one at the Queen Victoria Markets (called the Queen Victoria Building, or QVB, from 1898), and possibly in the George St markets (aka Paddy's Markets, near Chinatown). One of Louisa's meeting places was 43 Royal Arcade (possibly another Quong Tart establishment).

When Quong Tart came aboard a steamer from China to Australia, he learned English from Scottish crew members in the boiler room of the ship. After arrival in Australia, young Quong worked for his guardians, the well-to-do Scottish Alice Simpson family in country NSW, so he became known for his Scottish accent, the wearing of kilts and his fondness for singing songs of Robbie Burns at public functions ...

Categories: australia, china, history, biography

The Pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela

At Galicia, Spain, probably the world's greatest pilgrimage

The city of Santiago de Compostela became the seat of St James the Great (whose feast day this is), from the legend of his body having been miraculously translated there.

When his relics were being conveyed from Jerusalem, where he died, to Spain, in a ship of marble, the horse of a Portuguese knight plunged into the sea with its rider. When rescued, the knight's clothes were found to be covered with scallop shells.

It might be that the use of the scallop device derives from the pilgrims' using shells as primitive cups and spoons, or it might derive from the earlier Roman festival of the sea god and goddess, Neptune and Salacia (July 23, qv). Pilgrims to the shrine wore, and often still wear, a scallop shell on cloak or hat ...

The pilgrimage to Compostela became almost as popular and important in medieval Europe as that to Jerusalem. Because of this, seventeen English peers and eight baronets have scallop shells in their arms as heraldic charges. Note that it is not only in Europe that scallops and pilgrimages go together. In 19th-Century Japan, too, certain pilgrims adorned themselves with scallop shells.

The pilgrimage, known as the Camino (Camino de Santiago or Way of St James), is as popular today as it was in the Middle Ages. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, not all of them Roman Catholic, make the journey on foot. The pilgrimage, probably the most famous on the planet, goes for about 900 kilometres, from France to Spain, and takes about a month ...

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, spain, pilgrimage

Jekaupa Diena (Jekaba Diena), ancient Latvia

In ancient Latvia, Jekaupa Diena ('Jacob's day') was a festival held on July 24 – the Eve of St James (July 25), also known as Jacob. At the start of the harvesting season the townsfolk held feasts from their freshly harvested grain and gave neighbours gifts of bread.

Weddings held on this day were judged to be lucky. A bright sun was also lucky; a cloudy day was a portent of snow; rain caused a low harvest yield. Unless it was a new moon, old seeds had to be sown. It was unlucky to walk through cabbage fields; if the cabbage heads hadn’t appeared yet, they would not ...

Categories: latvia, calendar-customs, saint

No Limits magazine

I heartily recommend No Limits magazine.

'No Limits' is the premier free internet e-magazine devoted to topics related to your own power in areas of personal growth and empowerment; business and individual success; abundance and happiness; motivation and inspiration; health and well-being.

BBC exposes three psychic mediums

Not all psychics are con artists - a few are clearly just deluded, unlearned or mentally ill. This BBC-TV program exposes some who we won't try to categorize, due to defamation laws.

Categories: paranormal, skepticism

For those who want evidence, not superstition

I welcome the new TV show, The Skeptologists and look forward to viewing it. Now more than ever, as even much of the Western world seems to be descending into new Dark Ages of superstition and faith without rationality, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is encouraging to see that many people are still carrying illumination to the world.

One of the people behind this program is Brian Dunning, whose excellent critical analysis podcast, Skeptoid, will be well known to regular Wilson's Almanac readers. This almanac supports Skeptoid in its important work and I hope you will too. Ignorance mustn't triumph.

Categories: skepticism, superstition, science, reason

Plants for a Future - 7,000 useful plants

Plants for a Future is a very useful site for anyone interested in gardening or Permaculture design.

Categories: gardening, permaculture

The Downing Street Memo

2002 The Downing Street Memo: sometimes described by critics of the 2003 Iraq War as the "smoking gun memo", it contains the minutes of a secret meeting, on July 23, 2002, among United Kingdom government, defence and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the war ...

Categories: blair, war-on-terror, downing-street-memo, disinfo, disinformation

New website Living in Season

My online friend and colleague in almanacking, Waverly Fitzgerald, known worldwide for her excellent and popular School of the Seasons website, has launched Living in Season, "to foster community and creativity around the issues of slow time, sacred time and seasonal time".

