soldiers going on leave
Huh?
I've been told by Australians that the 1918 epidemic was spread *precisely* by the decision to demobilise. Surely the last thing you want to do is scatter all those potential vectors?
L'Chaim!
Good to hear. I'll be thinking of you both.
The book is brilliant. As I remember one of the crucial bits of evidence was the elderly woman some distance away from the pump who, it turned out, came from the area and whose loving son delivered her a small barrel of the pump's water every day because she liked its taste.
Two memories for you:
My own experience of getting into huge trouble in elementary school
wearing Rock Against Racism badges because they were "political".
My grandma as one of the Jewish and Asian stallholders in Stockport
market who for the first time ever started speak to each other, so they
could organise a barricade of the market and prevent the National Front
marching through.
Tony Blair.
Lots and lots of charisma. Cynicism may be a sorry kind of wisdom, but for those of us in the UK it is intimately connected to experience.
I liked Obama two years ago when he seemed to talk about Things, but I'm a bit tired of hearing about Vision and Change. I'd rather hear about policy.
In the UK they could be convicted under the harrassment and stalking laws, which were passed in part to try and tackle this kind of thing. They have mostly proved quite successful (in that unlike some other laws, they don't seem to have led to malicious prosecution, and they do seem to have headed off some rather nasty situations).
You might want to check out Remember, Remember the Fifth of November by James Sharpe.
Jim did a very good job of convincing me that this particular ryhme should be allowed to die. The site you linked to neglected to mention that November 5 was an excuse for Catholic-bashing (physically) well into the 1950s.
Most people in this country use as a guy of whichever public figure is most loathed at any given time. Mrs. T was very popular or a while.
They aren't the same word. "Whine" tells you the note on which the comment is sung.
"Mo....meee" is the classic whine or "it's not fair!!!!", and I would use "whine" to describe any complain sung in a similar tone. So Paris Hilton is whining.
But whinge is closer to the Yiddish kvetch, a sort of on-going irritating protest.
Many years ago I read a Fletcher Pratt story in which the rest of the world simply got fed up and combined to invade America.
Maybe I should find a copy and send it to Bush.
Do you think they went to Church on Sunday?
Sarah
The effectiveness of an attack is entirely determined by the response of those in the vicinity.
The absolute worst thing we could do is go into national mourning, The absolute best thing is to go to work as normal, celebrate the Olympics (should you wish to) as normal, go out and see our friends as normal.
As Paul says, the British have lived through this before. I grew up in Birmingham when the IRA were bombing the pubs. I commuted through London through the last terror campaign.
We know how the British public wil react: we know how to do this. We know the undergound is not and cannot be safe. We accept that we live in a city without litter bins.
Crooked Timber has posted Noel Coward's London Pride. It brought a lump to my throat.
Quite possibly the finest short story writer the field has produced.
Teresa, the report you linked to doesn't "sound right". Or rather, it does.
Like a lot of accounts of "lynchings" by witnesses it contains the classic "markers":
a sex crime
a confession
a heroic or traitrous attempt by a sheriff to take the accused to trial
a "simple" hanging
and the assertion that the witness was not a part of the act, and "wouldn't have been".
Research into lynching cases shows very different things. In a number of cases the actual crime didn't happen. If it did, the first stranger/non-white to hand was usually grabbed (Clive Webb has done some research on this one with regard to the lynching of Italians in the US). Confessions were often forced, you simply cannot assume that they are in any way meaningful. The whole business of the sheriff trying to take the person to prison is about local-versus outside interests, it has *nothing* to do with whether there is a death penalty as most lynchings were about sex crimes which don't *carry* the death penalty.
Then onto the lynching itself: lynching sometimes included hanging, but it usually also included torture. The report cited made it sound like clean (ish) death but it almost certainly involved repeated hanging as the death would have been by strangulation--I suspect the car was run away from the tree several times.
That picture you saw may not have been the end of the event, There were often photographers there who took the official "hunting trophy" photo you see, and then stayed on to provide souvenirs of the fun,
In many cases bodies were mutilated, there were incidents of people being burned to death. People kept bits of the bodies.
The account you've linked to is a fairly typical "lynching narrative" from the period but if you compare it to the Anti-lynching movements records, you'll find that such narratives come attached to lynchings that we *know* actually involved taking the person down and then burning them to death.
This also goes for the "I didn't do it, I only watched".
Lynching was a problem in the US right up through the 1930s. It's highest point was 1933. See http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/afam/reflector/historicalb.html and http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm for more info.
Re the "some women won't link". Who cares? As you say Teresa, they are making their world stupider. There are even sf "critics" out there who think they can construct the genre through women only books.
My only concern is that there are two distinct voices here, and I like those two distinct voices. If they remain distinct, fine. I wouldn't want a composite.
I don't think anyone on this list has yet mentioned Ratzinger's comments on Europe. Over and above all the arguments about papable infallibility and his theological position, this may be the most worrying thing about him.
Ratzinger has argued that the Church must "re-Christianize" Europe. He has actively opposed the entry of Turkey (on religious grounds) and wants to see a "recognition of Europe's Christian heritage" included in the planned constitution.
The snag is that some of us regard Europe's "Christian heritage" with fear, long memories, and noting the gaps in our families. The Nazis' anti-semitism came from *somewhere* and it wasn't from "moral relativism" or "secularism".
Have you read Geoff Ryman's novel, Air? It has some interesting thing to say about what global communication might do to the intervention of different cultures into the clothing market.
I do hope you're feeling better now.
It took me two years to stop snarling at even the mention of the word "doctor" after the misdiagnoses and idiot prescriptions I experienced. I'm now firmly of the opinion that most front-line medical treatment would be better achieved by a multiple-choice test and a computer scanner.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 2 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2005 | 8 |
Total: 19 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Farah:
Show all comments by Farah.