The content is updated seasonally (Northern Hemisphere). Waverly's new site, which also has a blog and newsletter, is well worth bookmarking and frequent visits.

Obama at home

I wonder if Barack Obama speaks at home in those irritating clipped sentences he uses (unsuccessfully) for rhetorical effect in his speeches. "Hello, MICHELLE. How was your DAY? Mine was pretty BUSY. What's for DINNER? Mmm, pot roast - that sounds GOOD. Which chef cooked IT? Or did all seven chefs work TOGETHER? American is the greatest nation in the WORLD. Did I mention that ALREADY? Good, I mean GOOD."

Categories: obama

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

1376 The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town.

The story of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularised in German by the Brothers Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning (1812 - '89) in his narrative poem of that name.

It comes from an old German legend translated into English in 1605 by Richard Verstegan, English publisher and antiquarian (c. 1548 - c. 1636), who gave this as the date in A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. (A 14th-Century account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half centuries later (1430 - 1450) as an addition to a 14th-Century manuscript from Lüneburg ...

Categories: germany, legend

One small step for man

1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface.

[From the vantage point of Australia, where this almanac is produced, Apollo 11 landed on this day, although it was still July 20 in some other parts of the world. In fact, in UT (Universal Time), it was July 21. This raises the conundrum: If we in Oz saw it on the 21st, did we see it before the Americans, Africans and Europeans, who saw it on the 20th, or after them? I’ll leave you to figure that one out, as it’s way too hard for your almanackist.]

What did Armstrong really say?
"That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

These are some of the most famous, and most eloquent, words ever uttered, indelibly engraved on the global consciousness by Neil Armstrong on that day in July 1969. And yet, if he said "… one small step for man", leaving out the indefinite article, the sentence doesn’t make much sense. What did he really say, and were his words scripted for him by PR suits at NASA ...

Wilson's Almanac Universe page (space news)

Categories: usa, history, space, moon

From Australopithecus to Homo sapiens in 5 minutes

Turn the unnecessary sound down if you like.

Source: YouTube

Categories: evolution, video, youtube

Hairy Saint Uncumber

Wilgefortis (Comera; Cumerana; Dignefortis; Eutropia; Hulfe; Komina; Kummernis; Kümmernis; Liberata; Librada; Lisvrade; Livrade; Ontcommene; Ontcommer; Ontkommena; Reginfledis; Uncumber; Virgo-Fortis), daughter of the King of Portugal, made a vow of chastity. When her father tried to make her marry she prayed for deliverance and immediately grew a copious beard. Her suitors fled and her father had her crucified.

Known in England as Uncumber or Liberata, she was invoked by women who wanted to 'uncumber' themselves of suitors or troublesome husbands. In German lands she was known as St Kümmernis (where her name means 'grief' or 'anxiety'). She was known as St Liberata in France, and Saint Librada in Spain.

Linda Ours Rago (The Herbal Almanac, Starweed Publishing, Washington DC, USA, 1992) says you can achieve the same thing by picking parsley at dawn and wishing aloud for release. Other authorities recommend self-reliance.

The story and feast day of St Uncumber might derive from the stories of the Corinthian Aphrodite who grew a beard and impregnated women ...

Categories: saint, folklore, calendar-customs

Peter Garrett: fame, fans and fish to fry?

I have long been opposed to uranium mining, and I remain opposed to it.
Peter Garrett, 2007 ALP National Conference

How can Australia’s Minister for the Environment redeem himself in the eyes of his erstwhile legion of supporters?

That’s not a rhetorical question with the (understood) answer, "By throwing himself down a mineshaft in South Australia". It’s a serious problem, at least for Mr Garrett. His latest policy about-face, this time on uranium mining, seems to leave him with few friends outside Labor caucus and big business.

Crikey.com asks, Peter Garrett: fool now or liar then? The Green Party has savaged him over the Four Mile uranium mine in South Australia, just as Greens leader Bob Brown called him "spineless" over the Gunns wood-pulp mill in Tasmania. Now there’s speculation about a further string of uranium mines.

Garrett has retained a core of the many rock fans he had when he was the lead singer of Midnight Oil, but many of those fans who loved him for his progressive politics and lyrics, as much as for the music show, have run from him in embittered droves.

Facebook bears witness to the grassroots rebellion with group titles such as ‘Peter Garrett is an environmental sell-out’ and ‘Peter Garrett is Australia’s most disappointing man’. Combined membership in these groups only numbers about 500, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. All sorts of other groups and individuals on Facebook – all over the Net, in fact – are making rude comments, such as:

“What the hell happened to him?”
“Mother ****er just approved a uranium mine”
“Thanks for the pulp mill, PG, and your half-hearted attempt at being Australia's Minister of the Environment.”
“Not really surprised he has approved a uranium mine. I have given up on him.”
“What did he get in return, deputy PM within 10 years?”
“Words can not describe my disappointment. What a traitor. What a liar. What a sucker.”

Then there are the parody lyrics circulating, like:

“Oh the power of the Factions, oh deceit and compromise”

and the parody song on YouTube (first shown on The Chaser).

How can he sleep while his bed is burning, and is it true that “nothing’s as precious as a hole in the ground”?

The question at the head of this post, I see now, was indeed rhetorical, although I sincerely searched my brain for it not to be. I’m not even sure that hubris and political ambition have not squashed any give-a-damn that Peter Garrett might have had about supporters. He won the seat of Kingsford Smith. He won the Environment portfolio. And he’s already had fame and fans, so maybe there are bigger fish to fry.

Categories: australia, environment, uranium, politics, labor-party

The Oz magazine trial

1971 British comedian Marty Feldman appeared for the defence in the OZ Trial at the sombre London criminal court, the Old Bailey, calling the judge "a boring old fart".

The OZ case was the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. The original sentences of up to 15 months for Richard Neville and the other defendants sparked a wave of protest from many, including John Lennon. With Yoko Ono, Lennon joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of 'God Save OZ' by the Elastic Oz Band, released on Apple Records.

At the time in Britain, conspiracy to pervert the course of public morals carried a life sentence and the defence of the OZ magazine defendants was an important libertarian cause ...

Tagged: law, legal, crime, hippie, uk

Documentary on 19th-century Aussie commune in Paraguay

ABC Radio National is repeating a 1990 documentary on New Australia and Cosme, two intentional communities in Paraguay comprising hundreds of Australians in 1893 after the failure of social reform in Australia. It makes fascinating listening.



Listen online
Paradise Lost Part One :: Paradise Lost Part Two :: Paradise Lost Part Three

Read about New Australia and Cosme in the Book of Days
Read about William Lane, the leader, in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days
Read the Wilson's Almanac chronology of the times and events
Read my novel which is deeply involved with the New Australia venture

Categories: intentional-community, australia, paraguay, australian-history, biography, history, radio-national

Why did Bellingen Council kill this grand old tree?

Camphor laurel stump
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

Pictured is your almanackist atop a massive Camphor laurel tree stump near Lavenders Bridge in the heart of my hometown of Bellingen. Last week the tree was removed by Bellingen Shire Council in order to widen the footpath that winds from Church Street to the bridge -- a footpath that I frequently use and seemed to me and others to be already perfectly fine and not in need of changes.

While Council planned this baffling exercise, other important works such as a landslip covering Waterfall Way at the Gordonville cutting were not fixed for months (and the landslip was cleared in just a few hours when Council finally got around to it). The road base that washed away in the lane from Dowle Street to Wheatley street near my home and Community Radio 2BBB-FM's studios has not been repaired since the March 31 flood. So, I must ask, what was the importance of this footpath, and why were beautiful big shade trees removed at great expense to the ratepayers?

It's true that Camphor laurels spread seed to unwanted places, but there are thousands of them in the district that are not attractions like the ones in town, which are very old and give the comfort of shade and beauty to residents and tourists alike. The ones in town should, I think, be the very last to go.

I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

Categories: bellingen, environment

Matthew Flinders sails around Australia

1801 On this day Matthew Flinders (1774 - 1814) left England to circumnavigate and map Australia. It was he who gave the continent its name.

In 1789 Flinders had entered the Royal Navy and in 1791 joined HMS Providence as a midshipman, serving under William Bligh on his second 'breadfruit voyage' to Tahiti.

In 1798 he circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state) aboard The Norfolk, therefore proving it to be an island.

The Flinders story has a tragic turn to it. In 1803, while attempting to return to England aboard The Cumberland, he was forced to put in at Mauritius for repairs on December 17. Unbeknown to Flinders, England was at war with France, and the French governor, General De Caen, had Flinders detained as a spy. He would be imprisoned on Mauritius for almost seven years ...

Categories: australia, history, nautical

Why Austar sucks

At 8pm last night two Austar salesmen knocked on my door. It was a dark and cold winter's night and two young men dressed in black jackets, like hoodlums or cops, except for the Austar logo, got a polite but firm, "This is really inappropriate. No, I'm not interested. No, please go away. Do you know what time it is?" I was astonished that any company would do such a thing. I feel sorry for the two guys who are trying to earn a living and have to do such a thing. Only for that I wasn't rude to them.

My friends never come to my home even in daytime without phoning first, and I show the same courtesy to them. I told the salesmen this and one of them disingenuously said he would have phoned but he didn't have my number. That's when I said goodbye and slowly and gently closed the door without another word. My guests and I were shocked. Salespeople should not be sent by their bosses to knock on people's doors three hours after dark. Full stop.

I looked up Austar on Wikipedia this morning and found that it is telecommunications company, the main business activity of which is subscription television, something I need about as much as tuberculosis. In the highly improbable event that I ever need subscription television, Austar will be the first company that will not get my custom.

Categories: corporations, tv, privacy

'Wimoweh' song and Orpheus McAdoo

1900 Death in Sydney, Australia of Orpheus Myron McAdoo (Bill McAdoo; b. 1858), African-American 'black minstrel' singer who toured Europe, South Africa and Australia with McAdoo's American Minstrels and McAdoo's Alabama Cakewalkers.

In 1876 McAdoo graduated from Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (founded in 1868 at Hampton, Virginia by Northern philanthropists, notably General Samuel Chapman Armstrong) and taught in Virginia schools before returning to teach at his alma mater. In 1881 he took the place of his fellow student, African American educator and author Booker T Washington (1856 - 1915), in charge of the Native American boy students' dormitory.

Before commencing his own theatrical company in 1890 (mostly composed of fellow Hampton graduates - see Booker T Washington's papers), he had been one of the troupe of the eminent bass singer Frederick J Loudin and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who first arrived in Australia at Melbourne on May 14, 1886. The Fisk style of music included cakewalks and spirituals ...

Like his Sydney contemporaries Henry Lawson, Henry Kendall, Dorothea Mackellar, JF Archibald and Victor Daley and numerous other Australian celebrities, McAdoo's grave is in Waverley Cemetery at Bronte, a suburb of Sydney ...

McAdoo, Solomon Linda and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Before McAdoo's death the McAdoo Jubilee Singers had extensive tours in South Africa until hostilities began in the Boer War. McAdoo was shocked by the racism he saw and wrote to the Hampton Institute:

"There is no country in the world where prejudice is so strong as here in Africa. The native today is treated as badly as ever the slave was treated in Georgia. Here in Africa the native laws are most unjust; such as the Christian people would be ashamed of. Do you credit a law in a civilized community compelling every man of dark skin, even though he is a citizen of another country to be in his house by 9 o' clock at night, or he is arrested? Before I go into parts of Africa, I had to get a passport and a special letter from the governors and presidents of the transvall [sic] and the Orange Free States, or we would have all been arrested. Black people who are seen out after 9 o' clock must have passes from their masters, indeed, it is so strict that natives have to get passes for day travel…. I met a few colored men, Americans, living here. One opened a business in Johannesburg and before he could open, he had to get a white man to allow him to use his name, because no Negro is allowed to have his own business."

Many indigenous Africans were no doubt influenced and inspired by the visitors as role model, as they had not long ago been slaves themselves. Orpheus Myron McAdoo's legacy in Africa and the world is far reaching for in the 1890s it was his singers who popularised African American spirituals in South Africa through their widespread touring – two separate tours totalling eight years.

McAdoo's syncopations and American styles reached deep into South Africa, in mining towns and bush villages. It reached as far as Gordon Memorial School, above a valley called Msinga, in Zulu country about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg. A generation later, the sounds influenced a pupil of that school, Solomon Linda, who formed a group called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds.

Solomon Linda wrote a song called 'Mbube', Zulu for 'the lion', and recorded it in the Evening Birds' second session, in Johannesburg in 1939 after they had been 'discovered' by a talent scout. The song's lyrics told the tale of a group of men hunting a sleeping lion; the song was a South African hit, selling about 100,000 copies during the 1940s. Pete Seeger, the American folk musician, heard the compelling song in 1949 ...

[Today in the BoD we have an hilarious animated version of the 'Wimoweh' song, featuring a hippo and a dog.]

Categories: australia, usa, biography, history, australian-history, music

Arms tycoon behind new Aussie uranium mine

"The new uranium mine approved by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, will be owned by a subsidiary of one of the world's biggest arms dealers."
Sydney Morning Herald

Categories: australia, nuclear, military

Aussie utopian communards set sail for Paraguay

1893 Australia: On a Sunday afternoon one week after a large farewell gathering (10,000 people on July 9 [qv]) in Sydney's Domain, the Royal Tar sailed, arriving at Montevideo on September 13, and William Lane and his hundreds of followers worked hard to establish the New Australia and Cosme utopian communist settlements near Villarrica, Paraguay (he called it "socialism with a small 's'"). Descendants of some of the 600 settlers still live there.




Australia's famous writer Henry Lawson briefly wanted to go, as the famous poet Mary Cameron (later Dame Mary Gilmore) did actually go later and stay six years in Paraguay, but Lawson didn't have the necessary sixty pounds and later turned away from the ideology and methods of Lane, his former boss at the Brisbane Worker.

The 171-ft, copper hulled Royal Tar, the largest vessel built in Australia at the time, was built of bluegum and bloodwood by John Campbell Stewart (and/or W Marshall) at Copenhagen Mill, Nambucca Heads, on the north coast of New South Wales in 1876, near where this almanac is produced and also not far from many modern-day utopian-style communities (the Rainbow Region of northern New South Wales) ...

Categories: australian-labor-party, australia, alternative-lifestyle, utopia, australian-history, radical-history, henry-lawson

Voudon pilgrimage of Saut D'Eau, Haiti

Today, thousands of Voudon (Voodoo) believers from Haiti and abroad will make a pilgrimage to the sacred waters of Saut D'Eau, a waterfall where Erzulie Freda – the Voudon spirit of love, art, romance and sex – appeared twice in the 19th Century.

Freda (her veve, or symbol, is pictured) is a beautiful, wealthy white woman, a promiscuous love goddess-seductress, difficult and demanding, who loves luxurious items such as perfume, champagne and gold. She wears three wedding bands, one for each husband: Damballa, Agwe and Ogoun.

Her sister, the dark-skinned Erzulie Dantor, is the spirit of motherly love, cognate of Saint Barbara Africana in the Roman Catholic Church. Dantor is heterosexual in the sense that she has a child, but she is also the patron loa, or saint, of lesbians. Her Roman Catholic counterparts are the aspects of Mary, Our Lady of Czestochowa and Our Lady of Mount Carmel ...

Categories: voodoo, calendar-customs, religion, haiti

The Future of the Book: it’s already here

The Creative Penn, who I follow at Twitter @thecreativepenn, has a very good article on this subject at http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2009/03/28/future-of-the-book/.

Categories: book, future, writing, literature, publishing

Qantas censors anti-censorship ad

"Qantas has put the kybosh on online activist group GetUp's latest anti-censorship campaign, refusing to run the 'Censordyne' ad on its flights.

"Simon Sheikh, chief executive of GetUp, said the group had planned to run the parody ad on all Qantas domestic flights into Canberra next month to ensure it was seen by politicians and their staff members around the first sitting week of Parliament ..."
Source

Categories: censorship, australia, internet, civil-rights, advertising, action, activism, authoritarianism

Bohemian Club cult for the rich and powerful

The Bohemian Grove, that I attend from time to time — the (inaudible) and the others come there — but it is the most faggy goddamn thing that you would ever imagine. -- Richard M Nixon; Bohemian Grove secret rites take place annually on July 15

Bohemian Grove is an 11 km² (2700 acre) campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco-based men's art club known as the Bohemian Club. In mid-July each year, Bohemian Grove hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world; members have included George HW Bush, George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Caspar Weinberger and Dick Cheney ...



Categories: cult, usa

Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst

1858 Birth date of Emmeline Pankhurst (d. June 14, 1928), most influential and famous of the British suffragettes, mother of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist parents, and married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister, in 1879. Dr Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.

In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898. In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, an organization most famous for its militancy which began in 1905. Its members included the notorious Annie Kenney, the suffragette 'martyr', Emily Davison and the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth ...

Categories: biography, feminist, history, suffragette